Rule-of-Three: 07/10/2012

Mengu · Jul 11, 2012

Someone said:
After all the bashing solos got in 4e (which I'm not mentioning as an example of what's good) for being grindy, a battle with something or a combination of somethings 4 times as long is worrying.

Solo's aren't necessarily grindy in 4e, though I've seen it both ways. More often, they are on the wimpy side and drop quickly. I distinctly remember us dropping a blue dragon in 2 rounds, with one of the PC's never getting a second turn. But I've also seen a black dragon give a party headaches round after round with its lurker tactics. It's all in the monster/encounter design.

It's not bad to have a fight with phases if the story warrants it. The occasional long fight is perfectly fine as long as it continues to be interesting and fun. You just don't want *all* fights to be long. The skirmish with a 6 goblin patrol should be brief.

I'm A Banana · Jul 11, 2012

Someone said:
Anyway, the point is that the resource system is conditioning how I must design that encounter and by extension the story. Either by making it extra strong in some way or another, or adding additional encounters beforehand, or threaten the players with enemies while they rest, or reinforcing the opposition. (Why do the bad guys have reinforcements always? If a team of highly motivated, buffed to the tetth and seemingly invulnerable individuals have been doing hit and runs on your side for two days with a partial score of 0-30 deaths for the outside team, I'd expect morale to be low)

You're missing the big reveal that there's no real balance difference between rolling an attack in a combat and rolling a Perception check in a mystery.

When you play D&D, you determine the success or failure of any given PC action on a regular basis. In a mystery, you're failing or succeeding at noticing clues, interrogating suspects, selecting the right leads, keeping things secret, etc.

Saying that the average adventuring day is, say, 18 successes long, isn't mandating the circumstances in which you get those successes. They might be attacks vs. goblins, or they might be Charisma checks vs. Reticent Witnesses.

All the "adventuring day balance" means is that the game assumes you have the resources for securing a certain number of those over the course of probably about twice as many die rolls.

I mean, hypothetically, if I was to make a mystery adventure in a 5e that had 4e-style pacing, I'd maybe say, of the 18 successes per party member required, the "mystery" portion takes up maybe 12 (various skill checks or noncombat challenges). The final battle might require 6 success per party member, meaning that the final battle is like a standard 4e combat, and the mystery is itself like undertaking two combats.

In such an adventure, hypothetical daily resources like Speak With Dead or such might be very useful (worth 6 successes on its own -- equivalent to an Instant Death attack!).

And if the next witness is murdered when the party takes a sleep, that can be functionally the same, as far as balance is concerned, as a warren of goblins picking up and moving to a new lair: making it so that you STILL need to spend your daily resources in order to secure victory in the adventure.

KidSnide · Jul 11, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
Rodney Thompson said:

From there, we want the DM to be able to do as he or she pleases with regard to adventure and encounter design (coupled, of course, with lots of advice); if the DM wants to run a single, massive combat encounter that eats up the whole budget for the adventuring day, that's fine! However, thanks to the XP budgeting system and the adventure design guidelines, this should mean that the single massive encounter lasts about as long as a more traditional adventuring day with several smaller skirmishes, thus keeping adventures paced correctly and the classes balanced against one another.

Click to expand...

Any reason that won't work?

In my experience, most "one encounter adventures" have only one encounter because combat isn't the focus of the adventure. I like the idea that I can run a 2-hour mega-combat, but that's not a good default answer to adventures with only one encounter.

It's a fool's errand to try to make this type of encounter a life-or-death threat to the PCs. By design, the PCs should be able to handle multiple short encounters or one much tougher encounter. Instead, the rules should provide methods to make the encounter a challenge without the likelihood of true PC defeat. For example, the rules should provide a sufficient framework to build a challenging (but not necessarily threatening) encounter to prevent the bad guy from escaping or finishing a ritual. I'd like to see DM guidelines to determine how difficult it is for a level X party to defeat a 1000 xp encounter in N rounds.

These type of guidelines are important because they provide DMs of moderate experience the ability to try out new types of adventures without having to first work out their own balance framework. I've played too many investigation games in 3.x with an unsatisfying climax because the DM was focusing on the investigation and didn't have the support to easily create a challenging and appropriate final battle.

