D&D 5E Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a forum issue. (In my opinion)

[Hussar]

Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a for...

I'm not sure I agree that we've added so many more combat rules as time has gone on. I mean, 1e initiative rules are a page long while 4e takes about three sentences. Sure we got more codified options in combat - 3e's special maneuvers for example, but we also stripped out a lot of complexity - weapon vs armor frex.

Overall, we've added loads more rules, sure. But a large amount of that is spells or skills. Most of which work the same basic way.

I don't know how anyone could look at say classic modules and conclude that combat isn't a major part of DnD.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't know how anyone could look at say classic modules and conclude that combat isn't a major part of DnD.

No one's saying it isn't. Combat is a major part, but the game isn't "about" combat.

 

[Hussar]

Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a for...

That's pretty fine hair splitting. If most of the time in session is spent in combat, what is the game about?

How much does an element have to take up before we say that's what the game is about?

Most of the classes are dominated by combat abilities, the primary way of advancing in the game is through combat, easily 2/3rds of the magic system is taken up by combat spells, the magic items are primarily combat focused. On and on.

Sure your campaign might be about two competing trade houses, but, I don't think it's a stretch to say that during most sessions, most people's games spend over half their time in combat.

 

[ImperatorK]

Dungeons and Dragons is a storytelling game, not a strict turn-based strategy

Actually it can and is both.

(there are enough tabletop options that do work that way it that's what you're looking for!).

Why would I look for other rabletop games when D&D works just fine?

 

[Ratskinner]

Huh? D&D wrote the least gamist edition of D&D ever - namely, 4e - and the edition of D&D with the greatest extent of "narrativist" (= non-process sim, FitM?) mechanics - still 4e - and is now trying to recover from the experience!

4e the least gamist? I know you run it fairly narrative, pem, and maybe it is (or can be run as) the "most narrativist" but that's not really the same thing as "least gamist". I'd look to 3e, where that funky not-quite-simulationist vibe seemed to bury everything else, if I was looking for "least gamist". No disrespect intended, but the bits of 4e which I would consider narrativist are fairly compartmentalized from the vast pile of combat powers, etc. Ignore them, and it can play in a very gamist mode. Much more so than 3e, IME.

It is, OTOH & IMO, a very different flavor of gamism than that which is represented by more traditional Gygaxian play. In this case, success is not necessarily being defined merely by survival through a nightmarish gauntlet full of horrid puns and shout-outs to elements of pre-80's Midwestern Geek culture. Rather, the players have or encounter a multitude of lesser opportunities to show off their niftyness through the application of their suites of complicated powers vs. opponents who have similar, if less multitudinous, arrays of powers to utilize (shout-outs to culture, Midwestern or otherwise, optional).

I don't think they're going to go down that path again, and insofar as the 4e experiment was a commercial failure, it shows that the D&D audience is not interested in the sort of game you are describing.

I'm not so confident that that's directly the lesson to be inferred from 4e's....history. That is, I'm not sure that it was a commercial failure (although perhaps less of a success than hoped), but that may not be as important as the fragmenting effect it had on the audience.

 

[Ratskinner]

Dungeons and Dragons is a storytelling game...

Having played several games which are explicitly storytelling games...I no longer consider D&D to be a good story game. It is a game about which, or within which, many interesting things and stories can happen. However, no edition of the game, AFAICT, has ever actually introduced mechanical elements to create a story structure beyond rather vague exhortations to the DM or players that they can/should do so using the game.

To be clear, this would not imply that D&D is automatically a turn-based strategy game....nor, in fact, is a game being a storytelling game incompatible with it being a TBS game. Capes, for example, is both.

 

[Ahnehnois]

If most of the time in session is spent in combat, what is the game about?

Roleplaying. Right there in the name.

How much does an element have to take up before we say that's what the game is about?

All of it.

Sure your campaign might be about two competing trade houses, but, I don't think it's a stretch to say that during most sessions, most people's games spend over half their time in combat.

I suspect that's a slight exaggeration. I would guess it at a little under half. But certainly a substantial amount. But then again, how many pages of Return of the King are taken up on the Battle of Pellinor Fields? A lot. Is that what the book is "about"? No.

