Bend, dont break.

[Hussar]

/snip
Circe turned dudes into pigs for fun. Achilles was invincible and all he had to do was get dipped in a river. Gandalf killed a balrog and appeared even more powerful than before. Luke studied hard, but then was a consummate badass. Naruto (ANIMES!) isn't even very good at it, and he can still jump around on tree branches, climb up walls, and transform. Shamans have secret knowledge, but aren't crippled by it.

Magic need not be some sort of user-debilitating dark force. It can be -- I'd love for a D&D warlock or something that used their own life-force or sanity as fuel for arcane power -- but it need not be.

The D&D wizard typically did not have magic as a self-destructive force, merely a limited force. I'd like for D&D to be true to that archetype in the wizard.

I'd like to see the self-destructive spellcasters, too, but first I'd like to see the classic D&D wizard balanced for what it is.

Which is totally within the realm of possibility.

The trick with your example is that none of them could do all of the above. Luke studied hard and could do charm person and force punch. Circe had one spell. Achilles had one superpower. Gandalf spends much more time in LotR swinging a sword than he does casting spells. On and on.

It's D&D that gives us casters who can do every single thing that every single spell caster in myth and legend can do, and do it again tomorrow.

That, right there, is the crux of the problem.

I should bloody well hope so! 4,500 gp, let's see what else we might get with that money. About a half-share in a longship or caravel. A trip to America for the entire party. A hireling wizard to cast the spell 75 times. Or a thousand skilled workmen for 2 solid weeks, enough time to excavate the entire dungeon from the top down like an archelogical dig!

Or, 2 +1 swords. Do you really want to start looking hard at the economic mechanics in D&D?

Hrm, a scroll of knock cost 75 gp (150 to buy). Just how many locks do you need me to open? Ten scrolls and I'm still only at 1500 gp and it took me one day, because I'm buying them.

And, remember, we're not concerned too much about this issue when a 2nd level spell slot is a valuable resource (say 3-5th level). This is an issue at high level play when you've got slots to spare and you might as well fill up the low level ones with stuff like this.

 

[Hussar]

Gaming story about why I don't like the idea of "magic does it better".

We had a fairly bog standard group of adventurers including a rogue. We also stumbled across a Chime of Opening during our adventures. So, what happened after that was that the rogue got to open the locks first. But, if we found any locks that were too difficult for the rogue, we pulled out the Chime and popped the lock.

So, effectively, the rogue got to handle the pedestrian stuff and whenever it really mattered - because who's going to put a really difficult lock on something that isn't important? -, out came the magic and the rogue got to sit back down.

And that's just wrong. It should be the other way around. The rogue should be the one dealing with the really difficult stuff and the wizard can handle the run of the mill, everday stuff. The wizard (or in our case, any character, since a Chime of Opening isn't class specific) should never be able to do stuff in other people's sandboxes better than the class whose sandbox it is.

I have no problems with the wizard being a competent combatant. That's groovy. I have no problems with the wizard being a competent problem solver. That's groovy. I have no problems with the wizard being able to do some healing (shock! horror!). But, the wizard, if he can do all these things, shouldn't be BETTER at it. I should not be able to consistently outdamage the fighter. I should not be able to consistently out problem solve the rogue. I should not be able to consistently out heal the cleric. ((granted, that last one's usually not a problem ))

Or, if I can do one thing better than someone else, I shouldn't be able to better than anyone else, with a day of rest.

 

[Sunseeker]

Gaming story about why I don't like the idea of "magic does it better".

We had a fairly bog standard group of adventurers including a rogue. We also stumbled across a Chime of Opening during our adventures. So, what happened after that was that the rogue got to open the locks first. But, if we found any locks that were too difficult for the rogue, we pulled out the Chime and popped the lock.

So, effectively, the rogue got to handle the pedestrian stuff and whenever it really mattered - because who's going to put a really difficult lock on something that isn't important? -, out came the magic and the rogue got to sit back down.

And that's just wrong. It should be the other way around. The rogue should be the one dealing with the really difficult stuff and the wizard can handle the run of the mill, everday stuff. The wizard (or in our case, any character, since a Chime of Opening isn't class specific) should never be able to do stuff in other people's sandboxes better than the class whose sandbox it is.

