D&D 5E Poll: What is a Level 1 PC?

[Neonchameleon]

I'm not sure how to respond to this... even stating him up as a minion is a system, and not just fiat... so I guess we sort of agree. Again, my broader position is that the default should be an actual system and shouldn't be... hey just make it up. There should be rules in place which one can choose to completely or partially ignore to stat out NPC's. So I guess I'll change my position slightly, the rules don't have to be NPC as PC's... but they shouldn't be make it all up... or generate a single number for a skill check. There should be a system to stat out a complete NPC as a default in the rules.

I think we're approaching the same page. My take is

1: There should be guidelines for everything an NPC can do that interacts with the PCs.

2: For a non-plot-centric NPC you should be able to do this without disrupting the flow of play when (not if) the PCs leave the beaten track.

Which means I'm going to give an outside time for the creation of a fast NPC that is fully developed under the rules of 30 seconds, and consider that to be about 25 seconds too long. Ideally I want to be able to do it by writing down half a dozen narrative words, if that.

So for our baker in 4e it would be ("five", (i.e. level 5), "minion brute" (the stats to use) "expert baker" (i.e. hard DC), "inept lover" (i.e. use the easy DCs if someone tries to seduce him)). That would give me all the stats I need in a way that's easy to remember and can be generated straight from the text. And indicates his challenge level to the party.

If I want to stat him out with the same level of detail as a PC, I can. He really isn't up to joining the adventuring party (nor are most people). But he's all there and has all the detail he needs for any interaction with the party. I can do this while taking a sip of a drink.

I can always add more detail given time. This is not a problem. It's the getting to enough detail and the right degree of challenge fast that's the problem.

Likewise, the rules for DMs don't need to tell you what a challenging combat encounter is or what the balance between different types of combat and noncombat encounters should be or how to treat you players.

That kind of advice has a place, but there don't need to be explicit rules married to it.

Moreover, the rules/guidelines for designing challenges/encounters in 3e D&D (and 2e and 4e, AFAICT) are so ludicrous that they do more harm than good.

Out of curiosity, have you ever actually tried playing 4e. Because everything you state above may be true in 2e and certainly is in 3.X but it is flat out wrong in 4e (especially post-MM3). The post-MM3 challenge guidance in 4e is pretty accurate across heroic tier (it slips about one level of challenge rating every five) and leads to fun encounters - and very easy encounter design. (pre-MM3 the monsters didn't scale fast enough so they fixed the math - and designed much better monsters).

It is quite obvious in a lot of places that the early 4e books had one year of design/playtesting rather than the two they should have because Orcus was pulled for being terrible. So the PHB1/MM1/DMG1 are very buggy in places. But that's bug not worse than useless as a lot of the 3.X balance is.

And having accurate rules for designing a challenging encounter (even MM1 works at low levels) does one huge thing - it allows new DMs to get started without it being too likely they accidently kill PCs or just lob them softballs. This is a huge thing for a game where death is on the line.

 

[Hussar]

Y'know, to be honest, I didn't really have huge problems with the 3e design advice. I found CR worked as a pretty decent baseline. I did find that using two or three monsters rather than one big one worked better, but, it wasn't as if following the encounter design advice in the 3e and 3.5 DMG was all that far out. It was pretty close.

Wouldn't work, I suppose, if the entire group was out to min/max the game, but, then again, 3e is pretty up front about the presumptions going into the advice. Once you recognize the presumptions, you can make pretty decent allowances for variation.

I would like to say that, like Obryn, I very much think that you can stat out NPC's without engaging the Class/Level system. Every edition of D&D has done that. I don't think anyone is advocating "Just wing it". I want to treat NPC's (at least the not so important ones) pretty much the same as a critter. Basic stat block for combat stats and assign skills as needed.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Out of curiosity, have you ever actually tried playing 4e.

No.

I've also never DMed 2e (only played). Thus, the "AFAICT".

