D&D Next Q&A

I'm A Banana · Aug 7, 2012

pemerton said:
In 4e, for example - at least as I play it, but I hew pretty close to the RAW - XP are a reward primarily for turning up and playing the game.

So, given that, it's not really functioning as a reward any more. There might be other rewards that you offer in your games (such as accomplishing certain narrative goals), but XP isn't one of them.

I think that's pretty common, but it's not hard to adapt to a system like 4e's or 5e's. You simply continue to use XP as a guideline for challenge difficulty, and continue to level up your players at a rate that feels comfortable for you. If you take your system in 4e and adapt it to 5e, perhaps showing up and playing the game awards 1/4 of a day's worth of XP. Or whatever.

pemerton said:
5 monsters worth per full skill challenge...5 monsters worth per equal level combat...Plus Quest XP

I don't imagine those would require any big deviation from a hypothetical daily-XP-value baseline, really. You'd probably even be able to use "monsters' worth," though I imagine XP could exist for individual skill checks, even (probably "minion XP," I'd think).

pemerton said:
Also, in 4e XP don't correspond to risk in any tight way.

It doesn't need to be exactly tight. In fact, it kind of can't be: a Minion Brute against a party heavy with Strikers is going to be a bigger challenge than a Solo Controller.

It's enough that a level 2 creature is worth more XP than a level 1 creature, and it has bigger numbers, and is a bigger vertical threat in general. Precision gives you rapidly diminishing returns as you micro-manage individual numbers of unique party members in an ever-increasing set of nigh-infinite variables, but ballpark is useful as a guideline.

I'm A Banana · Aug 7, 2012

Crazy Jerome said:
There is no Task A and Task B with the chance for the party to pick to only do part of it. There is a set of tasks comprising an "adventure day" that is worth 1,000 XP. The question was how to handle encounter balance in such an environment, since obviously ten 100 XP encounters are not equal to five 200 XP encounters are not equal to one 1000 XP encounter. My anwer is that for pacing advancement purposes only, maybe they are equal.

That clarifies your intent, thanks!

I think my own response to this first relates to the idea of players being able to dictate the circumstances of their encounters, and the second relates to my point above about precision providing for diminishing returns.

For the first, the idea is that, as in the playtest, the PC's get to use their abilities and skills to possibly keep encounter numbers low, gaining them more benefit for their risk. If they fail to, their risk begins to outweigh their benefit.

For the second, ten 100XP encounters is not the same challenge as 5 200 XP encounters in the same way that in 4e, a combat with one 1,000 XP solo is not the same fight as a combat with 25 40 XP minions. That difference is small enough and variable enough that quantifying it is likely much more effort than its' worth.

That said, you could probably add granularity without disrupting the system. A more detailed XP system for individual encounters seems well within the possibility for inclusion, just as you could PROBABLY add an XP system for party make-up vs. monster types in 4e without really messing its system up.

Crazy Jerome · Aug 7, 2012

On the rest of your post, yes. On this:

pemerton said:
If I'm following you correctly, then you're saying that - for the risk/reward stuff - this is established in the first instance via social contract at the set-up stage, and then managed during the course of play primarily via the GM. So the player conflict-of-interest that I was concerned about shouldn't arise.

Assuming I'm understanding you, that makes sense. I think I find the 4e approach more elegant, but for a system intended to support a wider range of playstyles than 4e, I guess it's inevitable that extra components will have to be added in (in this case, the "GM needs to balance risk/reward in addition to settle the pacing" dial).

Mostly. I'm saying that the group agrees to a social contract on risk/reward. Then the DM is responsible for broadly setting things up so that social contract is possible to happen in play, but the players are responsible for fine tuning play as it happens to hit it squarely.

At the extremes, the players won't need to do much. Death traps, never enough caution possible, and likewise "Full Metal Gonzo" are easy to hit. They players simply need to never back off from the agreed style. It's in the middle where I see more need for fine-tuning by the players.

For example, my usual DM style is that the world is a killer, but information is out there to gain much advantage if the characters seek it. It's perfectly possible for a party to play through several levels and never have a single death. If they don't go after information, it's perfectly possible to have a brutal TPK, which I will allow to happen. So there is a direct "challenge" concern here that I explicitly throw back onto the players to manage. It only indirectly and slightly affects pacing in that when the players are having trouble finding information, they get very cautious.

Of course, the DM could take full responsibility for all of it, if that was useful and/or necessary for the social contract at a given table. Full Gonzo might be an instance where that was the way to go.

Crazy Jerome · Aug 7, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
For the first, the idea is that, as in the playtest, the PC's get to use their abilities and skills to possibly keep encounter numbers low, gaining them more benefit for their risk. If they fail to, their risk begins to outweigh their benefit.

For the second, ten 100XP encounters is not the same challenge as 5 200 XP encounters in the same way that in 4e, a combat with one 1,000 XP solo is not the same fight as a combat with 25 40 XP minions. That difference is small enough and variable enough that quantifying it is likely much more effort than its' worth.

On the first, sure. I'm mainly looking at that part of it from the aspect of keeping the system simple and removing a bunch of fiddly decisions/accounting from the DM's plate. Obviously, there are some broad decisions to be made, such as strange circumstances turning challenge up or down radically in the macro "adventure day," but I don't have any great compunction, once an "adventure day" is specced to a ballpark in saying that the players deal with it as they find it.

