D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[EzekielRaiden]

I think the point is it is a story-driven encounter that occurs. In the example I gave (caravan guards) maybe it is the bandit attack you knew was coming. Maybe it is finding out which of the caravan merchants is secretly a devil and confronting him. The point is surrounding it with meaningless encounters on that day to get your quota is kind of lame, especially if PC actions are what drives when it happens ...... ok your investigation determined the tea merchant is the Devil, now let me throw a bunch of other meaningless encounters at you before you go confront him.

Okay, but the issue there is the meaninglessness.

Don't do meaningless encounters.

That's why 4e aimed for making all encounters set pieces. I think that aim was slightly off the mark, but not because making set-piece encounters great was bad. It's because there's still some value in nickel-and-dime encounters if the rules are built for it and the GM uses them judiciously.

That's why one of my other things, that I've been asking for since the days of "D&D Next", is what I call "Skirmish" rules. Ultra-fast, ultra-simple combats designed to be resolved in only a couple of rolls from each player. They are to regular combats, as group skill checks are to Skill Challenges: regular combats and SCs are both formal affairs where mechanics are relevant and guide the experience in a satisfying and mechanically-engaging way, while group skill checks and Skirmishes are small, quick, focused affairs that get out a burst of action very quickly and then move along. Characters can do things like expending HD (or Surges, if I had my druthers), spell slots, Superiority Dice, etc. to either reroll a die or auto-succeed; failure just means they get hurt, not outright KO'd/killed, unless they were already pushing their luck (e.g. you go in with 10 HP, all HD spent, no Second Wind, no healing spells, nothing--yeah, you're courting death at that point.)

 

[ECMO3]

Most people.

I don't see any evidence of that. I have played 5E with dozens (perhaps hundreds) of players in numerous countries and I would say it is not most people I have played with.

Because people understand that, when you incentivize something, that thing is now inherently more valuable. That's...what an incentive is.

Being mechanically better is not the same as being more valuable if you care about story and role play. For some people it is, and let those people do their thing.

It isn't at all difficult to achieve--you just have to work for it. It requires statistical testing, something a lot of designers are simply unwilling to do. But then again, using surveys correctly also requires statistical testing, so....they're already embarked on needing statistics in order to design the game anyway. Might as well use them wherever they're useful, rather than treating them like a horrible nasty thing to be avoided.

Ok how do you balance the Heavy Armor Master feat with the Mage Slayer feat? One is going to be WAY more powerful if you are fighting a horde of goblins, the other is WAY more powerful if you are fighting Vecna and I don't see how you keep the fiction there and make them equal.

You say that "Balance really kills the story". How? Like...genuinely what does that even mean? It sounds to me like what you're saying is uniformity kills the story. And if that were what "balance" meant, I would 100% agree with you. Making it so every choice is meaningless because the choices are "A, but blue; A, but red; or A, but green" is not a choice, it is the illusion of choice. Or, if you prefer...

But now imagine your choice is "I want to go to Chicago." By definition, all choices will have the same endpoint, but that doesn't actually mean that the choices are identical. You could fly there, which would be quick, but expensive. You could drive there, which would be slow, but could save you a lot of money. You could take a train, which is kind of in the middle, depending on when you need to travel, but limited and not the most comfortable unless you spend extra. You could take Greyhound. Etc.
These things are in fact actual choices, because they are qualitatively different, not quantitatively different.

I think your picture illustrates my position. All choices are not equal or identical, there is a clear right and there is a clear left. But if there is equivalence then all choices are trivial and that is the problem I have with balance.

Also your Chicago example flys in the face of your argument for mathematical equivalence and you actually have it backwards, they are quantitatively different but not qualitatively different. All of them get you to Chicago (qualitative), Flying gets you there a lot faster (quantitative), costs more money (quantitative), releases tons of pollution (quantitative). I can fly there in 5 hours (give or take), drive in 18, take a greyhound in about 30 or take a train in about 50 hours. All of them get me to Chicago eventually, i.e. qualitatively the same, they vary in quantitative measures -how much they cost, how long they take, how much harm they do to the environment.

If I am to take this analogy at face value a PC doing 5 DPR is equivalent to a PC doing 50 DPR because both of them kill the bad guy. They get you to the same outcome, more or less (dead bad guy), it just takes the low damage guy longer to do it. Is that your definition of equivalence and balance?

 

[ECMO3]

Okay, but the issue there is the meaninglessness.

Don't do meaningless encounters.

That's why 4e aimed for making all encounters set pieces. I think that aim was slightly off the mark, but not because making set-piece encounters great was bad. It's because there's still some value in nickel-and-dime encounters if the rules are built for it and the GM uses them judiciously.

