The Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse: Ideas you think D&D's better without

[Mishihari Lord]

So, what is D&D trying to simulate? Whose genre verisimilitude requires unbalanced games, and how do they show that that's actually a requirement of the genre they're interested?

The second question is easy. (Raises hand) I have an occasion wanted to run a game along the lines of Lord of the Rings. This means that I want a game where you can have Frodo and Gandalf in the same party and everyone still has fun. I did it with AD&D and it wasn't even hard. The impact of mechanical balance on fun is highly overrated.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The impact of mechanical balance on fun is highly overrated.

That statement is highly understated.

 

[Manbearcat]

The second question is easy. (Raises hand) I have an occasion wanted to run a game along the lines of Lord of the Rings. This means that I want a game where you can have Frodo and Gandalf in the same party and everyone still has fun. I did it with AD&D and it wasn't even hard. The impact of mechanical balance on fun is highly overrated.

This is quite easily accomplished with modern RPG PC build design and resolution systems. Multiple systems have done this, 4e being one of them. It just involves the usage of metagame mechanics.

- Gandalf is powerful wizard/angel guy who overtly taps into the ether and draws forth magic (while swinging a mean sword and throwing out esoteric knowledge).

- Frodo has metagame mechanics to directly intercede between his intent and the situation at hand (dice/odds) despoiling his intent (to live, for his friends to live, to get The One Ring to Mount Doom, etc). He could earn plot points by accepting complications and he could cash them out to create genre-relevant assets for himself or his allies or complications for his enemies. The player of Frodo could cash it in and be the impetus for events such as "mithril shirt turns the cave troll spear aside", or "Aragorn falls into a river instead of splatting", or "Sams the hero". Or, even easier than that, you could have unified PC build mechanics and Frodo could be a Princess Build Warlord.

Boom. The fictional positioning reflects Frodo the character is weaker than Gandalf the character but mechanical resolution gives each player the same relative ability to affect the game's trajectory/outcomes. Everyone is balanced, has fun, and the fictional positioning is intact.

 

[Bluenose]

This is quite easily accomplished with modern RPG PC build design and resolution systems. Multiple systems have done this, 4e being one of them. It just involves the usage of metagame mechanics.

- Gandalf is powerful wizard/angel guy who overtly taps into the ether and draws forth magic (while swinging a mean sword and throwing out esoteric knowledge).

- Frodo has metagame mechanics to directly intercede between his intent and the situation at hand (dice/odds) despoiling his intent (to live, for his friends to live, to get The One Ring to Mount Doom, etc). He could earn plot points by accepting complications and he could cash them out to create genre-relevant assets for himself or his allies or complications for his enemies. The player of Frodo could cash it in and be the impetus for events such as "mithril shirt turns the cave troll spear aside", or "Aragorn falls into a river instead of splatting", or "Sams the hero". Or, even easier than that, you could have unified PC build mechanics and Frodo could be a Princess Build Warlord.

Boom. The fictional positioning reflects Frodo the character is weaker than Gandalf the character but mechanical resolution gives each player the same relative ability to affect the game's trajectory/outcomes. Everyone is balanced, has fun, and the fictional positioning is intact.

In support of this, if you absolutely must have characters who are more important to the game due to having more personal power, the D&D answer is very simple. Make them higher level. That's a perfectly acceptable form of imbalance, assuming the players are satisfied with it. What I object to is characters of the same level not having equal significance, especially when people defend it on the grounds of verisimilitude. What, you want your high powered character to advance as rapidly as my low-powered one? I think that's a case of eating your cake and having it.

 

[pemerton]

The game has levels, classes and hit points and ability improved as you go up the levels. Perhaps the road travelled is harder for a Wizard than say a Thief or Warrior?

<snip>

I liked that players made a decision to either go for a class that progressed quickly but was ultimately weaker at the higher levels than another.

In fact, in AD&D, a wizard needs fewer XP per level than a warrior to get to 7th level, and needs fewer XP for each level until 14th, which requires 1.5 million for both. The wizard then needs more XP per level gained.

