D&D 5E Tedium for balance. Should we balance powerful effects with bookkeeping?

[Fanaelialae]

Again, tedium is subjective. Just saying, "tedious rules should be excised" doesn't mean anything on its own.

IMO, if a significant portion of your target audience finds the rule tedious, then it's tedious. Admittedly, "a significant portion" is also subjective, but there are certainly breakpoints where it's fairly objective. If 10% of your audience ignores a rule because they find it tedious, there's some room for debate. If it's 50%, not so much.

 

[nevin]

Again, tedium is subjective. Just saying, "tedious rules should be excised" doesn't mean anything on its own.

which is why you see many rules simply ignored. What is tedium for the largest group will be the first rules that fall by the wayside. Like tracking encumbrance and spell components.

 

[nevin]

IMO, if a significant portion of your target audience finds the rule tedious, then it's tedious. Admittedly, "a significant portion" is also subjective, but there are certainly breakpoints where it's fairly objective. If 10% of your audience ignores a rule because they find it tedious, there's some room for debate. If it's 50%, not so much.

Well to be fair. at 50 percent that means a lot of people are still having fun tracking thier stuff. (probably). Some people like to live in the weeds focusing on the details and some don't. No reason a table full of detail oriented people can't spend thier time tracking thier stuff if they find it fun.

 

[Micah Sweet]

IMO, if a significant portion of your target audience finds the rule tedious, then it's tedious. Admittedly, "a significant portion" is also subjective, but there are certainly breakpoints where it's fairly objective. If 10% of your audience ignores a rule because they find it tedious, there's some room for debate. If it's 50%, not so much.

And if they want to change the rules and announce that realism doesn't matter to D&D and folks should just accept that (you know, be honest about their design intentions), that would be enough for me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

which is why you see many rules simply ignored. What is tedium for the largest group will be the first rules that fall by the wayside. Like tracking encumbrance and spell components.

Then what are they doing in the book? Don't tell me ignoring such rules just recently became popular.

 

[Stormonu]

Again, tedium is subjective. Just saying, "tedious rules should be excised" doesn't mean anything on its own.

Very true. However, when someone starts to find something in the game tedious, for me it's an opportunity to see if there's a better way of doing it that reduces the drag. For example, if someone in the group finds tracking arrows to be tedious, either they're going to buy a few hundred of them (had one player do this) or as the DM I'm going to have to start tracking usage (which is something I don't need the burden of, I don't even track them for the NPCs I'm running, to be honest). Coming up with a more abstract method that's easier on everyone is in my own interest, at least.

In the case of encumberance, as the DM I'd often do checks to see if the party was toting too much, but these days I generally only call it out if someone decides they want to dump their Strength stat to 6 so they can have an amazing Dexterity or somesuch. In that case, having the rule around just makes it so players don't cheez the system.

And quite honestly, there's some things I just don't want to be bothered with (cough components cough), because they take away from the time to actually get things done in the game. At least, until they become important to what we're doing.

 

[nevin]

Then what are they doing in the book? Don't tell me ignoring such rules just recently became popular.

If you read my other posts I said this argument has been going on since the game launched.

 

[nevin]

And if they want to change the rules and announce that realism doesn't matter to D&D and folks should just accept that (you know, be honest about their design intentions), that would be enough for me.

Nothing about this game approaches anything resembling realism. You can add all the rules you want. Tedius ones will be ignored by most.
first one I remember going back in the day was surprise. first we nerfed it so that only one round of attacks was possible. then we just did ignored it except for special things like dragons. then we dumped tracking spell components. Encumbrance took a lot longer but eventually apathy just killed that one. But who cares if the Devs have design intentions? If it sucks we'll do what dnd Players have done since the 1970's ignore it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Tedium as a tool for "balance" is the pure-rules version of using RP as a tool for "balance." It can work, in specific groups, for specific players. As a general basis, however, very bad idea.

 

[mamba]

What if it's tedium for one player, but acceptable for others? Does that one player just not have to do it?

rules are established at the table and for the table. If everyone else wants it, that one player can play a fighter or something