That's why one of my other things, that I've been asking for since the days of "D&D Next", is what I call "Skirmish" rules. Ultra-fast, ultra-simple combats designed to be resolved in only a couple of rolls from each player. They are to regular combats, as group skill checks are to Skill Challenges: regular combats and SCs are both formal affairs where mechanics are relevant and guide the experience in a satisfying and mechanically-engaging way, while group skill checks and Skirmishes are small, quick, focused affairs that get out a burst of action very quickly and then move along. Characters can do things like expending HD (or Surges, if I had my druthers), spell slots, Superiority Dice, etc. to either reroll a die or auto-succeed; failure just means they get hurt, not outright KO'd/killed, unless they were already pushing their luck (e.g. you go in with 10 HP, all HD spent, no Second Wind, no healing spells, nothing--yeah, you're courting death at that point.)

But in a game that is based on collaborative story telling, it is not for the DM to decide the story elements. It is for the group, including the players to decide, and there is no way for the DM to engineer it to happen a certain way, 100%, without impacting agency.

That is not to say there should never be a script or a plan, but you can't script and force everything and expect players to have a meaningful role in the story.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't see any evidence of that. I have played 5E with dozens (perhaps hundreds) of players in numerous countries and I would say it is not most people I have played with.



Being mechanically better is not the same as being more valuable if you care about story and role play. For some people it is, and let those people do their thing.



Ok how do you balance the Heavy Armor Master feat with the Mage Slayer feat? One is going to be WAY more powerful if you are fighting a horde of goblins, the other is WAY more powerful if you are fighting Vecna and I don't see how you keep the fiction there and make them equal.




I think your picture illustrates my position. All choices are not equal or identical, there is a clear right and there is a clear left. But if there is equivalence then all choices are trivial and that is the problem I have with balance.

Also your Chicago example flys in the face of your argument for mathematical equivalence and you actually have it backwards, they are quantitatively different but not qualitatively different. All of them get you to Chicago (qualitative), Flying gets you there a lot faster (quantitative), costs more money (quantitative), releases tons of pollution (quantitative). I can fly there in 5 hours (give or take), drive in 18, take a greyhound in about 30 or take a train in about 50 hours. All of them get me to Chicago eventually, i.e. qualitatively the same, they vary in quantitative measures -how much they cost, how long they take, how much harm they do to the environment.

If I am to take this analogy at face value a PC doing 5 DPR is equivalent to a PC doing 50 DPR because both of them kill the bad guy. They get you to the same outcome, more or less (dead bad guy), it just takes the low damage guy longer to do it. Is that your definition of equivalence and balance?

All I can say is: Literally decades of video game design have consistently shown you are, in every way, wrong on this.

TTRPG design isn't that different.

The consistent complaints about 3e and 5e have both been exactly the thing you claim people won't complain about: that some things are overpowered compared to others, and shouldn't be. Consider the hue and cry about silvery barbs, or the Twilight Cleric, or even going all the way back to the original UA Storm Sorcerer, and how people said (essentially) "this is getting bonus spells that the other sorcerers don't have", so WotC...chose to cut out the Storm bonus spells, rather than issuing errata for the PHB. (One of many decisions that eventually contributed to 5.5e.)

People notice this stuff. It gets extensive complaints. It's almost exclusively the focus of complaints about game design.

Players can take care of story themselves. They're really quite good at it, in fact. They don't need to be shepherded into a realm of storybuilding--and they emphatically do not want to be told what stories they should be telling.

The proof is in how people--consistently, here on ENWorld, on Reddit, in WotC surveys, in wider gaming discussion--have responded to 5.0 as it developed, and how 5.5e was tested, and what 5.5e has become since release.

People see balance problems, and they complain about them. Consistently. You are simply incorrect if you claim this isn't so.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I want 6E to purposefully push out and purge the weak from D&D so that the strong won't be held back by trying accommodate the weak.
I also want WOTC to consult heavily with the members of Enworld; as who are better then us to determine the direction of D&D??
And instead of a DMG, WOTC could set up a apprentice program where expert DMs could tutor newbies because we all know no one ever reads the DMG.

 

[dave2008]

It means a story driven encounter, which can be a whole days XP.

The point though is if even it is one super-deadly encounter then you have some classes going Nova in that one encounter and other classes not getting their short rest recharge or not getting their built-in at will advantages ..... which is supposedly the whole reason we need to stick to a minimum number of encounters - to ensure attrition of Long Rest recharge resources.

To clarify I wasn't talking about the effectiveness of the encounter builder or adventuring day calculator. I was just pointing out that the "rules" allow for a single climatic encounter. If that is not what you intended as "set piece" then I misunderstood your intent.

