173
500 Hours in MS Paint
(ttrpg.network)
I really hate whenever I try to explain how some bad rules can be abused and immediatelly get someone say shit like "If this happens in your group, change it" as if that would solve the problem. And whenever it is not soemthing you witnessed personally, then it means it never happens and could never happen.
This has a lot of "stop enjoying that!" energy.
There's no set of rules that a clever person can't exploit or circumvent in some way, and min/maxers have been a plague on the RPG community since long before 5e. Frankly, if this sort of thing is a regular issue for you then the problem is the people you're playing with. A good DM can roll with players like this and balance them.
Also the toxicity that is implied to exist by this post is pretty rare really. Even back when I was using Reddit, toxicity generally sank to the bottom of comment sections, and even more so here. When I got into D&D close to the beginning of 5e, some online voices on YouTube for example carried this toxicity but nowadays, most voices are far newer and friendly.
In general, most people are more interested in what happens at their table instead of all tables, and the rules are just guidelines to aid that.
I wouldn’t say it implies a toxic fanbase at all. It clearly states that’s the MO of an apologist. It further states that someone chimes in with that MO. Not a horde, not a group, an individual.
And I agree wholeheartedly. They are a minority. A very annoying, very vocal, minority.
The amount of cope is staggering sometimes and makes me disengage from discussing the hobby altogether.
Even your comment has some cope mechanism embedded:
As if nobody knew that. The guidelines are shit at some points, that’s the whole discussion.
There's a thing in D&D forum spaces called the Oberoni Fallacy. The fallacy goes that, if someone says there's a problem with a D&D rule, they're wrong because they can just Rule 0 it away. It's a fallacy because they have just proposed a solution to what apparently isn't a problem.
People constantly saying "the rules are just guidelines" to any D&D problem is the same sort of idea. Yeah, I know you can ignore them, but I paid for the damn book, so I want what's IN the book to actually matter.
You are the red box in the image.
Right, OK, yes, so what? the red box is where reasonable people arrive mentally.
Not really. You're placing blame on players using a system as written and a DM for being unable to handle an exploit in the rules. At no point do you open the rules themselves up for criticism. In fact, you deflect all criticism away from the rules, as if the impossibility of a perfect system excuses every bad decision ever made.
Just like how there is no ruleset that cannot be exploited, there is no ruleset that cannot be improved. It's only by acknowledging the flaws that something can improve, but you seem hellbent on dismissing flaws entirely. That's unhealthy.
DnD isn't just a set of rules, though. It is inherently a social activity, and that means there has to be a certain level of expectation for social norms. If your group has toxic people in it, they will be toxic while playing tic-tac-toe.
The solution is to employ social pressure or ostracism for those people. We can certainly modify rules that have proven abusive in the past, but enforcing rules of conduct must always be the first line of defense.
If D&D isn't a set of rules, why do they charge so much for their rulebook?
It's also worth noting that nobody has said an actual exploit. Nobody has DONE anything toxic. Someone just noticed a POTENTIAL exploit and suggested fixing it before any problems occur. Yet ostracizing people is a more acceptable position than a rules patch?
If the rules aren't something to be changed, why do they charge so much for the rules revision they just put out?
At its core DnD is a wargame where we spend most of the game time fighting against monsters and bad guys. Having robust combat systems is the big draw of the game and fighting monsters in interesting ways without being too unfair either way. People want rules that are robust enough to make interesting combat but don't completely break down under a bit of the box thinking, like the peasant rail gun, or the moon box lich, or the create water in someone's lungs to cause drowning, or the coffeelock to get infinite spell slots.
All of these mechanical oversights are frustrating to play with because we have to stop the game and debate over whether this cheesy game breaking bullshit should be allowed at the table and it takes time away from the reason we're all here, to get together play a game, and let everyone have fun, DM included. And sitting around debating whether the moon counts as a container for a lich's soul reliquary or lining up 500 peasants and each of them readying and handing off an object at a bazillion mph for an hour and a half breaks the rules is not fun.
You want a system for magic that encourages being busted even at high levels? Play some Mage the Ascension, you can do some absurdly wacky shit even at fairly low power levels.
Yes. If you can't get someone to knock off bad behavior, the rules do not matter.
There are good reasons to change rules. People breaking social norms is not one of them.
