Be honest, how long would it really take you to notice all of this stuff...?

[Obryn]

In truth, someone *is* playing them: the DM; and while the usual DM might not bother getting in the heads of each little Kobold to find out what it's thinking the possibility of doing so is and always has been present in the game.

Put another way, the PCs are every bit as imaginary as the minion kobolds.

Of course the PCs are every bit as imaginary as the minion kobolds. The difference is that players are playing PCs, and therefore the PCs are a heck of a lot more important and therefore have a special status in the game.

For example, Alice can use Diplomacy for her PC, Shalestra, to convince the NPC King Plotdevice to send troops to aid you. On the other hand, Alice can't have Shalestra use Diplomacy to convince Bob's PC, Duncan, to send his henchmen. Why? Because Bob deserves a lot more agency over his PC than the DM deserves over King Plotdevice's attitude and well-being.

Gameplay convenience suggests that off-screen things carry their stats with them at all times as they could become on-screen at a second's notice. The Ogre hiding in ambush in its cave has 45 h.p. before the party meet it, 45 h.p. when the party meet it (though probably not after the party meet it!) and 45 h.p. if the party never meet it at all.

And while if you know the party are never going to meet it you might not bother rolling up its actual h.p. total it still undeniably *has* a h.p. total; you just don't know what the actual number is.

Why does the hit point total of an ogre the party never meets matter? An assassin can kill King Plotdevice with a crossbow off-screen and nobody needs to worry about 'hit points' at all.

It's not a very nice thing to do to the DM either, yet 4e consistently wants to hand her 8 HD (or 8th level) monsters with 1 h.p. that should, by virtue of their Con. score and natural toughness, have a lot more than 1.

The DM has - or should have - no investment in the well-being of individual kobolds. The DM is playing the game, but is not one of the players with a PC of their own. (Unless they're running a DMPC, which is terrible for all the reasons I'm laying out here re: investment in the well-being of what should be an NPC.) I find this claim of "being nice to the DM" really suspect.

If a Giant (Elite) has 95 h.p. against a 3rd-level party that same Giant has to have 95 h.p. against a 20th-level party, even though those 95 aren't going to last nearly as long.

If a Giant (Minion) has 1 h.p. against a 20th-level party then that same Giant has to have 1 h.p. against a 3rd-level party, whcih is ridiculous, of course.

If a Giant (Elite) has 95 h.p. against a 3rd-level party but that same Giant has but 1 h.p. against a 20th-level party then your game-world's mechanical consistency just went out the window; also ridiculous.

Hahah, what? Why's it ridiculous? Because you said so? Like hit points are a physical characteristic of fictional beings?

"Hit points" are just a gameplay convenience, and if the party should be mowing through them at 20th level, giving them 1 hp is dandy. You've successfully modeled what you were trying to model.

 

[Ahnehnois]

If you think about it, a focus on balance is kind of against the spirit of D&D.

Balance in the sense of parity of options for player characters anyway. It's very important, for example, that the game be balanced in such a way that the PCs can't do ridiculous things that ruin the game world. For example, if every PC had the ability to disintegrate objects by touch at level 1, they'd all be perfectly balanced with each other, but in the broader context, they'd all be equally overpowered.

The same rationale applies to things like healing. If characters can heal themselves instantaneously, that's overpowered, even (and perhaps especially) if every PC can do it.

But yes, the conceit that a bard and a barbarian are supposed to be of equal usefulness is really absurd, and one that's been vastly overemphasized throughout D&D's lifespan.

 

[Lanefan]

See, this is why it's so hard to have this conversation. FIGHTERS need more xp than casters in AD&D.

Depends what level range you're talking about. At low level Clerics advance faster than Fighters and both advance faster than MU's, if memory serves. At high level I seem to recall Fighters slow down quite a lot for some reason, relative to other classes.

The Rain of Colorless Fire is a seminal event in the development of Greyhawk and is the primary motivator for how most of the nations in Greyhawk came to be. IOW, it's probably the biggest single event in Greyhawk's history.

Ah, so part of the canonical history (which I 99% don't use even if running a pre-fab setting) of a setting I've never used. No wonder I've never heard of it.

Lanefan

 

[Ahnehnois]

SHow in the heck are the XP requirements tangential or inherently optional? This is a new one. You're now claiming that the Xp requirements for different classes is an optional rule and there exists some form of standardised advancement table in AD&D? That's a neat trick. Could you point it out to me, I'm having a bit of a tough time finding it.

