Tony Vargas
Legend
Wouldn't hurt to learn from their mistakes, tho.So we don't need to worry about what a present or past version of any game is like in order to have this design discussion
Wouldn't hurt to learn from their mistakes, tho.So we don't need to worry about what a present or past version of any game is like in order to have this design discussion
The counterpoint to this in theory would be that the party does not always have control over how long their day is, and therefore a mixture of long-day classes and short-day classes is desirable as a sort of diversified portfolio.* back on Gleemax, there was a school of thought that, if you played a fighter you'd "want" longer days, so you could shine, so there should be a built in check against the casters' impulse to the 5MWD. Among many other reasons that didn't manifest was that the point of /decisions/ in a cooperative game is to maximize the performance of the group, not minimize the performance of one member so another can finally make a non-trivial contribution. The fighter's best play, back then, was to be down with resting every chance the party got - and, the players best option was to /not play a fighter/ because other classes could contribute daily resources that were more important to the party's success than anything it had to offer.
Wouldn't hurt to learn from their mistakes, tho.
Not /always/, but it's still rather absurdist for the fighter to be expected to insist they press on in the hopes of exhausting the casters' spells so he can finally feel like he's contributing something.The counterpoint to this in theory would be that the party does not always have control over how long their day is
Lol. Caster classes were hella broken in 3.x, indeed. But (as in 5e) give it a long enough day and enough rounds of casters plinking with crossbows (or even more rounds of them plinking with cantrips) and the fighter /will/ catch up...This point is of course strictly theoretical in the case of the 3E fighter, which underperformed at any day length.
Well, that'd suck, sure.Worry in this case meaning “tie ourselves in knots over establishment, status quo, tradition, past design, market dynamics to the point that analysis is halted and design conversation is stifled.”
Portent My Analysis
Flexibility some times to aid allies and harm enemies (nice)
Affects more types of rolls this is also flexibility (saving throws ) (nice)
Unpredictability : you don't know til you roll (ok)
Infrequent only twice daily or thrice when entering epic
Can include mediocre rolls well I suppose that is better than risking a bad roll
Can be wasted while you get it on exactly the thing you want you do not know if you need it.
Did I miss anything?
@Tony Vargas
Well, as you know (I think?), I have a ridiculous amount of that level and beyond play in all of BECMI/RC, AD&D, and 3.x. The bulk of my 5e GMing (about 24 hours) is of lvl 14 and beyond.
I’ve never, not once, seen a Fighter be a consequential asset (forget parity with spellcasters) in noncombat resolution at those levels.
The only D&D (and derivative) games I’ve run at endgame tier play where a Fighter is both a consequential asset to noncombat resolution and at relative parity with spellcasters is 4e, Dungeon World, 13th Age, Cortex+ Fantasy Heroic, and Strike(!). Beyond the Wall and Torchbearer doesn’t get to that tier and I’ve only run a little of Shadows of the Demon Lord.
i cant provide a decent analysis... for DW ... will have to do more analysis of the game itself. Especially with who is fans of the game. Basically if you have to decide to apply the roll without knowing if the roll succeeded in a sense it is wasted ... it might have been better to save it. There are abilities that let you know the roll you are aiding before you spend the resource. Like a bards inspiration die if I recall.This looks good except I need clarification on the last component.
Can you clarify what yo mean by "wasted" here with a play example?
Also, did you see my instantiation of this for Dungeon World?
My point is that this is a bit of a strawman argument. Not necessarily in the sense that nobody has ever honestly argued it, because this is the internet and I'm sure somebody has, but in the sense that it's the weakest and most ridiculous version of an argument that can hold some water.Not /always/, but it's still rather absurdist for the fighter to be expected to insist they press on in the hopes of exhausting the casters' spells so he can finally feel like he's contributing something.
It's not so much the matter of the DM applying just the right pressure every day as it is them applying different amounts and diverse varieties of pressure from day to day. As long as the party doesn't know whether they're going to be facing one encounter tomorrow or ten, then keeping around a fighter or other long-day character is a good investment.Not much less absurd is expecting the DM to always apply just the right weight of time pressure to meet some theoretical balance-point.
