D&D 5E "But Wizards Can Fly, Teleport and Turn People Into Frogs!"

[Balesir]

Great, heavily whispered asides! After skimming the last few pages to catch up with this thread, I wish I hadn't; I don't suppose there's any way I can apply for that part of my life back? Didn't think so.

[MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION]: you may have found a "one true way" to roleplay that suits you and yours - good for you. But to suggest that there is only one "correct" way for a hit point/damage system to be or for an "experience"/character change mechanism to work or, more generally, for a roleplaying system to be is complete, utter and total bollocks. The idea that "if all the game designers just realised what the best way was to do this, we would have one superlative system and everyone would be happy" is just beyond stupid, I'm afraid.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'm with you on level 1 characters - at the very least the game should have straightforward rules for creating a character below level 1, so that if I want to start out playing a teenager wielding his grandpa's rusty broadsword who can barely survive an encounter with a single kobold, or an apprentice wizard who can't reliably light a fire yet, that's a real option. (At the same time, I wouldn't want a default level 1 character to be this weak, because that might be a turn-off to a lot of beginning players who want to feel like heroes from their very first session.)

Personally, I'm for making level 1 not totally incompetent and having apprentice levels for those who want true incompetence from their PCs.

No, but if you're going to put a lot of work into the former, and the latter will make a bunch of people (tactical players) happy with little tradeoff, why not do both?

In general, I think the latter is a worthwhile effort but one that can be pursued to excess. But what really makes buying a game product worthwhile is if it improves over previous versions in both respects, without sacrificing one for the other.

One of the changes they seem to be making in 5e is limiting this kind of trade-off. Like, you still have a lot of the same non-combat spells in 5e, but as long as you leave at least one slot for Magic Missile and/or learn one offensive cantrip you can still contribute to combat. And a rogue with high Charisma can use skill tricks to mind-screw his enemies on the battlefield. I think this is a good thing, because it means that you aren't forced to "gimp" yourself in combat to be powerful and well-rounded outside of combat.

The Cha rogue still may not be as powerful as a Dex rogue, but I'm inclined to agree that a broader variety of supported character concepts is a good thing (and certainly, nonmagical aspects of mental ability scores are a good target for improvement).

But are you okay with the current Wish, which is about as powerful as 3e but comes with more immediate drawbacks, like you can't cast any more spells that day and your strength is sapped? Because I think of that as a great example of how powerful spells can be effectively balanced.

Sure. XP costs are a stupid balancing tool. In-game costs are good. My Wish spell fix causes 8 points of damage to all ability scores that can't be magically healed and exhausts the caster. But man, when you need a Wish, the wizard is still the only game in town (or another full caster). And yet, it's more balanced with that cost. It's not the kind of balance you get from placing everyone under the same power system, but if it works for you, hey, it works for me.

Meanwhile, the fighter gets Combat Surge, which isn't as flashy as summoning meteors, but in combat can do way more single-target damage, or achieve a lot of other impressive tactical feats. And the rogue gets the awesome Ace in the Hole, which lets him do a lot of things the wizard couldn't without a great deal of luck.

I'm a little sketchier on those abilities, but there's some basic merit in expanding how good those characters can be at high levels.

I agree. I think most of the flame wars about caster effectiveness ignores the fact that most of the big BALANCE issues of these spells can be fixed without eliminating them altogether. Scry and Teleport aren't inherently bad spells; they're just way too powerful and low-level in 3e, and should come with trade-offs and requirements that actually make them more interesting.

Indeed. Which is the sort of thing that DMs can fix, but which new iterations of the rules can and should also address much better.

The "concentration" mechanic is another great example: it lets wizards use all their cool buffs, like polymorph and stoneskin, but it eliminates the stacking problem that made them overpowered, and it actually does so in a way that fits the way we expect magic to work.

Right on. That's something to think about.

I think this is the idea of maneuvers. Hopefully they scale well at higher levels!

Hopefully.

Maybe there's more common ground here than I thought.

 

[Garthanos]

Great, heavily whispered asides! After skimming the last few pages to catch up with this thread, I wish I hadn't; I don't suppose there's any way I can apply for that part of my life back? Didn't think so.

no you just psssd it away.

 

[Ahnehnois]

"And perhaps more to the point, overreliance on first-hand knowledge is one of the most basic of fallacies. I don't doubt that some individuals have enjoyed playing 4e, but I do doubt that the design of the game is responsible for that result, in most cases."

So... The people with first-hand knowledge of playing 4e shouldn't rely on it when evaluating it, and you doubt the system is responsible for their enjoyment. In other words, "If you like it, you have no idea why you like it, but I know enough in my armchair omniscience that it has nothing to do with the system."

You're making an attribution that isn't there. My point is that the gaming experience is a product of many things besides rules. Thus, regardless of whether game X or game Y is under discussion, the rules are not the primary determinant of whether each individual player of the game enjoyed it. And to those small number of people claiming that a particular rule or rules are better for everyone because those individuals have positive experiences with them, I'm saying I'm unconvinced that their experiences are generalizable to everyone. Even if everyone used that game. Because everyone's way of playing D&D is different. That's all.

My point is that one person saying "I think this rule is better for [abstract reason]" and another saying "I think a different rule is better for [abstract reason]" is fine, but then when someone comes in and says "Game over, I'm right because my friends say so and that's the end of it", I'm not inclined to change my mind.

[MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION]: you may have found a "one true way" to roleplay

I haven't. Ask around and you might find someone who has.

But to suggest that there is only one "correct" way for a hit point/damage system to be or for an "experience"/character change mechanism to work or, more generally, for a roleplaying system to be is complete, utter and total bollocks. The idea that "if all the game designers just realised what the best way was to do this, we would have one superlative system and everyone would be happy" is just beyond stupid, I'm afraid.

