Difficulty Dial?

[LeStryfe79]

Pretty self-explanatory, but what do you think?

Easy: superbalanced encounters and loot, no death traps, zero death penalty.
Normal: Fairly balanced encounters and loot, few death traps, low death penalty.
Hard: Encounters with high degree of difficulty and extremely randomized loot, lots of Death traps, severe death penalties.
Ect,ect,ect...... But you get the picture.

 

[howandwhy99]

I think we're talking about a few different things and it helps to differentiate them.

First, there is character difficulty which is sort of easy to describe. It's the odds on a die roll to achieve a desired outcome. Is the Difficulty 5% or 95% for or against? We can change this for greater granularity and also bend linear probabilities by adding more dice. There are plenty of ways to play with dice mechanics.

Second, I think Difficulty can mean the amount of interface the players are dealing with. This can depend upon their choices for the PC and it sounds like 5Es Complexity rating will primarily be about this kind of difficulty. If you look at the old PC sheets they have maybe a dozen statistics on them and a few places for lists like equipment. Maybe they even include a spot for a picture. As Monte and Mike have said, later edition PC sheets have grown in size and complexity. 4E innovated cards for many of the powers. 3.x had separate sheets depending upon character class. Statistics of monsters and other challenges grew considerably too. Because of this I think this kind of Difficulty should be divided between that for the Players and that for the DM.

Thirdly, there is an old kind of Difficulty based upon the complexity of the game world that fell within the scope of a PCs class. This really isn't used anymore, but I believe it was rated by XP class totals. So a Thief had about 1250 difficulty at 1st level and 2500 at 2nd. The Magic User though began the game at difficulty 2500. As the game went along and more and more of the challenges were surpassed by the Players/Characters the higher the PCs' levels increased. Of course, so to did the complexity difficulty of those challenges they faced. This method of difficulty is really dependent upon the design of the world, so it's not likely to be included in the next D&D.

A fourth kind of difficulty could be emotional difficulty. These are more easily recognized in emotionally charged games like horror. The difficulty is definitely one faced by the players, but I feel there needs to be some kind of safety word or agreement beforehand on when and how to dial up or dial down the emotional impact of what is occurring in the game. This one isn't so much a mechanical dial to enact vast yet quick changes to the whole system. It's more of a agreement about content and what's in and what's out and when to push more and when not to.

 

[keterys]

You need different dials for different things.

Random/Balanced loot isn't a difficulty thing at all.

I like high difficulty / challenge that really makes people bring tactics, have a risk for failure and sense of danger at all times.

But I also dislike any abrupt death ability (save or die) or "death trap" - for much the same reason. I want tactics, not pure luck, determining life or death, and I want a chance to react to dangers to prevent death.

Random vs balanced loot, eh, whatever. Random can be fun, but can result in stronger or weaker parties so clearly isn't Easy / Hard. Separate dial indeed.

 

[Aenghus]

Fairly recently I played an old-style module with lots of traps, and immediately fell back in the dungeon-crawl paranoia mode - compulsively checking everything for traps, being slow and methodical, distrusting appearances and first impressions.

While I can play this way, I found out i don't enjoy it, it becomes tedious very quickly. It's like picking your way through a minefield, not fun.

I prefer low lethality games where spontaneity and kick in the door tactics don't equate to messy suicide. For instance, in my 4e campaign I don't see the PCs being paranoid all the time, and prefer it that way as they don't need to be.

So, separate dials for these issues. Wanting high lethality doesn't necessarily mean wanting high randomness in other areas.

 

[LeStryfe79]

I see your points, but lets not kid ourselves. AD&D = Hard, 3rd = normal, and 4th = easy. I'm not saying which is better, but in this instance, casual actually equated to less players. I know it's a strange anomaly, but it's akin to poor people being fatter in the Unite States(statistically proven). In reality, it comes down to accepting a state of depression for a cost of less resistance. Depressed people usually have less money to spend and can no longer support our hobby. Controversial? Yes indeed! Rightly so, since controversy without merit is the last bastion of losers everywhere. I guess what I mean is that catering to a casual crowd works great for mainstream entertainment like Reality TV/Movies/ Social Games but is the doom of the type of game we love. Casual options are a great idea for bringing new players into the fold, however, so I'm all for them, but only to a certain extent. Unfortunately, this is a war in many ways, and those unwilling to see this will simply watch their beloved game die a mazes and monsters like death. I'm not kidding around here. New players are slipping through mine, and yours, and Enworld's hands on a daily basis. We HAVE to figure out how to attract these players ASAP or else!!! We have to show people how cool and interesting our hobby really is, and Bejeweled won't quite do the trick.

