D&D 5E (2014) 15 Petty Reasons I Won't Buy 5e

[Ahnehnois]

This sounds like a really seriously bonkers-hard-work. I feel like I'd really need a book on constructing an entire fantasy ecology to make that approach work, but to be fair, Ahn, you often promote approaches which imply truly huge amounts of work on the part of the DM.

If you're doing that sort of amazing hardcore work, I guess it explains why you seemed to be so attached to your monsters/NPCs!

I don't see how. My style, personally, has evolved to the same kind of minimalism that I use in all parts of my life. AFAIC, the work would be planning.

Generally, as far as encounter difficulty goes, I'm preparing specific creature stats months or years ahead of when they're being used, sometimes not knowing in what combinations they'll be used and often not knowing in what context they'll be used. And then when I use them, I just react to the situation as rationally as I can. There's still sometimes an element of specificity where things are titrated to the characters, but often there isn't.

I don't see how that's labor-intensive. The working ecology is assumed, not detailed, from my perspective.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Balancing treasure parcels by level (3.5) was always too much work for me. However, keeping track of the party's total treasure and comparing it to the expected for level, and making up for shortfalls, was much easier.

 

[evileeyore]

If you don't constantly wipe out your PCs, you are probably subconsciously doing some kind of encounter balancing (at least in terms of the adventure design).

Well either the PCs retreat from superior forces or they don't and they die.

Nothing really new about that.


But yeah, when I'm setting encounters they are meant to succeed at, I consider what they can reasonably handle and I build towards what I want the outcome to be: easy success, challenging success, or pyrrhic victory (there are more "settings" than that on the dial, but that suffices). If it looks like things aren't developing the way I planned I either let it roll or cheat. Whichever feels like the better option at the time.

Up until 3e, I just figured every ST/DM did that. With 3e though (and more importantly the internets) it seemed more and more DMs were on about "encounter balance" and "rules expectations".

I dunno, just feels like my grognardism is coming out on this one.

Sure, but if you want to make a truly mass-audience game and make fun and reliable to run, so people stick with it and love it,you need to make it as solid and reliable as possible.

I don't think that's a possible design goal. I know it's just anecdotal, but no one I know personally likes D&D as their "favorite" game. With most of my friends it's a 3rd or 4th pick... it's just tended to to be the one game everyone in the group* didn't hate, so it's what we played the most of.

If that's what 5e is shooting for, I'm not sure they'll be able to hit at this point in D&D's life cycle. There are too many other games let alone other versions of D&D to be able to grab "center market share" with just 1 rules set.

Will D&D stay on top? Sure, Pathfinder and the OD&D clones alone will ensure that.



* Except me, but my hate isn't so deep I can;t enjoy playing it. It just means D&D is my 'last pick".

This sort of guidance can help so much in making the game feel fun and the DM feel like he's done a good job.

I believe we have different definitions for "game feels like fun" and "DM did a good job".

I wouldn't have believed it would help so much before I saw a working system that did it, to be fair.

I can accept that.

DMs didn't just design encounters to wipe the PCs out, or the like, they had expectations about PC levels and numbers, and built encounters to certain difficulties accordingly. It's just that it was very easy to make serious misjudgments, and the only way to correct those was fudging (alternately, letting a TPK you didn't intend and that the PCs didn't deserve, and that didn't enhance the game, just happen).

That's not "balance" though, that's "building to what you want". Did DMs in the best try to make each combat fit into a mold of "use 25% of the party's resources"? Maybe. I know I never saw it happen.

And that's "encounter balance" to me. Picking some arbitrary amount the party needs to expend on a combat and building for that. It's weird and unnatural and never made sense to me.

 

[Umbran]

. If a party of level 1 characters meets a red dragon, the outcome is not likely to be their deaths, simply because the dragon does not meaningfully gain anything by killing them.

"Lunch," is not meaningful to a dragon?

Undead, demons, and devils, which populate large swaths of the genre and books, do not operate on a strict cost/benefit analysis.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

"Lunch," is not meaningful to a dragon?

Undead, demons, and devils, which populate large swaths of the genre and books, do not operate on a strict cost/benefit analysis.

Also, given that Evil is described in a number of books as being the alignment that actively creates more suffering in the world, one would figure "suffering" to be a goal for him. If he can cause pain, misery and death just because it's fun he would.

Doing nothing because it doesn't benefit them seems very Neutral to me.

 

[Ahnehnois]

"Lunch," is not meaningful to a dragon?

If it was, how are there any creatures alive less powerful than the most powerful ones? Are all the red dragons sequestered from all the potentially tasty human commoners and numerous other low-powered fodder? There must be some reason everyone isn't dead.

Undead, demons, and devils, which populate large swaths of the genre and books, do not operate on a strict cost/benefit analysis.

True. That's probably why that whole assumption about demons and devils not being able to get to the Material Plane is default to the game. That being said, even for them I don't think they just kill everything they see, for the most part.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But yeah, when I'm setting encounters they are meant to succeed at, I consider what they can reasonably handle and I build towards what I want the outcome to be: easy success, challenging success, or pyrrhic victory (there are more "settings" than that on the dial, but that suffices). If it looks like things aren't developing the way I planned I either let it roll or cheat. Whichever feels like the better option at the time.

Up until 3e, I just figured every ST/DM did that. With 3e though (and more importantly the internets) it seemed more and more DMs were on about "encounter balance" and "rules expectations".

I dunno, just feels like my grognardism is coming out on this one.

I think it is grognardism, as you say. Having it does not hurt you, but does help a lot of people. The internet didn't create this stuff, it merely revealed it, too. Personally I dislike cheating/fudging, but I also really dislike totally unintended/undeserved TPKs and the like (which in 2E/3E was the more-or-less inevitable consequence of zero fudging and smaller groups), so having a game which freed me from the need to do the former to prevent the latter was liberating and made the game vastly less stressful to DM.

With other games it gets complicated. A lot don't need it because they have so many built-in assumptions about how conflicts occur which lead to natural balancing. Others don't want it because they want TPKs (CoC, fr'ex - but even that tends to say "Yo dawg, this dude will wipe your group..."). Others still encourage it but call it something totally different.

D&D, with it's complex, often uniquely/deceptively-designed monsters, particularly needs a decent system for it, I'd suggest.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They won't complain about magic items per level, because I'll give them what the book expects. Just like they didn't complain when I gave them proper gold/level in 3e.

I feel like I'm trapped in some sort of time-loop here. You're saying you don't want to hear PCs whining about gold/level, but they never whined about it to you because you gave them the right gold/level.

Man what...

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Personally I dislike cheating/fudging, but I also really dislike totally unintended/undeserved TPKs and the like (which in 2E/3E was the more-or-less inevitable consequence of zero fudging and smaller groups), so having a game which freed me from the need to do the former to prevent the latter was liberating and made the game vastly less stressful to DM.

Same here!

I'll never understand how some gamers can be so derisive about guidelines that can be ignored at worst, and really helpful to those of us lacking a fine sense of what kind of opposition who can handle.

*shrug*

 

[billd91]

I feel like I'm trapped in some sort of time-loop here. You're saying you don't want to hear PCs whining about gold/level, but they never whined about it to you because you gave them the right gold/level.

Man what...

I think you made a misunderstanding in Majoru Oakheart's post a while back and haven't really broken out of it despite his elaboration.