Once again, nobody has done anything. There is no bad behaviour anyone needs to stop. You don't even know what the exploit is, or how the group feel about using it. You are inventing a hypothetical person to punish for a hypothetical misdeed while the actually flawed rules (by WotC's admission, as proven by the erattas and rules revision) are right in front of you.
What we infer from it all is that someone is using a rule in a way that's detrimental to the group. We may want to change the rule, or it may be time to have a talk, or it may be time to kick them out.
As far as assumptions go, that cuts both ways All I'm saying is that we don't take any of the options above off the table.
Quick question: Who do you mean by "them"? Who are you saying to kick?
Because the only information given is that an exploit exists. Nobody has said, at any point, that anyone has used an exploit at a table where the others found it to be detrimental. You invented that scenario. You invented the person acting badly, and you specifically imagined them to be toxic and ruining everyone's fun.
A person who doesn't exist cannot be kicked. A ruleset that exists can be changed. And changing a ruleset doesn't mean I can't also kick a person.
If nothing has happened, then nothing needs to be done. I sometimes float exploits in the rules past my friends for various games, but make it clear I have no intention of playing that way.
I even tested something in Terraforming Mars this past weekend. I made it clear with the group ahead of time that I wanted to try something, what the strategy was, and how I would be playing. They were all fine with it, and it turned out the strategy was broken as hell. Won by 12 points against a fairly experienced group. It's also a boring way to play that game and I wouldn't care to do it again.
That's also how I know that it's fruitless to expect rules to avoid these situations entirely. They must be handled socially. Any other tool is inadequate.
Prevention is better than cure, dude. Take your vaccine so you don't get the disease. Set up a fire escape so you don't burn to death. Lock your door so people don't walk in and steal your TV. Avoid Stabby Johnson so he doesn't stab you.
And if you notice a flaw in a game system, do what you can to fix it.
If you are aware of a potential problem and do nothing to stop it, then you are responsible for it if it happens. You can't expect to avoid tragedy entirely, but you reduced the risk of THAT tragedy by a good amount, and that's not worthless. A seatbelt won't always save you, but you're absolutely fucked without one.
For someone trying to keep all options on the table, you sure are quick to remove all options from the table.
What are you even on about? If there's a flaw in the system, the best that can be done is make it clear to the group that we shouldn't abuse this, and hope the official rules are changed at some point.
You may not be paying attention to me, but I thought you might want to pay attention to yourself. We absolutely CAN change rules at the table. It's called a house-rule. You keep pretending the issue is one that can't be improved with a rule change, but yes it fucking can.
Are you just going to "thoughts and prayers" approach that? Or are you going to post online about the exploit to mitigate damage while letting the company behind the game know about the potential exploit? I'm going to assume the first, since you said "nothing needs to be done" unless there's a person to kick from the table.
This has a lot of "I've only played D&D" energy. I am fascinated to hear your examples of exploits in VtM, or CoC, or even PF2e. Exploits and rules abuse have always been issues in D&D, which is just one of the reasons there are so many systems that aren't D&D. Plenty of rules can't be exploited, regardless of how intelligent you are - being clever isn't a magic spell that just lets you unravel rules to be remade in your image.
It's legit not hard to make an OP/powerful character in either VtM or CoC, assuming youre talking about making a character good at combat (which is usually what people talk about in this context with power gaming). I don't play PF2e, though, so i cant speak there.
CoC take high dex, put 90+ in handguns, take the pulp talents rapid fire and quick draw, wear a bandolier of guns, and dual wield pistols that you fire 6 shots from per turn. If you dont care about going first, then fast load if you care about reloading, if not, then just take shadow and start combat hidden for two attacks with a bonus die at the start.
For VtM its easy as take fist of caine and lightning strike. If you aren't playing as elders, this requires gaining some exp first. I know there's other combos that i cant think of off hand that are pretty potent too.
Each of these do have counters in the form of monsters immune to guns (CoC), or celerity 5 opponents (VtM), but thats no different than a DM in D&D always throwing fireballs at the guy with high AC. It begins to be apparent when its happening all the time that the GM/DM/Keeper/whatever is specifically targeting your weakness.
