D&D 5E Blog Post by Robert J. Schwalb

[Mistwell]

And that sounds pretty sanctimonious to me. Shall we call it even, and move on?



It is not possible to change the world for the good if you don't recognize the reality of the present. Failing to do so - trying to meet practical reality with idealism alone - is what creates cynicism (and abject failure to accomplish the goal).

I did not try to deny the reality of the present, I said don't reinforce excuses for bad behavior we both know exists in the present in some people. Which is why I said you're being cynical by not merely acknowledging the bad behavior, but saying it's inevitable and by implication not something we should push back against.

Yep. This is how humans behave, Mistwell.

No, it's not, and I think it's unwise that you present your limited experience as universal enough to judge whatr is "human behavior" in general. Some people are like that, others are not, and I think it's best to not reinforce acceptance of bad behavior.

It isn't just on the internet. It is everywhere. This behavior is not new with the internet - go look up some of the newspaper diatribes surrounding ratification of the US Constitution, there are some doozies in there. This behavior is centuries old. Millennia old. It probably stretches back to when humans first created language. I am not justifying it. I am merely recognizing it as the nature of the beast, across history, and across cultures.

You're arguing Hobbes' Leviathan (one source for the justification for dictatorships), and better men than you and I have argued he was extremely wrong - like John Locke (one source for the justification for democracies). Examples of bad behavior from the past do not show that all humans behaved badly in the past - just that there were SOME people who behaved badly in the past, and similarly in the past some others pushed back against it. Which is my point. Don't reinforce excuses for bad behavior by pretending it's just "human" to behave badly.

You sound to me like a cop who has just been on the beat too long and he's so burned out by just seeing the bad that people do that he thinks all people are just that way. "People" are not just that way. My wife for example would never have dreamed of engaging in personal attacks on an author, strawmanning him and projecting her emotions on him, no matter what she thought of it. Lots of people I know would not do that. It's not just "human" behavior you're commenting on, it's "bad" human behavior I am commenting on.

I can, and do, ask folks to be better than themselves on a daily basis, but only within a very limited context - EN World. And that kinda works. But any plan that requires humans to behave contrary to their nature broadly, over time and a large population, is a fundamentally flawed plan.

Human nature is not, by nature, to behave like a dick on the internet or otherwise. It's what you've had to deal with for so many years however, so I can understand why you've come to believe it's just natural universal human nature, if that's what you're getting at. Which is why I said you've become very cynical.

 

[Chaltab]

Are you talking about 4e? 3e does not assume this. I have also been told by several 4e players on the net that you can start with a 16 in your primary stat and be ok.

It really depends. With at level encounters it's fine. If the DM likes to throw harder stuff at you, you might be whiffing more often than you like. Either way there's nothing really time consuming about ability score optimization. Your primary, secondary, and tertiary are all marked by shades of grey on the character sheet and spelled out in the class descriptions. Feats, weapons, and how they interact with powers can be confusing as hell, especially for late pre-essentials classes like the Monk. But it's a design problem, not really, IME, a design goal problem, which is what Schwalb seems to believe.

 

[occam]

The answer is that it is a superhero comic book game. Superhero comic book titles come in a variety of power levels and a wide variety of powers and applications of those powers. The game is designed to recreate all of those power levels and all of the individual powers. While the game allows for it, certain powers or power levels may not be appropriate for a given campaign. The choice is limit the choices so as not to cover certain powers and power levels or allow any option and let GMs to determine what is inappropriate. Personally, I prefer the latter and allowing the GM to boot players that are not willing to accept campaign limitations, "because the build is, technically, legal" (then again, I like to assume most players are responsible to rein in any power gaming tendencies to meet the campaign the GM is running) .

Champions uses a point-based chargen system. The point buy is what's supposed to determine power level, but it doesn't really work that way in practice. (At least, not in the edition I played, which was a long time ago.) That's not because you can't design a decently balanced point-based system that allows for a broad range of power levels in the game; see GURPS for a counterexample.

Anyway, getting a little off-topic here. I was just pointing out that the dichotomy between "design for balance"/"ignore the min/maxers" isn't an all-or-nothing one. Good design can prevent obvious imbalances without contorting the game to try accounting for every possible exploit. It's a balance, like most things, and means that not everyone will agree on where the balance is struck.

 

[Libramarian]

@Libramarian , are you the same Libramarian as posted this in the Schwalb comments?

Assuming that it is you (it sounds a bit like you), you need to repost it here so people can give it XP!

(The follow up would be to look at other ways more "modern" games give the GM the capacity to put pressure on the players - in 4e, for instance, that has to be via encounter building and rationing extended rests - which is part of why the WotC 4e modules tend to be so bad, because they don't really tackle these issues at all.)

