Are Tools Completely Useless in D&D 5e?
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- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
- All players have tools and tools proficiencies on their character sheets, but they are seldom (if ever) used. So why are they there? Is there a point to having tools in D&D 5e? YES! And...also no. It's as complicated.
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I'm really enjoying your "Does [thing] really matter?" videos! This was another good one.
TL/DR: If you don't have the tool, you don't get to do the thing.
In games I've run/played*, tools are always vitally necessary to perform certain tasks. Shoes wear out on long journeys, as do saddles; tents rip; armour breaks, wears out, or no longer fits correctly; chests don't unlock themsleves; there's never a bridge when you need one; and so on. For that matter, tools, themsleves, can wear out. If a player forgets to include proper gear, the character has also forgotten, and may suffer for it.
Obviously, though, they can't carry around the wrench, the pipe, and the kitchen sink, due to encumbrance and weight. It's all a balancing act. We're going for semblance of realism, here, and not for drudgery
*I very rarely play ADnD, anymore, and basically never D&D/5E/WotC/Hasbro
Campaign Terrain thank you very much! You have some really great points! “Mundane” challenges are still challenges that require skills to overcome and they can be just as rewarding as a dungeon crawl if done correctly. I enjoy a more realistic game style, but I know many people who don’t. I really like the idea of needing to repair/replace items after a certain amount of use. I might play with that!
Great ideas on how to better integrate tools into the game. I like to give my players bonus pieces of information based on their background and tools are a great thing to also consider for that :D
Koroc DM awesome idea!
Super awesome video as always! You always offer such great insights and advice to dm’s. Can’t wait for the next video!!!
Smansam thanks friend! I really appreciate that!
This is your first video I've watched. And I love the way you think. Great Video. Thank you! -Pedro Sangria, The Artillerist Artificer who just got an All-Pupose Tool. :D
Thank you so much!! 😁
The "flooded with cash" and leveling up quickly makes certain tools difficult. Even with playing a Forge cleric, where it is your divine duty to make things, making plate mail is ridiculous. By the rules in the DMG it takes 15 weeks to make a suit. Or you could spend 15 weeks going on adventures and wracking up the money, favors and gifts to get a suit of plate mail and so much more.
Also like many crafts, it doesn't take into account the labor cost of an adventurer. Each week you make 50gp worth of something, which sells at retail for twice as much. So that is 50gp profit. Once you hit a significant level could you be making more than 50gp by curing the sick, the blind, healing people or any number of other activities. If your crafter has a low Charisma or selling things to a shop then you have to sell for even less than retail, as the actual shop owner or person with high Charisma who is selling it for you wants their cut.
I love including tool proficiencies in my characters for the reasons you mention. Adding to the player background and for RP reasons. The cleric or religious paladin who carves religious symbols to hand out when proselytizing, the bard who makes their own instruments, etc...
spaccorn Excellent point! If you just think of the pure time-to-reward ratio, crafting doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for players. Maybe in a real pinch, but it would be a boring game if all players did was craft 😅
Nothing specific to tools in previous editions (except maybe iron spikes, pitons, caltrops, and 10' poles). In fact the only tools of consequence were the players who were rules lawyers who quibble over everything that might disadvantage their character, super-munchkins who somehow have access to everything (it's on my character inventory sheet, page 53, subsection 4, and I know it looks like it was just written in but it was there beforehand honestly!), and those that insist that everyone else at the table speak in character ALL THE TIME (and the DM should have different accents, mannerisms, and a hat for every NPC).
😂😂😂😂
Feats + Tools: ACTOR + disguise kit? TELEPATHIC + playing cards? KEEN MIND + dragonchess? LUCKY + dice?
I had the pirate background and had navigation tools and STILL could not take the ship after we took it over because the module said not to give it to us. - last time I gave a single thought to tools.
William Cullen oh that SUCKS. 😩
Fantastic topic. Are tools useful or even necessary? That totally depends on how the campaign flows And if the players even think to use them. Use of tools in AD&D ,1E specifically, just a few classes such as Thieves and Acrobats had class specific tools. No one really went deep into the backstory or downtime occupations. 5E its really broad. I run two different 5E groups on the same campaign. Group 1 took over a seedy dive bar and turned it into a micro brewery with contracts it supply the local Inn / Tavern. Group 2 has two fighters with carpenters tools, in their down time they go around the community repairing homes for the less fortunate NPCs and They started a business and took on a carpentry apprentice each. While the Druid took over the same seedy dive bar, as group 1, and made it into a flower shop.
THAC0'S Cave I love all of that so much! My players are much more interested in Dungeon dives than owning a business 😂 it really depends!
