D&D 5E Final playtest packet due in mid September.

[Ahnehnois]

And there can be PC build systems in which PCs are "homogenous mechanical constructs" and yet express different archetypes

Sure, there can be. And that approach can work, but one of the strengths of D&D is that the mechanics of different characters are meaningfully different, allowing for more diverse play experiences. It's particularly important for D&D, as the big rpg in the room, to cast a wide net in that regard.

Conversely, if a game lets me build a bard PC, but then offers me no opportunity for imposing my will upon the fiction via my PC persuading and tricking people - if, in effect, it makes me play my bard like a poor cousin to the barbarian - then it is not really a system I want to play.

That's the sort of strawman argument people keep bringing up. If, instead, the game lets you build a bard and offers you the chance to affect the game through persuasion and subterfuge, but makes doing that incrementally more difficult for you than it is for a barbarian to simply smash things, that can and does work.

in a system with levels, a "sidekick" PC, or a "weaker" PC, is simply lower level. Otherwise, what do levels even mean?

Levels have never been the all-reaching measure of power that you seem to be implying. For one thing, ability scores can vary significantly, and in most versions of the game a mechanism for randomly determining those abilities was provided. To a lesser extent, rolled hit points have the same effect. And that's before one considers the simple algebra at work here.

10X + 10Y does not equal 20X, 20Y, 20(X+Y), or any other predictable outcome unless X and Y are equal. I think it's perfectly apparent to most people that 10 bard and 10 barbarian are the same thing; different commodities. The only thing your level in a particular class really measures is how good you are at that particular class.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Mine don’t seem to get less spotlight time. Perhaps that is because our group acknowledges things like “I would have missed if I didn’t have that extra bonus” or “he missed you by one” linking to “good thing you Evil Eye’d his attack rolls!” Direct damage is not the only way to contribute, by any stretch.

Of course not. However, I would expect that the aggregate contribution of certain characters, including every conceivable venue for contribution, would be slightly better or worse than others.

One can also take the spotlight out of combat, assuming non-combat challenges are also presented and resolved by the characters possessing the appropriate skills and abilities. Here again we have an opportunity for bias to show – if my bias is towards combat, combat, combat, then “town” is just a place to rest and reprovision, NPC’s are stick figures and we won’t have challenges that are resolved by social skills or other non-combat abilities (or perhaps they will be resolved by player, not character, abilities). That being the case, such abilities are devalued and players move further to warrior-type characters.

Not necessarily. NPCs can be influenced by combat prowess and achievements, as well as intimidation tactics. The reality here is more nuanced; are the NPCs more receptive to one type of influence, the other, or both equally? I believe that NPCs living in a D&D world probably have a lot of respect for warrior types, as do other PCs. I find that the typical "leader" or "face" type is most often playing one of the martial classes.

So he seemed to really like Bards, he played one in your game, was roundly mocked for it, and he hasn’t played a Bard since. There’s no message we can take from that, is there?

The message I take from it was that he made the wrong choice, and later decided to try another path.

First, I’m curious if he was around to see how the last Bard worked out. Second, only where his skills will specifically be exceptionally useful is the possibility even considered (and even then it must be a custom designed character), and third only someone wanting to play a sidekick would make such a choice. Nope, no bias there!

Nope. The last bard goes back far enough that I don't have any specific recollections of his exploits for better or worse.

However, on a macro level, my games tend to involve more Knowledge checks than any other die roll, which you'd think would favor a bard. However, they also tend to involve a lot of outdoor travel and combat, and tend not to take place in urban settings. I see a lot of rangers, a fair number of druids, and the occasional barbarian (i.e. the nature-y classes). I don't see a lot of bards or rogues. When I announced we were playing in a more civilized setting, the appeal of the bard changed naturally.

It's also important to note that virtually every player hands me a customized class or list of changes at the start of the campaign, which I then rewrite and we go back and forth on. It's not just bards. In this case, I had written a bard with singing and persuasion abilities, which were inappropriate for a royal servant, so I wrote an "archetype" (in PF terms) to make it based around poetry and benign influence. Enchantment is, after all, illegal.

What I take from this, and your previous comments, is that your game leans to challenges best overcome by martial characters in melee combat.

Well, my games tend to involve an enormous number of Knowledge checks, as well as the stealth and perception skills. But yes, melee combat is pretty important on the occasion it arises. I don't think this is a particularly radical development for a D&D game. In any case, no one plays in a vacuum and everyone's style favors something or other.

I see nothing wrong with calling it a bias, but I don’t mean it as a negative.