I have no problems with the wizard being a competent combatant. That's groovy. I have no problems with the wizard being a competent problem solver. That's groovy. I have no problems with the wizard being able to do some healing (shock! horror!). But, the wizard, if he can do all these things, shouldn't be BETTER at it. I should not be able to consistently outdamage the fighter. I should not be able to consistently out problem solve the rogue. I should not be able to consistently out heal the cleric. ((granted, that last one's usually not a problem ))

Or, if I can do one thing better than someone else, I shouldn't be able to better than anyone else, with a day of rest.

This is exactly the type of issue I was refrencing. Magic should aid, make things easier, and solve problems that are above and beyond mundane means. If there is a magical lock, perhaps a magical solution is in order, but magical items and more "generic" magic powers should aid the mundane, not trump it.

 

[GM Dave]

How is any edition of D&D a failure, they all have many, many fans (some rabidly so)?

Sounds like the biggest rift so far is 4th Ed (which I dig in many ways).

All editions have something to offer, 5th Ed is just another link in the chain.

Not all editions of DnD have been successes. There are actually quite a few versions that people don't talk about because they were that big a failure.

For example, I could summon up the original Saga DnD system (not the Saga of Star Wars which is pretty kwel but the card based one that was introduced at the time of Krynn Chaos God Novels).

I could also remind the audience of the Amazing Engine system. The system that you rolled a character which was then used to roll a character. It was thought that this was going to become a version of DnD but it failed to go anywhere.

The Alternity was thought to be an attempt to update 2e but it failed too!.

Yup, between what people accept as 2e and accept as 3e there were many experiments that did not make it into the 'editions' that players recognize.

I tell ya, we missed the great moment when people failed to accept that dice were dead and card based RPGs were the wave of the future.

 

[pemerton]

A spell can do DOUBLE the damage of a sword, as long as the spell only happens half as often. Now the two things have a very distinct mechanical difference, though they remain broadly balanced.

<snip>


In a typical 4e "adventuring day," with 10-round combats, you might have 30 die rolls, of which 15 hit, and deal an average of, say, 4 damage at level one, meaning your daily damage output is around the 60 hp range. So a wizard who can only make one attack per day can deal 60 damage with that attack and be "balanced."

My concern with this is that it makes a certain minimum number of encounters between recharges crucial to balance.

In 4e (at least without Essentials classes) that is not the case. There is no class that is especially good at nova-ing.

A static threat that doesn't react when the party rests is going to have the "lets rest and recover and nova again" problem regardless of adventure or encounter focus. It's just not very good game design, period. A goblin tribe who just sits in their lair until the PC's show up to kill them and never flees, hires reinforcements, repairs, builds traps, etc., is a gameplay problem, period. "This doesn't work in the face of a static challenge!" is a kind of a strawman argument: a static challenge doesn't work, period.

<snip>

If the party retreated from an encounter in an encounter-based design game (like 4e) and then returned, would you keep the same conditions, statuses, damage, and dead monsters as they had when they last left?

<snip>

If your challenge isn't reactive, encounter or adventure, you have a problem. In 4e, if you unload your dailies and encounters, and then flee, and come back after an extended rest, do the damage and effects remain?

I run some scenarios and encounters that are reactive, and some that are not. As to how they might recharge between forays, that is variable. The game doesn't depend on resolving this one way or another - if the PCs rest up and return, and the encounter hasn't recharged, the encounter is now easier - but this doesn't effect the effectiveness of the PCs relative to one another.

Of course easy encounters whittled down by attrition can have pacing implications that I, as GM, might want to manage. But on your adventure-based paradigm, the GM has to worry not only about pacing, but about intra-party balance.

That is my concern. (I appreciate that some Essentials classes also have this issue in 4e. Thankfully I'm not GMing for any of them, however, and so don't have to worry about it!)

A rogue can convince a king to be his trusted friend with 5 successful Diplomacy checks, and a wizard can do it with one Charm Person?

Yeah, I'm cool with that.

My worry about this is something different.

The closest that D&D has every had to a system in which a rogue can convince a king with 5 Diplomacy checks, and succeed at that task even if there are some failed checks in the meantime, is the skill challenge. Which almost certainly will not be part of D&Dnext.

