Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals

Lanefan said:

And as something of a mitigator you can always have (Greater) Restoration give back the lost level(s) at a cost.

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Yeah this would be a pretty cool in a story if you had to quest to find a caster capable of doing it but I still think you'd need to have the right players with buy in to make it work. I could see someone I play with---he's a good player in a lot of ways but a little too competitive---really not handling it. Possibly weirdly I think he adapts to character death better.

Level-draining would work better in 5e than in 3e or 4e in part because 5e can better handle a variable-level party., where in 3e and 4e the PCs all kinda needed to be pretty close in level if not all the same.

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2E could handle it to a reasonable degree, too. However, I do think you have to be careful about making players feel too much like their character is playing second fiddle.

Jay Verkuilen said:

Yeah this would be a pretty cool in a story if you had to quest to find a caster capable of doing it but I still think you'd need to have the right players with buy in to make it work. I could see someone I play with---he's a good player in a lot of ways but a little too competitive---really not handling it. Possibly weirdly I think he adapts to character death better.

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I've had (and have) players to whom major loss of PC wealth is worse than PC death.

2E could handle it to a reasonable degree, too.

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Ditto 1e.

However, I do think you have to be careful about making players feel too much like their character is playing second fiddle.

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Funny story there.

The party I'm currently running has two Necromancer PCs in it. One is our crew's GOAT for the class while the other is very much an understudy - a few levels lower, worse spell selection, overall lower stats, etc. Up until last session this didn't look like much fun for the understudy...but last session the party ate a fireball: the 'star' lost 2/3 of the spells in his books along with some other gear and is now going to be quite reliant on said understudy for spell access; suddenly having this second Necromancer along for the trip is looking like a pretty good idea!

This is also where cycling characters in and out can help - you might be second-fiddle one adventure and the star soloist in the next, depending on the composition of the party at the time.

Lanefan said:

Ditto 1e.

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They're not really that different IME.

The party I'm currently running has two Necromancer PCs in it. <...>

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Cool tale!

This is also where cycling characters in and out can help - you might be second-fiddle one adventure and the star soloist in the next, depending on the composition of the party at the time.

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Absolutely. The really old skool "ensemble cast with henchmen" type style of play works great---that's how the Lake Geneva crowd did it. In many respects I like it better than traditional party play. I like a smaller group of players (2-3) so almost always the party needs some filling out. We played a lot of "ensemble cast" where the general rule was "one upper tier PC and one henchman" in a given story, with the henchman being typically about three or four levels back. Each of us had, oh, three upper tier PCs, though it varied and sometimes one would retire for good reasons---called to found a temple, for instance, or killed. In the 2E days this worked fairly well because once you got to about fifth level for the henchmen they could still contribute to a ninth level party without just dying ignominiously.

Sometimes the henchmen were super fun to play, too. One of my favorite characters was the intrepid (and foul-mouthed) Buckminster "Bucky" Burrmaster II, a halfling fighter with throwing specialization. He wasn't the sort of character I'd have played for an entire campaign but he was a blast to play when it fit. His campaign end worked, too. One of the other hench-level characters, a dwarf fighter named Borlin, was one-shotted by a greater demon the party went up against. After that, Bucky said "Well, that could have been me..." and decided to cash out his magic weapons and such (except for a magic dagger he kept for old times' sake) and got married to the heiress Euphemia Morris, daughter of pipeweed baron Philip Morris. Two PCs were later introduced to the campaign through his wedding....

The thing about this kind of game is that everything's clear and laid out: Hench is hench so those characters are going to be a level back and will be more crunchy than main PCs.

Jay Verkuilen said:

Can you post a link to this PDF?

Yes, IMO the rest mechanic is... messy. Among other things, it induces pointless inter-party friction that's fundamentally focused on something induced by the rules as opposed to in-game fiction. "Sorcerer: What kind of arcane wimp needs a short rest? Warlock: ...Me?"

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I thought people wanted the classes to be different from each other? Giving them unique rest requirements would certainly go a long way in that regard.

MichaelSomething said:

I thought people wanted the classes to be different from each other? Giving them unique rest requirements would certainly go a long way in that regard.

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It does, but IME it tends to make for pointless inter-party friction due to the fact that some classes really benefit from short rests (e.g., Warlocks, Fighters, Monks) and others don't all that much (e.g.,. Sorcerers, Paladins, Clerics), so while that's differentiation it's not differentiation I feel is particularly useful. I guess it's fine if you want to coordinate so that rest needs synergize. Obviously your mileage may vary.