To extend the above, I think "bias" implies that there is something abnormal about it. I don't think that a D&D game that rewards combat skill is particularly abnormal. If I were sitting down to play with a new DM first, I would not play a bard, because I would assume that said character is slightly less likely to be effective than a more conventional adventurer.

Yet it sounds like your game is quite similar to that. Your players don’t play spellcasters, they play warriors. If you have a full slate of classes, but the only ones ever played are Barbarians, Fighters, with a smattering of Rangers and Paladins (gotta have at least a d10 HD, full BAB and good Fort saves; don’t really care about spells or special abilities – seems like Fighters and Barbarians will be the main classes), then that’s really just one warrior class with some variants.

Again, I don't know why you feel the need to take every statement I make to such extremes. To say that my players favor warriors does not mean that they don't play the other classes, or that it isn't interesting and different when they do. The typical class makeup of my games has been discussed at length elsewhere, but there is plenty of variety.

But there are advantages as well as drawbacks. There’s more to a good character, at least in my books (and sticking to mechanics) than how much damage he can deliver in a round. The halfling has better AC (higher DEX and small size, plus CHA bonus when smiting evil), his STR penalty to hit is offset by his size bonus, his ranged combat is much better (enhanced by DEX bonus and size) and an extra +1 to hit when Smiting Evil. A CHA bonus enhances many of his Paladin powers (an extra Lay on Hands, better spellcasting). He has spectacular saves (+2 compared to a human Paladin, no slouch himself, from his CHA and racial bonuses).

All true. However, I think the system as written inappropriately overweights those advantages and makes small characters more powerful than they should be.

While true, the player chooses that favoured class. The Elf could choose Wizard, but he can also select Barbarian or Cleric, or whatever class that Elf will favour. As such, there is no incentive from the base favoured class rules to select a specific race/class combination (some advanced options might bias the choice in wanting a specific racial favoured class option for the specific class).

I'm not a PF expert, but there still seem to be some subtle differences there.

The point at which it is game breaking, IMO, is the point where that bonus is so advantageous that it renders all other choices second-class. The bonuses for halflings, for example, are different, but also allow billd91 to play, in my view, a viable, competent halfling paladin who is not a weakness to his party, but simply brings different strengths than a half orc paladin would.

Which is all fine and good. I'm aware of plenty of points of differentiation between classes, but anything that is "second class" would need to be changed or excluded. Which does not preclude the possibility of a class like the bard that is clearly not as well suited for adventuring (combat or otherwise) as the others. Again, it's simply an offbeat choice, not second class.

 

[Ahnehnois]

There is vast space between "interested in being support characters" and "aggressively interested in being the star of the story." In my experience, most players who sit down at a table and expect to invest 6 + months into play don't expect an incoherent game, awkwardly hitched to their lead horse character, while the other players cheer from the sidelines. They generally expect to play one of the X-Men and to have their protagonism expressed cyclically and synergistically with the other players.

Maybe. But they do not have a detailed account going of exactly how much protagonism they express and compare it with the other characters.

I think the classes are fun and compelling. I also don't see where they "pretty explicitly stated that they approached class balance in vague terms and it wasn't the be all end all of design."

Are the classes balanced?
Loosely balanced, with a design focus on making each character class fun to play. Each class has distinctive mechanics that bring out what’s cool about being a fighter, rogue, sorcerer, etc. Fighters adapt to changing conditions in a battle to make unexpected attacks and maneuvers. Rogues move around a lot and strike quickly. Sorcerers gather power and release it in spectacular displays of chaotic energy.

Seems to me like you're okay with things that are "loosely balanced", which was kind of my point. After all, the original 3e classes are loosely balanced, and though they need revision for any number of purposes, I don't see that we need a game where a completely disparate barbarian and bard have exactly equal utility. I doubt they do in 13th Age, though the game is still young.

If n is represented in the rulebooks as 1 yet we have the hypothetical true value of n for classes as

Halfling Fighters @.65
Fighters, Monks @ .75
Rangers, Rogues, Barbarians @ 1
Bards, Swordsages @ 1.25
Wizards, Clerics, Druids @ 1.5

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ket-due-in-mid-September/page34#ixzz2dpffQ7Mv

Goodness I hope you don't believe those are the actual numbers.

 

[N'raac]

I definitely want player skill, and player investment in the actual play of the game, to matter. But in the case of combat, it's not player skill at combat that should matter - it's player skill with the tactical and narrative conceits of the game. And in social interaction, the individual player's charming personality or debating skills aren't what I'm trying to engage - rather, it's their skill in envisaging the dynamics of the ingame situation and thinking through it's narrative possibilities.

