billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
4e tried to reconcile them with the same mechanics, and we're now working on 5e. I'd say its attempt isn't going so well.
Balance Meter - allowing flavorful imbalance in a balanced game
- Thread starter Crazy Jerome
- Start date
4e tried to reconcile them with the same mechanics, and we're now working on 5e. I'd say its attempt isn't going so well.
Neonchameleon
Legend
And being thrown in the deep end without much in the way of guidance means that it's going to be a case of sink-or-swim. And I've seen people with an interest in DMing who sank so hard thanks to system issues that they aren't going to get back in the water.
I 100% disagree with you here. I consider that a DM will do best with a system that plays to their strengths. And in almost all cases that will be a niche system. D&D isn't a niche system. Which is itself a good thing - a broad system will better allow DMs to work out what their strengths are because it provides something of everything.
If the 11 year old never plays a game that expects him to deal with apples and oranges then I wonder just what game he is playing. Because almost every player it has ever been my pleasure to play with has managed to smuggle pineapples into the apple bin, and most have gleefully tossed in oranges, kumquats, satsumas, and pomegranates as well. In addition there was already the occasional potato mislabled as a pomme de terre thrown in there by mistake by the designers. And some of my more fun players will, when offered an apple, spray paint it gold and write Kallisti on it. And find that the golden apples were there all along. (As were the cans of orange spray paint in the orange bin).
No game has ever kept the apple bin pure. (4e certainly doesn't - it just through vigilance and errata keeps it pureish; I can think of a few pinapples in the apple bin, and a few golden apples). It's simply a matter of degree. Should there be grenades in the pineapple bin? And is the best way to learn for the DM to be presented with players reaching into the pineapple bin and pulling out live grenades? Or would it be better to learn what apples, oranges, and pineapples are before being presented with live hand grenades?
If you expect the grenades not to turn up at all, you aren't familiar with the same type of PCs I am. But speaking as both DM and player, that's no reason to simply drop them in there.
Crazy Jerome
First Post
I am beginning to notice highly selective use of this "argument". If you want to be consistent with it, then 3E, and all prior versions, have things that didn't go so well, either.
Neonchameleon
Legend
To me if magic uses a sword simply for cutting things and martial bathes people in flame without heavy machinery that's very different. (Yes I noticed the mistake). The mechanics merely resolve the fiction.
Some do. Which is why not all powers are encounters or dailies. Besides the pacing is narrative, not realistic. D&D gave up pretense to realism when it introduced the hit point.
Apparently Hasbro's targets for the D&D line are $50 million/year. It isn't going well by the standards of unrealistic financial targets. (And honestly, 4e is pretty close to a complete game mechanically at this point - it's hard to see too much more room for splatbooks no matter the quality that aren't just product churn - and it has several very nice setting books.)
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BryonD
Hero
I don't doubt it.
But it still worked for the market overall. There is no option that is perfect. I'd prefer to filter out the low end than the high end.
Well, market history suggests that a robust system that both expects and allows a lot of adaptation from the DM can do very well.
I've got no argument about what may or may not be best *for you* or any other specific person or group. But at the market level I see evidence that what I advocate works and what you advocate does not.
I don't claim that 4E does keep it pure. But I was responding to a direct statement from Hussar, not making any claim about absolutes of 4E design.
I DO think that 4E went too far in that direction and that is on the list of reasons we are are talking about 5E so soon. But I don't claim it is remotely the only reason and I don't claim it was a deal breaker.
And I would argue 4e already went to far, coming from a guy who tried hard to like it. It might be "much better to balance within silos" if your goal is a balanced rpg. I would argue its much better to have moderate balance within and across silos if your goal is to make a better version of D&D that D&D players of all types will want to buy. Im aware of your apples and oranges situation, the DM is there to handle these things, in fact I would argue that is why a DM exists in D&D to manage the game to make it more enjoyable then simple balance rules can.
I dont think there is anything about D&D that needs different mechanics for different classes. I do however think thats how D&D does it, and as you mentioned for people who wanted more flexible, balanced classes there was always that option. The real question is does D&D have enough fans and brand strength to follow its own central philosophy, or to adopt another games. I can see the effects of how that question was answered for the 4th edition, and would be disappointed for it to be carried to the fifth.