Yep, that was me. I was confused by his reaction to my post! I think he thought I was sarcastically trolling him

I'm sorry that he became so upset by the reaction on his blog but I also think it was a bit silly for him to be surprised by it. On the other hand, I also think that 4e fans shouldn't have been so surprised by his remarks on the edition. He said at the beginning of the 5e playtest process that skill challenges "should die in a fire". At that point I knew that he wasn't really flying the 4e flag amongst the design team.

I think it's too bad that it sounds so sarcastic just to say that the DM is the most important participant in the game. That's true! It follows that it's more important to make sure that they're having fun than anyone else, at least in particular (not necessarily the DM vs. the players as a collective). I think there is too much emphasis on the players' fun and not enough on the DM's in the WotC era. The blurb on the back of the upcoming 5e DMG says it's the DM's job to entertain the players. I don't think that's a good description of what the DM does. In my games the players entertain me more than I do them. Everyone entertains each other to some degree of course (and I certainly enjoy it when I receive a compliment from a player on my DMing), but I would say the players get most of their entertainment from the game, and I as DM get most of my entertainment from watching them play. This line of thought led to my comment that some types of play are more fun to watch than others. I dislike how the 4e DMG lays out different player types, the tactician, the method actor, etc. etc. and implies that the DM should psychologically diagnose their players and customize their adventures to make sure they're maximally entertained. I don't think that all players should be catered to equally. Those who play in a more entertaining fashion should receive more support than those who tend towards more boring play. I think that would lead to less DM "burnout" and be good for the game overall.

The problem with his comment, for me, and why I wouldn't XP it (despite agreeing with you on most things) is that he appears to be suggesting that prior to the 3E/4E, D&D didn't have rules where the PCs got to tell the DM what to do, that it was always "mother may I".

That's completely untrue, of course.

D&D absolutely DID have those rules. They were just strictly for people who could cast spells. Spells in every edition of D&D tell the DM what happens. Whilst he is able to interpret them or whatever, he actually has less leeway than, with, say, skill rules in 3E/4E.

I usually only play to level 6 or so before starting a new campaign. At low levels we (my group) all agree that spell-casters are underpowered.

Only in 4E did we finally see a kind of equality, where ALL the PCs got to say what happens some of the time, ALL of the PLAYERS got to say what happens some of the time. I don't by this stuff from Schwalb and Libramarian (or so I read it) about DMs being "on the run" or whatever. Going from from the mother in mother may I to more of a typical DM/Storyteller role in RPGs is not "going on the run". Further still, in 4E, I didn't go on the run, as a DM, I went on the attack. It was the first edition where I could unveil my full powers. In 1/2/3E, I could easily, even setting up "balanced" encounters, have been wiping out the PCs over and over. TPK 24/7, yo. But that was no fun. It was easy and boring and made everyone have a bad time.

In 4E, with it's balanced encounters, and the PCs ALL able to dictate what happened a lot of the time, I could suddenly go flat out, go tactical, try to win in a way which would have likely wiped the PCs out in earlier editions. That was huge fun for me. I see Librarmarian saying he had to "just watch all the time". That's completely untrue. It's not valid on any level. In 4E, you are not "watching all the time" any more than any other edition - and less than most, because, if you're using balanced encounters, you can actually be playing hard, playing rough, and having a great time in combat.

If you don't enjoy that kind of play, totally fair. Saying it's "just watching all the time"? Not fair or right.

I would describe my DMing as watching most of the time. I don't mind self-censoring a little bit when playing monsters. It's not the power of being the mother in mother-may-I that I enjoy per se, it's watching the players struggle with gratuitous difficulty and play a game with an inescapable gambling component where you can't eliminate all of the risk.

Argh, I have to go but I'll be back with more thoughts later.

 

[Greg K]

Champions uses a point-based chargen system. The point buy is what's supposed to determine power level, but it doesn't really work that way in practice. (At least, not in the edition I played, which was a long time ago.)

I don't know what edition you played, but Champions 4e, Champions 5e, Champions 6e discuss the GM setting caps. In Champions 4e, the discussion was "Playing the Numbers" on page S22 of Champions 4e which is all about setting the campaign limits on CV, Damage, Defenses, Speed, etc. The first paragraph tells GMs that they can run a campaign with no limits, but it is not recommended as it will unbalance the campaign. The author then continues by telling the GM how to determine campaign limits on Damage, Defenses, etc. I don't own 5e or 6e, but I know both had "Rule of X" which is all about the GM setting campaign ceilings for attacks, defenses, speed.

 

[occam]

I don't know what edition you played, but Champions 4e, Champions 5e, Champions 6e discuss the GM setting caps. In Champions 4e, the discussion was "Playing the Numbers" on page S22 of Champions 4e which is all about setting the campaign limits on CV, Damage, Defenses, Speed, etc. The first paragraph tells GMs that they can run a campaign with no limits, but it is not recommended as it will unbalance the campaign. The author then continues by telling the GM how to determine campaign limits on Damage, Defenses, etc. I don't own 5e or 6e, but I know both had "Rule of X" which is all about the GM setting campaign ceilings for attacks, defenses, speed.

