D&D 5E The Fighter/Martial Problem (In Depth Ponderings)

[Pedantic]

Sorry, not my intent. The point was exactly that there's an incentive to make the best possible choices whether the game is cooperative or competitive, the difference is that bad choices, in a competitive game, will lead to you losing, which is to bad for you, but fine for the player that wins - depending on the player, it might be annoying due to the lack of challenge, or not, if it's just all about winning for them. Avoiding bad choices is part of the challenge, and making better choices than the next player is part of what winning is measuring.
In a cooperative game, bad choices hurt all the players, and making a better choice than the next guy is not necessarily going to help you win, while everyone making the best choices will help you win.

Yeah, my point is that this is not on the cooperative/competitive axis at all. You're asking a question about difficulty and/or the floors and ceilings on skilled play. Setting the balance of impact between player actions over the underlying difficulty of the game, the "viable" part of your formulation, affects the end state of the game considerably.

I am generally of the opinion the reward for bad play should be knowledge of how to play better in future, delivered by loss, and that principle does not change if victory is evaluated as individuals or in a group, though it becomes harder to evaluate the relative impact of each decision when you spread them out amongst more people. I do know some people who play cooperative games with players of varying engagement levels essentially as an extra challenge. If you can't rely on your team to consistently make the best choices, can you still win?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, my point is that this is not on the cooperative/competitive axis at all. You're asking a question about difficulty and/or the floors and ceilings on skilled play. Setting the balance of impact between player actions over the underlying difficulty of the game, the "viable" part of your formulation, affects the end state of the game considerably.

I see. In D&D, specifically, difficulty can be set - or fudged - by the DM, so it's a shifting thing to gauge against, compared to directly evaluating the choices presented to players against eachother.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Second it assumes that more options are inherently better. I disagree. More options just mean more complexity.

we're not asking for more options or more complexity, we're asking for the all the options we already have to be more equally viable with each other.

I care about "Does the person playing the character have fun".

some people's fun comes from being able to be as mechanically effective as everyone else at the table without being forced into/out of picking certain classes/builds/themes to achieve that.

 

[Oofta]

we're not asking for more options or more complexity, we're asking for the all the options we already have to be more equally viable with each other.

some people's fun comes from being able to be as mechanically effective as everyone else at the table without being forced into/out of picking certain classes/builds/themes to achieve that.

How effective and helpful to overall team goals in my experience relies as much or more on the player as it does on the class. But the whole crux of a certain line of argument has been more options = better balance = better game. I simply disagree. Different classes allow people to take on different roles.

If you don't like the role a class presents, play a different class.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But the whole crux of a certain line of argument has been more options = better balance = better game. I simply disagree. Different classes allow people to take on different roles.

More meaningful/viable choices is how I've been defining better balance, which does make it possible for a game to be better, sure.
Different classes allowing players to choose different roles in which to contribute to the success of the party, is an example of that.
Imbalanced classes, OTOH, may make some roles inaccessible, or make specializing in a role via one class choice moot when alternatives fils that role better and/or fill that role and more besides.

In that scenario your effectiveness depends on the choice you make. That makes it a meaningful choice on that axis. That you may know the correct answer and thus can always choose the most effective choice might make it an uninteresting choice, but it’s still a choice that has meaning in relation to effectiveness.

In a meaningful choice, there's something about each option that makes it a real alternative to the others. If effectiveness is the only axis you make that decision on, then the most effective choice is the only choice, and not a meaningful choice, nor even a choice, at all. Likewise, a choice made in ignorance isn't meaningful, so just obfuscating effectiveness (making the bad choices enticing traps), doesn't make them meaningful either.

I don't think meaningful really applies....

Sure. I think what you are trying to claim is that people don’t only find meaning in effectiveness. And I agree. I’m just asserting that they also find meaning in effectiveness - which perfect asymmetric balance around effectiveness would undermine.

The way I look at it, effectiveness is more about viability. Meaningful gets pretty subjective, viability is more quantitative, effectiveness can be, too. Choices that are close to the same effectiveness may or may not be meaningful for other reasons. Choices that are lacking in effectiveness become non-viable.

I'm not sure what "perfect asymmetric balance" would even mean? Generally, asymmetric balance constricts the range of play, as each choice's area of high and low performance must be brought into play in the specific proportion that 'balances' them.

 

[CreamCloud0]

How effective and helpful to overall team goals in my experience relies as much or more on the player as it does on the class. But the whole crux of a certain line of argument has been more options = better balance = better game. I simply disagree. Different classes allow people to take on different roles.

If you don't like the role a class presents, play a different class.

no, our argument has been more viable options = better balance = better game, but some classes are designed to be the class to perform a role in a certain way and are still awful at performing it(or the role itself doesn't contribute much), so people who like the idea of the role want to perform that role in that way get lumped with a class that lags behind the rest of the group in effectiveness, different classes performing different roles doesn't matter when the class you have is the one to perform the role you want and is mechanically awful at doing it.

 

[Oofta]

no, our argument has been more viable options = better balance = better game, but some classes are designed to be the class to perform a role in a certain way and are still awful at performing it(or the role itself doesn't contribute much), so people who like the idea of the role want to perform that role in that way get lumped with a class that lags behind the rest of the group in effectiveness, different classes performing different roles doesn't matter when the class you have is the one to perform the role you want and is mechanically awful at doing it.

Every class has viable options. They just aren't the options you personally want.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Every class has viable options. They just aren't the options you personally want.

what's wrong with wanting all options a class provides to be viable? and i'm not talking about 'well technically you could build a tanky martial sorcerer with feats and species choice and stat distribution', i mean stuff like how beastmaster ranger or 5 elements monk which are pretty core class themes but which are just executed totally ineffectively.

 

[FrogReaver]

what's wrong with wanting all options a class provides to be viable? and i'm not talking about 'well technically you could build a tanky martial sorcerer with feats and species choice and stat distribution', i mean stuff like how beastmaster ranger or 5 elements monk which are pretty core class themes but which are just executed totally ineffectively.

You really want to be able to make a single classed fighter viable that dumps str, con and dex and picks up int, Wis, cha?

I don’t think that should be a viable option.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't think the ability to willfully build a bad character ever disappears from any TTRPG, that, y'know, lets you build your character.