I both agree and disagree here. For example, if the player has chosen to play a naïve character who has, to date, lead a sheltered life, trained in areas largely revolving around issues other than combat (the bookish knowledge-focused Wizard the Temple-sheltered Cleric) or even a non-tactical warrior role (a Battlerager, Ranger scout or soldier Fighter/Paladin whose role was to fight, not direct the tactics or strategy of the overall battle, and then plays the character as a tactical genius, I see that less as skill in the game and more as a poor ability to role play.

Similarly, if the choice was made to play a brute lacking in social skills, but suddenly he knows all the right things to say and do to get bonuses on interaction skills (rather than saying the wrong this as his personality and skill set would indicate), I again perceive poor role playing much more strongly than I see tactical skill.

That said, a bonus to persuade the Duke to, say, begin defensive fortifications for bringing back war orders from the Orc Chieftan found in a raid on an Orc lair? Sure - that's like getting a bonus for flanking your opponent or having a magical sword. Any character should be able to obtain that bonus. But if it's coming from the 18 CHA bard with 5 ranks in Diplomacy and a class skill bonus (so +12), the desired result should be MUCH more likely than when the same info is presented by the 8 CHA Brute character with no social skills (so -1) - even with the +2 bonus for having the "perfect to" to persuade the Duke.

The Bard's presentation will lead the Duke to trust his word. The Brute's may lead to suspicion that this is a bluff to get a reward, or simply less than full engagement so he passes it off to his advisors for verification rather than taking immediate action. How good the Bard or Brute's speech were? Irrelevant - the character's skill at speechmaking matters (and is reflected by CHA and skills). The player's skill, represented by the player's speech, does not matter - any more than the player's archery skill changes the odds of his Ranger archer (or 8 DEX sorcerer with no bow proficiency) splitting his first arrow in the bulls eye with his second from his Longbow.

This is related to skill choice, too. A player who wants to engage ingame situations in terms of the narrative possibilities of peace and friendship should play a PC trained in Diplomacy but not Bluff or Intimidate. A player who wants to engage ingame situations in terms of the narrative possibilities of manipulation and deceit should play a PC trained in Bluff (with perhaps some Diplomacy backup). Etc. Just like a player who wants to engage ingame combat situations in terms of the narrative possibilities of blowing things up should (in 4e, at least) play a sorcerer; and so on.

No question. If you want a character who is good at diplomacy, bluff, etc., then invest character resources in the skill. Don't expect the player's skill to overcome the character's deficiencies.

Yes, but, we're comparing him to the half-orc fighter no? So, now he's -1 to hit and -4 to damage, and, possibly considerably more when you take two handed weapons into effect. The halfing with a 2-H weapon gets +4 to damage (16 str max at 1st=+3+1for 2h). The half orc, using the same weapon, gets +7 to damage (20 str at 1st,=+5+2 for 2H).

This reflects making both 2 handed warriors, and is also skewed by pumping STR to a base 18, such that we get an odd number and rounding further skews the result. Instead, I would see the half orc capitalizing on his STR advantage, so by L4, he has a 21 STR and a 2 handed weapon, just as you suggest, so he gets, let's say, +7 to hit (+5 STR + 4 BAB - 2 for Power Attack) and does 2d6 (average 7) +5 (STR) +2 (2 handed) + 3 Power Attack, for an average of 17 damage. He has some other combat feats, of course. We'll keep them each to one for simplicity. Let's give him an AC of 19 (with a 12 DEX) and hp of 35 (10 + 5.5x3 + 8 for a 14 CON).

Now, our Halfling puts the same scores into INT, CHA and WIS (but he gets a +1 bonus on all INT and CHA abilities over the half orc since he gets no penalty. Rather than an 18 STR/12DEX/14 CON (for 26 points allocated),He puts a 16 in DEX (so he gets an 18) instead of STR, a 16 in STR, leaving a 14, and a 14 in CON (same 26 point investment, so 14/18/14). He wears a Breastplate (+1) and a Large Shield (for a slightly lower cost than Full Plate) for an AC of 22 (+6 armor, +2 Shield, +3 DEX, +1 Size), and the same hp of 35 (10 + 5.5x3 + 8 for CON). He likely wants a Rapier and Weapon Finesse, so he has +9 to hit (+4 BAB +4 DEX +1 Size) but only 1d4 + 2 damage , so only 4.5 on average, a shortfall of 12.5 points, albeit with a better chance to hit, and to crit, and a better AC. His extra cash could Masterwork his rapier, but let's not get too picky.