I don't think that. I'm suggesting that there's one "wrong" system (in general), and that other options (plural) that have previously been described ought to be considered. And indeed, if that was easy I agree it would have been done already. My side of this discussion is open-ended; there is not and never was one "right" answer to everything in my mind anyway.

 

[Ahnehnois]

If the mech were invisible, didn't get in the way of the pilot under any circumstance, required almost no upkeep and allowed the mech pilot to make a lot of money, and the mech pilot could wear the mech almost all the time, and the mech pilot without the mech was at least as skilled as the soldier at things other than combat then yes. Yes it would be.

Even in that extreme example, my answer to that question would still be no. I guess that's that.

 

[Garthanos]

Fair enough.

The actual conclusion to that is, discovering that in the latest version of D&D 4e, they had made levels meaningful, was one of the components that brought me back to D&D.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The actual conclusion to that is, discovering that in the latest version of D&D 4e, they had made levels meaningful, was one of the components that brought me back to D&D.

Fair enough.

 

[Siberys]

But, if a level /isn't/ power, what is it? Perhaps I'm using a weird, personal definiton of 'power', but I'd venture to say a more experienced musician is a more powerful musician, at least from the point of view of the metrics a game would care about. I mean, it represents experience and skill, translated into a relative measure. So higher levels means more experience and skill - not a stretch to say more powerful, huh?

Like I said, you want someone to be clearly better than someone else? Peg 'em with a higher level, because that is the game's metric for 'betterness'. Level being equal, though, different classes should have roughly equivalent pull. That's what balance is about; not making everyone the same, but making sure every option can pull its weight. If you give a bunch of options but one is clearly the best, there really aren't other options.

 

[triqui]

I've seen a small minority of internet posters say that (mostly after the 4e release; that marketing is pretty clearly the source of a lot of it), and never with any coherent explanation. Everyone I've ever talked to in person thinks that's a joke. Is your observation wrong? Maybe not. Maybe it fits your experience, the crowd you hang with (however many constitutes a load in all caps), your definition of "balance". But to extend beyond that and call it "generally agreed"...well that's just wrong.

Do you think AD&D2e was unbalanced toward non-casters? Do you think in AD&D, fighters were much better than wizards?

Let's see what did 3e mean to fighters:
They lost the unique perc with physical stats: no longer able to have 18/00 str, or being the unique beyond +2 Con bonus to HP.
They lost the unique extra 1/2 attack from weapon specialization. New BAB is somewhat comparable, but it's free for all characters, not something unique to them
They have a harder XP table beyond lvl 9 than before (as the table is standarized now)

Let's see what it did for wizards:
Wizards spells are no longer interrupted if the wizard is damaged in the round before casting it (need to be in the same exact moment, through ready action)
Wizards are no longer fragile: in AD&D2e, wizards had 1d4 hp, +2 max from con. At level 9, that was 9d4+18, for a wizard with starting 16 in con, or 40-41 hp. Now, they can have more than +2 from con, and Con can be boosted with belts/amulets/whatever. So that's 9d4+45, for an average of 60 or so hp at lvl 9 (not including things like toughness)
They get a better XP table beyond lvl 9, as the table is standard.

So, let's see: fighters lost things, and got a worse XP table. Wizards won things, and got a better XP table. In my opinion, either no single edition was balanced between casters and non-casters before the advent of 3e (and thus 3e brought balance to the system), or every other edition was balanced (or closer to balance) and 3e broke that.

 

[Ahnehnois]

But, if a level /isn't/ power, what is it?

Well, it isn't much. I think a level is power in some sense, but I don't think that in most rpgs it makes sense to say that all levels have an equivalency. A fighter 1/wizard 1 isn't equal to a fighter 2 or a wizard 2, in 2e or 3e (and doesn't exist in 4e).

I look at levels sort of like subscores in a large complicated test. For example, an SAT gives you a math score from 200-800 (I think) and a language score on the same scale. But a 500 in math doesn't "equal" a 500 in English. They're measuring different things. Similarly a fighter 5 doesn't equal a barbarian 5, let alone a cloistered cleric 5. They're different things.

Now, after the game is put together, it makes sense to refine it so those commodities (levels in a particular class) are close enough in power to be playable. But I don't think that all level 5 characters can ever be perfectly equivalent. Again, if you want to say that this makes the level an unnecessary concept, I wouldn't disagree with that (as above). But to make the level have a hard definition of power, you'd have to redefine the game.

Perhaps I'm using a weird, personal definiton of 'power', but I'd venture to say a more experienced musician is a more powerful musician, at least from the point of view of the metrics a game would care about. I mean, it represents experience and skill, translated into a relative measure. So higher levels means more experience and skill - not a stretch to say more powerful, huh?

Take this example. What if I have one character who has ranks in Perform and is a musician by trade. And another character who is a physician and has ranks in Heal. Do those ranks measure how good they are? Sure. In a clear and recognizable and generally linear fashion. Perform +4 is the standard for a 1st level character (in d20) with full training but no real talent. Perform -2 is inept. Perform +20 is great. Same for Heal.

But are ranks in Perform comparable to ranks in Heal? Is someone with +10 Perform as good a musician as someone with +10 Heal is a healer? Does that comparison even make sense? My case is that it doesn't. And in most games, even though they cost the same amount of skill points and such to get, a +10 Perform is not equal in usefulness or commonality to +10 Heal. Healing is better (or maybe music is better in some games). Does that mean that the two skills are not balanced with each other?

Now take the same reasoning and expand it out to an entire class. If a 10th level bard and a 10th level cleric are mechanically different, are they unbalanced?

Don't get me wrong, I see why someone could look at levels as a hard measurement of character power. But to me personally, the more I think about it the less sense it makes. It's an interesting discussion.