-KS

Someone · Jul 11, 2012

I'm having trouble following you. Not actually, I get the gist of what you're saying, but I'm amazed that you don't see that it's a completely screwed up system. Apparently, in the mentioned scenario the resource attrition comes from applying your limited resources to whatever challenge is present, which relies on several unspoken assumptions:

- You can use those resources in a meaningful way. I'd like to see the barbarian, for example, meaningfully applying one of his per-day rages to the problem of deducing who killed Lord Farrington from a set of clues.
- The guy using his limited resources actually must be forced to use them, presumably by having a smaller repertoire of abilities that can be used at will outside combat. We usually call those “skills”, meaning barbarian must therefore have less in number and less useful skills than the guy-who-only-can-swing-his-sword, aka fighter. Which I don’t really think is how things have worked up to now.
-The relative power of the resources expended should remain consistent. Casting Speak with dead at level 5 is completely different to casting it at level 10, where it’s starting to become a virtually meaningless effort in terms of resources.
- And finally, there’s no conceivable mechanic in a rulebook that can shut a player’s brain, short of hitting him in the head with the hardcover which is probably illegal in your state. The barbarian’s player can have as much input at piecing the bits of information they’ve gathered as any other player, without spending any precious resources.

In fact, there’s only one D&D character archetype, one who uses his per day resources to anything, who is useless without using his limited per day resources and can do very little outside combat, to which those balancing mechanics could apply. I’m starting to think we’re talking less about resource management and more about who should be boss and how the sword wavers should shut up.

Mustrum_Ridcully · Jul 11, 2012

A thing that could solve pacing issues would be if there were no daily or even encounter recovery mechanics.

Instead, you have certain limited abilities, and it requires a certain amount of action to recover them.

A Wizard that has cast his 3rd level Fireball must spend 15 minutes to memorize it again.
A Fighter with a special take-down maneuver needs to spend a round of focusing on one enemy to be able to apply that specific maneuver again.
A Cleric that has cast Heal needs 30 minutes of praying to recover it.

A careful party with all the time in the world can spend two hours after each combat encounter to recover it spells. It doesn't have to retreat to safety and sleep a night. But there can also be situations and parties where even those two hours are not available, so you spend maybe 15 minutes for it.

This puts players under better control of their power recovery, but also makes it eaier for the DM to predict what kind of resources the party will likely have, and plan encounters appropriately large or small.

I'm A Banana · Jul 11, 2012

KidSnide said:
In my experience, most "one encounter adventures" have only one encounter because combat isn't the focus of the adventure. I like the idea that I can run a 2-hour mega-combat, but that's not a good default answer to adventures with only one encounter.

It's a fair cop. That's part of why I think seeing the "adventuring day" as being challenge-neutral (ie: it can be a combat, or an exploration, or an interaction, or any combination of those) is useful. A dragon might be an entire "adventuring day" challenge, but that includes finding its lair, and maybe goading it into a vulnerable position, so that combat might be successful.

And now...
[sblock=Solvin' Problems]

Someone said:
You can use those resources in a meaningful way. I'd like to see the barbarian, for example, meaningfully applying one of his per-day rages to the problem of deducing who killed Lord Farrington from a set of clues.

Two approaches. My preferred method is to say, "Okay. Barbarians generally suck more at mysteries than they do at beating stuff up. Big surprise." They can maybe help chase down a fleeing suspect, or whatever, but if your entire adventuring day is a mystery, the barbarian is going to be at a disadvantage, and that's working as intended. If you're having a big intrigue campaign like ZEITGEIST, then barbarians are not the most ideal of PC's.

If you just use mysteries occasionally, then the barbarian might have to content himself with rolling mediocre Wisdom checks now, and the bard might have to content himself with rolling mediocre Dexterity checks in the big combat-laden dungeon coming up when the mystery is solved. Due to Bounded Accuracy, they can still meaningfully contribute, even if they're not using special awesome superpowers each time. Because most campaigns will use a variety of challenges, DMs really only have to worry about telegraphing their intent: if I say "I'm running an intigue-heavy game" and the PC's show up with a barbarian, a druid, a ranger, and an Athasian gladiator, maybe my e-mail got lost.

If you're the type to get worked up over every character always contributing equally to every challenge, it's also not hard to give the barbarian a superpower that's useful in the Interaction pillar (like Intimidate) and one that's useful in the Exploration pillar (like, I dunno, Scent. Or Athletics), and call that fine, too. It's not really my preferred method, but it works fine.

Someone said:
- The guy using his limited resources actually must be forced to use them, presumably by having a smaller repertoire of abilities that can be used at will outside combat. We usually call those “skills”, meaning barbarian must therefore have less in number and less useful skills than the guy-who-only-can-swing-his-sword, aka fighter. Which I don’t really think is how things have worked up to now.