Because everything you state above may be true in 2e and certainly is in 3.X but it is flat out wrong in 4e (especially post-MM3). The post-MM3 challenge guidance in 4e is pretty accurate across heroic tier (it slips about one level of challenge rating every five) and leads to fun encounters - and very easy encounter design. (pre-MM3 the monsters didn't scale fast enough so they fixed the math - and designed much better monsters).

...

And having accurate rules for designing a challenging encounter (even MM1 works at low levels) does one huge thing - it allows new DMs to get started without it being too likely they accidently kill PCs or just lob them softballs. This is a huge thing for a game where death is on the line.

I think you're missing my point. My point is not that any edition of D&D makes it too hard to design a "balanced encounter". My point twofold: one, that balanced, challenging encounters are not the goal of D&D. To quote [MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION] :

"When Perseus fought Medusa the math didn’t work and the combat was really swingy.
Perseus was a hero.

The great stories are never about balanced encounters."

Trying to make D&D about encounters of any sort or trying to create some sort of balance based on them is an endeavor inherently doomed to fail.

The second point is that even if a particular DM wants to balance an encounter in a certain way for some reason, the rules for encounter design are useless. In a truly open-ended game, it's impossible to account for all the possibilities of how different characters will interact with each other or with the world.

 

[Hussar]

For one, I find it very, very disturbing that you can quote BryonD's sig from memory. That just scares me.

But, besides that, you are mistaken on a number of points. For one, virtually every encounter you have ever designed for an RPG has been balanced. Granted, the balance might favor the bad guys, but, you knew that beforehand. Why did you know? Because the transparency of the system allows you to judge, with a pretty high degree of accuracy, how a given encounter will fall out.

And, lastly, no game is ever "truly open-ended". Your characters are limited by the reality in the game world - unless you allow your PC's to spontaneously fly with no explanation - and by the mechanics of the system - you don't allow your PC's to shoot the bad guys in the eye and instantly kill them, do you?

The idea that you have no idea how an encounter will resolve before that encounter is played out is something I have great difficulty believing.

 

[Bluenose]

"When Perseus fought Medusa the math didn’t work and the combat was really swingy.
Perseus was a hero.

The great stories are never about balanced encounters."

I've never been convinced that cutting someone's head off while they're asleep is particularly swingy or even involves much maths.

 

[Ahnehnois]

But, besides that, you are mistaken on a number of points. For one, virtually every encounter you have ever designed for an RPG has been balanced. Granted, the balance might favor the bad guys, but, you knew that beforehand. Why did you know? Because the transparency of the system allows you to judge, with a pretty high degree of accuracy, how a given encounter will fall out.

That was kind of my point. That if the rules for creating characters and resolving actions are clear enough, the DM can create the situation he wants without any notion of challenge ratings, encounter budgets, or the like.

Essentially, what you're saying is that balance is something the DM creates, which is pretty much my mantra.

And, lastly, no game is ever "truly open-ended". Your characters are limited by the reality in the game world - unless you allow your PC's to spontaneously fly with no explanation - and by the mechanics of the system - you don't allow your PC's to shoot the bad guys in the eye and instantly kill them, do you?

Sounds like a well described crit to me.

The idea that you have no idea how an encounter will resolve before that encounter is played out is something I have great difficulty believing.

The idea that you have no idea how an encounter will resolve before checking to see if it meets the DMG definition of a challenging encounter is something I have great difficulty believing.

For one, I find it very, very disturbing that you can quote BryonD's sig from memory. That just scares me.

Well, I'm not quoting it from memory so much as vaguely recalling that it illustrated my point, googling it, and copy-pasting it. Not sure what's wrong with that anyway.

 

[Imaro]

Given that the basic activity of an RPG is the players, via their PCs, engaging situations/scenes/circumstances framed by the GM, I actually think that "those kinds of thing" - whether framed as rules, or as guidelines - are pretty central.

This is a playstyle thing, and I think the fact that you like running your games like this is great... but I don't think this style of play is in any way "pretty central" to D&D.

EDIT: If anything I would say designing adventures for your players to engage with is what's pretty central to D&D... (not framing encounters/scenes/circumstances).