But let's put that to one side.

If a thief takes 1 XP per level and grows half-an-inch per level; and a wizard takes 2 XP per level and grows an inch per level; in what sense is the thief progressing more quickly but weaker? They are both gaining the same amount of height per XP earned, but one is just being divided into more granular units.

It created different power curves and made character choices more interesting.

Sure, but that is completely independent of the XP charts. You could tweak all the abilities per level, and then the XPs per level, to achieve the same abilities accrued per XP earned, and the power curves would be what they are without having differentiated XP charts.

There's a pretty strong case that this is what 3E does!

This does make sense and I think it's how most people view/viewed the game...IMO of course.

But surely you can see the only difference between requiring 2000 XP to get a level conferrnig d4 hp, 1 new spell and +1 to hit, and requiring 4000 XP to get a level that confers d10 hp, 2 new spells and +2 to hit, is that the former is more granular? The two progressions don't differ in power curve.

I also am not so sure about a level not having an in-fiction meaning (though I would argue it's implicit as opposed to explicit) since abilities based in the fiction are very much tied to leveling. In the fiction a level Y wizard can cast level x spells... A level Y fighter has X skill points, a level Y Barbarian can rage X number of times per day... this are all things that are in-fiction and tied to level.

The spells I can see. The barbarian rage is in the same zone as martial dailies - I think different people have different takes. But does anyone think that skill points are an ingame phenomenon?

 

[pemerton]

I agree with [MENTION=49017]Bluenose[/MENTION]. If you want character A to be more powerful than character B, just make them higher level! After all, that's how the typical GM does it when building NPCs.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

This is quite easily accomplished with modern RPG PC build design and resolution systems. Multiple systems have done this, 4e being one of them. It just involves the usage of metagame mechanics.

- Gandalf is powerful wizard/angel guy who overtly taps into the ether and draws forth magic (while swinging a mean sword and throwing out esoteric knowledge).

- Frodo has metagame mechanics to directly intercede between his intent and the situation at hand (dice/odds) despoiling his intent (to live, for his friends to live, to get The One Ring to Mount Doom, etc). He could earn plot points by accepting complications and he could cash them out to create genre-relevant assets for himself or his allies or complications for his enemies. The player of Frodo could cash it in and be the impetus for events such as "mithril shirt turns the cave troll spear aside", or "Aragorn falls into a river instead of splatting", or "Sams the hero". Or, even easier than that, you could have unified PC build mechanics and Frodo could be a Princess Build Warlord.

Boom. The fictional positioning reflects Frodo the character is weaker than Gandalf the character but mechanical resolution gives each player the same relative ability to affect the game's trajectory/outcomes. Everyone is balanced, has fun, and the fictional positioning is intact.

Sure those systems work, but I see them as more work for little gain. It's just as easy to design encounters so that everyone has something to do despite their disparate power level. I ran AD&D games for many years with a very wide level spread and never had anyone complain.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

In support of this, if you absolutely must have characters who are more important to the game due to having more personal power, the D&D answer is very simple. Make them higher level. That's a perfectly acceptable form of imbalance, assuming the players are satisfied with it. What I object to is characters of the same level not having equal significance, especially when people defend it on the grounds of verisimilitude. What, you want your high powered character to advance as rapidly as my low-powered one? I think that's a case of eating your cake and having it.

Here's an example where using different levels doesn't work: Frank wants his fighter to be a combat monster. Bob wants his bard to be the go-to guy in social encounters. If you insist that everyone is equally powerful in combat, the usual meaning of "balance", then you don't get to have specialists who are better at social interaction, exploration, or other aspects of the game but weaker at combat. And there are plenty of people who would like to play such characters.

 

[Ahnehnois]

And there are plenty of people who would like to play such characters.

Most players, I would think.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Most players, I would think.

I wouldn't say most, but I would agree it is a non-trivially large percentage.