Agreed even if it failed a bit on their first attempt it is probably possible to make them feel different. But you left out one thing, they still should to feel close enough to their original archetypes. Wizards have to memorize spells, have large access, fighters have to feel like fighters in D&D. This may be harder to achieve and still balance completely. This reminds me of the argument people keep bring up about other systems. I dont play other systems, I play D&D. Hell, I dont even like playing pathfinder, I want to play D&D. But I also want it to feel like D&D. The way to make everyone happy is to preserve archetypes D&D traditionally have, and make classes that also satisfy players who want something else. The 4e fighter is a great class, even if it isnt the D&D traditional fighter. It would have been a great additional fighter (e.g. stunt fighter) to the D&D world. But taking away the option of having an at will fighter was unacceptable to people who loved and played the game for years.
Exactly. My players steal ideas, abilities, classes, from all sorts of sources. We've dumped whole classes from 1e into 3e.
Once in a 3e game I downloaded a 700 page necromantic spell netbook and gave it to a player as a story award. I didnt read the book cause it was too big, and I wanted to impress on the players the amount of necromantic lore they found. At 10th level he found a clearly unbalanced spell that summoned 1d12 zombies, 1d8 skeletons and 1d4 raiths, and he could cast it 2-3 times a day.
As a DM I handled the imbalance of the spell, buffed my monsters, made some cool things for everyone else and above all made sure all my players were having fun. Thats what DMs do. And everyone fondly remembers the campaign where the party roved around with undead legions. What troubles me most about tight systems like 4e is the subtle undertone that actions like this have no place in the game whatsoever. Its such a clean and polished system that it subtly tells the DM and the players, hey hands off, no imagination and tinkering allowed here.
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because the point of growth aka levels, skill points, whatever metric you choose to reflect that, is to get better, which means to gain advantage. Balance takes advantage and hammers it into a flatline. This is why a lvl 30 and a lvl 15 character in 4E don't feel all that different. Gaining power and advantage is fun, and not just over the crap monsters you fought 10 levels ago, but over the mighty foes you face right now that are level appropriate. Also, the nerf bat and the gimping of cool concepts, ideas and mechanics that balance has a reputation for means alot of folks are so over this game design philosophy and want to go back to seeing ideas get as fully realized as possible more than they want to make sure those ideas "fall in line". Face it, the balance > all philosophy of 4E is a big part of why it is being replaced after such a short run. WoTC must be very careful with what it keeps from 4E lest it be doing 6th edition in 2 years.
Neonchameleon
Legend
Which ideas have been gimped?
The Batman wizard who made the enemy all irrelevant? CoDzilla? Ding Dong, the Witch is dead! Because 4e has decent balance, there is much more that is viable than in 3e. If someone was playing a druid well you had to cheese, play a tier 1 caster, or be left behind. And (excluding the Book of Nine Swords), the monk simply wasn't a viable concept. It was effectively playing The Load.
One reason balance is important is because it allows everyone to go for cool concepts. You don't have to go for the power - the cool is almost as strong, and a whole lot cooler.
Now name some of these concepts of yours that were "gimped" that don't revolve round overpowered spells.
Well you set up a pretty impossible challenge didn't you? Every martial class is unacceptable because in your view only casters were fun or playable pre-4e. And casters arent acceptable too boot. Don't think I can answer this one, sorry.
I already gave you two examples of themes that were unnaceptable. The classic D&D gnome illusionist, and the bard social skillmonkey, not to mention conjurers. None of these seemed overpowered to me in D&D
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But the mechanics resolve it in a certain way, and constraining the mechanics of conceptually different actions to be resolved in the same way limits their differentiation. (Even if there are other ways to differentiate!)
Are you really saying that it doesn't matter whether a character's abilities are daily or at-will powers? An at-will character is as good offensively in his 10th encounter of the day, while a character with daily powers might have used them all before that. The former is consistent, the latter can nova.