 

[Lanefan]

The idea that you have no idea how an encounter will resolve before that encounter is played out is something I have great difficulty believing.

I usually have a pretty good idea what the end result will be (party wins easy, party wins but is challenged, etc.) but much less of an idea - sometimes as little as none at all - as to exactly how that result will be achieved.

And that's before the dice get involved.

Lanefan

 

[Neonchameleon]

No.

I've also never DMed 2e (only played). Thus, the "AFAICT".

I think you're missing my point. My point is not that any edition of D&D makes it too hard to design a "balanced encounter". My point twofold: one, that balanced, challenging encounters are not the goal of D&D. To quote @BryonD :

"When Perseus fought Medusa the math didn’t work and the combat was really swingy.
Perseus was a hero.

The great stories are never about balanced encounters."

Trying to make D&D about encounters of any sort or trying to create some sort of balance based on them is an endeavor inherently doomed to fail.

And, as @Bluenose (can't xp, sorry) points out, @BryonD 's quote is almost entirely wrong. Perseus did not fight Medusa at all. He hacked her head off while she was asleep - and that wasn't a fight, it was a puzzle every bit as much as silly games involving wolves, goats, and cabbages are. So Perseus didn't fight Medusa, there wasn't a fight, and the math wasn't even slightly swingy. Literally the only point on which Bryon is not simply flat out wrong in his sig is the 'Perseus was a hero' claim.

On the other hand if we look at an actual fight in Greek myth, Hercules vs the Lernean Hydra, there was a fight, the math wasn't terribly swingy, and the encounter was balanced. Or how about Achiles vs Hector? Balanced in Achiles favour and not terribly swingy [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ygRholyh5g"]as seen here [/ame]

There are two sorts of story that make the cut most of the time. The epic clash betweeen approximate equals in which the combat is balanced, not terribly swingy, and is about the people concerned. And the work of an utter bastard trickster that does something like coup de grace Medusa when she is asleep or pour out of the wooden horse, butchering drunk Trojans, and unlocking the gates while they are having their victory celebrations. This always takes some rigging by the protagonist and the battle has been won before the first sword blow lands unless there's a complete screw up.

The second point is that even if a particular DM wants to balance an encounter in a certain way for some reason, the rules for encounter design are useless. In a truly open-ended game, it's impossible to account for all the possibilities of how different characters will interact with each other or with the world.

Of course it's impossible to balance all possibilities. What balanced math does is provide information about how the head on approach is going to work. Or if rigged, a given approach. If a fight was truly perfectly balanced, no one would ever win. But with balanced math you can estimate very accurately what is going to happen assuming there aren't an unusual number of surprises.



Edit note: the ENWorld parser that automatically turns links into videos is really annoying.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Essentially, what you're saying is that balance is something the DM creates, which is pretty much my mantra.

And essentially what you are saying is "The DM should be thrown in the deep end without much in the way of system notes to tell them what likely outcomes are". The point of the 4e balance is to give a three session DM the same facility with designing straightforward scenes and knowing what the outcomes will be that a six month year DM would have in previous editions - and a three month the equivalent of a two year and a two year the equivalent of a five year (after that the knowledge curve flattens out).

It's like learning from a pretty good teacher rather than pure trial and error.

The idea that you have no idea how an encounter will resolve before checking to see if it meets the DMG definition of a challenging encounter is something I have great difficulty believing.

As I said, the experience curve flattens out. I doubt that anyone in this conversation has an unclear idea of the balance of their favoured edition. But with a game that's designed clearly, like 4e, a newbie DM learns this part of the DMing fast and easily and can concentrate on learning all the other skills a DM needs.

That is what balance is about. Teaching new DMs skills rather than making them learn them the hard way. Because the hard way sucks and causes people who could be good DMs to give up after a screwup or two in which they accidently kill the PCs or give the PCs too many cakewalks because they are scared of killing them accidently.

Balance is not needed by really experienced DMs. It is, however, extremely valuable for newbies. And it's one of the many reasons I consider 4e an incredibly good system for encouraging people to DM, and getting them to DM well.