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

[FitzTheRuke]

I agree with you.

Unfortunately, the rules don't.

By RAW the feature has to work whenever a player invokes it.

You can "always" cast fireball, too (if you know it and have the right spell slot) - but you're not going to when it's inappropriate. Or for another example, your character sheet can say that you have Athletics +5, but you're not making an athletics check unless its appropriate for that part of the game.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I agree with you. It does state that, but it isn't explicit - and that is the problem here. Since it is implied, then both interpretations can be deemed correct. That is why I rewrote it.
(To be fair, many of the background features are vague, and for good reason. Because the beginning of the section tells the player to work with their DM. They need it vague to encompass different attitudes towards the game.)

Like I said, it is a list, not an appositive. It is not a description of the "local messengers." They are separate from one another. Which even begs to question whether those corrupt caravan masters and seedy sailors are "trustworthy" like your liaison.

Hence, the oxymoron. You have met the one criminal who know all the other criminals, yet somehow, they are reliable and trustworthy?

Yeah, I don't think the designers ever meant for every single word to be taken completely literally, with no exceptions or additions or modifications. They are meant as examples of the sort of thing that the features can do, and are vague on purpose, under the idea that the player and DM will fill it in with something appropriate to their game that is along those lines, but more custom-built.

I think they meant this as a feature (no pun intended), not a flaw - but I think it's clear that it didn't work for much of the audience, and the most common thing I see and hear about is that People Just Don't Use It.

Ultimately we're back to the likely reason that they're replacing it with a feat - something that will be used and still says something about your character's earlier life and training.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Wrong thread.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Staying with Level Up.

 

[tetrasodium]

You can "always" cast fireball, too - but you're not going to when it's inappropriate. Or for another example, your character sheet can say that you have Athletics +5, but you're not making an athletics check unless its appropriate that part of the game.

No you can't cast a fireball

• while standing in a beholders gaze (anti magic)
• while silenced (V)
• while tied up(S)
• while trying to not look like you are casting a spell (V and S)
• while without your focus (M)

no you can't get results from the cast if you are targeting a thing that is

• magic immune
• fire immune
• with a damage threshold that is higher then your damage
• a thing they that saves with a feature that gives it no damage on a save.

You are describing an action not the result & that's a different thing. Many background features skip right over the action and jump straight to being sbsolute in granting a PC both success and the result.

 

[Lanefan]

Just wandering around, no, the odds would be incredibly low. But what if you know where those people like to go shopping or drinking or to hang out, and you go to those places specifically to find them? The odds become much higher.

Which is what backgrounds like the criminal assume. You know where criminal sorts go, meaning you can go there, find them, and get one to take a message to your contact. The rules don't say it's automatic or instantaneous.

The don't say it's instantaneous but they do say it's automatic. There's a huge difference between "You know [contacts etc.] ..." and "You might know [contacts etc.]...".

The DM is free to say "how much time to you want to spend searching/waiting," or, "you're going to need to make a Wisdom roll to track them down."

By RAW the DM is free to say the first and allow the player to self-limit the character, but not the second because that imposes a roll; and as written, success in finding a contact is automatic.

 

[Lanefan]

You can "always" cast fireball, too (if you know it and have the right spell slot) - but you're not going to when it's inappropriate. Or for another example, your character sheet can say that you have Athletics +5, but you're not making an athletics check unless its appropriate for that part of the game.

A better analogy would be to say that if-when the character needs to make an Athletics check, because the rules say so the check automatically succeeds no matter what.

There's no mention in the background feature write-ups of their functionality being gated behind a check. As (poorly) written, they just work.

 

[mamba]

You can "always" cast fireball

apples and oranges… but you cannot always find someone to cast fireball for you

 

[Hriston]

that still does not explain how, unless to you how is ‘because they said so’

As @Lanefan said in the post to which I was replying, the “how” is easy to answer once, and as I said in my response, it doesn’t happen all that often.

 

[mamba]

As @Lanefan said in the post to which I was replying, the “how” is easy to answer once, and as I said in my response, it doesn’t happen all that often.

so you say it is no problem because the players do not use the feature much, so it always working is no problem, even if that means coming up with something highly improbable that ‘one time’? That is a cop out, so you still say it works every time…