D&D 5E 2/18/13 L&L column

[Garthanos]

This is only true if resting is a cost. .

Nope resting doesnt need to be a cost. Unless you are altering substantially how the fighting dynamic works the party will also now be able to take on 5 adversaries at a time when with a fighter in his place they could only take on 4.

Perhaps a way to avoid that might be if the Cleric is extending the day due to mostly healing the party outside of combat... not inside of combat. *he might still do some in combat but it wouldnt be substantial enough to increase the party power more than a fighter in his place would.

 

[Blackwarder]

Look, here's the issue...

The Dungeons & Dragons 5E game that practically every single one of us is going to be playing will be a STANDARD game. Why? Because one table will include a ranger (which ain't Basic). One will include a half-orc (which ain't Basic). One will include skills (which doesn't look like it'll be Basic). One will include overnight healing to full HP (which doesn't look like it'll be Basic). One will include artifacts (which ain't Basic.) One will include dual-wielding (which doesn't look like it'll be Basic).

For all of us that want any or all of these things... we will be playing the Standard game. We will buy the three books that will include all of these rules, we will read the very first section of the Player's Handbook that will spend probably 15 pages explaining the "Basic" version of the rules... and then once we read the rest of the book we're going to start cherry-picking bits and pieces to ADD or REPLACE the rules in the Basic section. Then the game is good to go.

That's what's going to happen for 95% of us.

The only time that's NOT going to happen is two reason: 1) if there's a 5E "Red Box" product that ONLY has the Basic rules in it. Or 2) if a table of experienced players decide they want to play a Basic game SPECIFICALLY because it's trying to emulate a BECMI type of experience.

As far as #2 is concerned... they WON'T CARE that the only healing available to a party is either natural healing overnight (however much that ends up being), Potions of Healing, or a Cleric casting a Cure spell. Because that's what D&D had back in the 70s, and that's what they are trying to get back to.

For Group #1... the whole point of having a BASIC game is that you open it, you read the short bit of rules, and you play it. You aren't required to DESIGN the game by selecting various rules options to use when you play. The rules are the rules. You use them, you play them, you enjoy them (hopefully). And thus you want a SINGLE HEALING PARADIGM for the Basic rules. Because for new players trying to learn the game, having a SINGLE RULE is easier to play and easier to understand.

The question then becomes... for this Basic game with only ONE healing style... which way do you go? Do you use Hit Dice? Do you use Wound/Vitality? Do you use "hit points return completely following every rest"? Or do you use the same rules (as close as you can get) that existed in the original D&D game... which (I believe) is meant to be slow natural recovery, the occasional Potion, and a couple Cleric spells?

WotC has chosen to go with the latter it appears for the time being.

Now the other issue is everyone grasping at what Mike said about clerics being required and getting all worked up. But as is the case every time any of the designers and developers mention ANYTHING about the game... people take isolated sentences and then blow things out of proportion, never wondering for just a moment that perhaps they were just speaking off the cuff and thus weren't not going into COMPLETE DETAIL about what their turn of phrase was actually a part of.

Is a cleric required in a Basic game? That depends entirely on what Mike actually meant. Perhaps he meant that yes, to play Basic D&D the ONLY way you are allowed to play it is if every table has one fighter, one rogue, one wizard, and one cleric. Or did he mean that a cleric is required because the way combat works, if you don't have a cleric to heal people, all characters WILL DIE no ifs-ands-or-buts. Or did he mean that a cleric is required *if* you wanted characters to regain hit points FASTER than through normal overnight recovery?

Which one is it? We don't know, do we? No, I don't think we do.

And THAT'S the issue. We're all rewriting rules to counter a problem that we might not actually understand or even exists in the first place.

And until Mike comes out and says specifically what the ACTUAL rule is... trying to blow up the Basic game into another Standard game is incredibly pre-mature. ESPECIALLY considering it doesn't sound like they've actually even DECIDED on what the Basic healing rule is going to be!

Quoted for being the most sensible thing written in the entire thread and for not being able to XP Defcon.

Personally, I'll prefer to have a BASIC game with only clerical spells healing plus extended rests, I would love to have a basic game that is as BASIC as it can be.
In fact, I would love to have a box labeled DUNGEON & DRAGONS that got everything you need to have in order to play said basic game.

Everything else should be relegated to STANDARD and ADVANCED rules.
I can see myself playing a game where HP is replaced by wounds and vitality and you gain more XP from gold than killing monsters with The One Ring style wilderness journey rules but I want none of that in my BASIC game, I want my BASIC game to be the good old Dungeon exploration game that could be played in a 1-4 hours sessions without too much hassle or prep time.

Warder

 

[pemerton]

Unless you are altering substantially how the fighting dynamic works the party will also now be able to take on 5 adversaries at a time when with a fighter in his place they could only take on 4.

Perhaps a way to avoid that might be if the Cleric is extending the day due to mostly healing the party outside of combat... not inside of combat. *he might still do some in combat but it wouldnt be substantial enough to increase the party power more than a fighter in his place would.

Exactly as per your second paragraph.

And note that, upthread, [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] is not calling for in-combat healing. He's calling for out-of-combat faster-than-"natural" healing.

