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

[Crimson Longinus]

I understand actual drama and actual good writing choices as opposed to cheap shock and the terrible way pop culture has mutated audience expectations.

If you say so.

I also understand the difference between a story you read or watch and a game you interact with and have a different parasocial connection with.

There indeed is difference. But that same difference means we also feel all those other setbacks more personally. You seem to have universalised your preference as a player for your character not to ever die. That is not an opinion shared by everyone. Each character's story will eventually end in one way or another, be it by the campaign coming to close in glorious way, the situation evolving such way the that character decides to depart and do something else, or the campaign fizzling out. A good memorable death if far from the worst way for a character's story to end.

Please stop acting like you know what I know and understand then being way off base and rude with it in hypertypical internet fashion. This is the second time this week.

If someone is being rude, it is not me. You have inability to express your personal preferences without being hyperbolical about it, or universalising your own taste as some sort of general rule, in the process implying that those who disagree are somehow misguided or foolish.

 

[TwoSix]

The intersection comes when the DM, in hopes of keeping the game challenging, also starts optimizing. Boom - now you have an arms race.

I believe the expectation would be that the game provides suitable guidance such that playing relatively skillfully is a requirement to survive the "default" challenge level. If the party is skilled enough that the "default" challenge isn't actually challenging, then the party can move onto a section of the game world that is more challenging than previously, again with the DM given guidance by the game materials.

 

[Maxperson]

They didn't call it magic at all.

Your example, even in the bolded part, says it's not magic.

Wrong. It says not in the traditional sense, which in language means it is non-traditional magic. That's how language works. It then goes on to say that it powers the non-traditional magic in ways other than arcane or divine.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If someone is being rude, it is not me. You have inability to express your personal preferences without being hyperbolical about it, or universalising your own taste as some sort of general rule, in the process implying that those who disagree are somehow misguided or foolish.

I haven't made anything personal at all. You keep doing it. We're done.

 

[tetrasodium]

Character death isn't that uncommon in 5e, particularly once you get into the mid-levels. "Actual character retirement due to death", if the player didn't want that to happen, is pretty much unheard of.

Agreed. I think that one of the consequences of wotc somehow encouraging such a massive misunderstanding also contributes to players feeling like they can not simply say "hey gm can I retire $pc & come in with a $coolNewPC" rather than forcing the GM to kill their PC so it disrupts the session with swordbush seeking & sudden "sir bob is dead". I May not have run 4e much, but I've run every edition back to ad&d2e and 5e was the first one where players seem to regularly resist simply retiring a PC they feel is stale for them even when the GM is offering to work with them.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Wrong. It says not in the traditional sense, which in language means it is non-traditional magic. That's how language works. It then goes on to say that it powers the non-traditional magic in ways other than arcane or divine.

No, it says it isn't magic in a traditional sense before going into an explanation as to how it is beyond mortal capability--which does not denote magic, but rather fantastic.

 

[TwoSix]

Agreed. I think that one of the consequences of wotc somehow encouraging such a massive misunderstanding also contributes to players feeling like they can not simply say "hey gm can I retire $pc & come in with a $coolNewPC" rather than forcing the GM to kill their PC so it disrupts the session with swordbush seeking & sudden "sir bob is dead". I May not have run 4e much, but I've run every edition back to ad&d2e and 5e was the first one where players seem to regularly resist simply retiring a PC they feel is stale for them even when the GM is offering to work with them.

For sure. As someone who likes playing new characters pretty regularly, I think a negative of the "story" orientation of modern D&D is that it subtly discourages players from derailing the story by introducing a new character.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Weird how death somehow pulls the curtains shut on a character's story in a game where a a dead PC can come back from death with revivify, reincarnate, raise dead, resurrection, true resurrection, & no doubt other methods. Players somehow having such a severe misunderstanding is a major flaw in how 5e presents PC risk & death to players.

Sure, though I don't like those existing (apart revivify, which is more like instant battlefield CPR.) I want death to be rare, but if it happens, I want it to actually mean something, I want the survivors be able to process it as a real loss and move on. The revolving door these resurrection methods create is terrible for drama, they make the death not a real death, merely a temporary inconvenience.

 

[Maxperson]

No, it says it isn't magic in a traditional sense before going into an explanation as to how it is beyond mortal capability--which does not denote magic, but rather fantastic.

Supernatural for certain. Non-traditional magic according to their statement. Again, that's how language works. If you call out something as not in the traditional sense, it's automatically that thing in a non-traditional sense.

 

[TwoSix]

Sure, though I don't like those existing (apart revivify, which is more like instant battlefield CPR.) I want death to be rare, but if it happens, I want it to actually mean something, I want the survivors be able to process it as a real loss and move on. The revolving door these resurrection methods create is terrible for drama, they make the death not a real death, merely a temporary inconvenience.

I'm of the opinion that those spells should be in the DMG as special quest boons or magic items, not in the PHB list of spells. They're world-building tools, far more so than part of any class's defining kit of abilities.