 

[howandwhy99]

I see your points, but lets not kid ourselves. AD&D = Hard, 3rd = normal, and 4th = easy. I'm not saying which is better, but in this instance, casual actually equated to less players. I know it's a strange anomaly, but it's akin to poor people being fatter in the Unite States(statistically proven). In reality, it comes down to accepting a state of depression for a cost of less resistance. Depressed people usually have less money to spend and can no longer support our hobby. Controversial? Yes indeed! Rightly so, since controversy without merit is the last bastion of losers everywhere. I guess what I mean is that catering to a casual crowd works great for mainstream entertainment like Reality TV/Movies/ Social Games but is the doom of the type of game we love. Casual options are a great idea for bringing new players into the fold, however, so I'm all for them, but only to a certain extent. Unfortunately, this is a war in many ways, and those unwilling to see this will simply watch their beloved game die a mazes and monsters like death. I'm not kidding around here. New players are slipping through mine, and yours, and Enworld's hands on a daily basis. We HAVE to figure out how to attract these players ASAP or else!!! We have to show people how cool and interesting our hobby really is, and Bejeweled won't quite do the trick.

I for one am not clear on what you are talking about. I'd like a game that could cater to a wider audience and can be changed for what each desired. I'm not sure what the war is about though. Or why some gaming styles won't do the trick. I'm sure there are other, different kinds of difficulty than the ones I outlined. What is it you are referring to?

 

[keterys]

AD&D = Hard, 3rd = normal, and 4th = easy.

That's a subjective statement - maybe true for your experience, of course, but hardly material for the discussion.

And certainly, 5E shouldn't have a single dial to match edition (though even that is more logical than your argument), but multiple dials to allow DMs and players to customize their preference.

 

[kitsune9]

I like the Hard setting myself. Save vs. die, random encounters, and so on. However, with games that have Hard settings, I would really want easy chargen.

 

[LeStryfe79]

That's a subjective statement - maybe true for your experience, of course, but hardly material for the discussion.

And certainly, 5E shouldn't have a single dial to match edition (though even that is more logical than your argument), but multiple dials to allow DMs and players to customize their preference.

That is not subjective at all. Try running a fifteen year old through an old Gygaxian adventure. Yeah, that's what i thought. Hard doesn't necessarily mean better. I'm not looking for an argument here. However saying that AD&D was harder is subjective is EXACTLY the kind of argumentative BS that hurts D&D. EVERYONE who played AD&D knows it was harder. What are you trying to prove here? By trying to be less controversial, you have instead created an argument where there was previously none. Don't blame me for making this an issue. I stated a statistical fact and you disagreed with bland subjuctiveness. Not only this, but you gave opinions from a moderator's point of view as if they were absolute. Please try harder to contribute to the conversation next time and bring useful knowledge to the table, or I will feel inclined to pull my monetary support from this site since they are so willing to employ those who haven't earned it.

 

[keterys]

Sure, Tomb of Horrors was a hard adventure.

But that doesn't make 1E a "hard" edition. There were also groups who barely had to worry about death, who had more magic (spells and items) than they knew what to do with, wishes to obtain fantastic results, etc.

Some of my strongest characters were 1st or 2nd edition characters.

Look at how easy it was to kill giants and dragons in 1E, for comparison. HP were so low and spell damage so high. Of course, it bounced back that way too - dragons who breathed for their hp? Uhoh.

In 3E, save DCs could get _far_ more extreme, making it far easier to just randomly die. Conversely, there were many encounters decided by literally the first character to act. Doesn't get much easier than that.

In 4E, monsters could be so much more resilient and PCs had far fewer ways to become immune to their effects. Conversely, a group with preparation and teamwork finds random death extraordinarily difficult such that TPKs often outnumber deaths and both too rare.

Every edition has a variety of intelligent decisions influencing an amazing degree of design decisions. And there's no gain to being blind to those decisions.

I've played (and written) some extremely hard 3e and 4e adventures, too. If you wanted something as difficult, or harder, than the Tomb of Horrors, it wouldn't take much to do so. Certainly, the system doesn't prevent it.

So, take a step back from any particular prejudice about an edition and scientifically break it down to what you're _actually_ looking for and talking about. Then, we can have a fruitful discussion.