 

[dave2008]

Okay. Second part is...massive...so it's getting a separate post.

My first thought: This is way the hell longer than the original. That leads to various issues. In brief:

• If every item is meant to look like this, items will take up massive page-space, making them unwieldy in production terms.
• Summarizing this on a character sheet would be a nightmare. Will initial fans like this effect, long-term?
• It's going to be hard to make this fit well with a "simple" system of any kind. Every item makes the system more complex.
• This implies every item always comes with serious drawbacks. This may drive people away from items altogether if so.
• While this item may be fun to design, it hugely increases the workload for all future item design. Is that desirable?
• The antipathy for "tools made to solve problems" is concerning. Civilizations should develop some such tools!

I'll respond to the other part later, it's going to require quite a bit more digestion.

While agree those are issues and ones I have concerns about too. In fact I had almost the exact same reaction you just listed when I first read it. However, what I love about it is the the story aspects of it. It is not a simply a broom that flies, it is a magic broom with a story. That is, IMO, where the magic is. It feels like real folklore or mythology. That is the magic. I think that mindset is important and you can have some of that without some of the baggage. However, if this is only way to get cool magic items than I would accept that baggage. It is just so much more interesting and "magical" IMO.

 

[dave2008]

I would disagree with this. Balance really kills the story IME. I know it works for some people, but not the games I play in. The mathematical equivalence is extremely difficult to achieve and when achieved it makes choices seem trivial.

I would like to core rules to not overly worry about 1-1 balance too (though I know that will neve happen). I would like classes to be somewhat balanced, but certain classes should shine in different areas. Similarly, I don't think species should be balanced either.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, I'm afraid you're almost certainly going to have to accept that some people like, not necessarily "wish lists", but aiming for particular goals over time, which will include items. It's unavoidable. The existence of cool things inevitably will mean some people--indeed, a lot of people--will desire some particular thing or range of things to actually happen. Not "on command" but, y'know, looking forward to it.

Oh, sure, no problem there. Great stuff.

But the rules don't have to be designed around this premise.

The design of the rules, even going back to 2e as I recall, VERY much punishes folks who don't specialize when it comes to directly usable equipment (armor and weapons mostly, but occasionally a couple other things that 3e would have called "wondrous items"), so such thinking is kinda encouraged by the rules themselves anyway, and has been for the vast majority of D&D's existence!

To a point; but it's only more recently that finding one's desired item(s) has gone from a player-side hope to a player-side expectation. Remember, before 3e players weren't allowed to see the magic item lists and thus in theory didn't even know what was out there (and still don't, if the DM is any good at homebrewing items).

This doesn't mean that you, personally, need to start liking or using "wish lists" or whatever. But it does mean that, if 6e is going to like...succeed, in any meaningful sense, it's going to need to be compatible with their interests. It should also be compatible with yours, to be clear. It probably needs to default to one or the other, but it should not put up barriers to doing it the other way--at all. Overall, I'm generally inclined to think that a mild lean toward "I would really like to encounter certain items eventually" is unavoidable, again because the game makes specialization so important and thus punishes generalists rather significantly.

Perhaps, though if the game has rules or even just guidelines for commissioning items from artificers then given enough in-game time and cash a character will eventually be able to get the item she seeks.

But this idea can't have the items be manufactured in just a few days or even a few weeks. You commission it now and pick it up in six months, or a year, or whatever; while maybe or maybe not continuing to adventure in the meantime depending on what you and-or your party decide.

Alternatively, do you think you would favor something that would, say, allow a Fighter to personally retrain herself to using a new Fighting Style over an old one, if they simply encountered a cool thing that they like better than their current weapon? Or something that would allow them to expand their repertoire over time, so that the "golf bag" approach is actually rewarded, rather than punished?

Sure. Not so much retraining perhaps but additional training. In 1e a fighter gained a new weapon proficiency at 4th, 7th 10th... levels; so if you found a hella good weapon during 6th level you'd claim it as yours at that point but wait until after 7th level training to put it to much use.

The golf bag approach works well if a fighter is collecting weapons good against specific foes e.g. a Giantslayer, a Dragonslayer, a Flametongue, etc.

 

[Lanefan]

I would like to core rules to not overly worry about 1-1 balance too (though I know that will neve happen). I would like classes to be somewhat balanced, but certain classes should shine in different areas.

And-or at different levels.

Long-term balance is just as useful as short-term balance; and all-the-time immediate balance is a fool's errand.

Similarly, I don't think species should be balanced either.

Here we disagree; I'd like species to be mostly balanced (using both benefits and penalties), but I don't at all mind certain species being better suited mechanically for certain classes and not as well suited for others.