Probably because you're looking. And looking for something that isn't really relevant to the point I was making. The lack of such a table is a limitation of the system, but it hardly means that XP is required

It's not as if everyone who played 2e used XP tables. Leveling up whenever the DM feels like it, let alone any number of more in-depth alternate approaches, is not something that was invented post-Y2K.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Which again destroys consistency. Let's take a "base form" Giant as an example, and make him a suitable opponent for about 12th-level types...then see what happens against parties of widely-varying level:

If a Giant (Elite) has 95 h.p. against a 3rd-level party that same Giant has to have 95 h.p. against a 20th-level party, even though those 95 aren't going to last nearly as long.

If a Giant (Minion) has 1 h.p. against a 20th-level party then that same Giant has to have 1 h.p. against a 3rd-level party, whcih is ridiculous, of course.

If a Giant (Elite) has 95 h.p. against a 3rd-level party but that same Giant has but 1 h.p. against a 20th-level party then your game-world's mechanical consistency just went out the window; also ridiculous.

Lan-"this is all a hazard of there being too much difference between low level and high"-efan

*headdesk*

Let's look at what actually happens in the game world.

A family of L12 clone-giants with 146hp face off against four L12 PCs. It's a tough fight.

A single giant from that family goes terrorising through the village 1st level PCs live in. The giant in question is utterly overwhelming to the PCs, and focussing on destroying the village. It behaves differently. It also should be given a lot more focus than the average giants because it's a career defining moment - when the PCs rise to the challenge to kill the giant they can individually barely scratch the hide of. It's a solo with 184 hit points. But hit points are not directly a thing.

As a solo its relationship to the PCs in terms of power doesn't really change. But the regular giants aren't likely to stop to snack on PCs or NPCs - if they tried any of that sort of nonsense the PCs would use their magic swords to stab them through the palette and end them. Against barely trained farmboys? That sort of nonsense is fun.

And at Level 20, the PCs finally reach the Giant Cloning Facility. The Exarch of Orcus is busy cranking the things out. But the PCs are now experienced giant-fighters. They have hamstringing and opening the femoral artery down to a fine art. And are alert enough they can easily dodge the giants most of the time. The giants are not going to hit on less than a 19; the PCs have the equivalent of AC-10 against THAC0 10 foes. But a battering from giants is still a battering. You make the pests into minions and their threat level against the PCs again doesn't change

The XP values remain constant, the threat ratings remain constant. And because these remain constant it's easier to work out how battered the two sides were in a fight than it is in AD&D.

 

[Hussar]

If you think about it, a focus on balance is kind of against the spirit of D&D.

The concept of balance under discussion really applies mostly between different PCs and their builds. The concern is the possible resentment if one PC out-performs another, or if one PC is noticeably weaker. You can't "balance" a fight between four PCs and a huge dragon - you can only try to make it a fair fight.

In the D&D game in spirit, the PCs are supposed to be a team, not competing with one another for who does more damage to the monster. Who cares if the thief did much damage to the skeletons - we wouldn't have gotten the secret door open without him.

I'd say balance is not nearly as important to game design as making sure a thing you designed does what you and your players expect from it.

((Side note, NeonC, you keep writing in different colours which show up as black on black background. It's really hard to read))

The point of balance is to ensure that no single option is clearly better than all other options. By making a fight between 4 PC's and a huge dragon a fair fight, you've just ensured game balance. That's the only way to do it. And, by fair fight, we generally mean that the PC's are going to win. Yes, there are outliers where the PC's lose, but, by and large, they do win. An EL par encounter in 3e isn't a guaranteed win. It just means that most of the time the PC's will win and use up X amount of resources doing so.

Without game balance, you have no way of predicting how an encounter will fall out. Which makes it that much harder to develop encounters, let alone campaigns. The only way to design a game so that it does what you and your players expect it to do is to have balance. That's the only way to achieve a level of predictability that will allow you to have a game that you want to play over the long term. Purely random games, like say, Chute and Ladders are very poor for any sort of long term play since it's entirely random - no game balance at all.

 

[Chaltab]

If you think about it, a focus on balance is kind of against the spirit of D&D.

