D&D 5E 5e Philosophy of System Mastery

[S'mon]

If I dock a player XP, I'm punishing them.
If I give them XP, I'm rewarding them.
If I do neither, I am neither punishing nor rewarding them.

A real life example - if the State puts me in prison, it is punishing me. If it gives me a knighthood, it is rewarding me. I am not being punished by not being given a knighthood and I am not being rewarded by not being jailed.

 

[Zardnaar]

Other DMs have infinite dragons, I have a large supply of players.

If they ever make an at will attack granting class well it's instantly banned.

You don't have to let the class or the player into the game.

Easy solution.

 

[Krachek]

Breaking the game is good for Magic the gathering, not DnD.

Pc already shine enough with casual build. No need to add an extra layer of optimization overhead.

 

[Krachek]

For me, game mastery is when a player put its character in high risk to follow its bound or flaw.

 

[Blue]

A while back during one of the Warlord Happy Fun Hours, Mike Mearls said, in response to Warlords potentially allowing Rogues to get extra sneak attacks, that they tend not to balance things around base case scenarios because they want players to feel good about finding those best case scenarios. It kinda reminded me of 3e's idea of "trap options" in order to reward system mastery, but better implemented. Instead of punishing players for not learning the game enough, it rewards players decide to go in depth with the rules, as well as allowing the players to feel awesome when they find something powerful.

I personally think it's a good idea, because of the reasons above, and that it lets players feel like their "breaking the game", which is generally a good feeling. My question is, do you agree with this idea of system mastery, as well as allowing the players to break the game in "acceptable" ways? In addition, do you think 5e does this well enough in most cases (reminder that core rules don't have feats or multiclassing) or not, as well as other potential games that might follow this philosophy?

If some players find the best case options and others don't, you get characters left behind. DMs needing to plan challenges and encounters either to challenge the "best case" players or the "average case" players. This is similar to the quandry of where the DM sets the bar when some are sub-optimal due to taking trap options, vs. average players.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I see two different kinds of system mastery. One has to do with your build, and how you use that build in play. The other has to do with knowing the rules of the game, independent of particular classes and abilities, and knowing how to apply those rules in various situations.

I'm a fan of the latter, not the former. Perfect balance is an impossible goal, but I think the ideal should be that you make character choices based on what you think is fun and cool, and then the part you master is using that perfectly fine character in actual play.

The worst case outcome is when a new/novice player sits next to an optimizer and says, "Oh, that's cool...I want to do something like that." And the answer is, "Well, you can't because your character sucks."

Part of the reason I feel this way is that character options, no matter how many, are finite. But game options...what happens at the table...are infinite. If you create tons of character options, with a wide delta in effectiveness, everybody is just going to figure out and post the "best" combinations on the internet anyway. But you can't predict what's going to happen in somebody's game.

I remember when World of Warcraft changed from talent "trees" to a model where you just pick one of three talents every X levels, with no dependencies or prerequisites. The optimizers all screamed bloody murder about "catering to casuals" and the like. Blizzard's response was, essentially: "We have the data. Clearly 99% of you just go to elitistjerks.com and look up the best build and copy it. So don't give us any $%@^ about system mastery."

 

[Ancalagon]

That a player can build a character that is better in some situations than other similar characters is plain to see and to me that's fine as long as there isn't an issue of spotlight sharing (which the DM controls anyway). I think it's a reasonable behavior for a player of a game to seek to be more effective at that game and that some players will have more skill than others. This isn't a problem if everyone at the table is trying to achieve the goals of play, that is, everyone having a good time and creating an exciting, memorable story by playing.

As far as "breaking" the game, yeah, well, good luck with that. I got infinite dragons.

The problem is not when all the PCs are powerful, as you say, moar dragons.

The problem is large disparities in power within the party. The dragons will crush the other PCs.

5e is much better at this than 3.x/pathfinder.

 

[BookBarbarian]

If you are in the habit of "whooping" a child, then not "whooping" them when they behave as you want is a reward.

I know this comment was made in jest, but this is sadly a common justification for for violence against children and very commonly women as well.

Lack of violence is a terrible, terrible "reward".

 

[iserith]

The problem is not when all the PCs are powerful, as you say, moar dragons.

The problem is large disparities in power within the party. The dragons will crush the other PCs.

5e is much better at this than 3.x/pathfinder.

I didn't really see a problem with it in D&D 3.Xe either and there was definitely disparity in system mastery at my table at that time. I don't deny it may exist, but I really think it's blown out of proportion. "DMing mastery" sorts it out it in my experience.

Otherwise I agree that this just isn't really an issue in D&D 5e, even among characters of disparate levels which occurs in most of my campaigns.

 

[Oofta]

I think something overlooked when looking at relative power level of PCs is ability score generation. I wrote a program a while back that ran some simulations comparing overall survival ratios putting different combatants in single combat against a variety of monsters. I simulated fights with champion fighters because that was the simplest.

What I found was that the -5/+10 feats could make a a difference depending on monster's target AC and PC level. Which should be fairly obvious. Against a low AC monster these feats can make a big difference.

But the bigger difference? Ability scores. Using standard roll 4d6 drop lowest, there was a pretty huge disparity on average between people with high stats and low stats.

Just noting that if you want to minimize power disparity at your table (not everyone cares) a big factor is ability scores. Second? In my experience powerful magic items. Third? PC optimization and optimal choice of feats.