I have grave doubts about the likelihood of D&Dnext incorporating a skill resolution system that makes having 10 goes, only 5 of which need to succeed, as effective as having a single auto-successful go (via a spell). Any such system that I can conceive of would have to have as much metagaming to it as skill challenges, and therefore would not be suitable for inclusion.

Without metagamed pacing and resolution management of a skill challenge variety, having the rogue use 10 checks on the king will require actually playing out 10 checks, some of which fail and have the king send the rogue away, and then involve the rogue coming back later to keep at it, etc. And as with suggestions on other threads, that to get past the guards at a door the rogue might poison their lunch rather than just fight them, I express extreme scepticism. I will eat my hat if, in 5e play, letting the rogue cultivate a friendship over weeks or months (requiring 10 checks, and also setting the adventure reset time at weeks or months) will be as common or viable in play as letting the wizard do it with a single spell. Game systems that do make this sort of thing viable, such as 4e (to an extent, via skill challenges), Burning Wheel and HeroWars/Quest do so precisely by incorporating scene framing and resolution techniques of the sort that make 4e so widely unpopular.

 

[Andor]

And, remember, we're not concerned too much about this issue when a 2nd level spell slot is a valuable resource (say 3-5th level). This is an issue at high level play when you've got slots to spare and you might as well fill up the low level ones with stuff like this.

The cost of a knock spell is only trivial at high levels, and at high levels any door short of the gates of hell should be trivial. At that point the fighter has adamantine weapons and the wizard has disintegrate. Doors are not a problem anymore, it's what's behind them that worries you.

Are you really trying to argue that "locksmith" is such a strong heroic and fantastic archetype that we need to keep "I unlock doors!" relvant at the level of play where dragon riding and visiting the gods are plausible? Hell at the D&D tech level locks just aren't that complex!

A Rogue should be relevant to high level play. Period. A Rogue is not merely a portable door opener. Class roles evolve over time as they level up. A first level wizard is expected to get you past the guards (sleep), a 5th level wizard is expected to get you past the unscaleable glass cliff (flight), a 15th level wizard is expected to get you out of hell (Plane Shift). A 1st level Rogue is expected to deal with the Watchorc (sneak + sneak attack), a 5th level Rogue is expected to get you into the tomb of the Unseen General (detect traps and lockpick), the 15th level rogue is supposed to steal the Mariliths Bra (Diplomacy and perform: dance, or however you want to run that one).

If all your character can do or is expected to do is open doors, then your character and character concept suck. Sorry, but walking skeleton key is not, by itself, heroic.

Not all editions of DnD have been successes. There are actually quite a few versions that people don't talk about because they were that big a failure.

I could also remind the audience of the Amazing Engine system. The system that you rolled a character which was then used to roll a character. It was thought that this was going to become a version of DnD but it failed to go anywhere.

Amazing Engine was never expected to do D&D. It was intended to compete with the likes of GURPs or the Hero system as a multi-genre engine with the added twist that exp in one game kinda-sorta carried over into the others. But none of the published settings were even vaugely D&D like, although Magitech is sort of what would happen if you allowed a D&D world to evolve past feudalism. Personally I still think "For Faerie, Queen & Country" is a great system/world.

The Alternity was thought to be an attempt to update 2e but it failed too!.

Yup, between what people accept as 2e and accept as 3e there were many experiments that did not make it into the 'editions' that players recognize.

I tell ya, we missed the great moment when people failed to accept that dice were dead and card based RPGs were the wave of the future.

Alternity was a SF RPG, not even close to D&D. If you want to bring up failed TSR games you might as well thrown in Boot Hill, Top Secret and Star Frontiers, but none of those were D&D.

 

[GM Dave]

Amazing Engine was never expected to do D&D. It was intended to compete with the likes of GURPs or the Hero system as a multi-genre engine with the added twist that exp in one game kinda-sorta carried over into the others. But none of the published settings were even vaugely D&D like, although Magitech is sort of what would happen if you allowed a D&D world to evolve past feudalism. Personally I still think "For Faerie, Queen & Country" is a great system/world.




Alternity was a SF RPG, not even close to D&D. If you want to bring up failed TSR games you might as well thrown in Boot Hill, Top Secret and Star Frontiers, but none of those were D&D.

You're speaking from hindsight and not the thoughts at the time of people as the products were in development and first being released.