The concept of balance under discussion really applies mostly between different PCs and their builds. The concern is the possible resentment if one PC out-performs another, or if one PC is noticeably weaker. You can't "balance" a fight between four PCs and a huge dragon - you can only try to make it a fair fight.

In the D&D game in spirit, the PCs are supposed to be a team, not competing with one another for who does more damage to the monster. Who cares if the thief did much damage to the skeletons - we wouldn't have gotten the secret door open without him.

I'd say balance is not nearly as important to game design as making sure a thing you designed does what you and your players expect from it.

Which incidentally is exactly what Rob Heinsoo was going for with his 4E design goals.

Regardless of whether he succeded for you, the point is not 'equality' between the classes. Hell, I ran a 4E game yesterday. The Sorceror and Ranger in the party did upwards of 300 damage to the monsters. The Invoker took another 50 each off two monsters that happened to be vulnerable to her Radiant damage attack. The Battlemind did about 18. I don't think the Swordmage or the Cleric actually hit anyone. Nobody complains about this because it's not about how much damage is dealt but that every player can provide a meaingful contribution. The Ranger was Dazed and Restrained, so the Swordmage teleported her in range of the Cleric, who gave the Ranger a divine boon to save against the status effects. The Battlemind didn't hurt anything much, but he kept the heat from the huge great-axe weilding construct off of the squishy members of the party. Not everyone contributes the same thing in the same measure, but everyone contributes.

Contrast this to a 3.X game. Fighters, even though they can eventually rack up high damage, are thwarted by the deep pools of HP high level monsters have, and by spells for which their saves are inadequate. Barbarians, even with all their rages, will never be able to simply walk around AC and HP and shift Tiamat to the Demiplane of Infinite Nuclear Fission.

 

[Neonchameleon]

((Side note, NeonC, you keep writing in different colours which show up as black on black background. It's really hard to read))

((Sorry. It happens when I cut and paste from actual sources in order to demonstrate my points - apparently ENWorld keeps the colours)).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Purely random games, like say, Chute and Ladders are very poor for any sort of long term play since it's entirely random - no game balance at all.

[NITPICK]While I agree with your assessment of the long-term playability of Chutes & Ladders due to its randomness, I would have to say it is perfectly balanced- each player has identical odds of any roll or sequence of rolls.[/NITPICK]

 

[Lanefan]

Of course the PCs are every bit as imaginary as the minion kobolds. The difference is that players are playing PCs, and therefore the PCs are a heck of a lot more important and therefore have a special status in the game.

For example, Alice can use Diplomacy for her PC, Shalestra, to convince the NPC King Plotdevice to send troops to aid you. On the other hand, Alice can't have Shalestra use Diplomacy to convince Bob's PC, Duncan, to send his henchmen. Why? Because Bob deserves a lot more agency over his PC than the DM deserves over King Plotdevice's attitude and well-being.

Funny, I just had this very discussion with one of my players at brunch today; he thinks a PC *should* be able to use Charisma-based abilities to convince other PCs to do stuff. I disagree, but I also disagree that a good Diplomacy roll should trump lousy roleplaying on the part of Shelestra's player.

The DM has - or should have - no investment in the well-being of individual kobolds. The DM is playing the game, but is not one of the players with a PC of their own.

Realistically, the DM should have an interest in the well-being of every NPC out there just like the players care about their PCs. Most don't bother with this because it's an awful lot of effort trying to come up with motivations, dreams, goals, and life experiences for a bajillion NPCs; but using the example of King Plotdevice I as DM should have a pretty good handle on what makes him tick and am then going to make sure I roleplay to suit what's in his best interest.

(Unless they're running a DMPC, which is terrible for all the reasons I'm laying out here re: investment in the well-being of what should be an NPC.)

In truth every creature met in the game world is a DMPC of some sort.

A character in the game world is no less a living, breathing (imaginary) entity just because it doesn't have a player attached. To think otherwise cheapens the setting and devalues the richness of the game.

"Hit points" are just a gameplay convenience, and if the party should be mowing through them at 20th level, giving them 1 hp is dandy. You've successfully modeled what you were trying to model.

I've successfully modelled it, yes, at cost of internal consistency and believability.

If the party's going to mow through the monsters anyway why not just leave the monsters with their normal h.p. values for Con. and HD (or level)?

Lan-"every creature tells a story"-efan