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

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Without ever explaining what that means or how that affects the game.

"
In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress.

For each character in the party, use the Adventuring Day XP table to estimate how much XP that character is expected to earn in a day. Add together the values of all party members to get a total for the party's adventuring day. This provides a rough estimate of the adjusted XP value for encounters the party can handle before the characters will need to take a long rest.
...
In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day.
"

DMG, pg 84

 

[Steampunkette]

Y'all make me wanna make a "Short Rest" game where attrition isn't a big part of the gameplay loop and it's instead built around the 5 minute adventuring day...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, but anyone who wants pure actor stance is always going to be disappointed by D&D-alike roleplaying games. It would be like asking for actor-stance play in OD&D, which is aggressively, overtly pawn-stance.

D&D-alike games have had varying degrees of actor stance over the years. No one's asking for pure, but some of us are asking for more than WotC's current version of 5e assumes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The system does not make it the default. Do you know how hard it is to stack the deck that precisely with CR being what it is?

The system makes it harder to TPK, for sure, since if people survive the encounter they can get the others back, or if someone drops to 0hp you can get them back up if someone doesn't beat on the body and you've got healing magic on hand.

And no. It's not meant to be a caricature of what people are saying. It's meant to present a broad spectrum of storytelling and gameplay between running the game entirely off the dice rolls to create the story at one end, and running the game with minimal dice impact beyond facilitating the story. I also specifically note how I've played all the way in between.

You know what I find helps with that? Not having the lair of an adult red dragon within walking distance.

Eh. I find this characterization to be poor. If the chance of death is remote and you want it to be higher, change the deck. Increase the encounter rating, play tactically, and murder your players. I've done that, too.

Particularly in horror games.

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If you're doing your 6-8 encounters per day (I surely don't) then mostly medium and a few hard is going to challenge most newbie players.

If you're running closer to 2-4 encounters a day, throw the hard and deadlies. Your players have a limited number of "Strong" resources and a larger number of "Weaker" resources so they can get through a bunch of encounters. But if you're only doing a few (like most) you need to stack the deck against the players so they're dropping their big bombs just to get by, and have less of the 'good stuff' for the next big encounter.

Hell, if you're playing with a group of skilled long-term players with strong tactical mindsets you might need to just -start- on Hard and Deadlies in order to challenge them. But there's always room for more danger if you need it.

Yeah, except I did mention it, specifically, in that post you quoted. And noted that I've played games that run the gamut. And specifically noted that I "have run games" with 0 chance of death, not that I only run games with 0 chance of death.

But you also presented an extreme view as the preference of your rhetorical opponents, which it is not. That's my objection.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Are you familiar with the idea that people that played OD&D modified and tweaked it heavily to be the game they wanted? Which included drastically cutting down on random death in our case?

Did all people do this? You have to acknowledge the baseline (intended gameplay in this case) first if you want to argue fairly.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The system does not make it the default. Do you know how hard it is to stack the deck that precisely with CR being what it is?

The system makes it harder to TPK, for sure, since if people survive the encounter they can get the others back, or if someone drops to 0hp you can get them back up if someone doesn't beat on the body and you've got healing magic on hand.

And no. It's not meant to be a caricature of what people are saying. It's meant to present a broad spectrum of storytelling and gameplay between running the game entirely off the dice rolls to create the story at one end, and running the game with minimal dice impact beyond facilitating the story. I also specifically note how I've played all the way in between.

You know what I find helps with that? Not having the lair of an adult red dragon within walking distance.

Eh. I find this characterization to be poor. If the chance of death is remote and you want it to be higher, change the deck. Increase the encounter rating, play tactically, and murder your players. I've done that, too.

Particularly in horror games.

View attachment 382642
If you're doing your 6-8 encounters per day (I surely don't) then mostly medium and a few hard is going to challenge most newbie players.

If you're running closer to 2-4 encounters a day, throw the hard and deadlies. Your players have a limited number of "Strong" resources and a larger number of "Weaker" resources so they can get through a bunch of encounters. But if you're only doing a few (like most) you need to stack the deck against the players so they're dropping their big bombs just to get by, and have less of the 'good stuff' for the next big encounter.

Hell, if you're playing with a group of skilled long-term players with strong tactical mindsets you might need to just -start- on Hard and Deadlies in order to challenge them. But there's always room for more danger if you need it.

Yeah, except I did mention it, specifically, in that post you quoted. And noted that I've played games that run the gamut. And specifically noted that I "have run games" with 0 chance of death, not that I only run games with 0 chance of death.

Pre 4e D&D wasn't a horror game, but it still assumed a higher danger level for PCs than more recent WotC offerings.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I think kids can understand the concept of missing the bus.

I think kids understand the permanency and story-ruining power of death less.

Is this where we start ranting about “kids these days”?

I tell you, I was babysitting my 18-month old nephew and he had no concept of object permanence!

 

[Maxperson]

I want to remove Darkvision from most ancestries and add Concentration to the Light spell to balance out the efficacy of it, and make the dark threatening again. I know for certain that my players will balk against this because it's weakening them. Is this such a significant balance change that it's really a problem? I don't believe so.

I had a similar reaction when I brought up Gritty Realism so that I could stretch encounters out over a week instead of a single day. It doesn't actually impact them much at all, just makes things more realistic.

Just play darkvision as written and they will stop relying on it. The disadvantage to all visual perception rolls is a HUGE penalty. After the third or fourth time in a short period that they fail to see a threat because of the disadvantage, they will start using light. Hell, it doesn't even have to be threats. If there's something in a room that is good or interesting and you ask for perception checks at disadvantage because of the darkvision, that's a pretty powerful incentive not to use it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Write the foundation for the fresh-faced new players.

Write the supplements for the old hands. (The MMO equivalent would be "write the raids for old hands", generally speaking.)

Any particular reason to believe they're going to do that? There's not much in WotC 5e to this point that feels written for experienced players to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In the world of D&D they might - just as barbarians get to choose when they get really angry, battle masters get to choose when they psych out a foe, all characters (or at least the protagonists) get to choose how courageous they are, etc. It's hardly a world in which will and drive operate randomly!

EDIT: I see that another poster beat me to my point:

None of those require metacurrency to work (I really don't like metacurrency), and none of them matter as much as whether or not you die.

The parts of life that are random I want to be so as much as possible. Obviously that's not as much as real life, but it seems to be quite a bit more than is your preference.