D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[Tony Vargas]

But why would a Rogue even apply Expertise to Athletics, it's one of the less useful skills.
I guess, if you wanted to emulate the wall-crawling of the original Thief class, and couldn't get any sort of access to spider climb...

 

[Oofta]

You were suggesting that it didn’t matter that the fighter couldn’t really contribute in social situations because there was an exploration situation where he could shine… except he could be pretty easily outshone in that situation too, by a Rogue (or Bard) with expertise in Athletics.

In a game without feats, there is literally nothing a fighter could do that can compete with a Rogue with expertise in Athletics.

Then it's a good thing D&D is a cooperative game and not a competition.

 

[Minigiant]

The longer an edition lasts the more people get tired of it. They learn the ins and outs and see the defects they overlooked early on. There's also the atomic bomb that dropped back in January, the OGL catastrophe. That soured a lot of fans on WotC and 5E.

Indeed.

That's one this you constantly hear denial of. The OGL fails o opened the floodgate of people who were used to be hardened 5e defenders to air all their grievances.

The OGL fiasco actually got a lot of people to relook at 4e. Then they came back to 5e complaining why 4e class, races, and powers were not in 5e.

 

[overgeeked]

Indeed.

That's one this you constantly hear denial of. The OGL fails o opened the floodgate of people who were used to be hardened 5e defenders to air all their grievances.

The OGL fiasco actually got a lot of people to relook at 4e. Then they came back to 5e complaining why 4e class, races, and powers were not in 5e.

Sure. But there’s also a lot of 4E fans who have been singing its praised since the height of the Edition Wars. There’s no denying 4E is a well-designed game. It’s tight, it works, it delivers what it promised. It just wasn’t what enough long-time D&D fans wanted at the time.

 

[FrozenNorth]

How are the surveys any more representative of the player base than D&D Beyond is? Likely both are a small fraction.

It seems to me that the human fighter was the most played race/class for as long as this has been measured: so not only 5e, but 4e and 3.5e as well.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that these were wildly different implementations of the fighter class. This suggests that people are not drawn to the class because of its implementation, but for other reasons.

Meanwhile, survey information about the 5e fighter suggesting people are dissatisfied with it does suggest an implementation issue.

TLDR: whether or not a race/class is popular doesn’t mean the implementation is good, particular if that combo seems to be popular regardless of implementation. In such a case, satisfaction surveys are pretty relevant.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Disregarding of course the fact that, in the second case, one attack with advantage is almost always worse than two attacks without it. Help is about option 1, and basically has no restrictions other than time.

The second use of Help is a pretty commonly-used exploit: the wizard’s owl familiar flies in, distracts the target, than flies out again (no opportunity attack because Flyby).

 

[Tony Vargas]

OK, people have been saying "cooperative game" like it absolves a game from needing to be balanced.

In a cooperative game, you don't win or lose individually, it's all or nothing, everybody wins or loses based on the sum of their efforts.
D&D is a cooperative game. OK, with the exception that individual characters can very much lose by, y'know, dying, or arguably "win" by getting the best magic items or whatever.
Early D&D could be more of a hybrid, rivals cooperating to survive, but still competing for certain things.

But, modern D&D, yeah, meant to be cooperative.

Thing is, individual accomplishment in a competitive game - the point and a big part the game - is simply winning. The most important thing in a competitive game is thus fairness - everyone has an equal opportunity to win if they can bring the skill & luck. Not so much balance, what does it matter if some choices are better than others, if you all have access to the same choices, you can each pick the best ones and have a fair competition. Knowing which ones are best? Player skill!, also part of the competition.

But, in a cooperative game, the gauge of accomplishment, the point and a big part of the game is contributing. And it's not just for the fun & feelz of each individual, it's for the win, too. If you under-contribute, you're dead weight, do so too badly, you'll lose the game for everyone.
Balance is thus critical for a good cooperative game. All the moreso if part of the idea is a heterogenous team that each steps up and contributes differently, rather than just a collection of best classes with the maximum number of best spells at the ready.

 

[Minigiant]

Sure. But there’s also a lot of 4E fans who have been singing its praised since the height of the Edition Wars. There’s no denying 4E is a well-designed game. It’s tight, it works, it delivers what it promised. It just wasn’t what enough long-time D&D fans wanted at the time.

And that all I was saying l. The 5e designers favored the pre4e fans' fantasy over the 4e fans. It was never about popularity. It's that they prioritized one over the other.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And that all I was saying l. The 5e designers favored the pre4e fans' fantasy over the 4e fans. It was never about popularity. It's that they prioritized one over the other.

Of course it was about popularity. If 4e design had been more popular, it wouldn't have been scrapped.

 

[overgeeked]

OK, people have been saying "cooperative game" like it absolves a game from needing to be balanced.

Balance is thus critical for a good cooperative game.

Exactly. Cooperative games still need balance. Here’s one amazing option and four terrible options. Have fun playing the terrible options, suckers.