D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Lanefan]

IMO, the disconnect is clearly either in the pitch, or in the thing being pitched. It's not the game's fault that your current and/or prospective players don't bite for any idea--regardless of whether it is easy or hard, light entertainment or ultra-serious, casual or hardcore. That doesn't necessarily mean it's your fault either (though I would argue that most campaign premises have some interested people, so if you genuinely come up totally empty that suggests there's a flaw in the pitch technique being used.) It just means there's a disconnect.

Trying to leverage any of that into, "And thus the system should be innately biased to the maximum difficulty, that way I never have to persuade anyone" is innately ridiculous.

The second paragraph talks about things unrelated to the first. The pitching of a pig product (or campaign) has nothing to do with the intended difficulty of said campaign and more to do with the known shortcomings of that product (or game system) which you have to pitch anyway.

For example, if somebody double-dog-dared me to run a 5e (or more extreme, 4e) game and I took them up on that dare, I'd then have to pitch that game to people in our potential-player crew and try to convince them to buy in to it even though I-as-the-pitchman know the problems I am (and, probably, they are) going to have with it. And yes, that's going to negatively affect my pitch; fact of life.

Same as when I sold wireless phones for a living: I sometimes had to pitch and sell phones I knew to be garbage simply because I had a quota to meet for that model. And yeah, it's not a good feeling; and whenever I could I'd steer people to models I knew to be solid and reliable and worth the money.

Your argument, as I have understood it, is as follows.

1. My players will not listen to my requests to play in an extreme-difficulty campaign, or at least are intensely resistant.
2. They will not listen (or are resistant) because they are aware that the system does not mandate non-extreme difficulty.
3. Hence, the game should have extreme difficulty as its default value, that way I don't have to convince anyone of anything.

Not quite.

My argument goes more like:

1. If the rules are going to be changed, players in general hugely prefer those rules being changed in their (or their characters') favour over those rules being changed in their disfavour.
2. Most DMs discuss potential rule changes with their players ahead of time and all DMs have to inform their players of the changes once made.
3. Changing the rules in the players (or PCs') favour makes those discussions immensely easier.
4. To be changed in the players' favour the rules have to be in the players' disfavour to being with. Hence, in order to make life easier on the DMs, default the design to high difficulty and leave it to individual DMs to ease it off, either via options in the DMG or outright houserule.

hat absolutely is not the only nor even the primary usage of the word. I'm sorry that that has been your experience, but it simply isn't representative. Flatly.

Any time you talk with your significant other and agree on a place to eat that wasn't your personal first choice, and also wasn't their personal first choice, that is automatically a compromise. Presumably, you and your SO (I believe you've mentioned that you're married? Please correct me if I'm wrong) would have a delightful time at this third-option restaurant that is neither your first choice nor theirs. Does this mean both of you were "dissatsified" with that restaurant? I don't really see how that could be the case.

We're a lot more easygoing than that. Odds are high we'd go to one of the "first choices" on the understanding that the other of us gets to pick next time.

That, and the restaurant case falls under "decision that has to be made right now" on the assumption we don't want to go home hungry.

A more common case IME would be, to use a gaming example, where two mutually-incompatible changes to a rule have been proposed and each has support from some of the table but not all. The fairly obvious compromise is to leave the rule as is and adopt neither change, but hard experience tells me to be cynical: whoever says "let's compromise by leaving it as is" (usually someone who realizes their position is currently the less-supported) is in fact punting the discussion down the road to provide time to lobby their opponents into changing their minds...or lobby enough of them at least that if it ever comes to a vote they'll win.

As I don't play the lobbying game, I've lost a lot of these over the years.

And so I've learned the hard way: when someone says "compromise" that's a huge red flag screaming settle it once, settle it now, and shut it down.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

giving something up that you want doesn't automatically rocket you to 'being unhappy',

As @ezo said, I think the issue is, we have different understandings of what "unhappy" means. To me, it means "not happy". I.e. neutral, or "fine". To you it seems to mean "miserable".

 

[ezo]

You could be right, emotion words tend to vary with culture. I would consider “happy” as meaning “getting everything you want”. Thus “unhappy” means anything less than that. Thus it is possible to be unhappy with a situation but still be satisfied.

“Unhappy” is the normal state of existence for most people, it’s not the same as sad or miserable or angry. Happy is a special state of emotion that people only experience occasionally.

If you ask someone how they feel, they will probably say “I’m fine”. Fine means the same as unhappy.

This is getting more into philosophy than I care to, but I agree with the bolded sentences.

I've found that as I get older (56) I am more willing to try (or retry) things I had come to believe I did not like. Such as chillies and blue cheese.

