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

[Ahnehnois]

I would suggest that, if Thoofus has a 20 CHA and 10 ranks in diplomacy, but you decide he "is likely to draw scorn and nothing else", then you have invalidated the character..

You're completely missing the point. Thoofus is the counterpoint to the barbarian. He has the minimum Charisma needed to cast his spells, no ranks in and Charisma-based skills other than Perform, and no spells that assist interactions. Your example was of a bard who was maxed for interaction and a barbarian who was minned (?) for interaction. This is the opposite.

Basically, the original example you gave was cherry-picked to make the barbarian look bad, so I turned it around.

I think this is simply a difference of opinion which we are not going to resolve.

No kidding.

The points for structuring the game so characters will be more or less equal at each level have been stated repeatedly already. I am uncertain what the argument against such a structure are.

They were also stated. The first one is that trying to create that kind of equality usually fails outright. The second is that the efforts to do so often undermine the character concept being altered to be more "equal". A third would be that it discriminates against players or DMs who want unequal characters for any number of reasons.

I suspect that you do not commence the game with you (and all the players) looking at three fresh young first level characters, and all four of you can point to the one which will clearly dominate the game and achieved great things over the whole campaign, the one who will retire to a quiet life after being a party to the success of the first, and the one who is clearly doomed to die in the attempt.

You kind of can, actually. Sometimes it follows from mechanics. Sometimes I make certain decisions about what conflicts they'll face (sometimes with regards to the player before a character is even made). Sure, things can change during play, sometimes a lot, but that doesn't mean that everyone sits down at the table with the conceit that all their characters are exactly equal. They're not naive.

 

[Ahnehnois]

So, basically, we're already glossing over realism in the interest of play balance (and I shudder to think of a "realistic" tauric blink dog halfling...). With that in mind, why would we not take the further steps required to achieve that balance?

Because we've taken enough or more than enough already?

In the pantheon of things an rpg needs to be, "feels real" is well above "all characters must be equal", along with its variants "makes sense" and "doesn't break immersion". So is "players can make the character they want", "DMs can create the game they want", "game plays fast and easy". If the choice is between letting one player choose a character type that's better than another character type that may or may not be selected by someone else, and homogenizing those characters, the choice is easy. It's only after all the roleplaying part and the game part already do everything that they're supposed to that you can start worrying about this kind of stuff.

 

[Greg K]

My approach to class design was largely developed in writing classes for the Psychic's Handbook. These were new creations, as the handbook has an interesting system but only one crappy class with no real abilities to support it. I then went back and applied the same principles to a couple of dozen published classes.

If you are talking the Psychic's Handbook by Green Ronin, I don't find it a crappy class at all. Unlike most WOTC and third party classes, it (like the fighter) does classes just how I prefer them done.

 

[Ahnehnois]

If you are talking the Psychic's Handbook by Green Ronin, I don't find it a crappy class at all. Unlike most WOTC and third party classes, it (like the fighter) does classes just how I prefer them done.

If you mean classes whose main abilities are skills and feats, I agree. But there are a lot of dead levels and I simply don't find it a class worth taking. I also wanted to reintroduce the flavor of the classic psionic archetypes, as well as some others.

 

[Cyberen]

Concerning RAW and bias :
My personal experience is very close to Ahnehnois' : people tinker a lot with RPG rules, and playing by RAW yet remains to be seen ! I believe 13th Age book to entertain the reader with Tweet and Heinsoo different approaches to resolution. Rob Donoghue (co-creator of Fate) is himself a passionate rule hacker, and consider hacking a necessary part of GMing. AD&D rulebooks are full of Gygax and co rulings. Every official setting has its own set of specific rules... In such a context, DM preferences, style, and choices, necessarily differing from RAW, hardly qualify as "bias" .

 

[N'raac]

You're completely missing the point. Thoofus is the counterpoint to the barbarian. He has the minimum Charisma needed to cast his spells, no ranks in and Charisma-based skills other than Perform, and no spells that assist interactions. Your example was of a bard who was maxed for interaction and a barbarian who was minned (?) for interaction. This is the opposite.