People seriously wondered if these were trial platforms for DnD that was going to replaced 2e.

Just the same way that people wondered on Saga Star Wars if it was going to be the trial rules for DnD 4e.

People often don't see how the market perceived many of these side developments and where some ideas were seen to work and some were flops.

Skills and Powers (with its related 4 book black cover series) was another version of 2e. Not a full edition change but in keeping with Essentials and Unearthed Arcanna/Adventurers Handbook.

Boot Hill, Star Frontiers, and Marvel (oh and that Prohibition era game) are radically different systems. They did not even attempt to use a d20 mechanic and had very different systems (without even the DnD attribute system).

 

[Andor]

You're speaking from hindsight and not the thoughts at the time of people as the products were in development and first being released.

Boot Hill, Star Frontiers, and Marvel (oh and that Prohibition era game) are radically different systems. They did not even attempt to use a d20 mechanic and had very different systems (without even the DnD attribute system).

No, I'm recalling from the time. Amazing engine went to great lengths NOT to step on D&Ds toes. That's why there was no D&D-like setting brought out for it. The first games were, what? Bug Hunt and Magitech? Bug Hunt was an Aliens inspired game of high-tech xenos stomping and Magitech was modern day with magic replacing technology sort of like Harrry Turtledove's "The Case of the Toxic Spelldump" but with fewer puns.

Nor does it use a d20 system. It has different stats and uses percentile dice in a stat + skill based resolution system, the core book is 32 pages with illustrations. Less like 2e D&D it could not be. (By coincidence I have it on my shelf atm along with Magitech and For Fearie, Queen, and Country.

Alternity was very d20ish to be sure.

 

[Fifth Element]

No, I'm recalling from the time. Amazing engine went to great lengths NOT to step on D&Ds toes. That's why there was no D&D-like setting brought out for it. The first games were, what? Bug Hunt and Magitech? Bug Hunt was an Aliens inspired game of high-tech xenos stomping and Magitech was modern day with magic replacing technology sort of like Harrry Turtledove's "The Case of the Toxic Spelldump" but with fewer puns.

Just in case you need someone to back you up here, I'll back you up here. I suppose some people might have guessed that it was a D&D preview so to speak, but they would have basically been making that up in their own minds. There was no indication that this was the case at the time.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So, one bit at a time:
[sblock=RE: Alrough]

You are defending a city that is being assaulted by the Daelkyr and their forces due to a dimensional rift. It perfect sense that they would replenish when you rest, given they have that rift available. The problem is, when do you rest? They control the timing. They control the terrain. You have nowhere to retreat to as this is your home as well.
If they are the ones that are attacking, then how does the adventure end and your adventure resources replenish?

For this scenario, the party closing the rift would probably be the focus of the "adventure." To save the city, they assault the daelkyr clustered around the rift and pull it shut. The four-person party above might have to find the item that can seal the rift (exploration/interaction), and then fight off the daelkyr between them and the rift (combat) until they reach the goal, seal the rift, and get to take an uninterrupted rest. If the party rests before then, the daelkyr replenish, or the artifact goes missing, or they move the rift (or open a second one!).

You could also break it into smaller bits, if you wanted a longer event in the campaign. You could have them secure a part of the city, to defeat enough daelkyr and build enough fortifications and save enough townsfolk that they can mount a counterattack -- or at least get a night's sleep. If they sleep before they've secured the zone, they get attacked, or the daelkyr replenish.

You are walking somewhere (because all the horses died of plague, or because you spent too much money on that awesome armor, or whatever) and on your way to the next major city, you run into trouble. It isn't that surprising given the Points of Light nature of D&D, but this is a hostile land and you keep getting attacked. What is the end of the adventure here? Is it when you finally reach your destination, or is it when you finally reach a destination, or is it when the DM feels sorry for you and meta-games a break for you guys?

If it is just the DM giving meta-game replenishment, then how is this substantially different than the DM making sure that nobody gets an extended rest?

For this one, you can do it a few ways, too. The first one that jumps to my mind is to say that the adventure ends when they reach a point at which they can rest easily for the night (like a fortified town), and then put the encounters in between them and their destination (6 bandits, 4 starving wolves, and a vicious thunderstorm!).

If the party tries to retire early, the adventure recharges by more wild creatures or dangerous highwayfolk finding the adventurers, either while they sleep, or during the next day.

