D&D 5E How Can D&D Next Win You Over?

[Shadeydm]

I see that you are apparantly not following me, but I don't know how to express it otherwise.

Maybe my example must be more specific and explicit?

Let's say the party is looking for a murderer. They are following his tracks, interviewing witnesses, and all the stuff. After 6 busy hours walking through the entire city, they finally catch up to him, and confront him and his associates - A fight inevitably breaks out. Now, the Wizard and the Cleric finally get to cast all those offensive spells they prepared in the morning (they may have used some utility spells, but they each still got at least 4-5 powerful combat spells). They have little reason to hold back,t hey are sure they have the culprit, and they need to stop him. So they'll use these spells, dealing a gazillion damage or whatever they can do with them. While the ROgue and the Fighter are just swinging their swords and contribute very little to the Fight.

We have a balance problem (Type 2), but not a problem for believability - that only one big fight might hapepn in this scenario is plausible, and one could very well argue that this wasn't a 15 minute adventuring day at all for Type 1 - the player characters were pretty busy, doing all that legwork. Time pressure in this scenario wouldn't work (at least not more than it already did). Wandering monsters? Well, maybe you could have put in some hostile gangs or some such, but it's not exactly likely that much threats would occur in a typical city if you're a band of adventurers. The only thing that may have cost the WIzard or Cleric their resources would be the use of heavy divination and enchantment spells - but they may not necessarily have needed them, or not prepared them. It could very well be that the only character that really would contribute the most in this scenario is either a Rogue or a Bard, thanks to their social skills, while the rest may have been mostly been the players thinking, but not necessarily character abilities. But that's not really the important part. The major aspect here is - the first few hours of the day were not sitting idle around, they were busy, the characters were doing all kinds of things, but these did not involve a major resource expenditure yet. But it lead eventually to a violent conflict.

And we can experience this even directly with wandering monsters during traveling, as well. THe party travels the whole day, and manages to not meet any wandering monsters, or evade them. But as they approach nightfall, their luck leaves them and they encounter a wandering monster and have to deal with it. They now know that they will go to rest soon, so it's inevitable that they will spend a large amount of their resources, knowing they'll be back soon (and that dead characters don't recover spells).

Or the 4E rogue might have snuck up done a boatload of damage action pointed done another boatload of damage and killed the murderer OH NO rogues are broken we need a more balanced game. We can go at this all day inventing bizarre scenarios that are essentially just corner cases. OH NO the wizard killed 12 minions and the rest of us mopped up after him killing the last guy omg so not balanced we must be his caddies right?

 

[Herschel]

Or the 4E rogue might have snuck up done a boatload of damage action pointed done another boatload of damage and killed the murderer OH NO rogues are broken we need a more balanced game.

Except without good balance in the single fight day his description isn't a corner case, it's the norm. That's the issue.

And many gamers run single-fight adventuring days as the norm.

 

[Shadeydm]

Except without good balance in the single fight day his description isn't a corner case, it's the norm. That's the issue.

And many gamers run single-fight adventuring days as the norm.

I'm sure they do I still think saying you can't do it with 5E after we have only seen the first playtest release and only 3 levels at that is a mighty big stretch IMHO.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I'm sure they do I still think saying you can't do it with 5E after we have only seen the first playtest release and only 3 levels at that is a mighty big stretch IMHO.

They've also flat out said that 5E isn't balanced if you deviate from their definition of the adventuring day, so I'm inclined to take them at their word until events prove otherwise.

 

[Shadeydm]

They've also flat out said that 5E isn't balanced if you deviate from their definition of the adventuring day, so I'm inclined to take them at their word until events prove otherwise.

I'm thinking the word balanced in this instance covers a lot of ground. It might not be 4E out of the box without modules however that doesn't make it 3E or broken either.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I'm thinking the word balanced in this instance covers a lot of ground. It might not be 4E out of the box without modules however that doesn't make it 3E or broken either.

They didn't say 'balance', they said 'not balanced' which is much more specific.

 

[Shadeydm]

They didn't say 'balance', they said 'not balanced' which is much more specific.

Not really more specific "not balanced" could mean one class averages 2 points of damage more for that encounter we don't know what it really means until we see the finished product.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Or the 4E rogue might have snuck up done a boatload of damage action pointed done another boatload of damage and killed the murderer OH NO rogues are broken we need a more balanced game.

A decent rogue can bloodly a same-level standard monster in one hit. But, he can't spend an action point in a surprise round, so near-miss there. Also, the murder could be an elite, if he's meant to stand up to a lot of punishment (or a minion if he's not).

We can go at this all day inventing bizarre scenarios that are essentially just corner cases.

"Inventing" being the key word, in some cases.

OH NO the wizard killed 12 minions and the rest of us mopped up after him killing the last guy omg so not balanced we must be his caddies right?

An encounter with 12 minions is distinctly under-powered, and is the kind of thing were a controller would shine. However, it's vanishingly unlikely the wizard would get all 12 of them. They'd have to be bunched up, and, with 4e accuracy hovering around 50 or 60%, his chances of hitting 'em all would be about 1:500 - unless the encounter were even more trivial because they were substantially under-level. OTOH, a 1e wizard catching a dozen lesser foes in his expand-to-fill-the-area fireball isn't too hard at all, and if they're such low-hp monsters that everyone else one-shot's 'em, then half damage will probably kill them automatically, so his chances of getting 'em all: unity. I guess some corner cases are shoved back deeper into the corner than others.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Or the 4E rogue might have snuck up done a boatload of damage action pointed done another boatload of damage and killed the murderer OH NO rogues are broken we need a more balanced game. We can go at this all day inventing bizarre scenarios that are essentially just corner cases. OH NO the wizard killed 12 minions and the rest of us mopped up after him killing the last guy omg so not balanced we must be his caddies right?

I described the situation as the murderer and his gang/allies, IIRC without scrolling back. So the fight isn't over that quickly. We're talking about an elaborate, exciting fight that is there to bring the story of the adventure to an dramatic conclusion. It is still a big boss battle.

Everyone in the party will use their action points and dailies in this scenario. Everyone will Nova. That's okay, since everyone can "Nova".

But if not everyone can nova, than those that can will dominate this fight, because the novaing character can use a more powerful ability each round, abilities that he would normally have to spread across many encounters that day, he can alll focus in one, leaving no need for the normally balancing actions where he cannot cast a powerful spell but is relegated to firing his cross-bow or using some other weak at-will ability.

There is the imbalance.

And if you do not want to see that, okay. I think this is the last time I'll try.

 

[Shadeydm]

The point remains Tony how balanced or unbalanced 5E will be for people who want to have one weak or average encounter per day remains to be seen we don't know and probably won't until it's released.