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.