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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9893202" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Preferences cannot be taught. They simply exist, or don't. They might arise from exposure...but they also might not. "I can teach you to like this!" is a massive error.Except it isn't. Like it literally isn't. A "sheer gamble" makes it a roulette-wheel situation. That is not what it is. At all. The game has designed math. You may dislike that fact all you like--it's still true. It is not "a sheer gamble". The game literally isn't designed that way--and it never was, not even in OD&D.I have no idea what "The old 'thrill of victory' piece" means.More to the point: You're right, but you're missing two critical things. First, it's not "winning too often", it's winning without earning it too often. Victories you earn are always valid, doesn't matter if you've won 10 or 1000 or 1,000,000. A good general winning ten battles in a row doesn't feel like the tenth battle was a dull waste of time. Second, you're forgetting that losing too often also sours things, but in the opposite direction. It's not just that there's no thrill to be had, it's that even the victories taste like defeat.That's the problem here. Hyper ultra mega lethality where you lose characters left and right doesn't feel good. It sucks. A lot. And given how much crappy awful darkness there is in our world right now, a lot of people are not interested in an experience which will grind them into the dirt, spit on them, and call them names for daring to do anything cool or heroic or exciting.No, because I've never seen that happen. Mostly because if that did happen, then 19/20 times, it would end in disaster, ruining the enjoyment of the evening and leaving me feeling depressed, like I'm a total failure who never deserves happiness.Again: you cannot teach preferences. Your preferences aren't mine. You are never going to be able to teach me to like this, and while I feel this more strongly than the average bear...the average bear agrees more with me than she does with you on this.Too much death is worse--much worse--than too much victory. For most folks, it's that simple.And I disagree.And you don't think that maybe, just maybe, your group is not a representative sample because you've specifically selected for people who share your tastes, and selected against those who are completely the opposite?The fact that you, a self-avowed OSR-style GM who actively cultivates a devil-may-care, hyper-mercenary attitude amongst your players. That's not how most people play D&D, and you will not succeed at "teaching" people that their preferences should be yours.You may think that if you wish, but it's a well-known problem in psychology. Humans over-value negative events and under-value positive ones. Not universally, this is a statistical thing. It's called the "<a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/negativity-bias" target="_blank">negativity bias</a>", and it is an extremely real and often very serious problem. If on Tuesday Bob has a good event, and then on Wednesday he has a bad event, he will feel worse about the bad event than the good one most times, even if both events are equally impactful. Bob will almost never feel neutral after this. Even if we switch the order, bad on Tuesday good on Wednesday, the good event will not entirely compensate for the bad event unless it is much more good than the bad event was.This is simply a part of general human nature. There will, of course, always Except you can't. Like in old-school D&D you literally can't. In modern D&D, you can. That's part of my point.First part: I already said that? Like that's what I literally said. Chance exists to prevent ossified SOPs and flawless plans. Second: I consider this a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nothing is made so no one plays it so nothing is made. PLENTY of high-level adventure paths have been made by Paizo and ENWorld and have done fantastically well, e.g. Zeitgeist goes all the way to 30 in the original 4e version."There's a reason" may be "they don't make it so no one plays it".Then those rules should not be present in the PHB. If they aren't intended to be used--if they're meant as a supplement to the actual game--then they should be just that. A supplement.Why? It's a fact. I have a miniature pinscher that is almost 21 years old. Does that change the fact that most miniature pinschers don't live past 16 years old? No, it does not. Hence: the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". Data has to be collected correctly, and if you don't, it's...gonna be a problem.In what way can you declare that an individual, personal experience, affected by all the vagaries of individual existence, becomes a general statistical fact? A sample size of 1 is statistically meaningless. Like it literally cannot be used for statistics--you'd get divide-by-zero errors.No. Games have degrees of randomness. This black-and-white thinking will lead you astray.Again, there are degrees of randomness. This is one that has a low degree of randomness.Blackjack, for example, is a game with a moderate degree of randomness. That's why card-counting is forbidden in casinos. It's a skill that gives you a meaningful advantage, even though the game is still random.It is some degree of random. Not the same as absolute pure randomness or no randomness whatsoever. See above: some card games are more random and others are less. Poker, for example, is more random than blackjack in most cases, because poker involves much less information presented to the player.Bridge is a good example of a medium-randomness game. It has a very strong skill component, but a lot of the information is not directly available to the player. Craps and roulette are good examples of almost totally random games, where skill plays little to no part and there's functionally no information the players could obtain to change that.And here you are having to concede the point I made above: randomness is not black-or-white. It's a gradient.Nah. Not my preference. Gave it a shot, hated it thoroughly. I'd rather never play an RPG again than do that.Okay. So...you have one class that can, officially, expand its capabilities. You have another class that cannot expand its capabilities. Do I need to spell out how "X can increase its capacities, even if it doesn't always do so, but Y cannot ever increase its capacities"?You've been quite clear in the past that every power has to come with a cost. What cost did the Wizard pay for being able to invent new mechics for itself, that the Fighter did not pay? It can't be the weakness--that's already balancing against the existing spells like time stop and wish. So...what cost was paid for this?Then the book should have already done that.What? No, certainly not with 5e. 5e actively encourages GMs to treat the rules as meaningless suggestions to be cast aside whenever, wherever, and however they feel like. It's one of the most irritating things about it!Ah, but is it "tweaking" things? Or is it "wholly reinventing the game every other session"? Because I have had far too much of the latter already.I prefer a small number of signature items that the player truly values and cares about. "Easy come, easy go" makes for "yawn, next?" in my experience--items aren't valued, they're just disposable trash because you know it'll all be taken away sooner rather than later.I mean that's what happens when the players acquire massive amoutns of loot or no loot at all, with zero control or reference.Wait...do you think WBL means players MUST have EXACTLY those values...? Good Lord, no wonder you think it's a terrible thing! It's just a benchmark. Do you think it's a problem that monster design has a typical/expected HP by level, even if many monsters don't follow it precisely?Certainly. That's why I always include elements in my design proposals that I know, without doubt, are not for me, but which would please others. Or, better still, elements which serve both of our needs in different ways, and which empower GMs to make their own decisions about what kind of game they should have.I just demand that the game itself actually be...y'know, one that genuinely runs, and runs well, for the playstyles the designers intended and told the players about. If it actually needs changes just to function, it's a bad game. If it is requiring the GM to act like the flight computer of the F-117, constantly making corrections because the plane cannot fly without such corrections because it is inherently aerodynamically unstable, then no, that's not acceptable and I don't think you should have to accept that any more than I do.Again, this is why I push SO HARD on the need for "novice levels" (read: robust, well-made rules for going from "the absolute bare minimum mechanics to be 'a character'" to "everything except one tiny missing piece to be a proper 1st level character") and, relatedly, the need for "incremental advancement" rules (read: robust, well-made rules for doling out little tiny pieces of a character's next level-up benefits). Because such rules don't just support you--they support several playstyles that I, personally, have no interest in, AND ALSO support brand-new players getting a gentler but still challenging introduction to the D&D experience. (Or an utterly ungentle one, if that's what the GM desires--but no GM is forced to be ungentle, nor to be gentle for that matter. They choose what end to turn these robust rules toward.)But what does "tweaked" mean? Because for me, "tweaking" is making small, I emphasize small, situational adjustments--a number here, a spell there. The way you describe it, it's much more like "alright, I'm going to rebuild the spell system from the ground up", which looks nothing like "tweaking" to me, and instead looks like paying for the privilege of having to do all the designers' work for them.</blockquote>

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