Bards get L6 spells, so he needs a 16 CHA eventually. I'm curious what Thoofus is focused on, but that's beside the point. Sure, if the Barbarian is max'ed out for interaction, he would be better at interaction than a character who put no resources into interaction. Of course, if that 16 CHA, 14 WIS Barbarian is a half orc, and is using the 28 point buy mechanism (rather than, say, "roll 4d6, drop the lowest, arrange as you like, roll as long as you like and keep the character whose lowest stat is a 14"), he has spent 6 points on WIS and 16 on CHA. That leaves 6 points to have a 12 STR (10+2), 10 CON, 10 DEX and 6 (8-2) INT. He spends half his 2 skill points per level to get Diplomacy ranks equal to half his level, so by L7 he has +8 Diplomacy (+3 from CHA, 5 ranks).

If Thoofus spends all his base 6 skill points next level on Diplomacy, and has that 16 CHA for his eventual L6 spells, he passes the Barbarian, achieving a +9. If he maximizes his Diplomacy ranks at L7, and has a 16 CHA, he has +13. Just as Bard is not the best chassis for a melee amage machine, Half Orc Barbarian isn't optimal for diplomacy. But if that's how they built their characters, then:

(a) The Barbarian will do better at diplomacy than the Bard;

(b) The DM should discuss the objectives of the players - if he runs a game with CR 7 opponents, I think that Barbarian is in trouble, and if the Diplomacy DC's are set in the 20 - 25 range (where a reasonably optimised Diplomat would have a 40% to 2/3 shot at success with no work to enhance their odds, and a very good chance if they can get some modifiers by, say, evidence that discredits the opposition, learning about the Duke's biases to tailor their arguments accordingly and securing support from other advisors the Duke trusts to get a couple of valuable Aid Another's going), their social challenges will be pretty hit and miss as well. [Example: DC 25, but you can get +2 from evidence the other faction is funding a scandal sheet that targets the Duke, +2 more by incorporating how good this will look in the Duke's biography, presently being written, and 2 trusted advisors' support can be attained by various side quests for another +4, that +13 becomes +21, so 85% likely, while that +8 becomes +16, 60% likely - more than double the chance of failure).

Basically, the original example you gave was cherry-picked to make the barbarian look bad, so I turned it around.

I think low CHA half orc barbarians with social skills limited to Intimidation are a lot more common than 16 CHA ones who max out Diplomacy, but YMMV, I suppose. Unquesionably,my example featured a character focusing resources on interaction skills, and a second dumping them. I'd suggest a Barbarian focuses a lot on melee combat damage, and a Bard essentially dumps that, at least as an area of primary focus.

They were also stated. The first one is that trying to create that kind of equality usually fails outright. The second is that the efforts to do so often undermine the character concept being altered to be more "equal". A third would be that it discriminates against players or DMs who want unequal characters for any number of reasons.

To the first, we can get closer without perfect success, or we can give up. I prefer the former. To the second, this depends on whether one views one aspect of the character concept to be "capable player character avbenturer". I do - anything not fitting that mold should be an NPC class, IMO. To the third, nothing precludes taking levels in those NPC classes, providing more character resources to some players/characters, greater use of random character determination and/or having characters of unequal levels, to meet the desire of anyone wanting unequal characters for any number of reasons.

Clearly, however, my bias (again, not a negative term, in my view) is to default to maximum equality of character choices, and leave unequal characters as a variation if the players/GM wishes to do so, rather than have character disparity be wide by default, with options to better level the playing field. Increasing the disparity betweem character power seems a lot easier than reducing it.

You kind of can, actually. Sometimes it follows from mechanics. Sometimes I make certain decisions about what conflicts they'll face (sometimes with regards to the player before a character is even made). Sure, things can change during play, sometimes a lot, but that doesn't mean that everyone sits down at the table with the conceit that all their characters are exactly equal. They're not naive.

If we already know how the campaign will turn out, why play it? Why don't you just write up the story you've already determine will play out and email it to us? Clearly (or at least I hope), your expectations are not as complete as that, but I don't think anyone shows up at the gaming table with a character they expect, even hope, will be killed off before he reaches second level.

In the pantheon of things an rpg needs to be, "feels real" is well above "all characters must be equal", along with its variants "makes sense" and "doesn't break immersion". So is "players can make the character they want", "DMs can create the game they want", "game plays fast and easy". If the choice is between letting one player choose a character type that's better than another character type that may or may not be selected by someone else, and homogenizing those characters, the choice is easy. It's only after all the roleplaying part and the game part already do everything that they're supposed to that you can start worrying about this kind of stuff.

Feels real? Yup, nothing like fire breathing dragons, spell-blasting wizards and tauric halfling blink dogs to keep it real! That last one isn't helping me a lot in the "makes sense" department either. I suppose it would "make sense" if everyone trained in magic and soldiers were replaced with golems and such, but I like having martial classes too. Not breaking immersion, I will agree is a big one, but I don't think "the PC's don't include guys who can't pull their weight" is a dealbreaker there (and again, I refer back to tauric halfling blink dogs...).