But we're assuming they both focus on a "melee Brute" build, which is the half orc's forte and the halfling's weak area. Let's now change the playing field - they are battling a flying opponent, and cannot engage in melee. Our Half Orc pulls out his Longbow (Brutes don't invest in magic and he already spent more than the Halfling on his armor) and has a +5 to hit (+4 BAB +1 DEX), and average 4.5 damage (1d8). Our Halfling draws his Long Bow (reducing his AC by 2 since he has to drop his shield - still better than the 1/2 Orc) and has +9 to hit (+4 BAB + 4 DEX +1 Size) with a 3.5 average damage. Advantage: Halfling.

I suggest the Halfling will focus on ranged combat (maybe abandoning his shield and weapon finesse so he can pick up another 3 melee damage,2 from weapon and another +1 from STR, with a halfling Greatsword if forced into melee), and probably add elemental damage with enchantments to his bow. This is his area of expertise. I suspect we can build a halfling archer who is a pretty fair warrior, even compared to that melee brute.

To compare to your figures, I get a Halfling with a much greater damage deficit but a much better chance to hit in melee, and only a small damage deficit, but a substantial to hit advantage, at range. If we build both characters out to their strengths, rather than forcing the Halfling to focus away from his area of strength just because that's the half orc's area of expertise, I think we get two characters with much more comparable utility. And we haven't discussed the Halfling's +3 save advantage against Cause Fear, his +1 overall save advantage or his extra skill point.

Sure, there can be. And that approach can work, but one of the strengths of D&D is that the mechanics of different characters are meaningfully different, allowing for more diverse play experiences. It's particularly important for D&D, as the big rpg in the room, to cast a wide net in that regard.

Yet you try to force the Halfling to focus on the mechanics that are to the half orc's advantage, rather than being a Halfling focused fighter. Build a half orc archer and let's see how that works out!

That's the sort of strawman argument people keep bringing up. If, instead, the game lets you build a bard and offers you the chance to affect the game through persuasion and subterfuge, but makes doing that incrementally more difficult for you than it is for a barbarian to simply smash things, that can and does work.

I think the question is balance. In a game of roughly equal combat and persuasion/subterfuge, those characters seem pretty equivalent to me. The Bard can do SOMETHING in combat, at least. I'd say even a slight preference to combat challenges would be equitable.

The problem comes when, with a third to half of the challenges related to social interaction, the Barbarian player complains because he can't do much, if anything, for that part of the game. And the Bard can at least do SOMETHING in combat, so to be "fair", we'll have more combat and less social interaction. And/or we'll let the Barbarian use his player's eloquence and look the other way at the character's low CHA and lack of skill ranks. So the Barbarian's combat prowess becomes relevant much more often than the Bard's social skills and/or the value of the Bard's social skills gets reduced to make the Barbarian player happy (but his combat prowess is not curtailed in any way).

Levels have never been the all-reaching measure of power that you seem to be implying. For one thing, ability scores can vary significantly, and in most versions of the game a mechanism for randomly determining those abilities was provided. To a lesser extent, rolled hit points have the same effect. And that's before one considers the simple algebra at work here.

Over the editions, player choice in attributes has become greater, first in allowing players to assign rolls to stats rather than taking the rolls for each stat as they come, with the big shift from 2e to 3e, where point buy has become much more prevalent, again favouring equal resources. The last to go is the luck of the hp roll. Maybe it's time that went away as well. That swing has a much greater impact on warriors than on wizards - the wizard can roll 1.5 below average and 3 below max, where the Barbarian can roll 5.5 below average and 11 below max. Who can offset low rolls with Toughness or CON items more effectively?

10X + 10Y does not equal 20X, 20Y, 20(X+Y), or any other predictable outcome unless X and Y are equal. I think it's perfectly apparent to most people that 10 bard and 10 barbarian are the same thing; different commodities. The only thing your level in a particular class really measures is how good you are at that particular class.

This, to me, is why multiclassing works poorly in 3e and above, and will continue to work poorly until/unless some way of making a L5 F/L5 W equate to a L10 F or a L10 W is found/created. 2e kept the multiclass about a level behind the single classed character for about the first 10 levels, and he got the best of the two classes abilities. Maybe we need some way to generate a hybrid "single class" to reflect a more "multiclass" character. However, with additive saves, BAB's, etc., rather than "pick the best of the two", it's mainly class abilities (especially spells for the spellcasters) where a Multiclass lags significantly behind.

