Quote from: Christopher Brady;844154In 5e, everything is an Attribute check, though.  Yes, some abilities get a bonus, via Proficiency, but the main focus is the attribute.

Yeah.  I think that was a good move on behalf of the designers.

I had another session of the game using Xd6 checks under attributes as my go to way of resolving things. I think I like it better than d20 + modifiers vs target number.  The distribution of results from 3d6 is definitely less swingy tthan the d20.  Especially given how small the modifiers I was using were.  The size of the modifiers relative to the die range was just too small.

Personally, I always had a thing against attribute checks: they don't factor in levels.

It seems self-evident to me that, for instance, a 15th level adventurer with a Dexterity of 15 should be much better at sneaking, pickpocketing, swinging on a chandelier or jumping out of the path of a rolling boulder than a 1st level adventurer with the same Dexterity. The idea that characters get better at everything as they gain experience (and thus, levels) is one of the fundamental assumptions of D&D, and attribute checks fail to represent it.

Quote from: NathanIW;844260Yeah.  I think that was a good move on behalf of the designers.

I had another session of the game using Xd6 checks under attributes as my go to way of resolving things. I think I like it better than d20 + modifiers vs target number.  The distribution of results from 3d6 is definitely less swingy tthan the d20.  Especially given how small the modifiers I was using were.  The size of the modifiers relative to the die range was just too small.

I like Xd6 better, myself. Not only can you roll 4d6 for harder tasks and 2d6 for stuff that should be trivial, but you can also make it 4d6 take worse 3 or 4d6 take best 3, or 5d6 take best 4 for situations that are hard, but something is working in your favour:).

Quote from: Premier;844264Personally, I always had a thing against attribute checks: they don't factor in levels.

It seems self-evident to me that, for instance, a 15th level adventurer with a Dexterity of 15 should be much better at sneaking, pickpocketing, swinging on a chandelier or jumping out of the path of a rolling boulder than a 1st level adventurer with the same Dexterity. The idea that characters get better at everything as they gain experience (and thus, levels) is one of the fundamental assumptions of D&D, and attribute checks fail to represent it.

What prevents you from rolling under Attribute+Level/2, then;)?

Quote from: Premier;844264Personally, I always had a thing against attribute checks: they don't factor in levels.

It seems self-evident to me that, for instance, a 15th level adventurer with a Dexterity of 15 should be much better at sneaking, pickpocketing, swinging on a chandelier or jumping out of the path of a rolling boulder than a 1st level adventurer with the same Dexterity. The idea that characters get better at everything as they gain experience (and thus, levels) is one of the fundamental assumptions of D&D, and attribute checks fail to represent it.

Isn't this the idea (sort of) behind proficiency in 5e? Ie if it's a thing you "do", you get better at it. Otherwise not.

I suppose you have trouble with the "otherwise not" part but I like the concept.

Quote from: Premier;844264Personally, I always had a thing against attribute checks: they don't factor in levels.

Good point.  I think I will factor in levels next session.  I'm thinking AsenRG's idea of  level/2 is probably good.

Quote from: AsenRG;844292I like Xd6 better, myself. Not only can you roll 4d6 for harder tasks and 2d6 for stuff that should be trivial, but you can also make it 4d6 take worse 3 or 4d6 take best 3, or 5d6 take best 4 for situations that are hard, but something is working in your favour:).

It really is very flexible.  One thing that resulted immediately is that the cleric's divine guidance spell became add a die drop the highest.

Another thing I noticed is that I have fairly bounded attributes as a result of the conversation based character creation.  The range is 7 to 15 across the entire party.  So I found the distribution of 3d6 worked really well with that.  When I made the call to go to the dice add not just have autosucess it felt like it wasn't a foregone conclusion.  And at the same time it wasn't as wildly unpredictable as d20 + small modifiers vs DC.

Quote from: Premier;844264Personally, I always had a thing against attribute checks: they don't factor in levels.