"players can make the character they want" - like a Bard suitable to adventure? "DMs can create the game they want" - what if this conflicts with the previous one? I don't see character choices being more or less equal by default having a negative impact on either of these - maybe the first if the desire is "a more powerful character than the other players", but what happens when two or more players want that, or another wants "more or less equal powered characters"?

"game plays fast and easy" is pretty subjective. Not sure how many RPG gamers wouldn't suggest that ship has already sailed - wy don't we go back to the Blue Book rather than a three volume starter set of rules? Heads the characters succeed and become leaders of their own kingdom, tails they die in a ditch is very fast and easy, but hardly satisfying. To the extent this is achievable (and it's achievable with way more depth than my Coin Toss Campaign example), I don't see default equality or inequality of choices hitting that hard. If anything, the quest for an optimized character seems a lot slower and more difficult than a system where any concept you choose will be fairly balanced with the other choices.

Of course, I guess if things are so unbalanced that one choice is clearly superior, so everyone plays one of those, that's also quick and easy character creation - we can just copy that sheet in bulk in case one of the clones dies. More realistically, if we can eliminate some choices, that simplifies matters. Let's consolidate back to Fighting Man, Magic-User and Cleric, maybe? All humans, no skills, no feats, all weapons do 1d6?

It's a balancing act, to be sure, and every one of these areas falls somewhere within a range of results - with many different views as to the ideal balance between them, and what points in the range are, in fact, acceptable, much less optimal.

 

[Ahnehnois]

If we already know how the campaign will turn out, why play it?

If you already know how a movie/book/etc. will end, why see/read/etc. it? It's not just where you end up, it's about what happens along the way.

Why don't you just write up the story you've already determine will play out and email it to us? Clearly (or at least I hope), your expectations are not as complete as that, but I don't think anyone shows up at the gaming table with a character they expect, even hope, will be killed off before he reaches second level.

No, but they have some pretty specific expectations, as do I. If a player creates a mighty warrior who survived the slaughter of his tribe and plans to become a great warlord, and at the end of the campaign has the same status as a dilettante whose main skill is singing and who just wants to explore the world, I imagine both players are going to be pretty dissatisfied with that outcome.

Feels real? Yup, nothing like fire breathing dragons, spell-blasting wizards and tauric halfling blink dogs to keep it real!

The hallmark of any great fiction is that it feels real, whether it's genre fiction with fantastic elements or not.

I don't see character choices being more or less equal by default having a negative impact on either of these - maybe the first if the desire is "a more powerful character than the other players", but what happens when two or more players want that, or another wants "more or less equal powered characters"?

If a player expresses a specific desire to play a more powerful character than another player, said player is probably playing the wrong game. However, if one player wants to play a war hero, and the other wants to play an artist, than I say let them. I see no need to dumb down the war hero or overload the artist with superpowers to correct some perceived inequality in those concepts.

"game plays fast and easy" is pretty subjective. Not sure how many RPG gamers wouldn't suggest that ship has already sailed

Well let's stick to discussing the non-subjective aspects of fantasy roleplaying games why don't we?
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Now that that's over with, just because the ship has to some extent sailed doesn't mean it can't turn around and sail back.

It's a balancing act, to be sure, and every one of these areas falls somewhere within a range of results - with many different views as to the ideal balance between them, and what points in the range are, in fact, acceptable, much less optimal.

Well, then.

 

[N'raac]

No, but they have some pretty specific expectations, as do I. If a player creates a mighty warrior who survived the slaughter of his tribe and plans to become a great warlord, and at the end of the campaign has the same status as a dilettante whose main skill is singing and who just wants to explore the world, I imagine both players are going to be pretty dissatisfied with that outcome.

So it should be unlikely, if not impossible, for those characters to grow and change as a consequence of the campaign events? Perhaps that warrior tires of battle and death, while that dilettante becomes motivated by some in campaign event(s) and becomes a leader of men to accomplish his new goals. Perhaps not, of course, but I find players who play their characters like caricatures - their views, opinions and motivations are exactly the same at 15th level as they were at 1st level, regardless of any experiences in the interim, because that half page character sketch written up with the L1 character sheet is the eternal be-all and end-all of the character - pretty dull, if not frustrating, to game with.

