D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

[Lanefan]

Of course, then you are giving the DM absolutely NO guidance on how to build encounters. How many orcs are appropriate for a low-level party? 10? 100? What about bugbears or gnolls? What about giants? I guess the DM could "figure it out" via the Guess and TPK method.

Trial and error is the answer, yes.

Beyond that, all it needs a bit of perhaps-intentionally vague guidance suggesting the DM compare the total party levels vs the total HD of the foes they're facing with advisement that things might get messy if Foes HD > Party Level Total.

And provided the players play their characters with a bit of a sense of self-preservation, TPKs are (or should be) vanishingly rare in any case unless the DM really screws up. All it needs is one survivor and the party can continue.

 

[Lanefan]

The main problem, by my reckoning, is when your game design ends up not matching the way the majority of your players want to play the game.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that the majority of D&D players want to play D&D as a game of Big Darn Heroes, doing Big Darn Heroic things.

I think it's not so much that they intrinsically want to play the game that way as they've been conditioned to play the game that way through a) marketing and b) lack of highly-visible well-marketed alternatives.

To the extent that they want to be forced to make compelling decisions during play [*], tthe sort of decisions they want to make do not include considerations such as "will I have enough gas in the tank left to face the BBEG?" or "how should I balance carrying gear versus loot to reduce the chance of being ground down or slaughtered by a random encounter?"

Again, this is a result of conditioning. Had those players' first-and-foremost point of exposure been to a much grittier style of game those sort of decisions would be or become second nature.

 

[Lanefan]

No, it is more complex to force the group to strategize about spell slots per day and which should be used for healing. Healing surges are absolutely dirt simple, and every player having them makes them simpler, not more complex.

No they don’t, they simply change what that layer is called and who controls it. It’s still “spend 1 X fo regain Y hit points. Regain X with a long rest.”

Frankly, making it so that X belongs to the character using it is simpler than having to transact between characters.

You're conflating role-playing complexity with mechanical complexity. They are not the same.

Forcing them to strategize - i.e. adding complexity to their role-playing - is great; as is pretty much anything else that encourages or forces more in-character interaction.

Adding more bookkeeping mechanics - i.e. making the players' job at the table more complex - is not great; there's many more important things for them to track than an unnecessary second healing-related number.

 

[Lanefan]

I actually really like this thought, and think it could really help differentiate the classes if their encounter abilities are in different numbers and power.

Like a fighter getting four exertion/ki/etc per fight, with a recharge of 5. On every fifth round you get one back. So a fighter could use an encounter power every round for 5 rounds, then have to wait 'til round 10 to do it again. The Fighter's encounter powers would, obviously, be individually weaker than a Sorcerer, who only gets 2 encounter powers before waiting 3 rounds to recover one on round 5... but the sorcerer's are more immediately impactful.

That would kind of mimic an exhaustion mechanic without creating a Death Spiral, since it would only kick in on long encounters if the goal of an encounter is 3 rounds.

And then -very- long encounters which go out to 10 rounds would result in the character exhausting themself in the first few rounds, pulling out one big trick on round 5... and then finishing the fight with encounter powers on round 10 for a nice dramatic finish. Or, y'know, they could pace themselves to maintain a fairly strong overall pace by interspersing encounters and at-wills from the start.

Definitely provides some tactical considerations and gives a coherent in-narrative structure for encounter powers: You have only so much power at once and it takes a moment to recover. (Technically 25 seconds to recover enough to do one more 'big thing')

What do you think? Decent "Winded" mechanic to give sim players a narrative?

Conceptually, the idea seems sound though the numbers could use some tweaking. If the goal-length for an encounter is 3 rounds then most abilities should only be usable twice before temporary shutdown (also maybe only 2 or 3 rounds), so as to force those do-I-use-it-or-not decisions to occur much more often.

That said, I think any exhaustion mechanic should be part of, or quickly lead to, a death spiral; that's the whole point, you're running out of gas to the point where either you're gonna die or your foe is and it's gonna happen soon.

Practically, though, I wonder if tracking this stuff would become a female-dog for the more casual players at the table.

 

[Remathilis]

Trial and error is the answer, yes.

You know, we can save a LOT of time if we just reduce the DMG to "figure it out yourself".

Encounter balance? Figure it out yourself.
Treasure distribution? Figure it out yourself.
World building? Figure it out yourself.
Monster creation? Figure it out yourself.
Campaign management? Figure it out yourself.

Think of all the magic items you could fit in the book if you stop using it to tell DMs how to play!

 

[Remathilis]

I think it's not so much that they intrinsically want to play the game that way as they've been conditioned to play the game that way through a) marketing and b) lack of highly-visible well-marketed alternatives.

Again, this is a result of conditioning. Had those players' first-and-foremost point of exposure been to a much grittier style of game those sort of decisions would be or become second nature.

It's rich to say players don't know what they want and have been manipulated to play in a certain style rather than to say the style players want today isn't the still you want. Real "no, it's the children who are wrong!" Energy...

 

[Micah Sweet]

You know, we can save a LOT of time if we just reduce the DMG to "figure it out yourself".

Encounter balance? Figure it out yourself.
Treasure distribution? Figure it out yourself.
World building? Figure it out yourself.
Monster creation? Figure it out yourself.
Campaign management? Figure it out yourself.

Think of all the magic items you could fit in the book if you stop using it to tell DMs how to play!

Plenty of GM books got by just fine without an encounter balance system.

 

[Zardnaar]

It's rich to say players don't know what they want and have been manipulated to play in a certain style rather than to say the style players want today isn't the still you want. Real "no, it's the children who are wrong!" Energy...

No one's saying theyre playing wrong.

Pre 3E Dragon and official adventures and conventions "conditioned" players. Game ran for 26 years one way. It wasn't universal.

3E. Forums plus surfing old stuff. Forums weren't universal.

5E social media. YouTube, reddit/facebook forums in that order.

Greater reach tgan old school. 26 years there wasn't any alternative in terms of healing.

25 years you have 5 examples from WotC to choose from.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's rich to say players don't know what they want and have been manipulated to play in a certain style rather than to say the style players want today isn't the still you want. Real "no, it's the children who are wrong!" Energy...

There's no way to know which of you is right, so his speculation is just as valid as yours.

 

[mamba]

Not seeing a lot of faith in your fellow gamer here. We were all new once, and we all worked through to get better.

because the best way to teach swimming is to toss someone into the pool and walk away…