D&D 5E What is balance to you, and why do you care (or don't)?

[Micah Sweet]

"This false stereotype has to have been rooted in something" is not a particularly persuasive argument when many, many people were quite ready to volunteer the facts, and even more were willing to make strident claims despite OPENLY ADMITTING to having never looked at it in the first place.

People were happy to uncritically accept crappy things about 4e, because it replaced 3.5e and they wanted a reason to oppose it. I would know. I was one of those people for a couple years.

Fair enough, but there are plenty of things to oppose about 4e that don't require lying about it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because then being a "Fighter" means nothing.

Being a "Fighter" instead of a "Wizard" or a "Rogue" or a "Ranger" or whatever else is literally choosing to not get things, as opposed to getting things.

Being a fighter means nothing in that situation. Do you think your job should define everything you do?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In certain context yes. But you still have the same basic tools than everyone and can still contribute.

And I'm not against buffing martials, I'm quite in favour of it, but this is not about that. It is about everyone not being good at everything,

I have never.

Not once.

Not even a single time.

Said "everyone should be good at everything."

You are, again, using straw-man arguments rather than actually engaging with the things people say and the things they ask for. This is the second time in this thread alone that you have tarred this position with that completely false and pernicious label. Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop doing that.

I don't want everyone to be good at everything. I want everyone to have something more than the absolute, rock-bottom basics to offer for any situations the game and its designers explicitly call out as vital components of play. Those situations, as the designers repeatedly and explicitly told us, were combat, socialization, and exploration.

it is about the characters being allowed to have different niches and areas of expertise. And by necessity that means that some things are not in your area of expertise and you have to fall back to the basic tools shared by everyone.

It absolutely does not "by necessity" mean that. You have forced a false dichotomy.

It is, in fact, possible to have more than two degrees of competence, besides "literally NOTHING but absolute, rock-bottom, nothing-unique-whatsoever" and "specialist who effortlessly succeeds every single time."

 

[Lanefan]

You're damned right that's what I'm not giving credit to. I'm giving it exactly as much credit as it merits.

Which IMO should be a lot of credit.

D&D characters are to me just ordinary people in the setting who have some cool abilities tacked on; and at times when those cool abilities aren't useful they are - and can always act as - the same ordinary people they always were.

My namesake character is a 10th-level Fighter who can bring some hard-core badass to any party he joins, but when fighting isn't appropriate I still find ways for him to contribute just by speaking or acting as himself the person rather than himself the Fighter.

It ain't rocket science, and it doesn't need game-mechanical support.

I should also point out that sometimes the best contribution a character can make to an in-game scene or situation is to Do Nothing and Stay Quiet. I hit this the other night: our party are engaged in some intricate spying and info-gathering in an off-world city. My PC has been invisible the entire time and nobody outside the party knows she's even there, allowing her to better act as a spy and scout; so when we got into a bunch of negotiations last session my entire contribution was to sit quietly unseen in a corner the whole time with my (un-needed, as it turned out) lie-detection device on high alert.

 

[Lanefan]

Because then being a "Fighter" means nothing.

Being a "Fighter" instead of a "Wizard" or a "Rogue" or a "Ranger" or whatever else is literally choosing to not get things, as opposed to getting things.

If your party is in a city where magic and-or its use is banned then your Wizard becomes an ordinary person (or an outlaw, your choice ). If your party is engaged in a mass melee then your Rogue becomes little better than an ordinary person. If you're trying to sneak somewhere then your tank Warrior-types become ordinary people.

Noe of this means those characters can't contribute anything. They're just mechanically limited for a while.

Not all contributions have to be backed by game mechanics in order to be relevant.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I have never.

Not once.

Not even a single time.

Said "everyone should be good at everything."

You are, again, using straw-man arguments rather than actually engaging with the things people say and the things they ask for. This is the second time in this thread alone that you have tarred this position with that completely false and pernicious label. Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop doing that.

I don't want everyone to be good at everything. I want everyone to have something more than the absolute, rock-bottom basics to offer for any situations the game and its designers explicitly call out as vital components of play. Those situations, as the designers repeatedly and explicitly told us, were combat, socialization, and exploration.


It absolutely does not "by necessity" mean that. You have forced a false dichotomy.

It is, in fact, possible to have more than two degrees of competence, besides "literally NOTHING but absolute, rock-bottom, nothing-unique-whatsoever" and "specialist who effortlessly succeeds every single time."

Not a strawman. You literally seem to want every class to have some feature or other special rule they can use for their benefit in basically any situation. In any situation everyone will have a fancy bespoke tool to use. That is wanting them to be 'good at everything'.

Also, why would we even have skills and ability scores if they're never good enough to be used for anything?

 

[Medic]

I think you just made the same point I was trying to make?

Just offering a different angle, I guess. I was pointing out that being of similar Power Level isn't really any indication of parity between the two of them. What matters is how their points are distributed - or in narrative terms, how their abilities are expressed in the fiction. Batman is the world's greatest detective, while Superman is a quasi-deific extraterrestrial that can juggle cars.

If Batman were PL 15 and Superman were PL 12, I'd wager that Supes would still be pulling more (literal) weight in combat and squaring up against nastier villains in fights, because he's just more inclined toward that, while Batman's time would still be better spent as a sleuth - albeit a smarter, sneakier one with cooler gadgets.

I have no idea how M&M wormed its way into this thread though.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

But you specifically said you didn't want arms race, I.E. the opposition to be scaled to match. So I have hard time seeing how only buffing the PCs but not their challenges wouldn't lead to them winning with ease.

Look at bards/wizards/paladins, then tell me that adding more fighter or monk capability would be an arms race. Boosting the bottom tiers isnt powercreep.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Let's say we have a party with a range of characters in it - all the same level, sure, but a couple of them are only about 5 on the awesome* scale where a couple of others are up around 9. That gives an average awesomeness of 7.

You want to balance these guys out. A laudable goal. But rather than by cutting the 9s to 7 and boosting the 5s to 7 (thus keeping the same party average), you want to simply boost the 5s up to 9s.

One simply isn't an option. They will never nerf their precious casters because they know full well what D&D has cultivated over its lifespan. The best we can hope for is a new martial class that gets cool things.

 

[Lanefan]

One simply isn't an option. They will never nerf their precious casters because they know full well what D&D has cultivated over its lifespan.

Not directly, perhaps, but their indirect way of nerfing them is - and for a while has been - to make the spells themselves less effective and-or useful.

Sadly, this is probably the most boring route they could have taken, but whatever.