"Combat as war", as I wrote the expression was meant to describe a gameplay where combat is not meant to be interesting or challenging *in itself* but rather *in context* (who wins ? Who survives ? What resources are spent ?)."combat as sport" implies combat interesting in themselves, as a narrative (action movies for instance) or a minigame. They are ideals, actual gameplay/style falls between those extremes. Ideally, the Rules should enable to seamlessly change style on a per-table and per-combat basis. This framing was not meant to be pejorative, e-warring, or a claim about my balls, but rather to give context to our misunderstanding here : claiming the designers don't do their job properly if classes are not balanced against each other only make sense if you endorse one extreme of this continuum.
D&D 5E [Warlords] Should D&D be tied to D&D Worlds?
- Thread starter Neonchameleon
- Start date
Neonchameleon
Legend
Which doesn't have much to do with war... But it was definitely an interesting insight even if the rhetoric attached was biassed.
No. That's just missing what balance is. Balance as long as things are asymmetric can only exist for a set purpose. It's about giving people the sort of resources they need for the sort of game you are playing. And Gygax spent a lot of time and effort balancing 1e around murder-hobo explorers.
The Playtest Dragons article discusses concerns about "never quite happy with... mechanical contrivance" and "didn't clearly represent something within the world of the game". This aspect of D&D Next's design philosophy has been reitereated several times now. It seems to me that they are concerned about marrying the rules to the fiction, so I'm not overly worried that there will be mechanics (like related to balance or whatever) that will feel contrived because there is no underlying story to flesh it out (at least in the core game).
Neonchameleon
Legend
And yet the execution is, as expected, massively lacking.
Legendary Resistance Four times per day, the dragon automatically succeeds on a saving throw of its choice
Doesn't directly represent something in the fiction of the game. Instead it's a gamist "Get out of jail free" card that just gets in the way of the spellcasters, cuts down tactics, and isn't particularly triggered by anything. Or how about the legendary tail whip/blender (four tail whips as its four legendary actions - one each at the start and end of turn against two people) being its best strategy? (Unless they set up for acid breath).
Obryn
Hero
I find that mechanics are best connected to fiction when a game heavily leverages the metagame, thus cutting through all the process-sim nonsense and focusing on the results of the rules' interaction.
Otherwise you end up with such awesome fictional standards as "the guy who trips everyone every round with a chain," "the guy who casts 20 spells on his allies every day," "the wall-of-fur" guy, the "dart machine gun fighter," and the "scry/teleport/fry guy." All well established in fantasy novels, ever since Gimli traded his axe for a longsword because it did more damage against Large creatures and Boromir specialized in darts.
-O
Maybe, maybe not. I respect the intentions, and I respect the overall implentation. I also respect the fact that Mearls made a point of calling it a "playtest" and a "work in progress." I give him the benefit of the doubt in that regards. People who like to spend hours debating the implementation of a work in progress may certaintly do so. It's just not my cup of tea.
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Neonchameleon
Legend
The problem is that to those of us used to 2012-era 4e, that dragon is very badly connected to the fiction. Its entire methods for breaking the action economy and for protecting itself against spellcasters are badly thought through metagame currency including four immunities and the tail-whip blender. As opposed to the 4e Monster Vault dragons which tear through stuff, shrug off spells and recover fast (with associated mechanics rather than metagame mechanics) and are fast, dangerous, threatening, and move differently depending on the type.
Compared to Monster Vault dragons, that's a near-pure metagame beast with little of interest.
Obryn
Hero
Show me a fiction-first system that embraces its metagame that can be transformed into a world-sim fantasy physics system with a few tweaks and we can talk unifying.
This isn't a line I've drawn; judging by the articles, it's Next's line. I'm just on the other side of it.
-O
I don't know even know what to say. 4E had its moment on the pedestal, and you can still play it. You can probably even play 4E-esque modules for D&D Next in the future. In the meantime, D&D Next is trying something else. So, um, I don't know, sorry?
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