D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back

[Ahnehnois]

That's one of the major flaws of 3e way of thinking. The belief that PC and NPC are equal, and what makes PC balanced also has to make NPC balanced.

So if I readc orrectly, 3e's problem is that it is too balanced?

It does not. PC live in a completelly different standards.

You might hold them to different standards, but they live in the same (fantasy) world.

Nobody cares if the Goblin King spent more points in his abilities, or has more money in magic items than his vassals.

Nobody? I can think of a lot of somebodies who would definitely have issue with that kind of thing if it wasn't justifiable in-world.

But a lot of players would complain if PC rangers have more points for his abilities than, say, PC fighters.

And yet, that's pretty much always been the case, and both classes are among the most popular and successful of D&D's archetypes.

Outside of encounters, the monster abilities do not cause problems, because they are there for DM plot advance.

So are the PCs' abilities. Again, no difference there.

Chess is balanced. You can't beat Kasparov. That does not make Chess unbalanced, makes you an awful player if compared with Kasparov. Chess is balanced when Kasparov plays against Karpov.

Okay. But if I play two opposing characters in D&D (any version), they're pretty much going to be balanced (unless I purposefully made imbalanced choices, which Kasparov could also do if he didn't want to drag things out).

Anything that has enough complexity to be able to develop system mastery, is going to have some people more adept to it than others. That includes Rock-scissors-paper. So unless you want to keep the system down to "tic-tac-toe" or "toss a coin" level, you always will have some free thinking players with different skill levels at the game.

Amen! So why try and undermine them?

On the other hand, even the best optimizers of D&D, can`t build a fighter that plays on the same league than a optimized full spellcaster.

IIRC, the stereotypical example of extremely unbalanced builds is a kobold. Power isn't solely a function of class. And even to the extent that it is, players have been building fighters that play in the same league as spellcasters for a lot longer than 4e has been around.

So its imbalance is not a matter of one player being worse than the other at it, but one class being superior to others.

All the above being said, there are some balance issues with 3e classes. The classes being unbalanced is not the same as the game itself being unbalanced.

 

[Lanefan]

Or it achived balance, but (grasp...) balance is something a lot of people don't want.

I don't think it's that people don't want balance; it's more they just don't care about it nearly as much as reading these forums would have you believe.

Lanefan

 

[billd91]

I would define it as them all being important, but different, for each single character.

I full well expect the average wizard to max Int and dump Str, I just think that it should matter that their Str is low. Even moreso, I think that it should matter if a character's Int, Wis, or Cha is low (or high). Too often in 3e, this was not the case. I get the sense 4e worsened the problem.

It did in some ways. By allowing PCs to pick their defensive stats, 4e allows them to dump 3 stats with near impunity - skills being the main thing affected by the dump. However, a little more reading and you notice that it's still true that not all class options have the same dumpability. Artful dodger rogues really can dump 3 without trouble, but the brutal rogue probably wants both Str and Con. Same with fighters. So those class options can really only dump 2.

In any event, you tend to see a flight from the mean stat in both directions to fund the higher end of the stats at a higher rate. If 5e can really make each stat more important via well-balanced saves, I'm in favor of it.

 

[Lanefan]

That's one of the major flaws of 3e way of thinking. The belief that PC and NPC are equal, and what makes PC balanced also has to make NPC balanced. It does not. PC live in a completelly different standards.

Not much of a 3e fan here but this is one thing it mostly got right: it made the PCs fit in mechanically with the game world rather than be mechanically set apart from it.

Outside of encounters, the monster abilities do not cause problems, because they are there for DM plot advance. If you need a Dragon to create a ritual that builds a black-hole that threat the entire cosmos as part of your plot advance, so be it. If you don't need it, who cares?

Well, the Dragon cares; it could still be off building that black hole whether the PCs ever hear about it or not.

Lan-"and then the world ended, and there was cake"-efan

 

[triqui]

So if I readc orrectly, 3e's problem is that it is too balanced?

You read wrong. The problem of 3e is they made the mistake to belief that monsters and players following the same rules, is balance, when it's not.

You might hold them to different standards, but they live in the same (fantasy) world.

They live in the same fantasy world, but live to different standards. That's why there is no problem with Fire Giants having +16 to STR, but there will be problems with a PC race having +16 to STR.

Nobody? I can think of a lot of somebodies who would definitely have issue with that kind of thing if it wasn't justifiable in-world.

Those somebodies have a hard time then, because almost any published adventure give the important NPC elite array or some other stuff. I'm quite confident that the goblin's two healing potions are ussually held by the Goblin King and not the Goblin Lackey in 99% of the adventures out there.

And yet, that's pretty much always been the case, and both classes are among the most popular and successful of D&D's archetypes.

I mean abilities like str, dex, con, int, wis and cha. There's no problem if the goblin king has a better array than the goblin lackey, but most players won't agree with having 20points buy while rangers (or any other class) has 25. Or if you roll, most people won't agree with rolling 4d6 and drop lower, while the ranger rolls 6d6 and drop 3 lower. So the disparity and balance between players is much more important than the disparity between NPC, because it does not really matter if you build a NPC which is a dumb, idiot, slow and comical goblin lackey that is good for nothing but for comical relief, while most players wouldn't want to be the party buffoon, unable to contribute in anything.