Should Gimli, at the end of Return of the King, have the same opinion of elves in general and Legolas specifically as he had at the beginning? Should the Dwarves at the end of the Hobbit still see Bilbo as one of those homebody hobbits? Should Merry and Pippin have arrived back at the Shire and just fit in perfectly with all the other hobbits, completely unchanged by their experiences? Or is the growth, or potential for it, whether the directions are expected or not, part of the fun?

The hallmark of any great fiction is that it feels real, whether it's genre fiction with fantastic elements or not.

Even if I agreed with you, is the possibility of an effective Halfling warrior or Bard adventurer an element so much more fantastic than a firebreathing dragon, gods walking the earth or wizards shattering mountains with a few arcane words and gestures? Perhaps to the occasional person, but I suggest this is far from universal - and the default game rules should cater to a broad group of gamers, not a few with very specific views. Include a balanced Bard, and effective Halfling warriors and let those who don't want that ban or weaken these options in their own games. This, to me, is the clear better choice than designing a game with scattered power levels, no guidance to players and GMs as to which choices are effective and which are deliberately sub-optimal, and leaving it to each group to rebalance these choices should they wish to do so.

If a player expresses a specific desire to play a more powerful character than another player, said player is probably playing the wrong game. However, if one player wants to play a war hero, and the other wants to play an artist, than I say let them. I see no need to dumb down the war hero or overload the artist with superpowers to correct some perceived inequality in those concepts.

If the war hero is the clearly superior character, then the player can express a desire to play a more powerful character merely by selecting that type of character, then pushing for "niche protection" to force the other players into characters that are not "the best adventurers". He never has to explicitly say "I want a more powerful character". Much more common are players who recognize that all the players want relevant characters, but who want to play characters who are not sub-optimal, so they will not select a character option which, by the rules as written or by the conventions of the specific GM/group, will be comparatively underpowered.

Now that that's over with, just because the ship has to some extent sailed doesn't mean it can't turn around and sail back.

Sure - what port do you suggest? I assume it's not as far as the Coin Toss Campaign. How does an array of character choices which are reasonably balanced, one against the other, make the game play faster and/or easier than a game which provides an array of character choices, some of which are more powerful, some less so, and some just traps unless your goal was to be useless against the game challenges.

It seems to me a lot of gamers have greatly supported greater balance because, at least in their eyes, it makes the game easier. As an example, having a Challenge Rating system facilitating the design of encounters at a given level of challenge is perceived as making the game easier by many gamers (on the assumption the characters are balanced, and the CR's appropriate). Many supporters of 4e (pemerton, please clarify or contradict if appropriate) highlight the very specific encounter design mechanics as making the design of appropriately challenging encounters much faster and easier.

In fact, many detractors of some 3e products, especially later releases, comment on "power creep" making the old CR ratings less reliable, and making it more difficult to have characters who are comparably powerful, such that the CR system can be rationally applied. To them, this power diversity made the game the opposite of "fast and easy".

Viewed from this perspective, building in balance is an aspect of making the game "fast and easy", rather than a potentially competing or conflicting objective.

Finally, I'm not sure "fast and easy" is a goal of many gamers. A lot of RPG players I know don't like board games because they are too fast and/or not sufficiently complex to engage them. While there is certainly an "overcomplexity" that makes the game too slow and/or difficult, there is also a risk of "undercomplexity" where the game becomes too easy to attract and maintain proponents of a more complex, and thus more engaging (at least to them) game. Some people are engaged by blackjack - very fast, certainly easier than most RPG's. Should RPG game design strive to reduce the complexity to match blackjack? Some people like the more simple game of Snap, or War. Others like more complex games. I think the "ideal level" of complexity of an RPG (or games in general - Talisman or Monopoly or Candyland? Snap or Cribbage or Magic?) varies markedly between possible players, and even between potential RPG gamers.

 

[Ahnehnois]

So it should be unlikely, if not impossible, for those characters to grow and change as a consequence of the campaign events?

Impossible? No. Unlikely? Yes. Class systems make change and growth difficult. And, one might argue, it ought to be. Predetermination is a theme in fantasy fiction. Biological predetermination is a theme of real life. The game just follows our preexisting observations to the effect that people don't change much.

Should Gimli, at the end of Return of the King, have the same opinion of elves in general and Legolas specifically as he had at the beginning? Should the Dwarves at the end of the Hobbit still see Bilbo as one of those homebody hobbits? Should Merry and Pippin have arrived back at the Shire and just fit in perfectly with all the other hobbits, completely unchanged by their experiences? Or is the growth, or potential for it, whether the directions are expected or not, part of the fun?