In a game in which time is not, per se, a resource, than the cleric being able to reduce the number of required rests changes the content of the fiction - just as a fighter parrying, or a wizard casting rope trick, changes the content of the fiction - but it doesn't actually change anyone's ability to "win" at the game.

All that said, I think [MENTION=3424]FireLance[/MENTION] is on to something in thinking about things in terms of encounter building - but to me that is just driving home the inanity of the assumption that the threat posed by a creature is independent of the company that that creature is keeping. (4e makes this assumption in a limited way - eg it doesn't distinguish between "clumps" and "waves" - but it uses a range of other techniques, like the AEDU structure, to try to achieve mechanical parity of effectiveness across the classes. Only D&Dnext is trying this harebrained scheme of balancing different player resource sets across some undertheorised "adventuring day".)

 

[pemerton]

In fact, I would love to have a box labeled DUNGEON & DRAGONS that got everything you need to have in order to play said basic game.

Everything else should be relegated to STANDARD and ADVANCED rules.
I can see myself playing a game where <snippage> you gain more XP from gold than killing monsters <snippage> but I want none of that in my BASIC game, I want my BASIC game to be the good old Dungeon exploration game

XP from gold rather than killing monsters traditionally was part of Basic D&D.

 

[Balesir]

This is only true if resting is a cost. My example upthread of the hypothetical wizard's Rope Trick spell shows that this is not necessarily so.
[MENTION=3424]FireLance[/MENTION] gives a more interesting example, in terms of capacity to handle encounter budget - to my mind this just reinforces the absurdity of treating 5 x 100 XP encounters as equivalent to 1x 500 XP encounters. If the cleric can help disproportionately in the latter case, then I agree it is more powerful. But simply removing a rest period between the 4th and 5th 100 XP encounters is only a power-up if resting is a cost. And I'm not yet persuade that it is (in general; of course it can be in particular circumstances, and you can build in mechanics, say like AD&D's upkeep rules or Burning Wheel's cost-of-living rules that make resting a cost, but I haven't noticed any such rules in D&Dnext).

Um, 'fraid I have to disagree. If the party without cleric can take 4 encounters, that means each encounter (on average) takes 25% of their "disposable resources" (i.e. resources before they feel they must withdraw to recharge, as opposed to "resources before they are dead"). Assuming that the gap between "resource expenditure before recharge" and "resource expenditure before TPK" is the same for both parties (as it ought to be, unless the risk averseness of the party has changed), then the party with a cleric, if able to take on 5 encounters before recharge, must use only 20% of its "disposable resources", on average, per encounter. This must mean that either (a) the party with a cleric has more resources, or (b) the party with a cleric is more powerful (and so uses its resources more slowly, as each use has proportionately more effect).

In other words, even though I totally agree that "time" in the game is not inherently a resource (only if it is made so by the adventure design, basically), the party capacity between recharges necessarily is a meaningful resource. This applies especially if encounter limits on resources have been removed (which is what taking out 4e's encounter powers and healing surges/hit dice does).

If the party resources are better/bigger with one cleric, then it stands to reason that they will be better/bigger still with two - or an entire party of clerics. This certainly worked with 3.x, and was arguably functional with earlier editions, too (although, there, you might want to hire in "specialists" for when the DM sets up deliberate "impossible without a whatever" scenarios).

I'm with [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] and co. on this one - if parties with and without particular characters can take a different number of "standard" encounters on before they need to recharge, it's a pretty clear indication that the parties are of different power levels. That has, ley's say, "unfortunate" consequences for optimal play (i.e. there will be such a thing, and it will be homogeneous).

 

[I'm A Banana]

A concrete instance: suppose that the cleric lets you do 5 encounters per day rather than the "default" 4. But suppose the wizard has a Rope Trick or similar spell that lets you rest safely once every 4 days (thereby getting a fifth day in every four). Then in terms of capacity to deliver reliable adventuring output, the two PCs are equivalent, unless ingame time is a resource in an of itself. But I personally haven't seen any argument that this must be so.

In addition to what [MENTION=3424]FireLance[/MENTION] pointed out, I'd point out that XP is essentially a cipher for "PC Goals," and is meant to represent a "challenge" to the party, mechanically speaking, of a certain amount, to achieve those goals (ie: a certain amount of die rolls, a certain amount of which need to be over 50% or so, a certain amount of HP loss, etc.) So if a cleric in the party makes it easier to achieve those goals, by making it easier to gain XP, they've made the game easier.

Which, again, isn't bad, it's just a certain choice.

 

[Blackwarder]

XP from gold rather than killing monsters traditionally was part of Basic D&D.

I know, I don't have high hopes for it being part of the basic game though...

Warder

 

[pemerton]

I totally agree that "time" in the game is not inherently a resource (only if it is made so by the adventure design, basically), the party capacity between recharges necessarily is a meaningful resource.

The party capacity between recharges is a meaningful resource only if recharges are in some way constrained.

As the experience of high-level teleporting wizards shows, if recharging is not a cost then capacity between recharges is not a meaningful resource: this is part of the reason why high level wizards are so powerful (whereas if capacity between recharges was a meaningful resource than their ability to generate recharges at will via teleport/rope trick/etc wouldn't break the game).