It seems self-evident to me that, for instance, a 15th level adventurer with a Dexterity of 15 should be much better at sneaking, pickpocketing, swinging on a chandelier or jumping out of the path of a rolling boulder than a 1st level adventurer with the same Dexterity. The idea that characters get better at everything as they gain experience (and thus, levels) is one of the fundamental assumptions of D&D, and attribute checks fail to represent it.

Honestly, I agree.  Even 'untrained' people get better at doing things.  And frankly, the fact that no one ever gets any more skills outside of special cases in 5e is a bit of a bother for me.

Quote from: NathanIW;844036I'm actually going to answer that at face value.  In an OSR game that actually had brain surgery come up in play I'd rule that it's a damned specialized field and pretty much anyone attempting it would automatically fail.  It'd be the type of thing for which a full time NPC surgeon would be required.

Now if having those skills is part of the scope of the game, then I see no problem with having them.  If I was doing a Star Trek TOS OSR build-a-bear game I'd probably have "medical" as one of the elements.  Along with "engineering" and a few other game appropriate elements.

There is simply no reason to concern ourselves with such things for a dungeon crawl though.

I posted the following earlier in the thread:

That the types of dungeoneers that go on adventures will be sufficiently similar in abilities not covered by the rules that the referee can rely on checks or rulings modified by ability scores as needed.

I think that's a time tested approach worth using.

That makes more sense than what was actually being said. Presumably players will do the same deal as ever with poor vs. great "ability scores" (which may be quite faithful role-playing). If they've been trained to think they can't do something even though it makes common sense that they could (even if poorly), then you just have to retrain them.

"OSR" or not, I like a sword-n-sorcery game in which none of the pcs is a professional sorcerer, but all are in the same league as swordsmen (or axe-swingers, or whatever style of mayhem each favors). However, they can have various other specialties: Cyrano the poet, Aramis the Machiavellian sometimes-abbé, Galahad the paragon of chivalry, Mouser the sneak (and tyro magician), Tarzan the interlocutor with monkeys and elephants, Groo the oblivious and disastrous, what have you.

Quote from: NathanIW;843977They'll look down their long list of skills and see some at +8 and others at maybe 0 or +1 and be far, far less likely to try the latter.

So your present players prefer stuff their characters are bad at? And you call this good role-playing? I truly haven't seen much of what you complain of in a wide cross section of D&D 5e players (game stores, convention, home, long-time players and complete newbies) or in the past RPGs I've played, and it's really up to the GM to stop this, not the rules.

QuoteAn idea that's pretty much been central to this thread is the inverse relationship between breadth of rules and options in play.

You keep saying this. Repeating it does not make it any more true than the other assertion. If you really believe this, then you should have no rules and thus infinite options.

QuoteThroughout this thread people have been ragging on what this thread is not about.  Like Pundit's points about bean counting points and having a glut of options.

People are pointing out the problems. You've avoided the interaction one by having very few options for your build-a-bear, but still there's a special rule for characters who can do both kinds of casting; they don't get to add together their total spell slots/points/whatever, so no more spells cast than a single kind of caster.

QuoteSo I'm totally okay if you want to call it having 10 classes.  At least we'd finally actually be talking about what this thread is actually about.   So with that agreement, I'll now ask you if you have anything to contribute towards the topic of having interest or examples of a game like what was described in the original post.

I suggested Peter Knutsen's Multiclass already; it seems very similar to what you're doing if you ignore the crunchy skill system underneath the class choices.

I liked The Fantasy Trip a lot; it's already been mentioned. It has two classes (hero and wizard) but they really only determine the costs of talents versus spells. Effectiveness in encounters depends a lot on the ability scores, which stand in for level.

GURPS Ultra-Lite seems to match what you are doing quite closely; not sure it adds much.

QuoteAs for archetypes, I think they were largely a red herring that sent this thread careening off into the abyss.  As I pointed out to the Pundit, the build-a-bear approach has produced archetypes in actual play.  So it is totally irrelevant what archetypes do or don't show up in 5e (or any other version of. D&D).  They *do* show up in the type of game that this thread is about.

It's not build-a-bear; it's choose a bear from the catalog of 540 bears. If you really allowed real build-a-bear choices, you would end up with all the problems the Pundit told you about.

