Nefermandias
Hero
It is quite clear that he is not talking about your personal game.Why should it have to be acceptable to you? You’re not one of my players.
It is quite clear that he is not talking about your personal game.Why should it have to be acceptable to you? You’re not one of my players.
Instead of being forced to invoke optional rules just to level the playing field, we should start with as close to level as humanly possible, and allow folks to make up their own minds about whether optional rules would make their games better or not.So instead of those rules being optional, should we be lobbying for them to be made core?
I flatly disagree. A system that is totally agnostic about playstyle isn't a system. Some kind of design commitment is required. There must be some baseline. The baseline we choose should be one that would be difficult or impossible to massage into an existing game that lacked that baseline.We should design a game that is agnostic about playstyle and make rules for it that (as far as practical) do serve all parties well.
I have never advocated, and will never advocate, for a "hard-coded rule-for-everything system." Never. Such things are fool's errands. That's what 3e tried to be.Often that serving-all-parties-well piece requires loosening the constraints a bit. A hard-coded rule-for-everything system simply cannot cater to as many playstyles as a looser each-DM-does-it-a-bit-differently system;
Don't lump 4e in with 3e's absolutely craptacular design here. 4e emphatically is not a "hard-coded rule-for-everything system", despite what its detractors love claiming about it. It is an exception-based design system. Rules matter, but they are not ironclad: make exceptions when they're needed, but don't go overboard.and after trying the former with 3e and 4e WotC learned this lesson and loosened things up for 5e. Results: a) a system that, while it certainly needs some tweaking, works well enough to be good enough and b) roaring success in the marketplace.
Not at all. Some baseline is required. That's unavoidable; we are embarked. A system that truly makes no design commitments whatsoever doesn't contain rules.While this sounds good, it seems to run counter to your not-exactly-supportive remarks just above re optional rules; given that all of these "tools and advice" pieces would fall under the optional rules umbrella.
I did not say they were incapable of it. I said that they don't need it in order to do the task of being a meatshield. Which is simply true. You don't need a brain to be a spiky, hard-to-move barrier blocking the enemy. An inanimate object does that just fine. That's what fortifications with barbed wire are, after all. If "meatshield" is the long and short of what the martial character is doing, they are contributing nothing more than what an inanimate object could contribute (or, at most, an automaton.)This tells me more about how you view and-or play your meatshield NPCs than you probably realize.
For me, any NPC in the party, even if it's someone's hench, is still capable of independent thought and of acting on said thought.
What possible decisions can one make about "stand between allies and enemies, tanking hits, and retaliating"?In the party I've been running for the last 3 years the PCs have, up until quite recently, all been mid- or back-liners of some sort, with the front-line duties mostly being handled by a long-serving NPC Fighter. That Fighter was every bit as much a "character" as any of the PCs, making decisions (and not always the right ones!), giving input, and then going out and not-always-perfectly doing her job just like anyone else in the party.
What free thinking, thought, and care???If the meatshield is someone's mind-controlled robot then sure, that's exactly how it'd work.
But 99+% of the time this isn't the case. Instead, the meatshield is a free-thinking person and IMO should be played with the same amount of care and thought as would an NPC caster in the party.
If the "meatshield" was your PC would you be so eager to play it as if it was a near-mindless automaton?I did not say they were incapable of it. I said that they don't need it in order to do the task of being a meatshield. Which is simply true. You don't need a brain to be a spiky, hard-to-move barrier blocking the enemy. An inanimate object does that just fine. That's what fortifications with barbed wire are, after all. If "meatshield" is the long and short of what the martial character is doing, they are contributing nothing more than what an inanimate object could contribute (or, at most, an automaton.)
An inanimate object cannot survey the battlefield, evaluate which spell would be most effective for that battlefield, and then deploy that spell in, hopefully, the most effective location. You need either an actual sapient brain, or something equivalent.
What possible decisions can one make about "stand between allies and enemies, tanking hits, and retaliating"?
What free thinking, thought, and care???
Seriously. What thought is required to be an emplaced fortification?