@@HalflingHobbies I try to have both groups return to their starting place before the end of the 3rd or 4th session on a mission. This way they have down time and are able to restock any expended supplies. This really helps with character building and possible relationships with the locals. In a campaign I ran several years ago I tested this with a Thief in the group. He decided he wanted to learn about the plants that were abundant in the area, on his down time. So I had him look for a specific retired Druid to teach him. This avenue of training lead the Thief to becoming Proficient in Botany and Natural Medicines, Eatables, and Poisons. This really worked to the party's advantage, when they were traveling between villages, when they needed stop for a short rest and eat.
THAC0'S Cave such a great idea! My ranger just picked up an herbalist kit in town and has been “experimenting” with it. I think I will have him do the same thing! Thanks for the great idea!
Hit me with the tubing story 😂
Tools didn't even exist in previous editions, except for thieves' tools pretty much.
I love crafting, tool use, and left-field solutions, I'm every GM's worst nightmare lol. One of the issues we ran into with 5e is the amount of work it puts on the GM with tools and crafting. These can be co-created with players, but if there's too much on the player then the GM doesn't know what's going on... So I've been working with my GM for the last few weeks to compile 5e's crafting/tool rules to streamline them (and modify in some places) as well as create lists of in game items I can try to craft with each set of tools. We tried to mimic how spell lists work in a way, making it so I have something I can refer to without having to constantly stop the game to ask if something is possible, while my GM generally knows what shenanigans I could get up to.
We've found that a lot of our players won't think of or try to do things if there's ambiguity or confusion around a mechanic, so it helped at our table to discuss tool proficiencies during session 0, outlining which of the base, optional, and homebrew rules apply. We also implemented a half hour before gaming for chatting, asking questions, and pitching ideas, which really helped them start poking at character aspects like tools that were completely ignored in the last campaign.
♥tardigrade♥ what great ideas! I hope more players and DMs do this! I would really love to see tools used more 😊
I'm going to make use of my tools during our next session since our drunken dwarf shot his mouth off and got our company banned from the "surplus shop" and lost all of our metal gear due to a corrosion/rust spell; all I need is a scrap yard and our dwarf to help make a forge since I have my own smithing tools.
Nice! Great use of tools!
Does anyone know what video game pops up on the screen at the 06:38 minute mark?
This one is great.
Thank you!! 😁
In 3.5 tools go hand in hand with skills. I have players that use their tools and skills to create and repair items
Yes I think it was used more in earlier editions.
Good video
Rivers RPG Channel Thanks got letting me know! I wonder why they have downplayed the significance so much in this addition. Too much to keep track of maybe? In any case, they certainly don’t seem to have the same value they used to.
Halfling Hobbies true
My opinion is they wanted a streamlined game and a lot of skills and feats that gave you more diversity for a character are gone. There’s no specialist in 5e, everyone can do everything. Not so in the older editions.
Rivers RPG Channel In the interest of making the game available to everyone, we lost some great features. But more people are playing, which is super fun!
Halfling Hobbies yep
Not at all. Matt Mercer is a massive tool and he has really helped promote the game to a wider, geekier audience.. :-D
We are all tools to be used to solve problems I suppose :)
your channel a nice find :)
Thank you so much! 😊
From at least 3rd edition onwards tool proficiency was not really a thing, the same concept was, but instead it was jsut that certain skills and certain uses of skills required you had access to tools. So it makes sense and I understand why tools was changed to function as skills in and of themelves, but it just made them more confusing, since they seem like a whole (optional) new system instead of just a slightly different wording for a couple of skills.
But I just wish they went back to making tools skills again, pretty much all other systems uses tools as either a requirement for certain actions or something that can give a bonus to certain actions. This weird middleground 5th ed tools have, is very unintuitive.
Barl3000 great point! I like the idea of tools simply being necessary to preform some actions instead of being an entirely new skill tree. Thanks so much for the insight!
currently preparing to be a forever dm, any advice? (i’ve played a adventures league game once and it was terrible)
Haha! Oh man, my biggest piece of advice is to compile a DM binder that just has LOTS of ideas that you can pull out anytime. That has saved me so many times!
I feel that 5E games are too fast. Since everyone forgets downtime activities because there's very little downtime, most forget they have them! However, for high sea's adventures, carpenters tools are very helpful!
Great point. My players hate "down time." I have to force them to take a break by giving them levels of exhaustion!
I wish that downtime was more incorporated into the game. I know that it technically is, but so far in our games it's very GM dependent to make sure it comes up. Otherwise the quests keep coming and it doesn't make sense as the good guys to take time off when lives are on the line.
@@HalflingHobbies good idea! YOU try to work without weekends lol
♥tardigrade♥ EXACTLY! Lol
I use tools more then I use most class and subclass features. Which sounds odd but yup I love tools in dnd.
Awesome! Most people don't use them at all! Very sad.