D&D 5E Legend Lore says 'story not rules' (3/4)

[El Mahdi]

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[KidSnide]

So then when we consider 5e, and I see a game that is once again built around a chaotic jumble of class mechanics, and presumably if we are to believe comments made here and there 3e-style MCing, then how would anyone expect that it won't crumble under its own weight just like 3e did?

That's interesting because when I look at D&DN, I see character gen mechanics in the style of 3e with the design discipline of 4e. Right now, it looks like they are working on a single spell casting mechanic shared by the spell casting classes and a single fighting mechanic shared by the weapon using classes. Yes, there are also special class abilities (the "chaotic jumble", as it were), but it looks like they are starting with a core sense of the baseline effectiveness of a front-line weapon user and the baseline effectiveness of primary spell caster and then modifying the classes from there. The objective here (which I see progress towards, but is by no means complete) is a class system that allows the unique mechanical feel of 3e classes with the underlying balanced mechanics learned from their experience with 4e.

Maybe that's an organized jumble, but the very act of trying to rebuild a system in the style of 3.x (with the lessons of having built 4e) has the potential to solve many of the problems that 3.x had built-in from the beginning.

And, to your earlier point, I think the early discussions about D&DN allowing BECMI, 3.x and 4e style games were widely misinterpreted. All "4e-style" means in this context is that (1) the character generation system will have a lot of optional customization, (2) you'll be able to play 4e / Delve style tactical combat with a battlemap, (3) there will be rules support for the most important 4e-isms like Dragonborn and (4) with the right rules modules, you'll be able to get some kind of encounter-based refreshing of some character abilities. I'm sure reasonable people could disagree, but that looks like "enabling 4e-style games" to me, and it looks like a perfectly achievable goal.

-KS

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am not going to debate you on this. But I deinitely disagree with your assesment, and I think a lot of gamers are split on this issue. It is far from settled and a lot more complex and nuanced than either side usually admits. And to me, 4E style parity and symmetry is not a good solution to those percived issues

Yeah, my main question, and one that I suspect has an answer that is different from what people may think, is about that "parity and symmetry". Is it the parity and symmetry that you're actually worried about or is it the specific content of the powers and feats that 4e provided? I think, as an example, that such a system could have pretty easily delivered the entire classic D&D spell list. Why not? Obviously casting wouldn't be exactly the same, but the point is all of a sudden we're playing with a VERY different list of options, but the same basic fundamental mechanical strengths. Thus is it the MECHANICS that was an issue or the CONTENT that was the issue (and we could also ask similar questions about the presentation). I don't expect answers, but it is something that people probably SHOULD think carefully about because it has a great bearing on the reasoning for DDN's design. I question whether the right compromises are being made.

I know people often resist re-examining their fundamental positions on this kind of topic. There will be a whole bunch of "that's bunk, we know exactly why we do and don't like X!" but really do we generally have that much insight into our preferences? I don't think you'll find very much evidence that humans are that introspective.

 

[Stormonu]

If Mearls and Co. are truly planning on keeping the spat level down, I'm hoping they squeeze as much as they possibly can into the core and first couple of releases. Nothing is going to dissapoint or annoy more than content missing out of the starting gate.

I remember being annoyed at 2E, for example, because of what monsters were left out of the initial MC as well as removing half-orcs, monks, etc. Same thing happened in 3E, mostly with monsters like, say, the banshee. I'm not even going to get into 4Es initial offerings at release.

I know that 5E isn't going to be able to cram 30+ years of D&D into one, or even three books. But I'm pleading now - don't make us wait six months to a year to get our campaigns back to "the way they were". Get that base stuff we need - classes, races, spells, iconic monsters - out there first and foremost. Then, you can start offering the add-on modules and in-depth tweaks.

Please.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's interesting because when I look at D&DN, I see character gen mechanics in the style of 3e with the design discipline of 4e. Right now, it looks like they are working on a single spell casting mechanic shared by the spell casting classes and a single fighting mechanic shared by the weapon using classes. Yes, there are also special class abilities (the "chaotic jumble", as it were), but it looks like they are starting with a core sense of the baseline effectiveness of a front-line weapon user and the baseline effectiveness of primary spell caster and then modifying the classes from there. The objective here (which I see progress towards, but is by no means complete) is a class system that allows the unique mechanical feel of 3e classes with the underlying balanced mechanics learned from their experience with 4e.

