D&D (2024) Do players really want balance?

[AnotherGuy]

That's just not enough for me to have fun, as a DM or a player. I've never been so attached to a PC that I can't accept the possibility of their defeat, even to the point of long-term injury or death. Seriously, I just make another one. But my players seem to take real danger and the possibility of loss personally. It's very frustrating.

I can understand both PoV.
As a forever DM I feel the same way when I play.
Currently I'm playing a bard modelled after Chris O'Donnell's D'Artagnan in '93's The Three Musketeers who quotes lines from famous movies to irk my friends. I love the character but I've accepted he's brashness is likely to see him killed absent a Disney safety-net. And that is ok.

I'm also a fan of the characters created by my players and I do my best to balance (a) my bias as a friend and a fan of their backstories which I wish to explore and merge with the main storyline with (b) the consequences of lethality which must of course be present in a game of D&D, IMO.

 

[Xenolith234]

I'm not really sure what you're talking about as far as magic items are concerned.

Moldvay Basic (p B50): Elven Cloak​

Wearing the cloak will make a person nearly invisible . . . A character wearing an elven cloak will only seen on a roll 1 (on 1d6). After attacking, the wearer will be visible for the rest of the turn.​

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AD&D DMG (p 141): Cloak of Elvenkind​

when it is worn, with the hood drawn up around the head, it enables the wearer to be nearly invisible . . . The invisibility bestowed is [a list of % chances by terrain and light follows].​

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AD&D UA (p 98): Cloak of the Bat​

The cloak bestows upon its wearer a 90% probability of being invisible when the wearer is stationary within a shadowy or dark place.​

I don't see how the approach of linking the chance to hide to the general rules for stealth/hiding makes things less mysterious or nebulous.

Cloak of Elvenkind in 2e:

A cloak of elvenkind is of a plain neutral gray which is indistinguishable from any sort of ordinary cloak of the same color. However, when it is worn, with the hood drawn up around he head, it enables the wearer to be nearly invisible, for the cloak has chameleon-like powers. In the outdoors, the wearer of a cloak of elvenkind is almost totally invisible in natural surroundings, nearly so in other settings. Note that the wearer is easily seen if violently or hastily moving, regardless of the surroundings.

 

[Oofta]

Most of my players care about the fiction so much that they will willingly buy into the illusion that a situation is very dangerous when it really isn't. Narratively they want the setting to have logical consistency, but mechanically they don't have enough interest in the rules to care whether or not the situation they're in actually is threatening, or just appears to be. That's fine for them, and I'm sure many DMs would be happy throwing up that illusion every week, but it just irks me how easy everything is most of the time. That's why I stopped watching Critical Role. I got frustrated watching the players act so worried about situations in game that I knew really weren't nearly as dire as those reactions made them appear.

That's just not enough for me to have fun, as a DM or a player. I've never been so attached to a PC that I can't accept the possibility of their defeat, even to the point of long-term injury or death. Seriously, I just make another one. But my players seem to take real danger and the possibility of loss personally. It's very frustrating.

People play for different reasons and with different expectations. It's why I discuss how difficult people want combat to be and how lethal a game should be. I can still have fun as a DM even if I'm not slaughtering PCs left and right and I want the players to have fun. I will never take PC death completely off the table but it's rare in my campaigns because that's what the players enjoy and I try to run a game they'll have fun playing. I don't see why it would be frustrating to run the kind of game people want to play.

 

[Steampunkette]

Go back one more edition and Rangers rocked pretty good: their niche was woodscraft, tracking, and wilderness survival; they were solid front-liners; and they had a locked-in set of (what are now called) favoured enemies that were pretty much guaranteed to show up on a halfway regular basis.

It was 2e that ruined them, and they have yet to recover.

It's been 35 years. There's been dozens of designers working on D&D since then. And most of them played 1e AD&D 'cause they're older than me.

And 1e's Ranger Niche wasn't enough to give them a consistent long term vision even within a single revision of the rules to make it work.

Like... The people who made 2e made 1e and went "We need to redo the Ranger." I guess their level as bonus damage on 24 different types of "Giant Kin" wasn't enough of a niche.

 

[Xenolith234]

So basically... you're @Lanefan while all your players are me.