In other words, none of this business about in the adventure day the 5 orcs over here are worth X, and the 6 orcs over there are worth Y, but if the party manages to bring both of them down on their heads at once, they get (X+Y) times bonus Z. The DM's job was to put them far enough apart that you had a reasonable chance of hitting them separately (where "reasonable" is defined in the context of the playstyle at that table.)

I think you and I were on the same page on this part from the beginning. I was trying to elaborate on it in ways that might make it palatable to fans of 4E encounter balance.

On the second, frankly, I see it more as mostly guidelines, with a tiny shot of mechanics to help where necessary. But if it is that simple, that only happens because it is conceptually divorced from reward and pacing. You aren't trying to say, for example, that bumping up the CR makes orc group X worth +Z amount. You only need enough information to let the DM know that merging orcs X and Y is within the parameters of what the group wants, but adding ogre O on top of that is not. You don't need a very fine grain to measure that, but you do need something somewhat finer than "adventure day".

pemerton · Aug 7, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
ten 100XP encounters is not the same challenge as 5 200 XP encounters in the same way that in 4e, a combat with one 1,000 XP solo is not the same fight as a combat with 25 40 XP minions. That difference is small enough and variable enough that quantifying it is likely much more effort than its' worth.

I agree that encounters with the same XP value can pose different challenges. (Terrain, which often is not part of the encounter budget in 4e, can itself make a big difference even if the opponents don't change at all.)

I think it matters more in an adventuring day model, though. In an encounter model, the GM is assumed to be framing things in a way that fits group expectations, capabilities, previous events etc. So the GM can exercise flexibility from scene to scene.

An adventuring day model, on the other hand, presupposes that a certain number of scenes will already be framed - it has a type of predetermination to it (otherwise it wouldn't be any different from an encounter approach). So taking care with encounter balance seems like it matters in advance, and is less easily modulated on a scene-by-scene basis.

Crazy Jerome said:
I don't have any great compunction, once an "adventure day" is specced to a ballpark in saying that the players deal with it as they find it.

In other words, none of this business about in the adventure day the 5 orcs over here are worth X, and the 6 orcs over there are worth Y, but if the party manages to bring both of them down on their heads at once, they get (X+Y) times bonus Z.

I'm happy with that, provided that the game has the techniques to deliver this without the need to exercise GM force in respect of plot - which is my biggest concern with a "day" rather than an "encounter" model.

pemerton · Aug 7, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
So, given that, it's not really functioning as a reward any more. There might be other rewards that you offer in your games (such as accomplishing certain narrative goals), but XP isn't one of them.

Yes. I've been posting along those lines for a couple of years now.

It's why I think that 4e, to the extent it supports gamist play (in the Forge sense of "step on up"), does so in a very different way from Gygaxian AD&D. Because you get XP just for turning up and playing, the gamist rewards have to be different from what they were in AD&D (levels and treasure). It's about "cool moves" and showing off to your fellow players.

And "narrative rewards" are also something that is a big part of my own 4e play.

SkidAce · Aug 7, 2012

Morrus said:
Well, no, I imagine that if you have not had the issue you wouldn't see why it needs addressing.

Some people are capable of seeing and comprehending issues that they haven't personally experienced.

And their solution may still be valid.

It's not black and white.

Neonchameleon · Aug 7, 2012

Dark Mistress said:
My point was about the bike is someone that has never ridden a bike can help someone else learn to ride a bike easy enough. Just run beside them holding the back to help them keep their balance. Someone that has never GMed would be of little help in teaching someone else to GM. same with web page. That was my only point.

Oh. So your point actually was an attempt at doing your best to ignore the discussion and derail it.

The reason that someone can run along the bike, maintaining balance works is because modelling the expected behaviour and getting someone to do it right assisted is a good way to get them to do it unassisted. That's how that teaching method works.

4e does this and does it successfuly. Skill challenges, treasure parcels, quest awards, encounter balancing. This is all the "get someone to model what feels right so they learn by doing it right" method.

And so 4e teaches you to DM despite not itself being able to DM (being a game) the way someone running alongside a bike holding it upright teaches bike riding. It gets them to model DMing well until they can do it under their own power.

This was the point I was making using the analogy of teaching someone to ride a bike that was brought up.

So tell me, why are you saying that the two aren't alike despite their simmilarity illustrating something valuable? Just because you don't like the consequence - that there are more ways to learn something than you listed?

Dark Mistress · Aug 7, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
Oh. So your point actually was an attempt at doing your best to ignore the discussion and derail it.

The reason that someone can run along the bike, maintaining balance works is because modelling the expected behaviour and getting someone to do it right assisted is a good way to get them to do it unassisted. That's how that teaching method works.

4e does this and does it successfuly. Skill challenges, treasure parcels, quest awards, encounter balancing. This is all the "get someone to model what feels right so they learn by doing it right" method.

And so 4e teaches you to DM despite not itself being able to DM (being a game) the way someone running alongside a bike holding it upright teaches bike riding. It gets them to model DMing well until they can do it under their own power.

This was the point I was making using the analogy of teaching someone to ride a bike that was brought up.

So tell me, why are you saying that the two aren't alike despite their simmilarity illustrating something valuable? Just because you don't like the consequence - that there are more ways to learn something than you listed?

No it was not to derail. It was saying I didn't think your metaphor worked the way you guys was using it. I don't really care about your argument or either side of it. It seems like you are trying to pick a fight, so have fun.