Minmaxxing isn't really the same as rules exploits - you can do those things to become really good at combat, but you're sacrificing your abilities in other areas, which make up a significant part of the game. It's not like hiding behind a tower shield to disappear or undead warlocks short resting to stack death ward, where you're actively taking advantage of wording and rules interactions to achieve unintended effects.
i mean, if youre wanting exploitative rule mechanics based on wording/interactions, you need to look no further than base first aid and medicine in CoC; You're able to make 1 of each per wound you take. Unlike older editions, they've done away with the heal cap on it, so if you're down HP, simply deal yourself 1 HP of damage, make a first aid check. and then make a medicine check to heal at minimum 2 HP. Repeat until full. You can easily reheal yourself to full this way, which is definitely "unintended" based on how healing works (and older editions).
Edit: at the end of the day, my point is that pretending other games cant or dont have exploitative mechanics/builds/whatever is naive at best? It's not a D&D only problem. It's just more prevalent in D&D because 1) it has more rules and 2) it has more players.
I think you've conflated part of those rules - there's nothing in the medicine skill saying you can only do it once per wound, just first aid. So you can deal/restore 1 damage in between medicine checks, but that's not what let's you keep making medicine checks.
Pg. 65, under first aid.
So it is, I'd been looking at the damage and healing rules on 120. I'm sure that's going to be fun to bring up at the table...
Still, I don't think that's as egregious as something like pun-pun or sorlocks short resting to regain spells. There are exploits in other systems, but not at the level or frequency of D&D.
yeah, unfortunately the CoC rules have always been kind of a mess. it still has a lot of that early RPG "stream of consciousness" aspect to it.
But yeah, at the end of the day, the number of rules you have is far more relevant to how many "exploits" there are, so CoC/VtM being less "crunchy" will result in less exploits.
I'd disagree on the second part, because of my other example, PF2e - the original had most of 3.x's problems, but the code-like specificity of 2e is really showing it's possible to stop stuff slipping through the cracks. There is a level of interplay between crunch and the possibility of exploitability, but I don't think it's as strict as bigger systems and more rules inherently lead to more exploits.
I mean, as i stated, i can't really vouch or argue against pf2e, since i dont play it and haven't really read the rules of it since it was in playtest. That said, just googling, i see some things that could be considered exploits like a reddit thread talking about being able to do 520 damage in one attack, some chatter about a "resentment witch" being able to make power word stun or color spray effectively permanent, and a youtube video by the rules lawyer about "OP builds", so it seems like there's at least some system exploitation going on.
Obviously a tighter controlled system is less vulnerable to exploitation (see D&D 4e), but that also doesn't mean that is necessarily doesn't exist. Another counter example system with lots of rules and lots of exploitation of them would be shadowrun, especially older versions, which were even worse than D&D in some respects.
Surprisingly, as OP as they seem, they're entirely in line with the intent of PF2e. 520 damage might seem like a lot, but it takes a specific enemy type, some prebuffing, 4 actions (plus any necessary movement) to prepare, 4 spells from 3 other characters, 2 more actions to execute the attack, and some incredibly lucky rolling - an equal level wizard can just use 2 actions to cast the 10th rank spell Cataclysm, and with similar dice luck deal 420 damage. 480 if the target is swimming. That's just level 20 PF2e.
Similarly, the resentment witch is just meant to make those conditions permanent - enemies of a higher level than the party have their success level against those saves increased, so while they can be a huge boon, they're unlikely to do much against enemies they'd really turn the fight against - being able to extend what effects they can land makes incapacitation spells worth potentially wasting on bosses, with the high chance of the spell doing nothing and the ability not even coming into play being the trade off for the power of the ability. Even if the spell does land, it'll be a lesser version of the effect that is extended.
I don't watch the rules lawyer, but from his interaction with the PF2e subreddit I'm pretty confident it's a clickbait title - they'll be powerful builds, but entirely within the intentions of the system, and ultimately as useful in game as most other builds.
Yeah you ripped someone's heart out in 3 seconds because your fast and strong, cool now you're covered in blood and a walking Masquerade breach becaise you punched through someone's ribcage The cops are on their way, second inquisition are listening in on radios, the Prince is disappointed that an elder is this careless and the sheriff is going to laugh at you as you're turning to dust because disciplines can only do so much before you fall into torpor because you're out of blood points/at max hunger.
oh hey it's that box from the chart. d&d is saved!