Quote from: AsenRG;843989I also pointed out that D&D 5e isn't an OSR game, which is what the topic is about. If I want a game that works in a largely similar way to 5e, I've got those already, what I'm looking for is a classless OSR game, so any 5e suggestions are anything but helpful.
Did you miss that post?

Your assertion was that D&D can't do these things; you were wrong. No, I didn't miss the post where you demanded specific mechanics and backpedaled furiously.

D&D 5e is quite old school; it would be easy to put backgrounds into any OSR game, and maybe bolster its class list a little. When I first started playing D&D, we had some house rules: a shapechanger class, "expertises" at each level just before your combat bonus increased (not as powerful as feats in 5e, but the same idea), and many of the classes that 5e has (not Barbarian, Warlock and Sorcerer) from supplements and Strategic Review, so even then I could have done almost all of your list (Barbarian would have been Fighter-Thief probably, but with no mechanic for rages; Nobleman was a high level Fighter so not a starting character, although you could have characters who were the heirs of some high level Fighter characters).

Quote from: rawma;844626Your assertion was that D&D can't do these things; you were wrong. No, I didn't miss the post where you demanded specific mechanics and backpedaled furiously.

Nope, at least a couple of the examples were still impossible, or impossible for a starting character.
And yes, I grew bored of discussing a game I didn't finish reading (and likely wouldn't finish, ever). For some reason, any discussion where fans of 5e bring up 5e ends up with me feeling like discussing religion with sect members...which I've done, too. And I stopped for similar reasons.
Which is probably at least a part of why I'm not in any haste to finish reading 5e. Some fans really aren't doing any service to the games they're fans of. You're very much included among those fans.

QuoteD&D 5e is quite old school;

What I'd read of its mechanics was enough that this makes me grin.
At best you can say that you have a game that's trying to not prevent you from running games in an old school way. How well it succeeds is up for this discussion - but not in this thread.

Also, this thread is kinda answered now. Yes, there is some interest in classless OSR game. Nobody was able to come up with an example (unless we consider Mongoose Traveller or Zenobia part of the OSR, which we probably should).

Quote from: rawma;844626So your present players prefer stuff their characters are bad at? And you call this good role-playing?

No, I don't.  But many games do have such skill system.  And I'm sure proponents of such system would argue that knowing their characters' shortcomings helps with roleplaying.  It's not what I'm looking for in a game right now though.

QuoteI truly haven't seen much of what you complain of in a wide cross section of D&D 5e players

I actually think 5e is on the lighter side when it comes to skills, so I'm not surprised.  

QuoteYou keep saying this. Repeating it does not make it any more true than the other assertion. If you really believe this, then you should have no rules and thus infinite options.

I *just* explained in my last post to you why I don't go freeform.

Anyone who wants to know about the inverse relationship between mechanical breadth and options in play can discover it for themselves by running a game with a large number of specific skills and a game with far less (or none) and actually pay attention to what the players do and say..  5e is not a good candidate for the large number of specific skills game.  Though Trail of Cthulhu on the lots of skills side and 5e on the few skills side should get the point across.

QuoteI liked The Fantasy Trip a lot; it's already been mentioned. It has two classes (hero and wizard) but they really only determine the costs of talents versus spells. Effectiveness in encounters depends a lot on the ability scores, which stand in for level.

The marriage of its approach with the basic ideas from 0e/S&W/m74 produced the best session I've had so far with this game.  I'm glad I didn't keep the skill system from M20 that I had for a session as the attribute check system that FT and 5e have works better for me.

QuoteIt's not build-a-bear; it's choose a bear from the catalog of 540 bears.

I did the math and the conversation based character creation can produce 1800 different results.  And without any of the problems the Pundit raised. That's good enough for me.

Quote from: AsenRG;844648Nope, at least a couple of the examples were still impossible, or impossible for a starting character.

No, you were just wrong. You did backpedal at an amazing rate for someone dragging goalposts with him.