So the question is: will recharges be under constraint in D&Dnext? I haven't seen any particular evidence that this will be so. (Of course fighters and thieves will still be hosed - I haven't seen any evidence that they will be able to trigger recharges other than via GM fiat. But wizards seem likely to enjoy some version of their traditional suite of recharge-triggering abilities.)

XP is essentially a cipher for "PC Goals," and is meant to represent a "challenge" to the party, mechanically speaking, of a certain amount, to achieve those goals (ie: a certain amount of die rolls, a certain amount of which need to be over 50% or so, a certain amount of HP loss, etc.) So if a cleric in the party makes it easier to achieve those goals, by making it easier to gain XP, they've made the game easier.

But a cleric only makes it easier if we treat the availability of recharges as a fixed quantity (and hence the expenditure of a recharge as a cost). But I don't know any reason to think that that is so in D&Dnext. (Of course there are some RPGs where recharges - or the passage of ingame time - do cost the players. But D&Dnext, to date at least, doesn't seem to be one of them.)

The playtest Keep on the Borderlands has advice about restocking the caves with the passage of time. This looks like it is meant to make the passage of time a cost, but it's not at all clear to me that it does - if the caves restock with XP over time, why is that a problem for an XP-hungry party?

All I'm seeing here is that [MENTION=3424]FireLance[/MENTION] has proved (again - I'm pretty sure I've seen the issue tackled in other ways last year) that the whole "balancing around the adventuring day" is broken in a system that treats the adventuring day as nothing but an element of flavour around resolution (clerics use fewer of them; wizards use more of them; but all get the same amount of XP per expenditure of unit of player resource).

 

[TwoSix]

The playtest Keep on the Borderlands has advice about restocking the caves with the passage of time. This looks like it is meant to make the passage of time a cost, but it's not at all clear to me that it does - if the caves restock with XP over time, why is that a problem for an XP-hungry party?

Probably because XP is an incoherent blend of a reward mechanic and a pacing mechanic. I assume the DM is "supposed to" stop rewarding XP if they use the patrol restock as a Gauntlet-style monster generator. Although in a simulated world, there can only be X amount of monsters in the cave, right? Why wouldn't you use a war of attrition if that allows you to reach your goal of cleaning out the caves, and simultaneously gives you the mechanical satisfaction of earning XP? Kill a few goblins with arrows, try again tomorrow.

I personally feel that's why it's superior to give level ups at narratively appropriate times, not when the XP counter flips over. Ideally, there would still be a reward mechanic for smart strategic play in keeping with the D&D core ethos. I think more loot/more magic items would be the most fitting.

Something like the Chrono Cross model (a PS1 video game circa 2000) would also work, I think, although it might feel less "D&D". Reaching character goals sets your level, which is your current maximum potential. XP must be spent to train the abilities to reach the maximum potential.

All I'm seeing here is that [MENTION=3424]FireLance[/MENTION] has proved (again - I'm pretty sure I've seen the issue tackled in other ways last year) that the whole "balancing around the adventuring day" is broken in a system that treats the adventuring day as nothing but an element of flavour around resolution (clerics use fewer of them; wizards use more of them; but all get the same amount of XP per expenditure of unit of player resource).

Yes. Advancement gained per in-game time is irrelevant. You want to maximize advancement per out-of-game time. If I spend 3 months in game over a 4 hour session, but I go up a level, that's a win!

 

[Balesir]

The party capacity between recharges is a meaningful resource only if recharges are in some way constrained.

Constrained or disincentivised, yes. 4e actually started out with constraints at encounter level (i.e. you do all of an encounter or none - you can't do a bit of one and then recharge) and disincentives at "day" level (APs and daily item uses, as well as resources, reset at extended rests).

As the experience of high-level teleporting wizards shows, if recharging is not a cost then capacity between recharges is not a meaningful resource: this is part of the reason why high level wizards are so powerful (whereas if capacity between recharges was a meaningful resource than their ability to generate recharges at will via teleport/rope trick/etc wouldn't break the game).

I think that shows, rather, an ability to change the recharge scope. "Scry and fry" essentially makes the only meaningful aliquot the encounter. You still need the raw power to take on the encounter you are teleporting into, but you can blow it all on that, leveraging power far more than the increase in character resources would make it seem prima facie.

So the question is: will recharges be under constraint in D&Dnext? I haven't seen any particular evidence that this will be so. (Of course fighters and thieves will still be hosed - I haven't seen any evidence that they will be able to trigger recharges other than via GM fiat. But wizards seem likely to enjoy some version of their traditional suite of recharge-triggering abilities.)

And this is the root of the problem, yes - the fact that the "adventuring day" has not been well thought through. If it actually turns out to mean nothing, then the only meaningful aliquot is the encounter. Only stuff that gets used during encounters will actually be material, all else will be simply "colour" and "feel". That will make the "balancing characters across the adventuring day" a bit of a lame duck, though. If the adventuring day is material, however, then the addition of "encounters" to the "day" by specific classes will be an issue. Sounds like frying pan and fire, to me.