You could extend the journey out for longer by putting multiple "adventures" in between the party and their destination. If rests are on the days/weeks timescale, you even can end up with something very much paced like LotR, with long periods of wilderness travel punctuated by occasional civilization where the party can recover for the next leg of their journey.

It's not meta-game -- a DM in designing an adventure probably should have goals for the party already (or the party should have given the DM goals, like "We want to go to the Free City of Greyhawk,"). All this is doing is saying that there's going to be a set of challenges (encounters) between you and your goal.
[/sblock]

[sblock=RE: Hussar]

The trick with your example is that none of them could do all of the above. Luke studied hard and could do charm person and force punch. Circe had one spell. Achilles had one superpower. Gandalf spends much more time in LotR swinging a sword than he does casting spells. On and on.

It's D&D that gives us casters who can do every single thing that every single spell caster in myth and legend can do, and do it again tomorrow.

That, right there, is the crux of the problem.

When your one superpower is "I am completely invincible," I think you only really need one.

But your argument seems to be "They can do too much!"

To which my response is: not when they're properly balanced.

The paradigm I mentioned above gave wizards 3 spells per day. That's it.

I'd imagine a Vancian wizard having many more spells in their books than they can use in a day, but potential variety doesn't matter in play, only actual capability, and their actual capability might be, "I can only do three awesome things, and then I'm spent." That's vertical vs. Horizontal advancement, that is: they're limited to be on par with everyone else vertically (in raw quantities of win). Their horizontal power doesn't matter in that equation.

We can talk about the horizontal power, too -- the versatility -- but I think most folks would agree that divine casters in D&D have had a bigger problem with too much of that than the wizard ever did (spellbook costs and learned spells kept a lot of it down).

We had a fairly bog standard group of adventurers including a rogue. We also stumbled across a Chime of Opening during our adventures. So, what happened after that was that the rogue got to open the locks first. But, if we found any locks that were too difficult for the rogue, we pulled out the Chime and popped the lock.

So, effectively, the rogue got to handle the pedestrian stuff and whenever it really mattered - because who's going to put a really difficult lock on something that isn't important? -, out came the magic and the rogue got to sit back down.

And that's just wrong. It should be the other way around. The rogue should be the one dealing with the really difficult stuff and the wizard can handle the run of the mill, everday stuff. The wizard (or in our case, any character, since a Chime of Opening isn't class specific) should never be able to do stuff in other people's sandboxes better than the class whose sandbox it is.

That sounds more like a specific problem with the Chime of Opening being an at-will knock effect than it is a problem with magic in general. There's a lot of other ways to design a Chime of Opening.

Yes, as I've pointed out above, when your big-boom effect gets used more frequently, things become unbalanced, because the limit you assume on the big boom is that you can't use it frequently.

But, the wizard, if he can do all these things, shouldn't be BETTER at it. I should not be able to consistently outdamage the fighter. I should not be able to consistently out problem solve the rogue. I should not be able to consistently out heal the cleric. ((granted, that last one's usually not a problem ))

The thing to note there is consistently. The vancian wizard in my model above can't consistently do jack.

Sometimes in the history of D&D, that limitation, of limited-use, has been forgotten. It doesn't need to be. And you don't need to overhaul the magic system or dramatically change the D&D wizard for that limitation to be remembered and enforced.
[/sblock]

[sblock=RE: pemerton]

My concern with this is that it makes a certain minimum number of encounters between recharges crucial to balance.

Encounter-based design makes a certain minimum number of monsters in the encounter crucial to balance. I presume that doesn't concern you. Why does this?

Just like in encounter-based design, you can play with that number. There can be single-roll "minions" and entire-party "solos" and even entire-adventure "champions" (or whatever) in this, too.

The game doesn't depend on resolving this one way or another - if the PCs rest up and return, and the encounter hasn't recharged, the encounter is now easier - but this doesn't effect the effectiveness of the PCs relative to one another.

I don't understand why you'd want to use static encounters that do not change, if only because it creates a lot of bookkeeping (X dead critters, critter Y has Z damage, critter B has a (save ends) effect that is dealing ongoing 5 damage so here's a few d20 rolls to see what happens to it when no one's around...), and jacks down the challenge of the game to cakewalk levels (blow all our dailies and encounters, run back to town, rinse, repeat).