Jay Verkuilen said:

It does, but IME it tends to make for pointless inter-party friction due to the fact that some classes really benefit from short rests (e.g., Warlocks, Fighters, Monks) and others don't all that much (e.g.,. Sorcerers, Paladins, Clerics), so while that's differentiation it's not differentiation I feel is particularly useful. I guess it's fine if you want to coordinate so that rest needs synergize. Obviously your mileage may vary.

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There have always been classes that require more / less rest or what have you. Generally my players who don't require "it" (whatever "it" is) have always been fine with "it" because their survival is important and that relies on the other PCs and their resources. That goes for downtime, healing, research, crafting, recruiting henchmen etc. (depending on the edition). Patience is a survival trait

*edit* to clarify my thoughts... hopefully.

R_Chance said:

There have always been classes that require more / less rest or what have you. Generally my players who don't require "it" (whatever "it" is) have always been fine with "it" because their survival is important and that relies on the other PCs and their resources. That goes for downtime, healing, research, crafting, recruiting henchmen etc. (depending on the edition). Patience is a survival trait

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I have no problem with needing different resources, but would rather have those differences manifest as something that reinforces the fiction, such as needing resources to purchase spells, do research, etc. IMO those are things that are part of the secondary reality. I find the rest mechanics start to rub against the secondary reality because it's very game-mechanical and it happens nearly every session.

I use the term "secondary reality" rather than "suspension of disbelief" because I know I'm playing a game and I'm not really disbelieving anything. Secondary reality (or secondary belief), a term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien, captures the idea better IMO, meaning that the world makes sense more or less on its own terms. I guess what I prefer is, insofar as it's possible, for the game mechanics to align with the fiction and not rub against them. To some degree this can't actually happen because it's hard to know how spell slots and hit points actually work. Nonetheless I prefer things to "feel" right and for some reason, the rest mechanics feel awkward and wrong. I don't think they work that well, either. I dislike attunement and concentration for the same reasons, not because the ideas are inherently bad but because they are just implemented in such an arbitrary fashion. (No I didn't like 1E's race and class limits, either.)

Of course, that's me. There are plenty of folks who are just fine feeling the rules more.

I dislike attunement also. Okay with concentration though.

And we ignored 1st ed race and class limits from the get go.

(except there is no such thing as a dwarven wizard, never has been, all the dwarves will tell you so, unless they find you rude for bringing it up, cause its a taboo discussion, and the end of the world is at stake/could be caused)

Jay Verkuilen said:

I have no problem with needing different resources, but would rather have those differences manifest as something that reinforces the fiction, such as needing resources to purchase spells, do research, etc. IMO those are things that are part of the secondary reality. I find the rest mechanics start to rub against the secondary reality because it's very game-mechanical and it happens nearly every session.

I use the term "secondary reality" rather than "suspension of disbelief" because I know I'm playing a game and I'm not really disbelieving anything. Secondary reality (or secondary belief), a term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien, captures the idea better IMO, meaning that the world makes sense more or less on its own terms.

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I call this 'internal consistency'.

I guess what I prefer is, insofar as it's possible, for the game mechanics to align with the fiction and not rub against them. To some degree this can't actually happen because it's hard to know how spell slots and hit points actually work. Nonetheless I prefer things to "feel" right...

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Same here.

...and for some reason, the rest mechanics feel awkward and wrong. I don't think they work that well, either. I dislike attunement and concentration for the same reasons, not because the ideas are inherently bad but because they are just implemented in such an arbitrary fashion. (No I didn't like 1E's race and class limits, either.)

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Agreed re 5e rest mechanics. Agreed to a point re attunement, as one can easily come up with an in-fiction rationale for it. Ditto concentration - it makes sense in a few instances but 5e went overboard with it as a balancing mechanic.

As for 1e: I don't mind some races flat-out not being able to be some classes ( [MENTION=7706]SkidAce[/MENTION] mentions Dwarven wizards as an excellent example, with which I fully agree) but I feel that if you can be a class at all there should be no arbitrary racial limits on how far you can advance. Stat-based limits, sure - you have to be smart enough to advance to this level of wizard, or wise enough to be allowed into the innermost mysteries of your temple, or nimble enough to master the most demanding aspects of thievery - and note this in a small way builds in racial limits as some races simply can't achieve high scores in some stats.

Lan-"half the characters in my game right now are probably at or beyond their RAW level limits by race - hasn't hurt the game any"-efan

Jay Verkuilen said:

Can you post a link to this PDF?

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Found it - it was very much a collective Enworld project.
Hope it helps.