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

[ImperatorK]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=322041

 

[Imaro]

Well if the GM had been taunting the players with the encounter level then they wouldn't have to ask, would they - because the GM would have told them!

I think you knew what I was referring to...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

in D&D you get +1 to all mental attributes per age category over adult...

wisdom goes to perception, and intelligence goes to know skills.

Everyone knows as you get older your eye sight and hearing improve and your memory gets better...

right there is a simulation night mare

If you line up 100 peasants who have never fired a bow in there life, and have all of them shoot at a target at max range a dozen arrows 5% will hit dead center perfect (nat 20 hits)

if an army of 500 5th level warriors (5d8+con mod hp) all fall 3 stories (3d6 falling damage) not only will not 1 of them die but none of them will hurt an ankle or wrist or in any noticeable way be less able to fight... if they fall 5 stories (more then enough to kill most of them if not atleast break a lot of bones in the real world) 5d6 will most likely not kill even 1.


world building ends up looking like OotS not like FR or GH

a second level wizard with a 10 con (6hp) can be run through with a crit for 14 damage, and if he stabilizes, sleep it off and be fine the next day with 0 magic healing.

 

[pemerton]

I think you knew what I was referring to...

I've honestly got no idea what you were referring to - I'm actually very confused at this point.

You made a comment about some players asking their GMs about encounter levels to see if they'd been fairly treated. I replied - sincerely but also in what I intended to be a fairly light tone - that the GM should be rubbing their noses in it by telling them the encounter level and thereby either mocking them (if they had trouble with an easy encounter) or scaring them (if they were coming into a big encounter).

It wasn't meant to be a hostile response at all - in fact I would have thought that those who dislike "player entitlement" would approve the GM using encounter levels as a tool for teasing the players one way or another. As I said, this is what I do - but as I also said, my players are fairly relaxed and take my teasing in good humour.

So apologies for irritating you, though as I said at the opening of this post I'm not sure exactly what you think is going on.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I've honestly got no idea what you were referring to - I'm actually very confused at this point.

You made a comment about some players asking their GMs about encounter levels to see if they'd been fairly treated. I replied - sincerely but also in what I intended to be a fairly light tone - that the GM should be rubbing their noses in it by telling them the encounter level and thereby either mocking them (if they had trouble with an easy encounter) or scaring them (if they were coming into a big encounter).

It wasn't meant to be a hostile response at all - in fact I would have thought that those who dislike "player entitlement" would approve the GM using encounter levels as a tool for teasing the players one way or another. As I said, this is what I do - but as I also said, my players are fairly relaxed and take my teasing in good humour.

So apologies for irritating you, though as I said at the opening of this post I'm not sure exactly what you think is going on.

I not only agree 100% with the way you do it, but sometimes (rarely or it doesn't work) I sabotage them by lying. if they are about to walk into a hard encounter like 2 or 3 levels above the party I will tell them it is an equal level one, or even worse tell them "this one is off the charts" then throw an encounter a level lower then them...

sometimes they pick up on it...but when they don't you get really funny moments.

It also works since I have more then once seen bad luck turn a walk in the park into an almost TPK...

 

[rabindranath72]

I not only agree 100% with the way you do it, but sometimes (rarely or it doesn't work) I sabotage them by lying. if they are about to walk into a hard encounter like 2 or 3 levels above the party I will tell them it is an equal level one, or even worse tell them "this one is off the charts" then throw an encounter a level lower then them...

sometimes they pick up on it...but when they don't you get really funny moments.

It also works since I have more then once seen bad luck turn a walk in the park into an almost TPK...

I told my players in advance that the campaign style includes mostly "status quo" encounters. That's by the book, and I don't think they need to know more than that. Learning to flee, scouting, and gathering intelligence can be rewarding in and of itself. So if someone tells them "there's a dragon over the hill" it's up to them to decide if they want to go there and risk, or choose a different avenue.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Wha? Funny 'cause it seems to me that the planar structure of Planescape is fairly well based on the alignment rules. That seems a pretty vulgar "footprint" of the rules on that setting.

Most D&D settings pay attention to at least some aspect of D&D. Especially some of the aspects of D&D which take place in areas the PCs are unlikely to use (for me Planescape games are basically about Sigil and the Factions - and those don't map to alignment neatly). Bits might take inspiration from D&D but even Eberron doesn't entirely use the D&D rules (which for 3e would end up with something like a Tippyverse or the Tome of Awesome).

 

[Ratskinner]

Rat skinner, I'd largely agree with that. The system is going to influence how a world looks to some degree. DnD is idiosyncratic and frankly inflexible enough that any DnD world is going to share a fair bit of similarities.

If nothing else, the class system imposes a number of constraints.

But, that's a fair distance from saying that DnD is meant to be a world building game.

Which is why I finished with:

On the general point, however, I totally agree.

Most D&D settings pay attention to at least some aspect of D&D. Especially some of the aspects of D&D which take place in areas the PCs are unlikely to use (for me Planescape games are basically about Sigil and the Factions - and those don't map to alignment neatly). Bits might take inspiration from D&D but even Eberron doesn't entirely use the D&D rules (which for 3e would end up with something like a Tippyverse or the Tome of Awesome).

I'm not saying that I think the rules are a good starting place for world design, but let's take a look at the quote to which I was responding:

The only D&D game world built on D&D assumptions is Eberron. None of the others are. There's how many D&D settings just from TSR/WOTC? Ten, twenty? Only one of them gave the slightest toss about the mechanics of the game that was being used. It's always been world first, mechanics second. And the mechanics are pretty obviously meant for PC's only.

I think that is overstating the rules-neutrality or system agnosticism of D&D worlds quite a bit. FREX: 3e, IIRC, pretty explicitly had NPC classes which were intended to be counterparts to the PC classes. I suggest that the mechanics for that edition, at least, are not intended solely for PC use. At least one 2e source (although I cannot recall which one, possibly the DMG) mentioned worlds that were conceived with silliness akin Tippyverse or the like (including Djinn-powered steam engines, IIRC.) Which does not imply that I think that the rules should be a starting place for designing a world.

Sure anything I build with Lego is going to share a certain blockiness. But that doesn't mean that I'm constrained to only building certain things.

If the mechanics of DnD come first in world building the every DnD world would have to be pretty much the same. But, once you step back and build the world first and then apply the mechanics you can do pretty much anything.

I would contend that this, as well, is overstating the reality. For example, building a ball with legos is a bit of task (to extend your metaphor a little.) While there is, indeed, a wide realm of possibility under the D&D umbrella, it is far from limitless. Running games in other freeform systems like Fate has, for me, illustrated by contrast how the D&D rules subtly but profoundly influence many aspects of its worlds.*

The mechanics of D&D don't have to come first to have such an influence on the setting, they simply have to be present in the mind of the designer throughout the process. I have a difficult time believing that setting authors somehow divest themselves of game knowledge during the conceptualization phase, only to re-introduce it during some final system-readiness audit. To return to your metaphor, given a bunch of LEGOs and setting about the task of building something cool to play with...one will not likely even attempt to build a playground ball. Rather, knowing the nature of the tools at hand (LEGOs) one will set about building something that is cool to play with that has or utilizes that certain blockiness from the outset.


*Which is not to say that those other systems are free from analagous influences or limits on their settings, either.

 

[Hussar]

At the end of the day it's safe to say that system matters.

 

[billd91]

At the end of the day it's safe to say that system matters.

The question is... for what? And on questions like that, we have a lot of disagreement.