But on your adventure-based paradigm, the GM has to worry not only about pacing, but about intra-party balance.

Not within an adventure, she doesn't.

Using unreactive encounters in general is a pretty "advanced DM" move, and if a DM wants to do that for some reason, and is still very concerned about this strategy, they should be advanced enough to think to ban Vancian spellcasters as inappropriate for their campaign. I think the DMG should absolutely talk about what is assumed in an adventure, and what happens when you change those assumptions. There'd be a lot fewer annoyed rogues in 3e if the DMG noted that a campaign full of undead and constructs will make them much weaker in combat.

The closest that D&D has every had to a system in which a rogue can convince a king with 5 Diplomacy checks, and succeed at that task even if there are some failed checks in the meantime, is the skill challenge. Which almost certainly will not be part of D&Dnext.

"Checks which require multiple successes" is not the same as "skill challenges." It would be very odd if they decided that one check does everything possible -- and result in a binary game which I believe few would find very satisfying. You can have the former without the latter.

I have grave doubts about the likelihood of D&Dnext incorporating a skill resolution system that makes having 10 goes, only 5 of which need to succeed, as effective as having a single auto-successful go (via a spell). Any such system that I can conceive of would have to have as much metagaming to it as skill challenges, and therefore would not be suitable for inclusion.

The nature of a "flatter math" system is that it relies on more die rolls to accomplish more difficult tasks, rather than just jacking up the DC.

The 3e DMG, under Diplomacy, just put "Make your enemy your trusted ally!" at a high DC. You could do it in one check, you just needed a VERY HIGH check.

The 5e DMG, under "Influencing NPC's," might include an "attitude track" where each success moves your target a little closer to being your friend. You could even take the 3e Hitting You In The Face-Hostile-Unfriendly-Neutral-Friendly-Helpful-Free Hugs continuum. The DC to change one to an adjacent one might not be that high by itself, but a trained character will hit it more often than an untrained character even with a modest bonus.

So 5 successful Charisma checks move the target from Hitting You to Helpful.

A Charm Person spell instantly puts the target at Helpful.

You can also divide it up amongst creatures (which REALLY puts the wizard at a strategic disadvantage). If every NPC is effectively a social minion requiring only one success to make them friendly (something like the 4 kobold slaves I referenced above), the wizard's spell is still very effective, but it's a lousy use of power.

And the numbers aren't exactly set in stone. You can futz with them in any direction to get a granularity that's right for you. The numbers I gave are just the numbers you come up with using 4e's existing mechanics as a base -- which hit a pretty useful zone, I think.

Without metagamed pacing and resolution management of a skill challenge variety, having the rogue use 10 checks on the king will require actually playing out 10 checks, some of which fail and have the king send the rogue away, and then involve the rogue coming back later to keep at it, etc

Each check can be more granular. I can imagine a rogue in 5e convincing a king by having the DM say: "Okay, tell me what you say and make a Charisma check" having the rogue's player give some statement, and roll a dice, and the DM describing the reaction to that particular statement, using the DMG's attitude track to describe how the king reacts to each check.

If you get sent away, that's a sign you've failed that particular challenge.

Game systems that do make this sort of thing viable, such as 4e (to an extent, via skill challenges), Burning Wheel and HeroWars/Quest do so precisely by incorporating scene framing and resolution techniques of the sort that make 4e so widely unpopular.

All I know is that it's possible to have balanced Vancian casting a la classic D&D in an adventure-based model without making non-spellcasting classes feel like second fiddles all the time. I've tried to show that fairly empirically with all sorts of maths.

I think that's a reasonable goal for D&D, and since it's possible, I think it's reasonable that they would do that. I'm certain they're smarter than me and probably figured this out before 4e was even launched.

That doesn't mean they will, of course. Clearly I am not on the design team for 5e (just givin' out awesome ideas for free on ENWorld ). The concept that Vancian spellcasting is bad and wizards are too powerful and impulse to make everything homogenous is clearly a strong one.

But I don't believe it needs to be that way. You can have your cake and eat it, too. You can have your powerful, limited magic and your reliable, effective skills, accomplishing the same thing, via different methods.

I want that to happen.
[/sblock]

*whew*

Time for a drink.