However, the fact that multiclass creates a weakening is, to me, a separate issue that should be addressed, not a reason that we should accept that some base classes will just be "superior". 3e dealt with this, to the extent it did at all, with prestige classes that provided a greater portion of the benefits of each class than could be obtained by simple multiclassing. To me, that's less a solution and more an acknowledgement that 3e multiclassing was much less than perfect.

Which, coming back to the thread topic, makes the lack of any multiclass rules in the playtest to date somewhat worrying.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Then again, this particular example always flies up my nose because I watched one of my players basically create a completely useless character. A halfling monk/paladin/pious templar who basically could never be killed - insane AC and saving throws that meant he only failed on a 1 and got saves versus everything. But, the character couldn't hit anything and, even when it did, did so little damage that it was pointless.

We had a player who made almost this exact same character. He was nearly invincible. But the player in question in our group did it very much on purpose. He wanted a character who was invincible.

The problem was that the rest of the group began to notice that his role in combat was to miss everything and not get hit. However, the DM was still increasing the effectiveness and number of monsters based on the number of people in our group. So, he was literally making things harder for us without providing any assistance at all.

Our group pleaded with him to change characters to something that helped us a little more after a couple of party members nearly died while he was at full health(having not done a single point of damage to any enemy during the combat). He refused because he liked his character concept.

The entire group agreed that our characters would dump him from the group and let him fend for himself since he it was evident that he was incapable of helping us. But our DM had a rule that we couldn't just vote to get rid of a character. Each player was allowed to play what they wanted to and the group had to accept that character.

It is one of the many reasons I got annoyed at the system for allowing such a character.

 

[Sadras]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]
Apologies if I am misunderstanding you, but are you seriously complaining because a Halfling does not wield a 2H sword as well and as effectively as a Half-Orc? In my personal opinion some roleplaying ideas like the one you have just stated should be hozed - asking for equality on such a comparison shatters my immersion into the game. The reason halflings do not go toe to toe with Humans nevermind Orcs in an open field is because of the strength and size of the two latter races.
I do not seek the kind of game balance you seek and this is perhaps terribly short-sighted of me, but I wouldn't know why anyone would want to.
I seriously doubt D&D Next would satisfy that playstyle (despite their initial proclamations) - the 4E model does a much better job of it.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Yet you try to force the Halfling to focus on the mechanics that are to the half orc's advantage, rather than being a Halfling focused fighter. Build a half orc archer and let's see how that works out!

I don't recall forcing anything. I expect a halfling fighter to focus on something he's good at, like avoiding hits and using thrown weapons. I just don't expect that the final outcome of a three-foot tall person throwing knives to be quite as good as the six-foot brute skillfully wielding an axe. When Verne Troyer fights Vin Diesel, Riddick wins.

I think the question is balance. In a game of roughly equal combat and persuasion/subterfuge, those characters seem pretty equivalent to me. The Bard can do SOMETHING in combat, at least. I'd say even a slight preference to combat challenges would be equitable.

I don't think the question is balance. In a game of roughly equal combat and noncombat focus, I expect that the bard would be a bit behind on the combat side, a bit ahead on the social side, and a bit behind on the exploration thing (to use the three pillars everyone's so fond of). And that there's a lot of other variables in play. After all, bards are much more useful when combined with large numbers of melee characters that they can aid, advise, and heal.

The problem comes when, with a third to half of the challenges related to social interaction, the Barbarian player complains because he can't do much, if anything, for that part of the game.

Yes he can. He can speak effectively about the natural world, and he can scare and impress people. Everyone has some options most of the time, and a few people are optimally engaged at any given time, and only rarely are people useless at any given time.

Over the editions, player choice in attributes has become greater, first in allowing players to assign rolls to stats rather than taking the rolls for each stat as they come, with the big shift from 2e to 3e, where point buy has become much more prevalent, again favouring equal resources. The last to go is the luck of the hp roll. Maybe it's time that went away as well.

Maybe it's time to push back towards the randomness.

However, the fact that multiclass creates a weakening is, to me, a separate issue that should be addressed

I think circumstances in which it creates a weakening/strengthening simply due to math need to be addressed (the rampant rounding issues that screw with saves and BAB). I don't think the classes or the multiclass rules need to be redesigned to force that kind of equivalency. A barbarian 2, a bard 2, and a bard 1/barbarian 1 are all different characters, which should be mechanically different.

 

[N'raac]

Of course not. However, I would expect that the aggregate contribution of certain characters, including every conceivable venue for contribution, would be slightly better or worse than others.