In order words, things you think you might like now? Good, maybe you will. But are you trying things you know you won't?

this is a wild perspective to me, i have never known 'fine' to have been anything equivalent to 'unhappy', i know that people when unhappy may say 'i'm fine' but they don't actually mean that, 'i'm fine' is a deflection, a white lie intended to bypass whatever conversation they would spawn if they actually said what they're really feeling, 'i'm fine' isn't actually being used to mean 'i'm fine', also note 'i'm good' and probably a few other phrases also get used in much the same way, 'i'm good' also doesn't mean 'i'm unhappy'

fine is on the positive side of neutral in my experience.

if i don't get my first choice i may not be AS happy as if i got my first choice, but that by no means means that i will be actively unhappy as a result of getting my second choice because my second choice is still one of my preferred choices, just not my first one. so if both of us can be moderately happy from us both getting our second choices that's still a compromise, a good compromise from where either way one of us is very happy and the other is unhappy.

Yep. Between happy and unhappy there is contentment or satisfied, and probably a few other stages of emotion IMO.

To you it seems to mean "miserable".

I don't think that is what @CreamCloud0 is saying at all. Being "less than happy" doesn't make you miserable.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't think that is what @CreamCloud0 is saying at all. Being "less than happy" doesn't make you miserable.

That's what I'm saying. To me, "unhappy" means "less than happy". Par, as they would say in golf. "Sad" is worse, and "miserable" is worse than that.

In order words, things you think you might like now? Good, maybe you will. But are you trying things you know you won't?

There is a difference between "believe" and "know". In the past, I have avoided a lot of things I believed I didn't like, but these days it's been so long that I don't know anything. The test need to be repeated.

 

[BrokenTwin]

As @ezo said, I think the issue is, we have different understandings of what "unhappy" means. To me, it means "not happy". I.e. neutral, or "fine". To you it seems to mean "miserable".

So, similarly, one issue I have with the English language (to be clear, I say this as someone whose first and only language is English) is that, where I'm from, there's no real word for the middle group between "like" and "dislike". The former is positive, the latter is negative, but there's no real neutral word in the set (in my area, we tend to use "meh", which my spellchecker refuses to acknowledge is a word).

Where I'm from, both unhappy and not happy imply a negative emotional mindset, not a neutral one. I would hazard a guess that the people you've been debating with would say similar. " Not happy" can be used neutrally in context, but I've never heard unhappy used neutrally IRL.

Edit: Eh, between me starting to write and posting a few others said the same thing. Did not intend to dogpile, feel free to ignore.

 

[AlViking]

giving something up that you want doesn't automatically rocket you to 'being unhappy', you may give up something you want and be less happy but still happy with the result, but a compromise where both parties are still happy is still a compromise if they've both given up something to get to that point, a compromise where both parties are still happy is the GOAL of compromising.

Not getting exactly what they want leading them to being dissatisfied would seem to explain certain people.

 

[CreamCloud0]

As @ezo said, I think the issue is, we have different understandings of what "unhappy" means. To me, it means "not happy". I.e. neutral, or "fine". To you it seems to mean "miserable".

neither 'unhappy' and 'not happy' are as extreme as 'miserable' but they're both beyond the point of neutrality for me, indicating negative satisfaction with a situation.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For a long time he was also the prime damage dealer.

I mean, with respect to them, this says a lot about the other players and their PCs!

Either they rolled badly on their stats (but you say they didn't), or a big part of the issue here was "One optimized PC in a group full of people who aren't even slightly trying to be efficient" (RK being a very good subclass is of course part of optimization, I don't dismiss that). The only other one I know is the AT/BM, which is anti-optimized for sure, and who presumably did pretty weak levels of damage and also couldn't CC or tank or heal or buff really.

This can be a real issue - even without exceptional subclasses in the mix, I've played in groups where that was going on, and with some games it just doesn't matter, and others it makes the game pretty annoying because challenging the group requires chucking stuff that can cause the optimized PC problems at them, and the other PCs are pretty useless.

I feel like this doesn't get talked about quite enough - 5E has much narrower optimization ranges than say 3E (this is a good thing), but still, a weaker class or non-synergistic multiclass combo paired with mediocre or sub-par subclasses, and a player making design decisions (ASIs, Feats, weapon/spell choice, etc.) can lead to some pretty vast gaps.

Not really... his part of the team was being the tank. Unfortunately for the others, when creatures had a hard time hitting him or taking him down, they focused on everyone else who was more "squishy" (much to their regrets).

Skill issue.

He wasn't making himself enough of a problem if that was happening!

Also his decision to make himself nigh-invulnerable rather than more of a tactical threat is another skill issue. He took Toughness (a Feat he clearly did not need, by your own account) when he could have taken Sentinel, for example. Sentinel would have let him do his job significantly better. I suspect he didn't need HAM either, and would have been better off with something that let him punish people attacking others better.