In 5e, there's ability checks. Everyone can make a Charisma check. And due to Bounded Accuracy, having a low Charisma doesn't necessarily mean you won't make the check -- the gap between untrained and trained is not as vast, and the DC's are within a given range. Everyone contributes, and if you have a low Charisma, you might not contribute as much to a Charisma check, but that's the price you pay for having low Charisma!

Someone said:
The relative power of the resources expended should remain consistent. Casting Speak with dead at level 5 is completely different to casting it at level 10, where it’s starting to become a virtually meaningless effort in terms of resources.

As was pointed out (see the Level Up! section), you can only balance an increase of # spells/day if you overall increase everyone's output. This typically happens as the party gains levels, anyway, so that's to be expected. If you don't want, you can keep the # spells/day static and just increase spell level (presumably to keep pace with increasing capability from the rest of the party), but there's no reason to expect that the party's output remains static over the course of all the levels, since D&D usually doesn't work like that. And if it does (and maybe links doubling to things like tiers-as-treasure), that's balanced, too, and you wind up with a 2e/1e/etc.-style spells/day system that cannot be easily increased.

Things like spells that don't scale with caster level (but rather with spell slot level) are evidence that the team is thinking along similar lines.

Someone said:
And finally, there’s no conceivable mechanic in a rulebook that can shut a player’s brain, short of hitting him in the head with the hardcover which is probably illegal in your state. The barbarian’s player can have as much input at piecing the bits of information they’ve gathered as any other player, without spending any precious resources.

Which is fine, too. The balance is not razor-thin and fragile. If the barbarian player is clever and the DM doesn't care to enforce a "You must roleplay your low Int!" rule of some sort, the barbarian's player might make a mechanically wonky proposition into one that doesn't much affect her personally, or even one that she excels at. A tactical player in a detailed combat would do the same (even if they were playing a one-handed bard in a wheelchair). A smart player in a puzzle-oriented dungeon would do the same (even if they were playing some idiot fighter doofus).

It's called "rewarding good play," and it's something D&D is mostly OK with.

Someone said:
I’m starting to think we’re talking less about resource management and more about who should be boss and how the sword wavers should shut up.

I'm beginning to think you're not reading the links.

Musing said:
Meanwhile, you might tap a class like the Barbarian to be more "the wizard-style fighter," with Rage enabling them to perform TREMENDOUS feats of strength and willpower (six times the power of a normal fighter! six times the result from a Jump check! six times the ability to ignore attempts to persuade them!), but only a few times in a day.

The interest in the balance is mechanical and mathematical, not fictional. You run into the usual problems of martial dailies when you try to give most martial characters access to a daily resource, but if you're cool with that, the balance is a honey badger: it don't care.
[/sblock]

tl;dr: Ability Checks, Bounded Accuracy, Read the Links, Good Play Is Good, The Sky Is Not Falling.

Harlock · Jul 11, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
The Sky Is Not Falling.

Wait... then whatever will we talk about?

Someone · Jul 11, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
My preferred method is to say, "Okay. Barbarians generally suck more at mysteries than they do at beating stuff up. Big surprise."

You missed the point. I don't care if the barbarian, which was just an example of a guy with another kind of daily resources, could apply his rages to the problem, or is useful at murder mysteries. I counted that he won't be able and in fact he'll arrive at the final fight with all his combat resources intact.

The claim is that the number of resources to be spent in one day can be made constant because you can force resource attrition through any kind of non combat. My answer is that you can only do that with a very particular, and very versatile, subset of resources called wizard spell slots.

In 5e, there's ability checks. Everyone can make a Charisma check. And due to Bounded Accuracy, having a low Charisma doesn't necessarily mean you won't make the check -- the gap between untrained and trained is not as vast, and the DC's are within a given range. Everyone contributes, and if you have a low Charisma, you might not contribute as much to a Charisma check, but that's the price you pay for having low Charisma!

Again, The claim is that the number of resources to be spent in one day can be made constant because you can force resource attrition through non combat. If the wizard can contribute with skill rolls as much as any other character this means two things:

-That he is as good as any other character at solving out of combat problems and is no more forced to spend resources of any kind if he wants to contribute, which makes the claim not true for 5e.
-That if he decides to use his limited resources, he's now strictly better than anyone else, which is kind of unbalanced.

Things like spells that don't scale with caster level (but rather with spell slot level) are evidence that the team is thinking along similar lines.

I'm willing to admit that an appropiate design of the number of spell slots can make this point moot. Since we don't know the spell per day progression let's leave this on hold.

Which is fine, too. The balance is not razor-thin and fragile[...]

The claim is that the number of resources to be spent in one day can be made constant because you can force resource attrition through any kind of non combat.

