D&D (2024) Do players really want balance?

[Micah Sweet]

We’ve been doing this for some time. Dropping to 0 applies a stackable -1 penalty to everything the pc does, checks, saves and spell dcs. At 0 each hit causes another penalty. You die when you reach -10 but can act normally in the meantime. Penalties only go away 1 level per long rest.

Works well. Makes PCs not want to drop to 0. Allows dm to keep attacking them without players feeling defenseless. They can dodge, disengage etc. Or act normally if they want. Much harder to kill PCs, but tends to increase time they want to rest so easier to come up with reasonable campaign consequences.

Exactly! That's the point of death spirals: to discourage the PCs from getting into that position, and to better represent injury.

Just curious: is your proposed solution a houserule to 5.5 that you use?

 

[tetrasodium]

Going to snip this down a bit because there is a point that deserves discussion without needing to get watered down and lost in the broader sprawl of things

The issue for those other DMs is they (probably?) don't want to have to use Hard and Deadly encounters all the time just to feel they are challenging the PCs (and players). If you go by the guidelines in the DMG of 6-8 medium/hard encounters, you aren't going to have that feeling of really challenging the PCs, especially with the suggested two short rests as well.

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I think that there are two important issues to address in that with a giant spotlight because the "just crank it harder" crowd have been presenting that idea as if there are no downsides and no complications to doing so.

The easy one to tackle is that the players will quickly notice that all of the encounters are loldeadly and beyond deadly. That in itself leads to an arms race and blame game when things go wrong. When the players suffer setbacks at the claws of what is obviously an inappropriately leveled encounter it's easy for players to look at their GM and blame their gm for it regardless of anything the players could have done better or boneheaded choices they made contributing to the setback.

The arms race plays out with much worse results. Because PCs are designed with the slogfest expectation of 6-8 medium to hard encounters they are almost certainly going to be equipped as a party with the most optimal tools for any given encounter and feel confident in going overboard thanks to neovancian rather than vancian prep. On top of having the most optimal tools for any job you wind up with a scenario where it becomes easy for players to fall into a 5mwd expectation they see as justified because encounters are all deadly and deadly+. Then you can top that all of with the avalanche of disaster that comes with the condensed adventuring day dramatically (dis)favoring some classes over others in ways that damages overall fun at the table for players who didn't pick the winner builds

 

[Bluenose]

No, there's plenty who want their favourite class to be superior.
But I give an absolute guarantee based on observation (Pathfinder fans most recently) that no matter how much people say they don't care about balance or see any value in it, if the class they like playing comes out inferior in an edition of the game they want to play you will see a lot of complaints.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, there's plenty who want their favourite class to be superior.
But I give an absolute guarantee based on observation (Pathfinder fans most recently) that no matter how much people say they don't care about balance or see any value in it, if the class they like playing comes out inferior in an edition of the game they want to play you will see a lot of complaints.

Yes, because it's not about balance, it's about power fantasy, and part of that power fantasy is feeling awesome no matter what the other players are doing.

 

[Vaalingrade]

For a game where attrition is often professed to be important, why has D&D NEVER offered guidance on gauging the challenge of encounters based on said attrition?

 

[Xenolith234]

For a game where attrition is often professed to be important, why has D&D NEVER offered guidance on gauging the challenge of encounters based on said attrition?

Because the designers of 5e don't want it to be a game of attrition, even though it should be.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Because the designers don't want it to be a game of attrition.

If but only.

Actually it's probably still got attrition due to inertia and the desire to convince the older fans not to riot again.

 

[nevin]

In a game where players are measured by Hitpoints gear and stuff that make them harder to hit and let them do more damage how do you get rid of attrition? That's really the elephant in the room. Made worse by long rest and short rest rules that were designed to stop the complaining from players who couldn't use their abilities all the time. Now we have two groups of players. Those who'se DM's dont' let them rest all the time and those Who's DMs do. Effectively those groups play two different games.

 

[Zardnaar]

If but only.

Actually it's probably still got attrition due to inertia and the desire to convince the older fans not to riot again.

Na they went with 6'8 encounters based on polling.

3E and 4E used 4 iirc? Well 3E did.

But 5E classes are comparatively mire power lower level with more generous amounts of healing than older D&D.

4E was explicitly attrition, 5E kinda stumbled into it (but no one really plays it that way).

 

[Vaalingrade]

In a game where players are measured by Hitpoints gear and stuff that make them harder to hit and let them do more damage how do you get rid of attrition?

Encounter-based design.

There would still be per-encounter attrition, but everything resets after each encounter and no one has to care about tracking things throughout the day.