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How much should 5e aim at balance?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6015607" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>What Ratskinner said.</p><p></p><p>Here is an example of what I mean. One of the players in my game has, as part of his PC's backstory, that his PC was a failed recruit in the dwarven militia. The first encounter after the PCs had achieved paragon tier - and the PC in question had taken the Warpriest paragon path - was with a dwarven militia patrol, which included former comrades of that PC, who used to mock him for his ineptitude. After retreating from a hobgoblin assault, the NPC dwarves had received a visitation from an angel of Moradin, who told them that a priest who might help them could be found in the foothills. They proceeded into the foothills, where they encountered the PCs. At first they mocked the dwarven PC, asking where the priest could be found. Eventually he persuaded them that <em>he</em> was the priest whom the angel had told them of. He then went on to take command of the NPCs.</p><p></p><p>This sort of thing isn't <em>just</em> changing the hook. It's the players "hooking" the GM, rather than vice versa - the GM framing scenes in accordance with the signals sent by the players, rather than the players adjusting their PCs to fit the signals sent by the GM.</p><p></p><p>A pithy expression of this idea is found in the Burning Wheel rulebooks, discussing player-purchased Relationships for their PCs (BW Gold, p 377):</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">If one of your relationships is your wife in the village, the GM is supposed to use this to create trouble in play. If you're hunting a vampyr, of course it's your wife who is his victim!</p><p></p><p>D&D doesn't have formal mechanics for building a PC's backstory like this, but it is pretty easy to do it informally, and to have the GM set up situations that hook onto that backstory in something like the same way a Burning Wheel GM does.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6015607, member: 42582"] What Ratskinner said. Here is an example of what I mean. One of the players in my game has, as part of his PC's backstory, that his PC was a failed recruit in the dwarven militia. The first encounter after the PCs had achieved paragon tier - and the PC in question had taken the Warpriest paragon path - was with a dwarven militia patrol, which included former comrades of that PC, who used to mock him for his ineptitude. After retreating from a hobgoblin assault, the NPC dwarves had received a visitation from an angel of Moradin, who told them that a priest who might help them could be found in the foothills. They proceeded into the foothills, where they encountered the PCs. At first they mocked the dwarven PC, asking where the priest could be found. Eventually he persuaded them that [I]he[/I] was the priest whom the angel had told them of. He then went on to take command of the NPCs. This sort of thing isn't [I]just[/I] changing the hook. It's the players "hooking" the GM, rather than vice versa - the GM framing scenes in accordance with the signals sent by the players, rather than the players adjusting their PCs to fit the signals sent by the GM. A pithy expression of this idea is found in the Burning Wheel rulebooks, discussing player-purchased Relationships for their PCs (BW Gold, p 377): [indent]If one of your relationships is your wife in the village, the GM is supposed to use this to create trouble in play. If you're hunting a vampyr, of course it's your wife who is his victim![/indent] D&D doesn't have formal mechanics for building a PC's backstory like this, but it is pretty easy to do it informally, and to have the GM set up situations that hook onto that backstory in something like the same way a Burning Wheel GM does. [/QUOTE]
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