A lazylord or prince/princess build is one of those ironies able to contribute in any context but doing so with function and flavor of the non-combatant.... Enabled by the mechanics of a Warrior Lord / Lord of War. Kind of Evokes what the fighting is about.... having someone to fight for can make heroes even more heroic....but when I do, it's a warlord build.![]()
It was a commercial failure, for a veritable perfect storm of reasons, including the nerdrage that surrounded it making it less likely new players would even try it.4Ed have try to level the experience of all classes. It has been a dramatic failure.
Nope. Never. (Yeah, that wont' get me in trouble; at least I didn't say "Stormwind Fallacy" ...oops. ) If you have to work around the system to get the desired RP results, it's just proof of either a bad system (as has consistently been the case with D&D - I'm sorry, I love the game, but I love in in spite of it's many, deep, and abiding flaws) or a system with design goals incompatible with the desired RP results.So the solution is in the role play.
Two very strong points that argue to exactly the opposite of the conclusion it sounds like you might be aiming for.Fighter and wizard are not competing to win the game at the end of the session
The player who play a fighter is there to feel and make live a fighter hero in a world of magic..
TBF, it was a smaller part of the defending side of the Fighter SUX arguments on Gleemax… and I was too often forced to use it, myself. So there's some bitterness in there. ;(Not necessarily in the sense that nobody has ever honestly argued it, because this is the internet and I'm sure somebody has, but in the sense that it's the weakest and most ridiculous version of an argument that can hold some water.
That /is/ the right pressure, yes. I should've made it clearer that it wasn't as simple as always applying exactly the /same/ pressure.It's not so much the matter of the DM applying just the right pressure every day as it is them applying different amounts and diverse varieties of pressure from day to day.
Yeah, see, you get it.As long as the party doesn't know whether they're going to be facing one encounter tomorrow or ten,
That's the idea, the problem is that it rests on grinding down the resource-heavy characters, and reducing the overall effectiveness of the party, in order to glorify the low-contributing character.then keeping around a fighter or other long-day character is a good investment.
NOT doing this let the story be natural and let everyone have reliable climactic potency.The bottom line is that kind of balance-by-pacing mechanism both restricts the kinds of stories the game can produce, from the narrative side, and is dysfunctional as a cooperative game, on the system side.
A slightly unbalanced (keyword, slight) game is actually superior in the context of an rp game that necessarily includes an element of realism than a perfectly balanced game. For a lot of reasons. So actually no. You dont want a perfectly balanced game. You actually want one that is specifically slightly out of balance.It was a commercial failure, for a veritable perfect storm of reasons, including the nerdrage that surrounded it making it less likely new players would even try it.
But concluding that balanced games are bad, and, conversely, broken games are good, is not valid . Not just because it's ad populum reasoning, though that's enough, by itself.
Nope. Never. (Yeah, that wont' get me in trouble; at least I didn't say "Stormwind Fallacy" ...oops. ) If you have to work around the system to get the desired RP results, it's just proof of either a bad system (as has consistently been the case with D&D - I'm sorry, I love the game, but I love in in spite of it's many, deep, and abiding flaws) or a system with design goals incompatible with the desired RP results.
Two very strong points that argue to exactly the opposite of the conclusion it sounds like you might be aiming for.
A hero in a world of magic, is one who makes a difference in spite of the many challenges posed by that magic. Not one who's just a pawn in a game of wizards, whose decisions and actions make no difference, who's readily replaceable with a golem or summoned monster or off-the shelf mercenary.
The point of a cooperative game is, similarly, for everyone to contribute to winning the game. You don't win that game by making choices to keep another player down for your own glory. Making good choices needs to stand out as a good contribution - even if, say, they're sacrifices. An option in a cooperative game that requires the player to make decisions that net harm the overall chances of winning, in order to appear to be making an important contribution, is a trap option....