None of those things sound like changes that would have particularly salient mechanical representations.

Even if I agreed with you, is the possibility of an effective Halfling warrior or Bard adventurer an element so much more fantastic than a firebreathing dragon, gods walking the earth or wizards shattering mountains with a few arcane words and gestures?

Does that matter? A player who signs up to play a three foot tall fighter is almost certainly not doing so with the expectation that his overall combat effectiveness will be equivalent to that of a medium sized character. Why fix something that isn't broken?

Perhaps to the occasional person, but I suggest this is far from universal - and the default game rules should cater to a broad group of gamers, not a few with very specific views.

Exactly. The number of people who laugh at a bard trying to adventure alongside a barbarian is probably large. The number of people who acknowledge that some classes should be better or worse at adventuring than others is likely pretty much everyone. The number of people who will complain if a halfling dervish is whirling through combat just as effectively as a character twice his size is likely pretty much everyone.

The number of people who have a meaningful in-game problem because of one macro-level mechanical choice being slightly better or worse than another? Miniscule. That's for the charop boards.

I take a bevy of complaints every week about applying real laws of physics to the game, genre conventions and stereotypes built into mechanics, interpersonal and character-specific issues, and a variety of other things that have nothing to do with the balance of those mechanics. I've had probably a single-digit number of complaints, ever, about one character being more or less powerful than the others, most of which involved gross misreadings of rules and none of which were game-breaking. And, as you've pointed out, those complaints usually resolve themselves over time. I'm in favor of catering to the larger audience that cares more about stuff they understand and less about esoteric game mechanical considerations like whether the aggregate contribution of bards and barbarians is exactly equal.

How does an array of character choices which are reasonably balanced, one against the other, make the game play faster and/or easier than a game which provides an array of character choices, some of which are more powerful, some less so, and some just traps unless your goal was to be useless against the game challenges.

Um, it doesn't. That's kind of my point.

In general, the more open-ended the mechanics, the faster they play. A DM who says "roll a Knowledge check" and sets a DC arbitrarily in his head resolves the check much faster than one who checks a series of rules to determine the DC. A character built using open-ended skills (like what 13th Age does with backgrounds) is built much more easily than one that requires researching and comparing all relevant skill options. PF's combat maneuver system plays a lot faster than magic (or its ilk) because you simply decide what you're trying, roll a die, and let the DM tell you what happens. Not as "balanced", but easier and faster.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

The number of people who laugh at a bard trying to adventure alongside a barbarian is probably large.

I think your group's bullying of other players is clouding your perception heavily.

The number of people who acknowledge that some classes should be better or worse at adventuring than others is likely pretty much everyone. The number of people who will complain if a halfling dervish is whirling through combat just as effectively as a character twice his size is likely pretty much everyone.

No. But I like your determination in stating your opinions as if they were facts.

The number of people who have a meaningful in-game problem because of one macro-level mechanical choice being slightly better or worse than another? Miniscule. That's for the charop boards.

Again, I believe your opinion is flawed. I am not a CharOp person. I'm a DM who likes to provide an even challenge to my diverse group. Not too overwhelming, not a cakewalk. My problem with classes being unequal is that those with good system mastery know to choose the "good" classes, while those with less system mastery fall into trap classes that sound fun, but are ineffective compared to the system master. At that point challenging the system master's character appropriately is overwhelming to the trap character and properly challenging the trap character leads to a cakewalk for the system master. Players tend not to like overwhelming odds nor cakewalks IME and therefore have less fun. They're not having less fun because someone created a better character than them (character envy), but instead because the game turns down hopeless or boring paths.

I take a bevy of complaints every week about applying real laws of physics to the game, genre conventions and stereotypes built into mechanics, interpersonal and character-specific issues, and a variety of other things that have nothing to do with the balance of those mechanics. I've had probably a single-digit number of complaints, ever, about one character being more or less powerful than the others, most of which involved gross misreadings of rules and none of which were game-breaking. And, as you've pointed out, those complaints usually resolve themselves over time. I'm in favor of catering to the larger audience that cares more about stuff they understand and less about esoteric game mechanical considerations like whether the aggregate contribution of bards and barbarians is exactly equal.

The "larger audience" of course being your small home group, gotcha. I'd rather the game be more open to the real "larger audience" and let your group continue to mock your "friends" (not that I'd call someone that who constantly mocked my choices) for their ridiculous choices.