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

[Ratskinner]

But I'm also going to try and use your weight against you in a mighty judo-throw: notice that you didn't confine "mentally challenging" to being a desideratum for gamist play.

"Mentally challenging" can mean a lot of things, which of those apply isn't clear from the article. For instance, putting people in a morally or ethically challenging situation can light up the brain quite a bit. Similarly, a mystery is obviously a mental challenge. However, neither of those gains much traction against what people normally refer to as Gamist play. I think that that's disservice to solving mysteries, but maybe not so much for the moral/ethical crises. Additionally, given the timeframe, it could also refer to a desire for game mechanics which are not overly simple. (I mean, I pray it doesn't, but....)

I think in 4e the central role of carefully-calibrated challenges is similar. It certainly emphasises the situation/encounter as the site of play, and thereby downplays traditional D&D-style exploration. But these encounters don't have to be challenges in the step-on-up sense.

Is there no risk of failure? Is 4e really D&D on "easy mode"? If not, if the level of challenge is not vanishingly small, then it can be approached in a gamist fashion, taking away pride/enjoyment from the sense of accomplishment. I mean, the 4e skill challenge takes scenes and encounters that were previously very nebulous and hard to "rate" (Old-School games highly dependent on DM fiat) and gives them numerical ratings/difficulties, in effect turning what used to be almost purely narrativist/drama-resolved situations into lightly gamist mechanics. ...which makes me wonder to what extent "DM fiat" is a pejorative against drama-resolution...but that's probably another rant entirely.

I think it's rather implicit in the skill challenge rules, and also in James Wyatt's famous "say yes" and "skip to the fun" advice, and a bit more overt in the cut-and-paste by Robin Laws from the HeroQuest revised rulebook into the DMG 2. (The problem with this cut-and-paste isn't that it's unclear about playstyle, but that it doesn't explain how to adapte the HQ techniques to the different mechanical environment of 4e.)

If its implicit, I must say it totally whizzed by me (and I consider myself a fairly sophisticated consumer). It certainly didn't reveal itself when I ran and played 4e for about a year. I have witnessed no 4e groups playing that way. Even on these boards, you seem to be in a distinct (if welcome) minority. I didn't stick with 4e long enough to pick up DMG2, so maybe Robin Laws does give some magical advice there. I mean, I love our conversations, but from everything I've seen, you have a very unusual take on 4e. I recall being stunned quite a bit during our first encounters.

Now, my (and perhaps @innerdude 's) question to you is: How much of your experience is the way 4e is played by the book, and how much is it you? I mean, Narrativist play doesn't require a whole lot of rules. Its one of the things that makes writing Narrativist games a bit tricky, I suspect. Even Edwards acknowledges that people play narrativistly with/despite rules that don't support it at all, even with rules that fight against it.

I don't think 4e is particularly antagonistic to narrativist play, but certainly, the bulk of human effort developing the game was put into devising a mildly challenging tactical minis game. That's just obvious for the reasons innerdude and others have mentioned. Strip away the rest (there's not much) and you still have that midlly challenging (rules as suggested) tactical minis game.

I agree it's not as clear as in rulebooks like Marvel Heroic or Burning Wheel. But nor is the gamist idea - there is nothing analogous to (for instance) Gygax's description of skilled play in the closing pages (before the appendices) of his PHB, and his invocations of skilled play throughout his DMG. So someone who came to 4e with gamist expectations might read it that way, but someone who came with narrativist or high-concept sim expectations I think could equally read it that way. (I think it doesn't have an easy reading for those with process-sim expectations - which turns out to be a good chunk of the 3E player base.)

I certainly didn't see it. I think its hidden much deeper than you do. I mean, I don't wanna dig out my 4e core books and go quote-fishing, but I recall a lot...a LOT of emphasis on designing interesting and challenging encounters, less but still significant advice about to most effectively use monsters of various types to wage challenging combat encounters. For the players, there was a lot of advice about effective teamwork and...well sheets and sheets of combat powers, a few of which had notable utility outside of combat. All of it with little notes about "appropriate" levels of difficulty. Outside of combat, well, we took that and made it a mini-game called a skill challenge, so it could be more like combat. We gave them strict difficulties just like combat and then published a system that was so heavily tested that it was errata'd almost before the books were out the door. I'd also note that I don't recall very much talk at all about how to use the presented fluff to hook players into encounters and scenes, nor anything about setting up the types on thesis/anti-thesis. "Interesting" as far as I can recall the 4e core books, was a word that applied only to tactics.