I would not wish that upon my greatest gaming enemy, LOL!

For me, it's not that I actually want to kill their characters at all - I have a moral quandry every time that gets even remotely close. However...I think, the game needs that tension, for both them and me, and if the threat of death is only pretend, then the same emotional depth and reality of it isn't being plumbed.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I mean, you're correct on the second point there, that isn't balance

That's called "Poor encounter design" and kinda is irrelevant to this thread as a whole? The discussion is on balance. BBEG's go down super quickly in every edition except 4E anyway. If you want them to stay around, take some lessons from that or from MMO fights. If the BBEG isn't designed to be a slug-fest taking multiple rounds, then no matter how hard you complain, the stat-block won't magically change to make them one.

Balance, in this case, is referring to all of the classes being designed well enough they can contribute to the fight (And making a class unable to contribute in combat is not an answer, 90% of the game's rules are about combat so that's what matters). An unbalanced edition is 3.5E, because in the PHB alone, several of the classes (Monk, Fighter, Paladin) are some of the weakest classes in the entire game, while other ones (Druid, Cleric, Wizard) are some of the overall strongest. That's what balance is trying to avoid, the sheer gap in power between "This class is useless" and "This class is so powerful that I out-shine everyone else on the table and negate their fun because I solve every problem single handedly"

i agree with most of what you say here apart from the bolded, personally i would instead say 'balance is referring to all of the classes being designed well enough they can equally contribute to the game as a whole', and while combat is undeniably a significant portion of play it is far from the only part of the game or the only part that matters, a class's out-of-combat capabilities should definitely be weighed as part of what they are contributing and be factored into the Balance of the game, even if that means when it comes to combat they end up plinking away with cantrips or single basic attacks with a simple dagger or quarterstaff because the budget of their toolkit is all spent on filling it out with utility spells or expertise CHA checks.

 

[Xenolith234]

i agree with most of what you say here apart from the bolded, personally i would instead say 'balance is referring to all of the classes being designed well enough they can equally contribute to the game as a whole', and while combat is undeniably a significant portion of play it is far from the only part of the game or the only part that matters, a class's out-of-combat capabilities should definitely be weighed as part of what they are contributing and be factored into the Balance of the game, even if that means when it comes to combat they end up plinking away with cantrips or single basic attacks with a simple dagger or quarterstaff because the budget of their toolkit is all spent on filling it out with utility spells or expertise CHA checks.

However, combat is the only part of the game that's sufficiently fleshed out, therefore it's the only thing that's balanced for with any class. Exploration would give room to balance out the ranger (and potentially others), but that tier is nearly nonexistent in default 5e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

People play for different reasons and with different expectations. It's why I discuss how difficult people want combat to be and how lethal a game should be. I can still have fun as a DM even if I'm not slaughtering PCs left and right and I want the players to have fun. I will never take PC death completely off the table but it's rare in my campaigns because that's what the players enjoy and I try to run a game they'll have fun playing. I don't see why it would be frustrating to run the kind of game people want to play.

I strongly object to your characterization of my view as "wanting to slaughter PCs left and right" or I can't have fun. Wanting to challenge PCs is not the same as being a jerk. Maybe cut out the hyperbole so many people use to present their opponent's opinions as ridiculous?

And it's frustrating because my enjoyment of the hobby is about more than making sure other people are enjoying themselves. It includes that, but just facilitating the fun of others isn't enough for me. Sue me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

However, combat is the only part of the game that's sufficiently fleshed out, therefore it's the only thing that's balanced for with any class. Exploration would give room to balance out the ranger (and potentially others), but that tier is nearly nonexistent in default 5e.

What about not-default 5e? Must we always assume we're talking about WotC's game? No matter the label most of these thread topics apply equally well to other games.

 

[CreamCloud0]

However, combat is the only part of the game that's sufficiently fleshed out, therefore it's the only thing that's balanced for with any class. Exploration would give room to balance out the ranger (and potentially others), but that tier is nearly nonexistent in default 5e.

i agree that (unfortunately) combat is the only part of the game that's sufficiently fleshed out, however, i disagree that therefore it should be the only part of the game where your capabilities are weighed for their contribution to your class's balance.