TBF, it was a smaller part of the defending side of the Fighter SUX arguments on Gleemax… and I was too often forced to use it, myself. So there's some bitterness in there. ;(
Without going into too much detail, the broad-strokes panorama of the sorta-consensus we came up with back then, on keeping casters & non-casters, in general, and the LFQW with the elegant-design, but Tier 5 fighter as the L (also, honorable mention to the much less inferior Tier 2 Sorcerer), and CoDzilla and God-Wizards as the Q, often abbreviated as "Living World" was for the DM to devote the campaign to making spell prep & cast choices /exceedingly difficult/ via profound time-pressure, uncertainty via downright telegraphing some threats and presenting equally trustworthy seeming disinformation, and a constantly-changing tapestry of challenges. The idea was to balance the Fighter by either/both making the 'day' drag on so long that the casters were tapped out of their best combat spells for multiple combats, relying on the fighters through some important battles, or, were so uncertain and so fearful of needing spells later that they passed on casting them even at ideal moments, letting the fighters shine (but not the party die), then being left holding spells they ended up not needing later afterall. Similarly, BTW, wizards could be goaded into taking slates of highly situational spells that turned out to be useless due to disinformation, allowing the sorcerer a chance to shine spamming some generally-useful spell that was OK in the situation, while the wizard cursed himself for not prepping the /ideal/ spell. ...at the extreme fringe of that, there's "but what if the DM isn't doing a good enough job forcing the time pressure" and "well, your fighter as the 'natural party leader' should talk the party into showing some heroic fortitude and bravely pressing on!" Which, actually, sounds kind good - especially after selling the Living World concept all through a long thread - but, which, really, when considered for the perspective of designing for a cooperative game is quite dysfunctional.
That /is/ the right pressure, yes. I should've made it clearer that it wasn't as simple as always applying exactly the /same/ pressure.Yeah, see, you get it.
That's the idea, the problem is that it rests on grinding down the resource-heavy characters, and reducing the overall effectiveness of the party, in order to glorify the low-contributing character.
The bottom line is that kind of balance-by-pacing mechanism both restricts the kinds of stories the game can produce, from the narrative side, and is dysfunctional as a cooperative game, on the system side.
If it weren't so enshrined by decades of tradition, the hobby would regard it like modern doctors revisiting the possibility of using leeches*.
* example chosen advisedly, because, yeah, actually, there are a few legitimate medical uses for leeches!
There are no perfectly balanced games, so that's moot.A slightly unbalanced (keyword, slight) game is actually superior in the context of an rp game that necessarily includes an element of realism than a perfectly balanced game.
First of all, look at the actual meaning of the word moot. For some reason everyone uses it in the opposite way of its meaning. (Seriously)There are no perfectly balanced games, so that's moot.
Not that FRPGs necessarily need an element of realism in any sense that would necessarily cause imbalances, either. For instance, magic, not existing in real life, has no bearing on realism, and can be arbitrarily tuned to balance pretty freely, rather than be kept stubbornly Class-Tier 1.
Also sure. They dont need said element. It just makes it better. And more realistic. But its nit necessary for something to be better or realistic. People just prefer better and more realistic.There are no perfectly balanced games, so that's moot.
Not that FRPGs necessarily need an element of realism in any sense that would necessarily cause imbalances, either. For instance, magic, not existing in real life, has no bearing on realism, and can be arbitrarily tuned to balance pretty freely, rather than be kept stubbornly Class-Tier 1.
"Realism" can make a game a lot worse - especially a game emulating fantasy, which, by it's very nature, is at odds with realism.Also sure. They dont need said element. It just makes it better.
"having little or no practical relevance" is /a/ definition of mootFirst of all, look at the actual meaning of the word moot. For some reason everyone uses it in the opposite way of its meaning. (Seriously)
Now I quibble with definitions, since there's not an official one of "game balance" AFAIK. You may be saying 'balance' but I'm not sure that's what I'd mean when I say it.Second, fine, a game that approaches balance too closely is inferior to a game that has a decent amount of unbalance. That actually does happen some times. It creates an unrealistic and stagnant game.