So are the PCs' abilities. Again, no difference there.

There's a world of difference.

Okay. But if I play two opposing characters in D&D (any version), they're pretty much going to be balanced (unless I purposefully made imbalanced choices, which Kasparov could also do if he didn't want to drag things out).

No, and that's the problem If you play two opposing characters in D&D, and one of them is a wizard, and the other is a fighter, unless you purosefully choose to dumb down your wizard character, he will be better than your fighter character. To make Angel Summoner and BMX master blaanced, you have to either min-max BMX to the sky, dumb down Angel summoner, or both.

Amen! So why try and undermine them?

Because the target is making them happy whatever their *playstile* is. If I happen to like Conan books much more than Elminster books (which I do), I shouldn't be punished with an inferior class just because I like an archetype better than others.

IIRC, the stereotypical example of extremely unbalanced builds is a kobold. Power isn't solely a function of class. And even to the extent that it is, players have been building fighters that play in the same league as spellcasters for a lot longer than 4e has been around.

By playing in the same league, you mean like Nigeria playing the same baskeball tournament in London 2012 than USA's Dream Team? Yeah... Nigeria has been playing basketball for a long time.

All the above being said, there are some balance issues with 3e classes. The classes being unbalanced is not the same as the game itself being unbalanced.

It's the class balance what I'm talking here. Especifically, full spellcasters balance.

 

[Emerikol]

Oh, well that's fine, then. Unverifiable anecdotal evidence from an anonymous person on the internet: case closed.

Well it's good enough for me because it's me. We didn't have balance problems and I did nothing special to prevent them.

With 30 years of experience making a broken game work, running one that isn't broken could be a shock, I suppose.

While I admit I've houseruled individual spells both because I felt one or two were overpowered or because I wanted to change the flavor of the world. The latter of course doesn't matter for this discussion. I have never really changed anything structural about the fighter or magic user classes. They just worked.

I make no claim as to the relative size of the player bases who cleaved off with each rev-roll. The data are not available. Any 'theory' as to that size supporting this or that side of a debate is just wishful thinking. Irrelevant, except as a sign that the one making that claim has no concrete arguments to defend his assertions.

While it is true none of us have conclusive proof. It is a false statement that because you don't have absolute detailed numbers that you know nothing. I know certainly that 4e was widely rejected by many. I know WOTC cancelled it quicker than any previous edition. I know that many leading designers have openly rejected the game which is unprecedented for people formerly associated with WOTC. In my hometown and on enworld's poll, 3.5e and Pathfinder BOTH were listed as being played more often than 4e. 1e/2e were about half of 4e.

Some very basic things about D&D have always led to structural imbalance. Vancian casting vs all-at-will non-casters, being one of the most painfully obvious.

This belief is why we can't reach compromise. Is 5e unbalanced right now?

Well, one reason might be consideration for others. Balanced mechanics may not let you do /everything/ you want to with your character, for instance, but they let everyone at the table come as close as possible to what they want without leaving anyone in a position of mechanical irrelevance.

Other than one guy who loves clerics, our group has never had players clammering to play casters. I've had a wizard but often that was because I suggested someone play one. I've never had two people both wanting to play a wizard. I've almost always had a fighter and some multiclass variant of a fighter in my campaigns. The fighter has been an extremely popular and very effective class.

Perfect balance, as is so often pointed out, is impossible. What's harder than impossible?

My standard is not perfect balance. That would almost guarantee a boring and unfun game with all the stuff you'd have to do to guarantee that. I didn't realize even you had that standard. So sufficient balance is not so hard to achieve for people of my persuasion.

I'm sure if I told you sky was blue, at this point, you'd go out and check.

My point was that the cure is worse than the problem.

There is no important difference between someone arguing zealously and uncompromisingly against every mechanism that has succeeded in delivering balance on the basis of a grab-bag of rationales, and one arguing against those same mechanism for sheer dislike of balance, itself. Both want the same thing.

AEDU was the main balance mechanism. Perhaps the slaughtering of utility magic was another. It's not like you've offered a hundred options. You've offered 4e which included a few.

It was, indeed, unique in how successful it was. The important difference, though, wasn't the 4e, but the GSL vs the OGL. In the past, the initial 'splash' of rejection was short-lived, those rejecting the new thing had little to talk about after their initial disgust, and the only new, interesting things coming out were for the new system. The rejection faded away for lack of anything to latch onto.

You've presented this theory a few times. I'm not saying this had nothing to do with it. But I think you over state it's importance. People really are willing to play an out of date game. I've come to learn this by observing so many 3.5e players nowadays who have Pathfinder to go to but haven't. Same for the tons of people playing 2e. So would 4e have done a smidgen better if Pathfinder didn't exist, surely. But would 4e have been this raging success? No.