Maybe that's an organized jumble, but the very act of trying to rebuild a system in the style of 3.x (with the lessons of having built 4e) has the potential to solve many of the problems that 3.x had built-in from the beginning.

My experience with hacking and playing games says to me that the strength of 4e is the direct result of the regularity of the mechanics, not something you can add to a different type of implementation by any amount of analysis. Sure, you can try to analyze all the options that are built using highly divergent mechanical underpinnings, but you'll never achieve even 1/100th of the ingenuity that will be applied to prying it apart in the first week by charops. I mean charops broke 4e all the time, but the point was that the very nature of the design was a firewall. You could break a power, or you could combine and pile on certain types of options to an excess and you could produce a character that did exorbitant amounts of damage or whatever, but it wasn't a deep breakage. It wasn't like the 3e Cleric where unless you actively avoided all the decent options like the plague you just outstripped fighters hands down every time, and the number of permutations of things that would produce wonky results was a number theoretically dauntingly large sum. You could plug holes in 3e all day and not even make measurable progress because of the design, not because of some lack of care at making the elements which used that design.

And, to your earlier point, I think the early discussions about D&DN allowing BECMI, 3.x and 4e style games were widely misinterpreted. All "4e-style" means in this context is that (1) the character generation system will have a lot of optional customization, (2) you'll be able to play 4e / Delve style tactical combat with a battlemap, (3) there will be rules support for the most important 4e-isms like Dragonborn and (4) with the right rules modules, you'll be able to get some kind of encounter-based refreshing of some character abilities. I'm sure reasonable people could disagree, but that looks like "enabling 4e-style games" to me, and it looks like a perfectly achievable goal.

-KS

Well, there are a LOT of us, for instance see the "Will there be a game called DDN?" thread or the "Pemertonian Scene Framing" thread(s) where we have put forward a very coherent explanation of how and why DDN is drastically different from 4e in fundamental ways. The things that you mention are no doubt what Mike means, but they are superficial and trivial and a game designer of Mike's caliber must fully understand that DDN will deliver game play that is NOTHING like what 4e delivers for at least a very substantial fraction of 4e fans. In other words what WE consider a '4e style game' is not enabled at all, and the goal appears to be unattainable at this time within the timeframe and within the parameters outlined by Mr Mearls. I guess that's "reasonable people can disagree". I hope it illustrates something of where I'm coming from when I find DDN's design and very goals inadequate from my perspective.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Bedrockgames]

I know people often resist re-examining their fundamental positions on this kind of topic. There will be a whole bunch of "that's bunk, we know exactly why we do and don't like X!" but really do we generally have that much insight into our preferences? I don't think you'll find very much evidence that humans are that introspective.

I think we do understand our own preferences and alot of the attempts I see to "clarify" other peoples' opinions about mechanics in many of these edition wars are really more manipulative than anything else (even if they are not deliberately so). I just find the attitude of "you don't really know what you want" dismissive. I mean I have been playing the game since 1986, played countless other role playing games, and like a lot of other gamers, designed my own mechanics and thought hard about what I like and why. Just because we disagree on some fundamental things, doesn't mean I am misguided about my own taste.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

IMO it's a pretty empty threat to say you won't have the patience to wait around for your preferred modules/options when you're following DDN right now, like a year and a half from release.

Who says I am following it? I used to be, when I thought it was going to offer me something I wanted. Every packet and every L&L drives the point home that it is not in fact, something I am interested in.

Well, there are a LOT of us, for instance see the "Will there be a game called DDN?" thread or the "Pemertonian Scene Framing" thread(s) where we have put forward a very coherent explanation of how and why DDN is drastically different from 4e in fundamental ways. The things that you mention are no doubt what Mike means, but they are superficial and trivial and a game designer of Mike's caliber must fully understand that DDN will deliver game play that is NOTHING like what 4e delivers for at least a very substantial fraction of 4e fans. In other words what WE consider a '4e style game' is not enabled at all, and the goal appears to be unattainable at this time within the timeframe and within the parameters outlined by Mr Mearls. I guess that's "reasonable people can disagree". I hope it illustrates something of where I'm coming from when I find DDN's design and very goals inadequate from my perspective.