4e didn't talk about "skilled play". However, I suspect that that may be because such talk was less PC in 2008 that it was in the 1970's. (Also, you're trying to sell this game, you don't want to scare off your consumers.) However, the strong and consistent emphasis on appropriate challenge levels and creating tacticly interesting encounters is Gamist, not Simulationist or Narrativist.

"Here's a challenge, use your resources to defeat it" describes Burning Wheel as much as 4e. But Burning Wheel is an obviously narrativist-oriented game.

This is really the same point as in my response to Ratskinner earlier in this post: all RPGing is, in some sense, a challenge to the players' skill. The hobby provides mental diversion. "Step on up" is about making that challenge to the players' skill the raison d'etre of play.

I disagree here. If there is a level of skill required to play Fate, my experiences would indicate that its very small indeed. Its certainly nothing like any version of D&D I've played. I have a few Narrativist games on my hard drive where skill doesn't even enter into it (at least, I can't see how it would).

I agree that if the "story of D&D" that unfolds in 4e play as a factor of (i) XP gain and levelling and (ii) the default monsters in the MMs were mere colour, that would be consistent with gamist play and a serious impediment to narrativist play.

Good heavens! Why would that be an impediment to Narrativist play? What about it prevents the DM/players from presenting dramatic theses and challenging them? Nothing that I can see. Narrativism lives in the color, not the X's and O's of the tactical game. Talking to you on this board has helped me recognize the "mere color" aspect of challenges as a narrativist strength of 4e, not a hindrance at all.

But is it meant to be mere colour? I personally don't read the books that way - eg The Plane Above has a discussion of "journeying into deep myth" in order to change the mythic history of the setting which wouldn't be out of place in a HeroWars sourcebook. I think the core mythology and cosmology has been deliberately written so that it can be played as more than simply colour - that if the players want to sink their teeth into it, there is something to latch onto.

So...you're figuring that most 4e groups are using The Plane Above now? Is there anything about that process of changing mythic history that wouldn't also apply to previous editions?...to other games entirely?

As far as the default color goes...sure, its as good as any other, I suppose. It does reflect a sort of generic D&D-ized Indo-European mythology. However, more below...

As for whether thesis/antithesis comes with challenge ratings - it does in HeroQuest revised (or, rather, DCs are set according to a table that correlates the current location within the rising action with the average strength of the PCs), and that's not an obstacle to narrativist play in HQ. In fact it's core to it.

That's interesting. I don't know how it works, so I'll have to reserve judgement.

The transparency of 4e's challenge maths supports the use of story elements in a way that conduces to the whole thesis/antithesis thing. It's at odds with a certain sort of simulationism, which wants the story to be the outcome of whatever the mechanics dictate rather than making the mechanics the servant of a certain genre and story orientation, but not with narrativism. (Nor with gamism, obviously. I don't dispute the utility of these techniques to what I've called "light" gamism. Just that they imply or entail it.)

I would say that 4e's challenge maths are neutral in this regard. Yes, you can use them to present whatever flavored challenge you want, but no, there is nothing inherent in them that requires or even encourages you to ensure that the players are facing meaningful thematic decisions. In fact, quite the opposite, great pains are taken to make sure that all PCs will sustain a minimum level of effectiveness in all situations, making it easier for the DM to completely ignore any theses that his players may want to address, and for the players to play without ever feeling obliged to address a thesis as well. The priest of the Raven Queen will be substantively unaffected if the party never encounters undead, Orcusian cultists, or demons. Even the Quest mechanics you mention above don't do anything to require addressing significant theses, but can easily be used to do so.