 

[Nagol]

Going back to here - the reason Ars Magica works is because everyone is playing a Magus. And everyone is also playing their hangers-on. Because the system acknowledges there is no way in which Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit are even playing the same game. So unless you're suggesting D&D incorporate a troupe system, or suggesting that it's ideal that Wizards are the real game, and Fighters get to ... um ... travel with Wizards, I don't think this is a good model.

-O

Actually, I ran an Ars Magica campaign where each player picked a character to play: mage or companion. About half the players chose a mage. THe troupe is a default, but the game works pretty well without it.

Granted, there were some tweaks to make the two choices a bit closer in ability, but only a couple.

 

[triqui]

Not much of a 3e fan here but this is one thing it mostly got right: it made the PCs fit in mechanically with the game world rather than be mechanically set apart from it.

We have had a long discussion, I think in this thread, about why in 3e the best silkweavers, or diplomats, or glassblowers in the world have BAB +10/+5 and damn good hit points and saving throws, so they can have enough levels to get their ranks in their skills.

I disagree with this being mostly right.

 

[rounser]

I don't know what you think, but I'd say Hector, Achilles, Jason, Heracles, Beowulf, Cuchulain, Sigfried, John Carter of Mars and the knights of the Round Table are, all of them, kinda occidental. And they are just play baddasses that kick any wuxia anime asses into oblvivion.

Only, they're not who get copied when fighters come in for "supe-ing up". Epic level occidental mythology seems not sexy or apparently sellable enough perhaps. There's seemingly not even a grasp of what a mythological bard is amongst D&D designers ever since 2E - that's morphed into a dungeon-going minstrel, and the influences on very high level fighters and weeaboo books like Book of Seven Swords (or whatever it was called) are seemingly more The Last Airbender and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon than The Tasks of Hercules.

D&D has enough of all that in the form of the monk, already. And for some even that's too much.

 

[Nagol]

Ok, so the problem isn't that you want magic to be inherently better than martial/mundane, it's just that you need to rationalize it so it does not break your suspension of disbelief.

Let's see if we can agree with this:

Wizards have powers that allow them to damage several people in an area (lightnign bolt), can overcome hit points (hold monster), instantly kill a monster (finger of death), disable them (blindness), become too hard to hit (Displacement), and too hard to kill (stoneskin).

Let's see if I can build some martial movents that can be balanced toward those, without feeling "magical".

Let's suppose a power where you charge in a line, attacking with your sword everybody in your path. That's equivalent to a lightning bolt.

Let's create a power where you make an Intimidating shout, and a target cower in fear in his place.

Let's creae a power called "beheading" (or "heartseeking", to use it with arrows), that instantly kills a creature who fail saving throws, or have a certain treshold of hit dice/hit points (like Power Word to Kill)

Now let's go with a power called "gouge", that makes a creature that fails the save to be blinded.

Then let's make a "dodging stance", which makes you dodge 50% of the incoming attacks, just like Displacement does.

And now let's build a "defensive stance" which gives you DR 10, like stoneskin. As hit points aren't meat, but also stamina, will to fight, dodge, and ability to turn a big hit into a lesser hit, this damage reduction does not come from your skin being hardened (as the spell), but from you being better at dodging, parrying, and turning hits into glances.

There you go. As you don't like martial dailies, we can have two options:
1) those are at-will. Yep, the wizards will cry. But we don't care about balance, it's not a problem that a class is inferior to other, as long as there is in-world verosimilitude, and this powers are verosimile for a mundane character. The wizard will be clearly inferior in combat, but if we didn't worry about the fighter being inferior, we don't really have to worry about the wizard being inferior. Unless, of course, the problem is we secretly really want fighters being inferior, period, and everything else is just a excuse to rationalize it.

2)If 1) doesn't work, we can give the fighter a set pool of points called "fatigue" or "stamina" or "adrenaline". He can use those to activate this skills, until he is too tired to do any more. He can repeat them, to avoid "plot coupons". He, as a character, is aware of this powers being tiring, just like he is aware of his hit points. So it's not dissociative.

Would you accept this solution?

I'd be happier with that model, sure. I don't even think having them at-will is all that bad and having the Martial character work sort of like a Sorcerer (small number of abilities powered from a central pool; the abilities can be used interchanably) fits the concept of endurance better than having a few abilities that each can be used once.

On a separate note, I think you could add much more over-the-top combat abilities and still end up with the Martial characters being seriously dependent on the spellcasters.

Death Blow: Once a round, instead of rolling damage, the Fighter may declare an opponent struck in combat dead. Use: At-will; Saving throw: none.

What does this do in the game, really? It shortens combat. Pre-4e, who cares if the arcanist is clearly inferior in combat?

When do spellcasters in pre-4e outshine non-spellcasters? Higher levels. Why? It's not because their abilty to inflict damage goes up more than the non-spellcasters; in my 3.5, the Dwarven Fighter was throwing down more damage each round than the 2 arcanists combined. It is because without the spellcasters, the group cannot discover the adventure site, cannot reach the adventure site, cannot investigate the adventure site, cannot endure the adventure site, cannot rest and recover from anything inflicted upon them throughout the adventure, and cannot return from the adventure site.