QuoteAnd yes, I grew bored of discussing a game I didn't finish reading (and likely wouldn't finish, ever). For some reason, any discussion where fans of 5e bring up 5e ends up with me feeling like discussing religion with sect members...which I've done, too. And I stopped for similar reasons.
Which is probably at least a part of why I'm not in any haste to finish reading 5e. Some fans really aren't doing any service to the games they're fans of. You're very much included among those fans.

Correcting wrong information is worth the loss of one dishonest, goalpost-moving clown. If I ever have a need for such, I guess I'll have to settle for the second stringers.

Quote from: rawma;844626D&D 5e is quite old school;

Quote from: AsenRG;844648What I'd read of its mechanics was enough that this makes me grin.

Here's another opinion for you from someone with more complete knowledge:

Quote from: RPGPundit;782361A Brief Review of 5e D&D From an Old-School Perspective
[...]
So first, it's clear that the PHB is not in and of itself an OSR game.  But it is certainly informed by a strong old-school feel.

Quote from: rawma;844626D&D 5e is quite old school

Not in my book. 5e is more like a toned down 3.5 with some 4e concepts reflavored. It can be played more like old school than 3.x or 4e, but to really play it old school, you'd need to make a number of changes to the rules. Somewhat deeper changes than most of those suggested in the 5e DMG.

Quote...it would be easy to put backgrounds into any OSR game, and maybe bolster its class list a little.

I've had player-created (with GM approval, of course) backgrounds in my game since the late 1970s. The background a character has is treated just like the character's class for determining what he can do. In "modern terms", a character's class and background are two very board "skills" that the character is assumed to start fairly competent in and get more competent as his level increases. A character's background can literally be anything that makes sense in the setting and is almost independent of class (the only real restriction is that a background cannot duplicate a class). I much prefer my system to the 5e system. It's less limiting and does not require pages and pages of background writeups.

Quote from: RandallS;8447785e is more like a toned down 3.5 with some 4e concepts reflavored.

It feels to me like the OD&D and AD&D I played in the late 1970s, and the differences are ones I like.

QuoteI've had player-created (with GM approval, of course) backgrounds in my game since the late 1970s. The background a character has is treated just like the character's class for determining what he can do. In "modern terms", a character's class and background are two very board "skills" that the character is assumed to start fairly competent in and get more competent as his level increases. A character's background can literally be anything that makes sense in the setting and is almost independent of class (the only real restriction is that a background cannot duplicate a class). I much prefer my system to the 5e system. It's less limiting and does not require pages and pages of background writeups.

So some actual old school games had backgrounds? That's very cool. We described characters, and sometimes that could be quite elaborate, but it was really only a role-playing and sometime DM discretion thing.

I do find 5e more verbose than necessary. There is also very limited scope to advance outside of classes; some races get abilities or increase certain abilities at specified levels, and you could add feats relevant to your race or background, but the feats come because of class levels. And that's about it. But I would also say that's a more old school aspect.

Quote from: rawma;844776No, you were just wrong. You did backpedal at an amazing rate for someone dragging goalposts with him.

It's your problem how you see it. To me, half the examples I was given, just sucked.

QuoteCorrecting wrong information is worth the loss of one dishonest, goalpost-moving clown.

Indeed:). So go ahead, get lost!

QuoteHere's another opinion for you from someone with more complete knowledge:

I didn't agree with Pundit in this thread, why do you suddenly decide that I'd take his opinion as the authoritative source on 5e now?
Clearly, he and I have differences in opinion. Just like you and me. Unlike you, he manages to present those differences in at least a somewhat tolerable way;).

Quote from: RandallS;844778Not in my book. 5e is more like a toned down 3.5 with some 4e concepts reflavored. It can be played more like old school than 3.x or 4e, but to really play it old school, you'd need to make a number of changes to the rules. Somewhat deeper changes than most of those suggested in the 5e DMG.

Yeah, this is my impression as well. And it's why I'm unlikely to ever finish reading it. I mean, I tried 3.5, tried 4e, and neither was to my taste, although I had different degrees of tolerance for them.
In related news, I like neither vanilla, nor mint icecream, and the idea of trying out vanilla and mint icecream sounds like yet another thing I'm not going to like:D!