D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[Tony Vargas]

If that were the case, there would be very few social features, and they would be pretty useless.

That was the case in the TSR era. You got a CHA bonus to a very random/arbitrary "reaction roll," and that was the end of it, from there on it was you trying to impress your GM with your speachify'n ways...

 

[Scribe]

Your choice of balance is utterly useless as a balancing mechanism for my preferences.

I mean perhaps a tad harsh, but thats why my initial (I think) post in the topic stated "For a given definition of balance."

This takes into consideration.

The Game Design.
The Class Design.
The Adventure Design.
The DM considerations.
The Player considerations.

Its not some clear cut thing, unless one wishes to push an extremely sterile definition of balance that 1 = 1.

Note: I'm not saying 5e, or Wizards, is particularly great at balance. For ANY definition of balance.

For 5e specifically, I've come to the point where I barely consider it at all, its simply too vast a market, too many different views, and every table is different. Balancing for that? Impossible, with how 5e is designed.

 

[overgeeked]

I mean perhaps a tad harsh, but thats why my initial (I think) post in the topic stated "For a given definition of balance."

This takes into consideration.

The Game Design.
The Class Design.
The Adventure Design.
The DM considerations.
The Player considerations.

Some of those things simply cannot be balanced, like the DM and players. They're not really a part of the equation other than as variables you literally cannot account for.

Its not some clear cut thing, unless one wishes to push an extremely sterile definition of balance that 1 = 1.

Note: I'm not saying 5e, or Wizards, is particularly great at balance. For ANY definition of balance.

For 5e specifically, I've come to the point where I barely consider it at all, its simply too vast a market, too many different views, and every table is different. Balancing for that? Impossible, with how 5e is designed.

It's one of those things where TTRPG players take a mole hill and make a mountain range out of it. Video games have managed to have balance (more or less) for decades. It's nowhere near as hard as we seem to think it is.

 

[Scribe]

Video games have managed to have balance (more or less) for decades. It's nowhere near as hard as we seem to think it is.

I don't think this is clear cut either. Tier lists exist for a reason.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've seen video-game style Tier lists (A,B,C,D,S,SS?) and they seem more like rankings or popularity contests than the 3.5 (1,2,3...) Class Tier lists, which seemed a rather cogent ranking of class versatility/power. In particular, restricting your players to one 3.5 Tier gave them a somewhat fair set of choices.

 

[Scribe]

I've seen video-game style Tier lists (A,B,C,D,S,SS?) and they seem more like rankings or popularity contests than the 3.5 (1,2,3...) Class Tier lists, which seemed a rather cogent ranking of class versatility/power. In particular, restricting your players to one 3.5 Tier gave them a somewhat fair set of choices.

Some are. Some are quite clearly power rankings, and it's exceedingly clear for those playing.

I mean it's a great discussion but good luck holding it lol.

Is a random party of 4 balanced against an optimized party of 4? What happens when we change a class, or remove all healing classes? Casters? Ranged?

For a definition...

 

[SteveC]

I've seen video-game style Tier lists (A,B,C,D,S,SS?) and they seem more like rankings or popularity contests than the 3.5 (1,2,3...) Class Tier lists, which seemed a rather cogent ranking of class versatility/power. In particular, restricting your players to one 3.5 Tier gave them a somewhat fair set of choices.

I recently went through Treantmonk's video series on class/subclass evaluation as part of giving advice for my group on characters. I think his stuff is very thorough, and he also talks about why he ranks things the way he does. I think this is a good (and thorough) way to rank things. Especially if you're doing patching at work and suddenly have a lot of time where you're waiting on things to finish (ahem...)

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've heard bad things about Treantmonk's judgement w/r/to 5e, which I found odd, since I remember him being pretty on the ball before 5e.
I really don't care for videos, tho. Any text summaries?

 

[SteveC]

I've heard bad things about Treantmonk's judgement w/r/to 5e, which I found odd, since I remember him being pretty on the ball before 5e.
I really don't care for videos, tho. Any text summaries?

Here's an older Reddit thread with summaries of the rankings. I don't think that will be as useful as the discussion he has about why he made a particular choice. Here's a link for you. There is a mountain of discussion about his ratings on different boards/reddit threads. Hope you find it useful. I don't always agree with what he says, but it always gives me something to think about.

 

[FrozenNorth]

That was the case in the TSR era. You got a CHA bonus to a very random/arbitrary "reaction roll," and that was the end of it, from there on it was you trying to impress your GM with your speachify'n ways...

Sure, but in the TSR days, they certainly weren’t talking about a “social pillar”.