Nailed it. I tried to XP you, but I couldn't.

 

[KidSnide]

My experience with hacking and playing games says to me that the strength of 4e is the direct result of the regularity of the mechanics, not something you can add to a different type of implementation by any amount of analysis. Sure, you can try to analyze all the options that are built using highly divergent mechanical underpinnings, but you'll never achieve even 1/100th of the ingenuity that will be applied to prying it apart in the first week by charops. I mean charops broke 4e all the time, but the point was that the very nature of the design was a firewall. You could break a power, or you could combine and pile on certain types of options to an excess and you could produce a character that did exorbitant amounts of damage or whatever, but it wasn't a deep breakage. It wasn't like the 3e Cleric where unless you actively avoided all the decent options like the plague you just outstripped fighters hands down every time, and the number of permutations of things that would produce wonky results was a number theoretically dauntingly large sum. You could plug holes in 3e all day and not even make measurable progress because of the design, not because of some lack of care at making the elements which used that design.

I don't disagree with any of the details of your statement, but I'm not sure I agree with the ultimate conclusion. Many of the 3e balance problems were, as you say, build deeply into the system, but many are fundamental design elements -- not just products of the multitude of options. To pick some examples: Cleric and Druid had a bunch of stacking bonus spells that allowed them to outfight Fighters straight out of the PHB. Wizards advanced in number of spells, the level of spells and the effectiveness of spells while scrolls and wands allowed them to bypass most of the limitations of a finite number of spells per day. Save and BAB numbers didn't work well with how multiclassing allowed you to stack level 1 bonuses. Polymorph magic lets PCs use the monster manual as a self-augmentation menu. These are fundamental problems to the system whether or not you add on a couple dozen splat books.

I agree that there's no way to solve these 3.x problems by hunting down unbalanced combos (except maybe by changing polymorph), but I don't see you couldn't create a new 3.x style game that solved them from the beginning. Will there be unbalanced combos after that? Sure, I'm sure there will be. Searching for unbalanced combos is part of what some people enjoy about the game. But I don't need a game that is safe from charop. I just want a game where I can let my less-sophisticated players choose their own powers without generating useless characters. (And frankly, it's not like 4e was all that good about that. You can get some pretty ineffective characters picking powers from PH1.)

I also think the lessons WotC designers learned from managing powers can be imported into D&DN. Spells can be balanced across classes and levels in the same way that powers were. Yes, it's harder to try that with class abilities, but we've seen maneuvers as an effort in that direction. I don't think I can judge the whether WotC can balance non-spells until we're a little further along in the playtest.

Well, there are a LOT of us, for instance see the "Will there be a game called DDN?" thread or the "Pemertonian Scene Framing" thread(s) where we have put forward a very coherent explanation of how and why DDN is drastically different from 4e in fundamental ways. The things that you mention are no doubt what Mike means, but they are superficial and trivial and a game designer of Mike's caliber must fully understand that DDN will deliver game play that is NOTHING like what 4e delivers for at least a very substantial fraction of 4e fans. In other words what WE consider a '4e style game' is not enabled at all, and the goal appears to be unattainable at this time within the timeframe and within the parameters outlined by Mr Mearls. I guess that's "reasonable people can disagree". I hope it illustrates something of where I'm coming from when I find DDN's design and very goals inadequate from my perspective.

I don't know. I've read those threads and I play 4e now. But I don't view those characteristics as being "superficial or trivial." I think those (along with - at least in theory - skill challenges) are primary characteristics of 4e play.

For my game, 4e provided a fun tactical subgame, encounter-based resources, easier DM prep and a bunch of new fluff (that I picked and chose from, but mostly didn't use). It also solved a number of 3.x problems that were driving me nuts, but it also slowed down combat as my less sophisticated players began taking longer and longer to re-read their character sheets before every combat round.

-KS