I don't see the unlikeliness of ever attaining "perfect balance" making it any less of a target worth striving for - we may never reach it, but we can look to get closer, rather than further away. The fact that certain classes are "underpowered" or "overpowered" can be recognized, and efforts made to correct that.

Not necessarily. NPCs can be influenced by combat prowess and achievements, as well as intimidation tactics. The reality here is more nuanced; are the NPCs more receptive to one type of influence, the other, or both equally? I believe that NPCs living in a D&D world probably have a lot of respect for warrior types, as do other PCs. I find that the typical "leader" or "face" type is most often playing one of the martial classes.

See, here we come to giving bonuses to players who don't want to invest character resources in certain areas. In the source material, I would agree the typical leader is most often a martial character. He is also most often a charismatic, fairly sharp character, and not a low CHA, dull-witted brute. When we see the latter in the source material, he tends to be a minion at least as good at combat as the "hero" (ie a lower level character who dedicated all his resources to combat so he can match the higher level character in that one area) or a much more potent combat threat than the Leader, who can't simply be defeated in face to face combat, but must be defeated by teamwork, clever thinking or some other approach that offsets the fact this Brute is a superior combatant (same level, but focused much more on combat than the Leader).

Or we just hand out free bennies to the warriors so they can do the same things classes with less combat benefits can do, and act surprised when this is perceived as a bias towards warrior characters, or a reason why one's players might gravitate to warriors rather than other classes who don't get the same bonus freebies. I could just as easily note that Wizards or Clerics are typically held in awe and viewed as sources of sage advice (or powers to be feared), leading to NPC's being inclined to take their advice very seriously - that is, their skills and accomplishments command a lot of respect. For that matter, nobles often want to be seen as educated, erudite, literate and artful - so they were patrons of the very arts the Bard epitomizes. So shouldn't they also show respect for those achievements and accomplishments.

Now, if they show equal regard for each of these areas of achievement - oh my, we're back to using the actual characters' skills to differentiate their success in the social arena. But if we assume that only warrior types command respect, so they get free bonuses to their efforts in the social arena, then we give those characters freebies. Part of the problem is that we imprint specific classes on fictional characters. Maybe that clever, charming Knight isn't a L11 Fighter. Perhaps he is a L5 Fighter/L8 Rogue - same BAB, but a lot more social skills. And maybe he has a 14 STR, 12 CON, 12 DEX, saving some stats to invest in CHA and INT (or maybe, just maybe, he's not constrained by the point buy or random roll limits imposed by a game where teamwork is desired).

The message I take from it was that he made the wrong choice, and later decided to try another path.

Well, I would agree, at least in part. I believe he concluded (consciously or otherwise) that he made the wrong choice for your game (including both your and your fellow players' playstyles and attitudes), and later decided to try another path better suited for success in that game. That's no different than selecting Power Attack because your GM uses a lot of Giants with low AC's and high hp's, but choosing Weapon Focus in a different game because that GM uses a lot of high AC low hp undead, or picking Ranger favoured enemies based on the type of monsters the GM likes to use - making character choices to suit the game style.

However, on a macro level, my games tend to involve more Knowledge checks than any other die roll, which you'd think would favor a bard. However, they also tend to involve a lot of outdoor travel and combat, and tend not to take place in urban settings. I see a lot of rangers, a fair number of druids, and the occasional barbarian (i.e. the nature-y classes). I don't see a lot of bards or rogues. When I announced we were playing in a more civilized setting, the appeal of the bard changed naturally.

You can have lots of rolls without those rolls being overly meaningful. Does failing those knowledge checks lead to character death, or to combats that gather more xp and loot? With the classes you cite, and your comments on locale, I also wonder whether it is knowledge of nature specifically which is valuable in your games.

It's also important to note that virtually every player hands me a customized class or list of changes at the start of the campaign, which I then rewrite and we go back and forth on. It's not just bards. In this case, I had written a bard with singing and persuasion abilities, which were inappropriate for a royal servant, so I wrote an "archetype" (in PF terms) to make it based around poetry and benign influence. Enchantment is, after all, illegal.

I wonder how much of this is simply dumping abilities your games don't favour to pick up abilities your games do favour. Here again, I don't see how we can compare classes under the rules if you're not using classes under the rules. If, for example, every rewrite I propose that would create a favourable class focused on combat in the style for which a Halfling is best suited for gets rewritten so it would be better for a high STR brute, I'll quickly learn not to play Halfling warriors. Since your game already seems to shy players away from non-warriors (again, which I can attribute to the manner in which revised classes get accepted and rejected), why would I ever play a Halfling at all?