Which, I think, is a place we will disagree on the impact which the default color/fluff has on play. While it is an arena that Narrativist players will find room for rather simplistic theses, its presence removes the impetus for the GM player to engage in any deeper thematic play. That is, a GM can approach his monster selection and indeed adventure design in a way that is very passive wrt theme or thesis. Contrast that with a game like Fate, where such a thing is practically impossible (but the maths are equally, if not more facile.)

This is an interesting point but I'm not sure where to take it.

Me neither. It's one of the little things that makes me question the utility/completeness of the GNS viewpoint. The majority of games play that way, and if I can't discern between difficulty-for-the-character and difficulty-for-the-player then I can't distinguish between Gamism and Simulationism. And yet...that would seem to be a fundamental experience for that elusive thing folks like to call immersion.

I think the extent to which a game requires a high degree of player tactical engagement is mostly orthogonal to its GNS orientation, although I guess the presence of such stuff does open the door to gamist drift in an otherwise non-gamist oriented game.

I think there's an important distinction between player-side tactics and character-side tactics. I would say that if a game has heavy tactical play on the player side...its probably Gamist. Player-side tactics enable "skillful play". At the design stage, "Step on Up" would be, I think, the motivating factor for developing an extensive Player-side tactical inventory. Character-side tactics can be abstracted to fit whatever agenda is running around, I think.

However, I've come to disagree with the GNS theory about how exclusive the play agendas are from each other, so that may be coloring my thinking as well.

I think, given my comment just above the quote, that I think it is the extent of tactical/mechanical player decision-making that is required that determines how wide the door is open to gamist drift. (Though T&T shows that luck-based rather than skill-based gamism is equally possible, and a game like HeroQuest could be played in this sort of way, even if that's not perhaps it's natural orientation.)

If Gamism is the player responding to a challenge of skill (or luck), it seems fairly straightforward to me that being able to lable things with a "degree of difficulty" is an enabling device for making sense of that kind of game.

 

[DM Howard]

I think you're right. A player is typically not comparing his character to the others, he's typically comparing it to an ideal in his head. Nor are most players keeping score in terms of how effective their characters are or how much time they get in the spotlight.

I don't know about that last bit. I think a lot of players unconsciously keep "score" of contributions to the collective effort and if they start to lag behind their fellows might become disenchanted with their character. They might even go so far as to think it's something wrong with the mechanics rather than some internal group dynamic or simply their own play style.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think a lot of players unconsciously keep "score" of contributions to the collective effort and if they start to lag behind their fellows might become disenchanted with their character. They might even go so far as to think it's something wrong with the mechanics rather than some internal group dynamic or simply their own play style.

If they did, they'd be wrong.

Thankfully, most players I've had don't do that. Instead, they realize that their character's fate has more to do with their choices and the DM's, so they take responsibility for their choices and learn to communicate and collaborate with the DM.

 

[Manbearcat]

However, for anyone who doesn't grasp the narrative positioning and scene framing aspects--and everything I've ever heard from you, and @Manbearcat, and other "scene framing" advocates, your playstyle is simply not explicit in the core 4e texts.

Very much disinclined toward getting involved in these conversations right now. I could spend 45 minutes breaking out various rules texts, comparing and analogizing, but to little fruitful end.I have game theory fatigue. Too many words spilled with little to no verifiable productivity. Maybe in a year or so once batteries have recharged. I've got a 4e game, a new 13th Age game, a Dungeon World game and a Dogs in the Vineyard game to occupy my RPG allotted time with.

Perhaps I'll read the thread (which I'm pretty sure I could predict the various parts played and positions taken with extraordinary accuracy without having poured over it) at some point in the next few weeks and advocate for my viewpoint. Maybe I'll just say that several aspects of the D&D predecessors vs 4e divide reminds me very much of the Football (Soccer) vs American Football divide and leave it at that.

 

[Remathilis]

Are we still discussing Forgespeak? It makes me long for the days of swashbucklers...

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The non-combat spells: Arcane Sight, Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, Daylight, Gaseous Form, Gentle Repose, Illusory Script, Nondetection, Secret Page, Tiny Hut, Tongues, Water Breathing.

