David Noonan on D&D Complexity

[Glyfair]

In the latest Design & Development column, David Noonan discusses designing the GenCon Dungeon Delve. This installment focuses on designing the dragons in order to work in the delve format.

That’s a lot to keep in the front of one’s mind. Here inside the walls at Wizards, we often talk about the “processor load” on a DM’s mind. Dragons will take all the processing power you have, and then some.

To be blunt, I think dragons are overdesigned. They’re eighty gallons of fun in a forty-gallon barrel. And the most troublesome aspect of dragons is their potent spellcasting. Those big sorcerer (and sorcerer/cleric) lists certainly make dragons more effective, but they also add about 20,000 moles of complexity.

Dragons have lots of great options for grappling, but nobody—nobody in the world, anywhere—likes the grapple rules

To give an idea of complexity of D&D, he points out that he was looking for a way to speed up casting of restoration. James Wyatt pointed him to a feat in the Complete Divine, a book David Noonan had designed!

 

[Nyaricus]

To give an idea of complexity of D&D, he points out that he was looking for a way to speed up casting of restoration. James Wyatt pointed him to a feat in the Complete Divine, a book David Noonan had designed!

Okay people, stay calm. The ship is going down. I repeat, the ship is going down.



cheers,
--N

 

[Glyfair]

Okay people, stay calm. The ship is going down. I repeat, the ship is going down.

Nah, I think this is just the flip side of those who say "WotC design has lost touch." They realize the weaknesses and strengths of the game (and sometimes they are the same thing).

One thing I find interesting is that there solutions to these issues moves the game more towards the miniatures game. Given a lot of peope who complain about D&D complexity also complain about the game being "dumbed down" to the mini game...

 

[Pants]

Nah, I think this is just the flip side of those who say "WotC design has lost touch." They realize the weaknesses and strengths of the game (and sometimes they are the same thing).

One thing I find interesting is that there solutions to these issues moves the game more towards the miniatures game. Given a lot of peope who complain about D&D complexity also complain about the game being "dumbed down" to the mini game...

I certainly think there's a way to lighten the load without turning it into a mini-centric game.

Then again I'm not that big of a proponent of the 'D&D is too complex' line of thought either.

 

[Glyfair]

I certainly think there's a way to lighten the load without turning it into a mini-centric game.

I'm specifically referring to those who whenever something is simplified they refer with a comment like that. Even for simplifications that have nothing to do with minis (although it is the sort of thing they do in the mini-game).

Then again I'm not that big of a proponent of the 'D&D is too complex' line of thought either.

My personal POV is that D&D can use simplification in some areas of the game. I'm all for that. However, I'm also for having lots of options and using my "intelligence guided by experience" (a a fictional detective used to say) to limit those options in my game appropriately.

 

[Wik]

To come back to Noonan's article, he does mention how much it sucks for Dragon's to be spellcasters, and I fully agree - Dragons should be centred around breath weapons, melee attacks, snatch attacks... not spellcasting. I handle dragon spellcasting a bit differently (they lose sorcerer spells, but get some sorcerer abilities factored into their stats, so that a dragon might have a permanent Obscuring Mist effect on it, and gets some fireball damage factored in with a breath weapon or something).

Like him, I don't like the idea of a dragon waving his claws and casting a spell at the group before wading into melee. Dragons should be above that.

I personally think most monsters should have only a few abilities associated with them; too many abilities makes them a pain to run. A dragon, for example, has a lot of different rules associated with it - frightful presence, multiple attack forms (tail slap? Wing buffet?), a plethora of feat choices, spellcasting, breath weapons.... And while those might be fun, I feel it's sometimes too much.

I'd rather have a monster that has, say, three attack types (I can power attack to deal a lot of damage, a breath weapon for area effect damage, and some sort of defensive buff... okay, I can keep that in mind) over a stat block that is a page and a half and I know I'm not going to effectively play.

I'm all for simplification of D&D whenever I can.

 

[Glyfair]

Dragons should be centred around breath weapons, melee attacks, snatch attacks... not spellcasting.

There is definitely a certain amount of support for dragon spellcasting in legends. However, there is certainly support in the game already to give them spellcasting classes, so I would support the default dragons (at least the core ones) not having spellcasting ability. Keep the spell-like abilities, though.

 

[Hussar]

Perhaps removing the class spellcasting abilities from dragons but add on a ritual based sort of spell casting specific for dragons. That way dragons can still have all sorts of magical toys around them, but, they aren't going to buff up and blast away in combat.

 

[Plane Sailing]

With the 3e setup though, if powerful dragons don't have access to powerful magics, they are going to get quickly destroyed in the magical arms race that D&D can turn into - if they can't scry, buff, teleport, Heal and do other fancy stuff.

Spells for dragons is a way of giving them a little more configurability, survivability and extensibility, really.

Personally, I might be tempted to replace some of the dragons spells with spell like abilities, building on the capabilities already included in that fashion.

 

[delericho]

Interesting article. In particular, I noted that he denied both the PCs and the dragons any ability to dispel magic. Conversely, he left Energy Drain in (although I think that decision was addressed in the previous column). Both of these can cause havoc at the table, as the DM has to radically refigure the stats for his critter. The worst, of course, is when the PC wizard successfully dispels some but not all of the BBEGs suite of buffs.

I wonder if perhaps the Dispel Magic spell should be split in two: have a standard-action Counterspell Magic spell which has the counterspelling utility of the existing Dispel Magic, but can't dispel operational spells (perhaps set at 2nd level), and increase the casting time of the regular Dispel Magic to 2 (or more) full rounds. That way, the ability to dispel magic exists, but is probably not a combat option. I'm not sure what impact that would have on the game.

As for Energy Drain... I'm not sure. In general, spells that provide a bonus to friendlies are easier to deal with than spells that provide a penalty to unfriendlies (and personal buffs are easier still). So, where possible, I would like to see these emphasised. Where a penalty must be applied to the other side, it should be as simple as possible. So I think Energy Drain needs rethought. At the very least, a fixed number of negative levels per casting is probably a good idea.