D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[Lanefan]

You keep saying this, but it keeps not being true.

The dice do not make it a gamble. They make things uncertain.

And resolving uncertainty by random means (in our case, dice) is always a gamble.

There is an ENORMOUS difference between these things. And it is that very difference which explains why the idea of "take 10" or "you just can't do that" (or "you just succeed") exists. Because it's not about gambling. It's about certainty vs uncertainty--not about adding nor removing "gambling".

Gambling is reckless. It is needless risk, risk taken solely for the thrill of the risk, for the limited possibility that it might do something good and the high chance that it won't--or will even do something bad. It is, to quote Kipling, "If you can make one heap of all your winnings/And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss".

I disagree. Gambling isn't always needless risk, nor is it always reckless. Even if the odds of success (or winning) are 95% in my favour I'm still gambling that the other 5% doesn't rear its ugly head when I roll that d20 hoping not to see a 1.

And sure, as player you do what you can to tilt the odds in your favour and the game often gives you ways and means of doing so; but at some point you gotta roll dem bones and at that point, it's a gamble.

 

[ECMO3]

Ok. What does "work harder" mean mechanically to you? Is there a practical difference from using magic in play?

Yes. Like I said if you have a 5th level character who has Magic and a 5th level character who has no magic at all the later should need luck (i.e. good dice rolls) and smarter play to be the equal of the former.

To make a completely easy to understand example:

The PC with magic would be able to swing his sword and get extra damage (like the current spell Truestrike does). This is a pure mecahnical advantage offered by magic.

A PC without magic would not get that, however it would be possible to be the equivalent of the magical character if their dice rolls are better (i.e. luck) and/or they just make better decisions in play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Thats probably a bridge too far for a lot of folks.

I love games that do either. I'd prefer either a specialized race as class system (so several elf classes, several dwarf classes, etc), or a more complex and detailed system like A5e, where heritage has several components that can be combined, and added to culture, background, and destiny. Vanilla 5e's version is too simplistic and lacking in options for my taste.

 

[TwoSix]

I am satisfied with them, but if I am making my wish list we just get rid of the distinctions between Race and Class and go back to Races being classes like in Basic.

So you can be a Human Fighter or a Human Wizard or an Elf that does some of both.

Yea, that's just not going to happen.

People are simply too used to the division, in addition to the extremely obvious questions like "Why CAN'T an Elf be a fighter?"

 

[Scribe]

I love games that do either. I'd prefer either a specialized race as class system (so several elf classes, several dwarf classes, etc), or a more complex and detailed system like A5e, where heritage has several components that can be combined, and added to culture, background, and destiny. Vanilla 5e's version is too simplistic and lacking in options for my taste.

Yeah, I'm thinking a happy medium looks a lot more like Daggerheart, than todays options.

 

[TwoSix]

Yes. Like I said if you have a 5th level character who has Magic and a 5th level character who has no magic at all the later should need luck (i.e. good dice rolls) and smarter play to be the equal of the former.

To make a completely easy to understand example:

The PC with magic would be able to swing his sword and get extra damage (like the current spell Truestrike does). This is a pure mecahnical advantage offered by magic.

A PC without magic would not get that, however it would be possible to be the equivalent of the magical character if their dice rolls are better (i.e. luck) and/or they just make better decisions in play.

In that case, are you giving out metagame advantages to the player of the weaker concept?

There are plenty of superhero systems that do what you're saying here, as an example, but those systems are also oriented towards telling stories (as opposed to overcoming challenges) with resolution systems that determine overall results, not just the effectiveness of a particular ability.

 

[Lanefan]

My personal take is that I’d like to see multi-class go the way of the dodo in favor of much more classes and subclasses. That may just be shifting problems around but at least the problems of balance will remain entirely within the class/subclass rather than interactions between different combinations of classes.

Another consideration might be to dare to suggest up front right in the PH that there's going to be some character concepts the system simply won't support; the most obvious of which is The Character Who Can Do Everything. You have to pick a lane and stay in it, accepting (for any class) that there's things your character is very good at and other things your character is - and always will be - very bad at.

Do that, and multiclassing can hit the road.

 

[ECMO3]

Long-term balance looks either like oscillation, where two things repeatedly crisscross one another and neither maintains a lead for long, or like convergence, where two things take different paths to reach the same result. Middle-term balance just means you have two things genuinely comparable over some range, and anywhere else, anything goes.

Fighter and Wizard are probably the classes cited the most when talking about balance. Based on the several 1-20 campaigns I've now played, if you are talking about Combat I think this is what the current 5.5E relationship between a Fighter and a Wizard is if we are talking about single class characters - repeatedly criss-cross each other. Through 20 levels, they oscillate back and forth on which is the more powerful in play.

As you start adding more classes and mutliclassing to the discussion it gets extremely complex. With as many classes as we have, I don't think it is possible to balance all of them in such a long term fashion and multiclassing just adds more complexity to the discussion.

Also much of this is campaign driven and driven by optional rules. Bastions and lots of downtime for example can dramatically affect this and swing it one way or another.

Finally, what is lost in many of the "balance" discussions is the mechanical advantage associated with versatility. For example we will talk about DPR and compare a melee fighter vs a ranged fighter and debate which is more powerful, where a character who is optimized for neither, but good at both is going to be better than either of these in many combats.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yea, that's just not going to happen.

People are simply too used to the division, in addition to the extremely obvious questions like "Why CAN'T an Elf be a fighter?"

Elves are a certain kind of fighter. The kind that leverages the fact that they're an elf. And there might be more than one of those as well.

You know there are still current RPGs that use race as class right? When you say "people" are too used to the division, what "people" do you mean?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, I'm thinking a happy medium looks a lot more like Daggerheart, than todays options.

Not a fan of Daggerheart, at all. Too many mechanics designed to interact with the narrative.