Customizing each character also allows a far greater scope for bias to be exercised than sticking largely or entirely to the RAW. I'm curious how your players would make out in a game that did stick to the rules, rather than customize each and every aspect of a character. I suspect they would perceive a completely different game (for good or ill).

To extend the above, I think "bias" implies that there is something abnormal about it. I don't think that a D&D game that rewards combat skill is particularly abnormal. If I were sitting down to play with a new DM first, I would not play a bard, because I would assume that said character is slightly less likely to be effective than a more conventional adventurer.

Your assumption is, in itself, a bias. I would expect players who have only experienced a game where warriors are favoured would not choose to play a bard in a new game with an unknown GM, but might come around to a different way of thinking if, in that game, the Clergy are well-respected and warriors looked upon as scruffy ne'er do wells at best and dangerous bloodlusting madmen at worst, especially if the game also involves a lot of undead and other challenges best resolved with the abilities of clerics.

I think a D&D game that rewards melee combat to a greater extent than ranged combat skills, magical skills, etc. is not "the norm". It is easy to render the Rogue undesirable - just lean enemies towards those immune to sneak attacks. Providing reduced opportunities to use their special skills will also discourage them. It sounds like your game is very "clanky warrior" focused, so either those stealth rolls are seldom successful, or you set the DC's low enough that these warrior types can generally succeed, in which case there is no great benefit to having a character with greater stealth capabilities (or maybe your revised classes just tend to swap out something of low value in your game for Stealth being added as a class skill).

All true. However, I think the system as written inappropriately overweights those advantages and makes small characters more powerful than they should be.

Didn't you just get through telling us how DISADVANTAGED a small character is? Here again, that view can lead to a bias to provide greater benefits to other character concepts than to Small characters.

Which is all fine and good. I'm aware of plenty of points of differentiation between classes, but anything that is "second class" would need to be changed or excluded. Which does not preclude the possibility of a class like the bard that is clearly not as well suited for adventuring (combat or otherwise) as the others. Again, it's simply an offbeat choice, not second class.

"Not as well suited for adventuring" seems to me to be second class. An aristocrat or an expert is not as well suited for adventuring as a PC class either. As well, I suggest the proof is in the play - classes that are rarely, if ever, selected in your game (not that your game is actually using the PHB classes anyway, apparently) seem likely to be second-class character choices in your game. While I wouldn't call that proof positive, it seems very persuasive evidence to me.

 

[Ratskinner]

...one of the strengths of D&D is that the mechanics of different characters are meaningfully different, allowing for more diverse play experiences. It's particularly important for D&D, as the big rpg in the room, to cast a wide net in that regard.

That doesn't rely on or prevent a balanced game. If you wish a "Barbarians are all things to everyone" experience, isn't it easy to take a balanced game and give Barbs a discount on levelling? I think so. However, if another person does want a balanced game, its extremely difficult to re-balance all the classes, races, etc. starting from an unbalanced game. (Witness the nigh-infinite amount of online effort to do so in the 3e era.) An unbalanced D&D limits rather than enhances the diversity of play experiences available to various playgroups.

That's the sort of strawman argument people keep bringing up. If, instead, the game lets you build a bard and offers you the chance to affect the game through persuasion and subterfuge, but makes doing that incrementally more difficult for you than it is for a barbarian to simply smash things, that can and does work.

...and creates a limited set of play experiences, yes.

Levels have never been the all-reaching measure of power that you seem to be implying. For one thing, ability scores can vary significantly, and in most versions of the game a mechanism for randomly determining those abilities was provided. To a lesser extent, rolled hit points have the same effect. And that's before one considers the simple algebra at work here.

10X + 10Y does not equal 20X, 20Y, 20(X+Y), or any other predictable outcome unless X and Y are equal. I think it's perfectly apparent to most people that 10 bard and 10 barbarian are the same thing; different commodities. The only thing your level in a particular class really measures is how good you are at that particular class.

10X+10Y = 10(X+Y)

For the sake of the professional designers and companies producing adventures, I would hope that the levels of various classes are relatively balanced in overall effectiveness and ability to conclude an adventure. If the classes vary wildly in their capacities, it makes writing sensible adventures extremely unlikely. I mean, how can you write a 7th level adventure if an all-Barbarian party will be twice as effective as an all-Rogue party of the same level? Its fine to say that D&D should have an "easy mode" and a "hard mode", but putting that into the character class choice seems a poor idea to me.