It could definitely be argued that Gaseous Form is a mixed spell as well, since it protects you from weapons and helps you escape combat. I've seen it cast more often during combat than out of it.

So, if you count the mixed-use spells as half, the 3rd-level wizard list is about 60% combat-oriented. Cleric spells were a little harder to categorize, but I came up with 11 combat, 11 mixed, and 8 noncombat spells.

Either way, it's still the majority of spells. I also assume this number varies wildly depending on which level of spell you choose as well as whether you consider the entire edition's worth of spells from all sourcebooks or just from the core rules. Also, I'm trying to consider D&D as a whole. Which means all the editions.

My guess is that in any particular edition (except maybe 2e, since it was the edition that was most fond of publishing weird magic items and spells that appeared to have nearly no use at all, nevermind combat uses) that the number ranges from 50% to 80% combat oriented spells and options. In 4e, it was basically guaranteed that unless the power was a utility power it was combat oriented. Even then, I'd guess that over half of the utility powers were also combat oriented.

It definitely creates an image of a game that at the VERY least is 50% combat oriented. It doesn't appear to be a game made for adventures with ZERO combat in them.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

At 3rd level, I'd say that cure serious wounds and remove blindness/deafness should be considered combat spells, as they are almost always used to "clean up" after a fight. The rest of the "fix people up" spells I put in the mixed category.

I'd say healing is generally combat oriented. It's true that they might be most often used AFTER a battle, but the reason to use them is because you got into a battle. Thus, they are spells you take BECAUSE of battle. Environmental effects are certainly a possibility but I'd say rare enough to discount them.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I don't know about that last bit. I think a lot of players unconsciously keep "score" of contributions to the collective effort and if they start to lag behind their fellows might become disenchanted with their character. They might even go so far as to think it's something wrong with the mechanics rather than some internal group dynamic or simply their own play style.

This definitely happens in my games. I do it whether I want to or not. In the process of playing the game, especially when a battle takes 60-90 minutes with 5 minute long breaks between my turns, I have not much to concentrate on except the tactical situation. So, my thoughts are:

"Alright, I did 15 points of damage to that monster, it likely has around 70 hitpoints. The Wizard went and rolled 45 damage on his dice and all the enemies failed to make their saves because they needed 18s, so he hit 5 of them for 45 damage a piece for a total of 225 points of damage. Then the Cleric went and healed the Barbarian for 120 with a heal spell, which is the total damage the enemy has done to him over the last 3 rounds. Then the Barbarian went and because he was raging, power attacking and had a couple of buffing spells on him, he did 85 damage to the same creature I hit, killing it. Wait a second, he did 85 damage in ONE hit? If it had only 70 hitpoints then that means even if I had just delayed my action and did absolutely nothing at all, nothing would have changed. I was literally useless in that battle. Wow....why do I even show up?"

 

[Dausuul]

It could definitely be argued that Gaseous Form is a mixed spell as well, since it protects you from weapons and helps you escape combat. I've seen it cast more often during combat than out of it.

Hmm, fair point.

Either way, it's still the majority of spells. I also assume this number varies wildly depending on which level of spell you choose as well as whether you consider the entire edition's worth of spells from all sourcebooks or just from the core rules. Also, I'm trying to consider D&D as a whole. Which means all the editions.

Oh, certainly. I just grabbed 3rd level as the "workhorse level" of spells; it's always been a set of spells that wizards rely on heavily once they get access to it, because it's dramatically more powerful than levels 1-2 while still being low enough level that a mid-range wizard doesn't have to hoard it like platinum. And I picked 3E because I had ready access to d20srd.org at the time. It was an illustrative sample, not a comprehensive analysis.

And I agree that the spell list is pretty combat-heavy. If all pillars were being given equal treatment, one would expect the spells to favor each pillar equally.

 

[DM Howard]

If they did, they'd be wrong.

I agree. However, my post was more pointing to the idea that many players do in fact care about balance, it's just an internal one, that many players (not saying all mind you) do, in fact, "[keep] score in terms of how effective their characters are or how much time they get in the spotlight."