D&D General The Problem with Talking About D&D

[pemerton]

if the party faces less encounters, yes, things are easier for them. But, and say it with me now, they gain less experience points.

I don't see how this follows. Because the fewer encounters that makes things easier is fewer per recovery. But XP are earned, per encounter, without reference to the recovery frequency. (There is a contrast here with, say, action points and the daily item limit in 4e D&D.)

So unless a given table is really slow when it comes to book-keeping, having more recoveries will make encounters easier, but will not meaningfully change the rate at which XP are accrued.

Of course, all that is before we get to the issue of asymmetric resource suites meaning that those easier encounters also radically change the intra-party play dynamic.

 

[overgeeked]

But is that not a session zero issue. You get all of that out of the way in the beginning. it is not like you have a different stable of gamers each session.

Some DMs have session zero, some don’t. Some DMs state the game they want to run and anyone who wants to play that way is welcome. And yes, some games feature a rotating cast of players. Every table is different. Though there are some overlapping things across many tables, there’s almost nothing that’s universal.

 

[pemerton]

I have gotten multiple notes form my playtesters that led to me adding a section to the feats that says 'Feats provide a means for a character to perform certain actions in a reliable or repeatable way. Their presence does not mean characters without the feat are unable to take that action ever. Please use the ad hoc rules to adjudicate reasonable uses of the actions feats simulate.'

Then they asked for a definition of 'reasonable uses'.

I don't know what system you are playtesting, but if it resembles 3E, 4e or 5e D&D in the way that feats open up the space of action declarations then my sympathy is with your playtesters. Because the mathematics, and hence mathematical balance, of those games is not trivial!

Now maybe your ad hoc rules are comprehensive in the fashion of 4e's p 42 supplement by a discussion of the imposition of conditions (which was a bit of a gap in p 42). In which case my gratuitous drafting advice would be to delete the word "reasonable", as you can just use the ad hoc rules to adjudicate use of the actions in question, relying on the rules themselves to ensure reasonableness.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Now maybe your ad hoc rules are comprehensive in the fashion of 4e's p 42 supplement by a discussion of the imposition of conditions (which was a bit of a gap in p 42).

They're modeled on 42, but I haven't heard about the condition issue. Please elaborate.

In which case my gratuitous drafting advice would be to delete the word "reasonable", as you can just use the ad hoc rules to adjudicate use of the actions in question, relying on the rules themselves to ensure reasonableness.

Believe me, despite the internet somehow not disabusing me of these notions, the playtesting process has proven that there are no reasonable gamers.

Two groups left off the starting airship of the sample adventure trying to loot hanggliders off bandits that are explicitly and readily for sail on said airship. You might think they're prohibitively expensive for level 1 characters. They are 10gp and the adventure gives you 25gp to spend how you want before the bandits hit the ship.

 

[James Gasik]

I don't see how this follows. Because the fewer encounters that makes things easier is fewer per recovery. But XP are earned, per encounter, without reference to the recovery frequency. (There is a contrast here with, say, action points and the daily item limit in 4e D&D.)

So unless a given table is really slow when it comes to book-keeping, having more recoveries will make encounters easier, but will not meaningfully change the rate at which XP are accrued.

Of course, all that is before we get to the issue of asymmetric resource suites meaning that those easier encounters also radically change the intra-party play dynamic.

Not in game time, real world time. If your session consists of 4 encounters and the xp budget is lower than the 6-8 encounter xp budget, how many sessions will it take to get you level up changes.

Sure, you could decide to dump the budget of 8 encounters into 4, but that now you need a different rest schedule or you're going to make the game significantly harder and probably kill the player characters.

 

[pemerton]

They're modeled on 42, but I haven't heard about the condition issue. Please elaborate.

The generic consequence of a successful combat action declaration in 4e D&D is damage + effect. Both are scaled by level - eg domination is higher level than stun is higher level than daze - and there are internal trade-offs between them - eg a power that does only damage will do more damage than one of the same level and frequency that also pushes, or slows, or dazes. At the limits of these trade-offs are some powers (typically magic ones) that do only effects.

