D&D 5E How much should 5e aim at balance?

[Shadeydm]

Except he needs the proper opening to pull it off, which includes the enemy either not knowing it's coming or in a position to not counter.

Speaking of a pile of horse crap are we really back on the opening fallacy again? So my fighter needs an opening to stab you twice with rain of blows after that you can see it coming and I can't do it. Yet I can stab you and knock you back 15 feet leaving you prone via tide of iron over and over again. You can't ever see it coming? It just doesn't add up sorry.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Hmm, if you really like to play wizards, why didn't you find a character concept that allowed you to be play a wizard without breaking it?

Because a wizard should (a) be smart and under classic rules (b) be capable of learning most of the spells in the game. If a wizard isn't in character trying to optimise his spell book he ain't trying. And if he's doing it badly then he ain't smart. It's the Gygaxo-Vancian* spellcasting that's the problem here (as in so many other places).

The closest to a wizard I can get is a bard (or possibly a beguiler). One of my favourite wizardly archetypes - the illusionist/enchanter.

Or I can play something with a less controllable magic system like 4e, or WFRP 2e or 3e - or even Exalted.

I see. Ya, no, I never said there was a "The Social Contract". I said the social contract, ie the one at the table. In fact, I think I borrowed the term from somebody else entirely.

Which you seem to think is an answer.

I think 5E should cope up with Step On Up play to a certain point probably short of what you would like ideally. I seems to me that 5E is going there anyway, with the 15MAD being addressed by "the social contract" and not hardwired to the rules.

Um... the 15 MAD is being addressed by guidelines tied to Gygaxo-Vancian casting saying you should throw a certain number of ninjas at the party per day. Worst of all worlds.

* Jack Vance's archmages could learn, after extreme effort, maybe half a dozen spells, and needed real effort and study to replace them. And tended to cast one or two a story. Gygaxo-Vancian wizards get more spells per day than most of Jack Vance's wizards do per story. Instead they are more based on battlefield artillery.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Actually, you're both 100% wrong, demonstrably so. Under the stated guideline, ANY time you interact with a game rule it's a "Disassociated Mechanic" because the character and player aren't "naturally conforming" to anything but a metagame construct, period. You choose which metagame constructs you want to accept or reject, but they're ALL metagame constructs.

...and all equally so?

With logic like that, how can this conclusion be wrong?

 

[Alzrius]

Then you're reading is the issue, not the rule because as it's been shown over and over, HP have NEVER represented simple wounds.

That said, if you want them to represent wounds, that's cool, but the game itself has NEVER put them forth that way. The closest it ever came was if you only read the index entry in 2E.

I disagree completely, particularly since we started in 2E. I think that the people who have been reading hit point damage as anything other than physical wounds are the ones reading it wrong.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I disagree with this, as I found 4E's conception of hit points (e.g. "will to keep fighting") more dissociated than those of previous editions (e.g. "wounds").

I'm aware that people have a case to make that there's text in previous editions of the game likening hit points to "will to fighting," but the way my friends and I read the books they always sounded very forthright in saying that hit point damage was physical wounding.

Did you start on 2e by any chance? Because Gygax in 1E was very clear that pure wounds were a ridiculous way of looking at pure hit points. If an orc with an axe strikes an unarmoured target as hard as he possibly can (max damage) and they don't go down, I want to know what their body is made of.

Hit points as wounds simply lead to PCs being made of something tougher than steel at high level.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I disagree completely, particularly since we started in 2E. I think that the people who have been reading hit point damage as anything other than physical wounds are the ones reading it wrong.

Heresy!

 

[Underman]

Because a wizard should (a) be smart and under classic rules (b) be capable of learning most of the spells in the game. If a wizard isn't in character trying to optimise his spell book he ain't trying. And if he's doing it badly then he ain't smart.

That can't be true in an absolute sense, if only because thousands and thousands of wizards have been roleplayed in contrary ways, so maybe, just maybe, you're taking a narrow minded view of how wizards must be roleplayed. For example, you don't seem to want to consider the possibility that spells (like magic items) are not all necessarily equally accessible (or even exist) in any one campaign. Secondly, what happens if you roleplayed a wizard your way (the "trying" "smart" way) and an official errata comes along that nerfs a power and suddenly your wizard can't do that anymore. Does your wizard self-destruct from the paradox? I mean one day, your wizard is doing x, and the next day he can't. What happened there: your wizard suddenly became too stupid? If you can imagine a world where your wizard can do x one day and not x the next day, then you can imagine the same thing before the errata came out and you and/or your DM houseruled it for the social contract.

 

[Alzrius]

Did you start on 2e by any chance? Because Gygax in 1E was very clear that pure wounds were a ridiculous way of looking at pure hit points. If an orc with an axe strikes an unarmoured target as hard as he possibly can (max damage) and they don't go down, I want to know what their body is made of.

Hit points as wounds simply lead to PCs being made of something tougher than steel at high level.

See above, and insofar as Gary's stance on the issue, I think he's been misunderstood. His famous paragraph regarding how it could be "divine intervention, or pure luck, or something else, etc." has been misinterpreted by many people over the years.

What Gary's talking about there is damage scaling, as in why 4 hit points that would slay a level one character are shrugged off by a level ten character. He's taking the damage value as set, and then trying to explain in-character why it wouldn't be so bad, which is that something else is soaking up the relative value of the damage.

The key here is that this is still dependent on damage having been taken - he's simply introducing an unknown to ablate it; it's still revolving around a physical blow.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I disagree completely, particularly since we started in 2E. I think that the people who have been reading hit point damage as anything other than physical wounds are the ones reading it wrong.

They changed a little in 2e. In 1e it was very clear, but 2e didn't go into the same detail or have anything like the same care spent on a fundamentally weird mechanic. But it's 2e that's the outlier here.

Originally Posted by AD&D 1e DMG, page 61
As has been detailed, hit points are not actually a measure of physical damage, by and large, as far as characters (and some other creatures as well) are concerned.

Originally Posted by AD&D 1e DMG, page 61
Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical - a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the magical protections.

Originally Posted by AD&D 1e DMG, page 81
For those who wonder why poison does either killing damage (usually) or no harm whatsoever, recall the justification for character hit points. That is, damage is not octually sustained - at least in proportion to the number of hit points marked off in most cases.
​

Originally Posted by AD&D 1e DMG, p.82
It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness).
​

Originally Posted by AD&D 1e DMG, p.82
Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This character would have an average of 5% hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points.

​

Originally Posted by 3.5 SRD

(and unsurprisingly identical to the PF SRD)


What Hit Points Represent

Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.
​

 

[Neonchameleon]

That can't be true in an absolute sense, if only because thousands and thousands of wizards have been roleplayed in contrary ways, so maybe, just maybe, you're taking a narrow minded view of how wizards must be roleplayed.

Or I'm playing what wizards are to me. And how I want to roleplay them. For that matter I consider in a resource management game this to be an obvious way. If you want to roleplay a big brash evoker, good for you. That's another type of wizard (and battlefield artillery) - just one I have absolutely no interest in playing.

Secondly, what happens if you roleplayed a wizard your way (the "trying" "smart" way) and an official errata comes along that nerfs a power and suddenly your wizard can't do that anymore.

My wizard looks round for new and better spells to replace it with. This is a problem? If something stops working you (a) try to find out why and (b) use something else. Nerfing a power doesn't change the approach.