That sort of thing makes the optimization issues worse too - he's optimized himself to not die when he already couldn't die and thus can't really keep people off the squishies (admittedly that can just be impossible if too many people want to play low-HP frontliners).

9 even at level 20? If so, that sounds pretty good as a base structure to me.

The only issue I take with the AEDU concept is that it seems so "forced" and gamey.

Yeah I feel like if they'd had AEDU as the base structure but had a couple of classes not use it initially, rather than not until much later, it might have worked out better.

And yeah IIRC 9 even at L20 - you just replace abilities rather than getting more and more (I think there might have been a way to swap them back in and out, I forget, but any time you were actually playing, there were 9 that were potentially available).

 

[Willie the Duck]

So, similarly, one issue I have with the English language (to be clear, I say this as someone whose first and only language is English) is that, where I'm from, there's no real word for the middle group between "like" and "dislike". The former is positive, the latter is negative, but there's no real neutral word in the set (in my area, we tend to use "meh", which my spellchecker refuses to acknowledge is a word).

Where I'm from, both unhappy and not happy imply a negative emotional mindset, not a neutral one. I would hazard a guess that the people you've been debating with would say similar. " Not happy" can be used neutrally in context, but I've never heard unhappy used neutrally IRL.

Edit: Eh, between me starting to write and posting a few others said the same thing. Did not intend to dogpile, feel free to ignore.

Within the context of negotiating states of affairs with others*, I would vote for 'find acceptable' as the closest term. Likewise, on the happy-unhappy spectrum, I think 'okay' and 'ambivalent**' are the closest to a neutral state. I agree, both unhappy and not-happy are below the neutral position. Not-unhappy might be a neutral term, but seems stilted and artificial.
*I think still the subject of discussion, since we are talking about compromises.
**although ambivalent suggests mixed feelings, which is an additional nuance.

 

[ezo]

I mean, with respect to them, this says a lot about the other players and their PCs!

No, their PCs are strong in different ways. One deals much better damage, another has skills etc.

It is the RK is OP compared to other subclasses. It's power creep. We see it all the time in game design. Why can you not accept that the issue is with the subclass, not the other players or their PCs? Their characters are just as optimized for what they are. The RK is just that much more powerful when "maxed out".

Either they rolled badly on their stats (but you say they didn't), or a big part of the issue here was "One optimized PC in a group full of people who aren't even slightly trying to be efficient" (RK being a very good subclass is of course part of optimization, I don't dismiss that). The only other one I know is the AT/BM, which is anti-optimized for sure, and who presumably did pretty weak levels of damage and also couldn't CC or tank or heal or buff really.

No, they rolled well. Nearly as good or as good. Hexblade with CHA 20, rogue with DEX 20, cleric with WIS 20, all with 16's or 18's elsewhere. True, no one else is a 20/20 in two scores, but honestly the difference between an 18 and 20 is marginal.

AT/WM is a very effective combination. Due to his sneak attacks, he routinely dealt more damage than the RK did. As I showed, his AC was just a point lower (maybe 2, but I think just 1). The lower CON (14), lack of Tough feat, lower HD in general, etc. all lead to him having barely half the HP. But his mobility kept him out of danger often. This PC is hardly "anti-optimized". Could he have gotten a better MC mix? Sure, but better how? With WM he boosts saves when needed, he has most slots for mage armor and such, not to mention better cantrips for combat. And as I mentioned, he was often on the front line for his attacks, he just didn't stay there if he could help it.

This can be a real issue - even without exceptional subclasses in the mix, I've played in groups where that was going on, and with some games it just doesn't matter, and others it makes the game pretty annoying because challenging the group requires chucking stuff that can cause the optimized PC problems at them, and the other PCs are pretty useless.

I've had it happen as well, but never to this extent. It was bad enough with just great scores and HAM, but once the Hill Giant rune was taken--- damn, it is just too much. It is the reason why barbarians can't rage in heavy armor. HAM + "half damage" is just too much. I had creatures hitting him for 12, and he would take 4. I routinely had him surrounded to grant flanking advantage just to help hit more often so the cumulative damage would start to pile on. But they he had second wind, or our life cleric would heal a crap-load of damage (twinned often) to him and the other front-liner (paladin, later the hexbalde).

The fault lies in the subclass, really, it does. It is just too good compared to anything pre-Tasha's for a fighter. As I've said, the concept is sound, but their is too much going on with the runes themselves, they last too long, etc.

I feel like this doesn't get talked about quite enough - 5E has much narrower optimization ranges than say 3E (this is a good thing), but still, a weaker class or non-synergistic multiclass combo paired with mediocre or sub-par subclasses, and a player making design decisions (ASIs, Feats, weapon/spell choice, etc.) can lead to some pretty vast gaps.

Certainly! And power creep never helps.