Page 42 gives tables for the damage-by-level. (We can query how well the tables match the actual experience of gameplay, how they work on player-side vs GM/NPC side given that the maths of those two sides is structured quite differently, etc, but let's put all that to one side.)

Page 42 doesn't give a scale of conditions-by-level, nor any advice on the damage-effect trade-off. And that despite the actual worked example - pushing an ogre into a brazier (I think it is?) - includes an effect, namely, some forced movement.

A further aspect that p 42 doesn't touch on at all is action economy - eg when is a minor action to impose an effect per p 42 reasonably balanced?

The late wrecan, who was a value member of the 4e community on these boards and I believe also on the WotC boards (but I didn't use them much) wrote an article/blog that gave advice to plug this gap: it correlated various effects/conditions, and action economy costs, per level. I can't remember if it also addressed the damage/effect trade-off.

Anyway, if most of the above was all obvious already I'm sorry for the tedious detail. It's just something that some of us who played a lot of 4e back in the day, and posted about it on these boards, had thought a bit about.

 

[pemerton]

Not in game time, real world time. If your session consists of 4 encounters and the xp budget is lower than the 6-8 encounter xp budget, how many sessions will it take to get you level up changes.

I'm talking about real world time too. If you have enough time per session for 8 encounters, but run 4 encounters per rest, then you will have a rest in the middle of each session. Same number of XP per session, but easier encounters.

If you substitute XP-earning play for non-XP earning play then of course that will reduce levelling-per-session, but (i) that's a weird artefact of legacy XP rules that once rewarded the focus of play but under this hypothesis no longer would do so (4e D&D addressed this issue by changing the XP rules to respond to the full gamut of play, but 5e seems to have reverted), and (ii) the same thing could happen without changing the rest frequency - you could have 4 encounters per session with all the non-XP-earning stuff between them, and have a long rest at the end of every second session.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The late wrecan, who was a value member of the 4e community on these boards and I believe also on the WotC boards (but I didn't use them much)

He very much was and is missed.

Anyway, if most of the above was all obvious already I'm sorry for the tedious detail. It's just something that some of us who played a lot of 4e back in the day, and posted about it on these boards, had thought a bit about.

No, I really a appreciate it. And it only seems obvious after the fact. I'm looking from the top down, see the fact that monsters have damage scaling for if they have adders, but never realized ad hoc actions, which are not player-facing, don't.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Some DMs have session zero, some don’t. Some DMs state the game they want to run and anyone who wants to play that way is welcome. And yes, some games feature a rotating cast of players. Every table is different. Though there are some overlapping things across many tables, there’s almost nothing that’s universal.

Are you saying that because of the diversity of gaming circumstances, the RAW has to give permission to all possible playstyles?

 

[James Gasik]

I'm talking about real world time too. If you have enough time per session for 8 encounters, but run 4 encounters per rest, then you will have a rest in the middle of each session. Same number of XP per session, but easier encounters.

If you substitute XP-earning play for non-XP earning play then of course that will reduce levelling-per-session, but (i) that's a weird artefact of legacy XP rules that once rewarded the focus of play but under this hypothesis no longer would do so (4e D&D addressed this issue by changing the XP rules to respond to the full gamut of play, but 5e seems to have reverted), and (ii) the same thing could happen without changing the rest frequency - you could have 4 encounters per session with all the non-XP-earning stuff between them, and have a long rest at the end of every second session.

Hm. Well I guess you have a point. My point of view is, people say the game is broken unless you constantly push the player characters to the limit.

To which I intended to say, "but if you don't, it's ok, because they will probably level slower". Obviously I need to level up my communication skills. Since you know, those aging bonuses I'm supposed to have gotten to make me smarter/wiser/more persuasive don't seem to be kicking in.