But you can't force resource attrition of any kind if the main activity characters do during the day is something that's player dependant or something that doesn't involve resource spending like thinking or roleplaying or buying stuff in the market or babysitting the princess or walking from point A to point B. If you've planned a complex social encounter where the players spend two hours of the 4 hour session meeting the NPCs, speaking with them and making alliances or whatever, how possibly do you plan to force the wizard to spend half of his prepared spells?

I'm beginning to think you're not reading the links.

I'm busy reading between lines.

I'm A Banana · Jul 11, 2012

The claim is that the number of resources to be spent in one day can be made constant because you can force resource attrition through any kind of non combat. My answer is that you can only do that with a very particular, and very versatile, subset of resources called wizard spell slots.

Now I don't follow.

If the barbarian has 3 Rages per day and uses one to intimidate a witness into talking, and another to run down the horse the suspect was fleeing on, she has one left for the final combat.

If the barbarian DIDN'T (or couldn't, since she can only rage in combat or whatever) use her daily resources to do that, she's saved all those rages for a big blow out at the end, and that's working as intended. It's smart (or at least lucky) play: save up all your resources for the big confrontation at the end. Proceed to dominate the end. She wasn't contributing as much to solving the mystery, so she gets to shine now.

Someone said:
-That he is as good as any other character at solving out of combat problems and is no more forced to spend resources of any kind if he wants to contribute, which makes the claim not true for 5e.
-That if he decides to use his limited resources, he's now strictly better than anyone else, which is kind of unbalanced.

Of course a vancian caster isn't just as good at solving problems as anyone else. If making an Ability Check is "baseline", he's only as good as the idiot barbarian without his spells (Cha is a dumpstat for wizards, too, y'know.

).

Keep in mind that the math is roughly that baseline+3 + baseline + baseline/3 rounds = baseline+1 + baseline+1 + baseline+1/3 rounds. If he decides to use his limited resource, he's playing catch-up, or setting himself up to have a long time of just baseline contribution. The wizard will naturally be OK using baseline abilities in, I dunno, maybe a puzzle dungeon, just as the barbarian will naturally be OK using baseline abilities in the wilderness (and the rogue in the streets is fine with baseline, too).

It's sort of the difference between a 4e basic attack (baseline) and a 4e at will (baseline +1). By analogy, characters without daily resources have more "at-wills," while characters with daily resources only have basic attacks.

Someone said:
But you can't force resource attrition of any kind if the main activity characters do during the day is something that's player dependant or something that doesn't involve resource spending like thinking or roleplaying or buying stuff in the market or babysitting the princess or walking from point A to point B.

In which case it's not a challenge, not part of the challenge structure, and so the challenge structure is completely irrelevant.

If it's not something you can succeed or fail at, it is not something that "balance" has any bearing on.

Someone said:
If you've planned a complex social encounter where the players spend two hours of the 4 hour session meeting the NPCs, speaking with them and making alliances or whatever, how possibly do you plan to force the wizard to spend half of his prepared spells?

People spend resources on challenges. If making alliances is challenging, the PC might blow a Charm Person or two. If it's NOT challenging, it's not part of the "adventuring day," really. It might be part of the narrative day, and part of the session, and a lot of fun, but balance only comes into play when dealing with challenges. You don't force the wizard to spend anything because you're not forcing ANYONE to spend anything, because those things don't count as encounters, or challenges, or risks.

Someone said:
I'm busy reading between lines.

Why spend so much time staring at nothing?

keterys · Jul 11, 2012

A system in which a barbarian has 3 big 'rages' and can do something cool with those, and a wizard has 3 big 'spells' and can do something cool with those, and that works equitably with the fighter who... does something less cool every round... might be possible to balance.

But D&D doesn't seem to work that way, does it? The barbarian starts with 1 rage, and gets another every few levels. (Does D&D assume you face more encounters as you level up? It's actually felt almost like the reverse in my experience. Lots of smaller fights at low levels, a few bigger standalone fights at higher level.) The wizard starts with a couple spells and gets a couple every level. Soon enough it's not Charm Person taking one of the wizard's 3 spells, it's taking one of his dozens of relatively superfluous spells.

And even in the more perfect 3 big spells paradigm. So the wizard uses 1 or 2 in the first encounter. Then rests. Then uses 1 or 2 in the next encounter. Then rests. Then uses 1 or 2... etc. It just encourages resting even more. The only way to really solve things is to divorce from the daily recharge mechanism, and I suspect that can't happen. Which may be why WotC's not bothering to balance the issue, because balancing the issue makes it no longer D&D. (to enough people)