 

[N'raac]

I don't recall forcing anything. I expect a halfling fighter to focus on something he's good at, like avoiding hits and using thrown weapons. I just don't expect that the final outcome of a three-foot tall person throwing knives to be quite as good as the six-foot brute skillfully wielding an axe. When Verne Troyer fights Vin Diesel, Riddick wins.

I think it largely depends on the situation. Can that axe wielder land a blow? Can he even close in enough to use his axe? Range can be a significant advantage. In most of the source material, the nimble, agile knife thrower tends to do pretty well against the hulking axe wielding brute, but generally because he plays to his own strengths, and avoids close combat with the Brute.

I don't think the question is balance. In a game of roughly equal combat and noncombat focus, I expect that the bard would be a bit behind on the combat side, a bit ahead on the social side, and a bit behind on the exploration thing (to use the three pillars everyone's so fond of). And that there's a lot of other variables in play. After all, bards are much more useful when combined with large numbers of melee characters that they can aid, advise, and heal.

An issue rarely addressed, but unquestionably characters that can buff the group are more effective in large groups than small groups, and more effective with certain teammates than others. There are a host of moving parts. I commented a while back on spell choice in Zeitgeist. Since we seem to see a lot of human/humanoid opponents, spells like Charm Person or Hold Person that only affect such targets seem much more effective than in a typical "lots of weird monsters" game.

Yes he can.

He can speak effectively about the natural world

If he invested skill points in that knowledge skill - but why would the Duke listed to someone with knowledge of trees in assessing strategic decision? And if he will, why would he not give equal consideration from a Bard, or a Wizard, or a Rogue, with the same level of Knowledge of Nature?

and he can scare and impress people.

Provided he has invested in the Intimidate skill. And here, his CHA Dump hurts him. A Rogue with an equal investment in Intimidate should be just as able to intimidate people more, probably, as he will have more CHA). A Bard, not so much as it is not a class skill.

Unless, of course, we give the Barbarian (or the Fighter) free bonuses to these abilities to make up for the fact they CHOSE to dedicate their character resources to combat, and be less effective (or even completely ineffective, dedicating all resources to combat) in non-combat situations.

To the 5e issue, one suggestion (which I could get behind) is giving each class (and race?) choices of combat and non-combat (or even melee, ranged combat, social and exploration, if we want those three pillars, and a difference between melee and range) abilities. Within each pool there could be plenty of choices. But you can't trade between pools - you can't, for example, trade in all your non-combat abilities for greater combat prowess (or focus exclusively on melee, or on social skills, if we create finer pools), so you can't build a character who is useless in a broad aspect of the game. Different classes would clearly have a different mix (maybe fighters would be 2/3 combat, 1/3 noncombat, while Bards might be 1/2 social, 1/4 exploration, 1/4 combat, just to pick numbers out of the air).

The rules could also carry some advice for the mix between the various types of challenges, and how to give all the characters their opportunities to shine. Obviously, if your game features meaningful challenges which are primarily or exclusively combat-focused, then your players will gravitate to characters with more combat focus themselves. Perhaps some of those "class area of focus" abilities should include the ability to shift the nature of the challenge (eg. a Social ability to convert a combat encounter into one which can be resolved by social means - such as the classic "wait, you don't want to kill me because..." ending the battle in favour of social interaction, at least if the ability is used successfully).

Maybe it's time to push back towards the randomness.

That's definitely one opinion. That being the case, are you good with:

- roll for each stat once, and what you roll is what you get
- roll for race
- roll for class (perhaps a chart for each race with stat-based modifiers, and for history when leveling up)
- roll for skills (table skewed to class skills and/or racially favoured skills)
- roll for feats (again, skewed by class/race)
- roll for spells known (wizards, sorcerers)
- roll for starting level (it's called "d20 system", right?)
- roll ONCE in front of the group - what you get is what you play?

All of these are varying levels of randomness over character power and abilities. Lots of others could be evaluated. The last will be, I expect, especially unnerving for some - it's funny how many "randomly rolled" characters are above the statistical averages, isn't it?

I think circumstances in which it creates a weakening/strengthening simply due to math need to be addressed (the rampant rounding issues that screw with saves and BAB). I don't think the classes or the multiclass rules need to be redesigned to force that kind of equivalency. A barbarian 2, a bard 2, and a bard 1/barbarian 1 are all different characters, which should be mechanically different.

There seem to be two very different concepts you link together. I am in favour of mechanical differences. However, I am also in favour of those mechanical differences balancing out overall such that different classes/races/choices are not "weaker" or "stronger" in an overall sense.