 

[Hussar]

Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a for...

Compared to the rest of the story? Pelinoe fields is darn near a footnote. The section with Tom Bombadil is nearly as long.

In any case, if around half of play time is spent in combat, it's not really so much of a stretch to say the game is about combat.

Note here, I said GAME not campaign. Those are two distinct things.

 

[pemerton]

4e the least gamist?

I wondered if that would be controversial!

I'd look to 3e, where that funky not-quite-simulationist vibe seemed to bury everything else, if I was looking for "least gamist".

<snip>

It is, OTOH & IMO, a very different flavor of gamism than that which is represented by more traditional Gygaxian play.

<snip>

the players have or encounter a multitude of lesser opportunities to show off their niftyness through the application of their suites of complicated powers vs. opponents who have similar, if less multitudinous, arrays of powers to utilize

I was thinking of classic Gygaxian D&D as the most gamist: the whole "skilled play" thing, and the notion that in a porperly run game PC level is a rough proxy for player skill.

I agree that 3E is the most process-sim, but [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and others have persuaded me that 4e is perhaps the best adapted to high-concept sim. (Let's find out what it's like to be heroes with an epic destiny awaiting us. 2nd ed AD&D aimed for high-concept sim but had no mechanics to supportit). And 4e doesn't have the same opportunites as 3E for gamist play in build, because of its greater mechanical rigour and transparency on both player and GM side; nor the same opportunity for gamist play in either XP or treasure acquisition (the DMG description of these as "rewards" is a clear misnomer, given tha acquisition of treasure is simply a function of levels ie XP, and XP are earned automatically for playing the game).

The inadequacy of 4e as a D&D gamist vehicle is visible, for instance, in the frequent criticism that D&Dnext is meant to "fix", that gaining levels and finding +1 swords and in general getting bigger numbers doesn't actualluy make your PC any better because everything scales up. (In the fiction, of course, your PC is getting better, so this is not a criticism from the high-concept sim side. It is a criticism from the gamist side.)

I'm not sure that it was a commercial failure (although perhaps less of a success than hoped), but that may not be as important as the fragmenting effect it had on the audience.

By "failure" I meant "less successful than necessary to be sustained", so on that I think we're agreed.

On fragmentation - I think the audience was always fairly diverse. The present fragmentation is a new commercial state of affairs (because of the emergence of PF, and the commercial effects of the OGL/SRD more generally) but I don't know that it's a new state of affairs as far as the preferences and styles of the player base are concerned.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Because D&D is primarily about combat. 90% D&D rules are for combat. How can you not get that simple fact?

Because it's not actually true. If we look at the proportion of the rulebook, we find that other than 4e it doesn't matter. About 40% of the PHB in any D&D edition other than 4e is made up of spells. OK, so a lot of those spells are combat spells - but the spell list is where D&D has historically stored much of its flavour and worldbuilding.

Thank you... all this talk of movies and books made me figure out what I want to say...

I want JLA/Avengers balance. See people like to make jokes about aquaman being a joke too weak. People also like to look at Batman and ask why have him on a team with superman and green lantern.

the movie avengers are not that much better, I mean Iron Man and Thor are big hitters, but hawk eye and coleson?

SO jokes aside how do the writers handle it?

They writer deal with it... they cheat. Batman isn't the same character in Detective comics and JLA... I mean on his surface he is, but he is much larger then life in the team.

And this is why when running a superhero game I use something like Marvel Heroic or Icons. It makes the genre work. But I can see many things happening before we get Plot Points or Fate Points into D&D. Including Pigasi. There are games better with plot points and games that are better without them.

And on the LotR derail, people are assuming that The Fellowship of the Ring was one party. It wasn't. Gandalf was the DMPC, the Hobbits were one party, and Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Boromir were the other - with the time when the two parties were together being pretty overtly an escort mission.

Edit: And 4e is a tactical rather than a strategic game. I don't get the gamist glee from other editions of setting up monsters to go head first into their own pit traps.