I'm not concerned with whether the optional rules level the playing field, tilt the playing field, or stand the playing field on its ear. I'm instead talking about the desirability (or not) of a) having a base system with lots of optional rules or b) incorporating as many of those optional rules into the base system as possible, maybe by only presenting several options without presenting a baseline or "core" version of a rule.Instead of being forced to invoke optional rules just to level the playing field, we should start with as close to level as humanly possible, and allow folks to make up their own minds about whether optional rules would make their games better or not.
Problem with that is it forces you to limit your potential audience.I flatly disagree. A system that is totally agnostic about playstyle isn't a system. Some kind of design commitment is required. There must be some baseline. The baseline we choose should be one that would be difficult or impossible to massage into an existing game that lacked that baseline.
A fine sentiment in theory, but in practice it risks binding the DM (and-or the whole game) in the straitjacket of predictability.It is very, very easy to design a system that gives the DM no idea what effect their choices will have, that is mechanically unreliable. It is very difficult for a DM to impose mechanical reliability on a system that lacks them. Hence, the system should start from a position of reliability.
At least we agree on that much.I have never advocated, and will never advocate, for a "hard-coded rule-for-everything system." Never. Such things are fool's errands. That's what 3e tried to be.
And if that commitment consists of "here's the basic rules framework and here's a bunch of options you can use to build your own system on to that framework", isn't that good enough?Not at all. Some baseline is required. That's unavoidable; we are embarked. A system that truly makes no design commitments whatsoever doesn't contain rules.
I never said I was eager to. I said that it is completely possible to do so. (As a matter of fact, I hate this fact!) Hence: BEING a meatshield and nothing else isn't a peer contribution to the group. You're a footsoldier, a caddy, a consumable resource to your caster "allies."If the "meatshield" was your PC would you be so eager to play it as if it was a near-mindless automaton?
No? Good. Glad to hear it.
But that's not what the actual rules give you. The actual rules give you meatshield and...that's about it. That is, and has always been, my problem with this proposal. You aren't an equal participant. You're a footman to the Actually Important People.Now let the NPC be played the same way as you would your own PC and we're good to go.
Lanefan the character is a straight-up Fighter. Always has been. And I'd like to think that when he's in the field (as is currently the case) he's contributing a lot more all round than would this quasi-inanimate meatshield you speak of.
You are conflating a character and a role, they are not the same thing, your character might be nuanced and multifaceted and contain much consideration about what actions they want to perform at any moment but the role of meatshield is not and does not, their methods and actions are about as simple and predictable as a brick.If the "meatshield" was your PC would you be so eager to play it as if it was a near-mindless automaton?
No? Good. Glad to hear it.
Now let the NPC be played the same way as you would your own PC and we're good to go.
Lanefan the character is a straight-up Fighter. Always has been. And I'd like to think that when he's in the field (as is currently the case) he's contributing a lot more all round than would this quasi-inanimate meatshield you speak of.
This is always the case for all possible games, period.Problem with that is it forces you to limit your potential audience.
A system that is inherently unbalanced cannot be turned into one that is balanced by mere effort of will on the part of its users. That's my point here. This is a one-way thing. Adding balance where it doesn't exist is a Herculean effort. Eliminating balance where it is present is trivial. Achieving good asymmetrical balance is a difficult task for a designer, and a near-impossible one for the end user.I'd rather design a system that can equally well handle fantasy Vietnam, big damn heroes, high-drama story arcs, courtly intrigue play, rogue-like play, West Marches sandboxes, heists and treachery, short fast adventure paths, 10+-year campaigns, imbalanced characters, balanced characters, mismatched levels, no magic, high magic, monty haul, and whatever else the customer base decides to throw at it.
I don't know how this thread even got started or what the real argument is about but I do not think it is a herculean task to balance a game as DM that is not balanced at the beginning. I guess if you make the imbalance far greater than any edition of D&D has ever had then yeah you can take it super far. I balanced a lot in early editions of the game and it was something I did but I had a lot of other issues of far more concern.A system that is inherently unbalanced cannot be turned into one that is balanced by mere effort of will on the part of its users. That's my point here. This is a one-way thing. Adding balance where it doesn't exist is a Herculean effort. Eliminating balance where it is present is trivial. Achieving good asymmetrical balance is a difficult task for a designer, and a near-impossible one for the end user.