So did the edition I played, and that's what I mean. As a player making a character, I wasn't looking at those, I was looking at the chargen rules. Then the GM would have to come in after the fact and tell people if they had overdone something or other. It was a poor experience. Those guidelines, I believe, were just papering over the flaws in the chargen system that allowed it be so easily, even unintentionally, exploited beyond the bounds of acceptability. The Champions chargen system could've been designed without those flaws. For instance, I also played a lot of GURPS back then, and I tried my best to stretch that system. I was able to pull off some pretty cool things, but nothing I did was game-breaking.

Anyway, bringing it back to D&D, I think it's good to try to design a system that is reasonably balanced and tamper-resistant, without tying itself in knots to avoid every foreseeable exploit. Experience will be the judge, but so far it seems like 5e is doing a decently good job of that.

 

[occam]

...in 4E, I didn't go on the run, as a DM, I went on the attack. It was the first edition where I could unveil my full powers. In 1/2/3E, I could easily, even setting up "balanced" encounters, have been wiping out the PCs over and over. TPK 24/7, yo. But that was no fun. It was easy and boring and made everyone have a bad time.

In 4E, with it's balanced encounters, and the PCs ALL able to dictate what happened a lot of the time, I could suddenly go flat out, go tactical, try to win in a way which would have likely wiped the PCs out in earlier editions. That was huge fun for me. I see Librarmarian saying he had to "just watch all the time". That's completely untrue. It's not valid on any level. In 4E, you are not "watching all the time" any more than any other edition - and less than most, because, if you're using balanced encounters, you can actually be playing hard, playing rough, and having a great time in combat.

True dat. Being able to pull out all the stops and go all-out vs. the PCs? This is something that I loved about DMing 4e combat. I hope 5e works out this well, or at least close.

 

[Hussar]

I wonder if, because 4e pcs tend to be much more durable than earlier edition pcs, some DM's had a hard time making the adjustment. Killing pcs is so easy in 3e, for example that I did find myself erring on the side of caution when making adventures.

I do like really being able to pull out the stops as a DM.

 

[MechaPilot]

I wonder if, because 4e pcs tend to be much more durable than earlier edition pcs, some DM's had a hard time making the adjustment. Killing pcs is so easy in 3e, for example that I did find myself erring on the side of caution when making adventures.

I do like really being able to pull out the stops as a DM.

That is certainly possible.

Also, I like pulling out all the stops as well. I created a kind of fantastic terrain that gave my players no end of trouble:

Necrofungus
Necrofungus is a necrotic fungus that is black in color, slick and damp to the touch, and it bears the sickly sweet odor of decay. Any creature that begins or ends its turn within 5 feet of a patch of necrofungus takes 5 damage per tier. Additionally, the necrotic energy of the fungus dampens healing effects, causing all healing within 30 feet of a patch of necrofungus to be halved. This dampening effect also allows the fungus to grow. Whenever healing occurs within 30 feet of a patch of necrofungus that patch will grow to each of the adjacent squares.
Any creature that dies within 5 feet of a patch of necrofungus will rise in the next round as a necrofungal skeleton or zombie. The creature has an arua of necrotic damage and dampened healing as if it were an ambulatory patch of necrofungus.

I recall one dungeon where the PCs encountered necrofungus and necrofungal undead in the first couple of chambers. After surviving the encounter, they decided to go back to town. They came back with a cartload of casks of lamp oil and proceeded to try to burn the dungeon to the ground.

 

[billd91]

So did the edition I played, and that's what I mean. As a player making a character, I wasn't looking at those, I was looking at the chargen rules. Then the GM would have to come in after the fact and tell people if they had overdone something or other. It was a poor experience. Those guidelines, I believe, were just papering over the flaws in the chargen system that allowed it be so easily, even unintentionally, exploited beyond the bounds of acceptability. The Champions chargen system could've been designed without those flaws. For instance, I also played a lot of GURPS back then, and I tried my best to stretch that system. I was able to pull off some pretty cool things, but nothing I did was game-breaking.

Anyway, bringing it back to D&D, I think it's good to try to design a system that is reasonably balanced and tamper-resistant, without tying itself in knots to avoid every foreseeable exploit. Experience will be the judge, but so far it seems like 5e is doing a decently good job of that.

I think your assessment of character gen in Champions is off base. The superhero genre is well served by that sort of flexibility. It just requires GM oversight, which is already not a bad thing given the complexity of the character gen system anyway. I'm an advocate of GM involvement in character gen in general, particularly as the number of options in a system increases - and, yes, that includes D&D and Pathfinder.