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

[HaroldTheHobbit]

As a GM I don't care about character mathematical balance, as long as each character can be useful in many different situations - that's in systems which I use with a roleplaying focus (not necessarily what focus the system have).

But I'm more and more drawn to OSR:ish stuff and a focus on player creativity, where balance as a concept is thrown in the bin.

 

[ezo]

And? If it's supposed to be a difficult fight then it should be ... wait for it ... difficult.

Oh, jeez... REALLY??? DUH!!! I mean, come off of it, what sort of comment is this???

The difficulty guidelines are just that, guidelines. Encounter design has always been more art than science and every group has different capabilities, often drastically so.

And...

The poster said they don't understand why others complain about difficulty in challenging PCs, and then give two encounter examples which by design are Deadly and Hard. My point was if you are only using Hard and Deadly encounters, by default you are fairly certain of challenging your PCs.

The issue for those other DMs is they (probably?) don't want to have to use Hard and Deadly encounters all the time just to feel they are challenging the PCs (and players). If you go by the guidelines in the DMG of 6-8 medium/hard encounters, you aren't going to have that feeling of really challenging the PCs, especially with the suggested two short rests as well.

Hopefully that is clear enough for you.

 

[DEFCON 1]

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.

And that's fine. But at least I know for me that there really isn't any "tension" involving "death" in D&D, for a number of reasons:

1) If we are talking strictly about the mechanics of the D&D combat system, "death" can ostensibly be taken off the table at 5th level once Revivify comes into play. Because most tables that are centered around the combat system will have learned that having healing classes at the table greatly increases the amount of success they can have, and thus magic that can raise the so-called "dead" become commonplace-- provided the DM hasn't restricted its availability. Thus having individual characters truly die becomes exceedingly rare starting at 5th level. So there's not much "tension" there from a mechanics point-of-view (as far as I can see.) You "die" mechanically... you get "brought back" mechanically shortly thereafter.

2) Like it or not... Dungeons & Dragons is a game that involves story. Every mechanic in the game has a story element layered on top of it... so that a narrative comes out of its use. So for me (and probably a whole host of thousands across the globe)... the "tension" is from the story we are playing out-- none of which requires the use of mechanics, much less the threat of "death". We want our "characters"-- the story bits and bobs we have layered upon a bunch of numbers on our sheet-- to interact with the narrative world and accomplish things within the narrative world. And it is our success or failure at accomplishing that which wish our "characters" to do that is where we find the "tension"... and that more often than not does not involve our characters potentially "dying". If we were hired in the story to "protect a wagon on its journey a hundred miles to a neighboring town" and would get paid "500 gold pieces upon its safe arrival"... the tension is whether or not we are going to do the job and get paid, NOT whether or not we're going die. And that's true with most things we interact with inside the story... it's completing the task or not, not "surviving" or not. Which again means that "death" is not actually much of a tension in the game in my view. After all... if "not dying" was the central thesis of every single thing our "characters" were asked to do in-game... no one would actually do anything.

Now some people may indeed play D&D to "just survive as long as they can". And if that's the case, then obviously the tension in their games is regarding "death". But for myself and many others, death is much further from our mind as something to be tense about, when what we are really trying to do is succeed in the story tasks we have chosen to do.

 

[Xenolith234]

As a GM I don't care about character mathematical balance, as long as each character can be useful in many different situations - that's in systems which I use with a roleplaying focus (not necessarily what focus the system have).

But I'm more and more drawn to OSR:ish stuff and a focus on player creativity, where balance as a concept is thrown in the bin.

Old school games just tend to be more inspiring to my creativity, IMO. Looking at the Monk in Swords & Wizardry and their "Mastery of Silence" - stopping their heartrate for 1d6x10 minutes. What are the implications of such a cool ability? We wouldn't see anything like that in 5e's monk because it's not applicable to combat and potentially using it in every situation that arises. By standardizing abilities across the board and ensuring they're always useful, you eliminate all other interesting possibilities.

 

[dave2008]

You took a wrong turn and missed ignored or discarded all of the initial discussion leading up to the post you quoted where the hows & why's behind the reasons players get the ideas you are questioning. It wasn't the first post on that tangent & shouldn't be treated as such just to strawman it like that by blaming the playersfor not knowing better .

Missed. However, the answer is still simple: be mature reasonable people and talk about it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I gotta ask, why are you folks having such a difficult time challenging the characters?

I'm running Shattered Obelisk right now, and I've seen some pretty skin of the teeth fights. Six Revenants, all immune to turn, 2 attacks per round at +7 dealing 6d6+4 damage per hit. How is that not beating the snot out of your 7th or 8th level party?

That indeed seems pretty challenging as six (CR5) revenants, is a CR 18 encounter, with adjusted difficulty rating about three times of deadly budget for the party of four level 7-8 characters. And I still don't think that's impossible, I've had my players beat encounters that outclassed them at this magnitude.

So yes, this is what you need to do to actually have dangerous fights, which means the guidelines in the book are a total joke. What they call deadly should be medium at most, and actual deadly is indeed somewhere around this three times of the current deadly.

 

[ezo]

which means the guidelines in the book are a total joke.

Oh, I wouldn't say they are a total joke. I used them religiously all the time to great effect.

But, I do so with the understanding that 5E is an attrition game. If I allow the PCs to rest all the time, etc. I don't expect a Moderate encounter to do much against them---at best it will do what it is meant to do---deplete some resources.

 

[Clint_L]

As many have pointed out, "balance" depends on context. To the OP, who is very focused on optimization and high level play, "balance" means something very different than it does when I am running a campaign for beginners, starting at level 1 and probably ending by level 5. We know that, in general, most of D&D is played at tiers 1-2 (levels 1-10). 96% of games, if WotC is to be believed.

I also think "balanced" means something different to the mostly hardcore crowd who frequent forums like this, as opposed to the vast majority of players.

For me, I think the game is balanced if every player can feel like their character has about as good a chance as the others to make a meaningful impact on the story, but this can be hard to evaluate. For example, if you play a barbarian you will likely have a significant impact on most battles - your contribution will score high for reliability. But if you play a sorcerer, you will likely have almost no impact on some battles but a huge one on others, so your contribution will score low for reliability. It's hard to assess whether that is "balanced;" I think it largely comes down to subjective experience, and people are typically bad at assessing subjective experience.

So all that said, I think 5e has always done a pretty good job of maintaining balance while also allowing classes to feel distinct. This is not easy, and it took them around forty years to get there! The jury is still out on the 2024 rules; my sense from my own games is that 5e remains pretty balanced, but time will tell.

Edit: So do players really want balance? Yes, in the sense that they want to feel like their contribution is as valuable to the story as anyone else's. And that is a fair expectation!

I also don't think that most of the OP's examples were really about balance, but others have covered that.

 

[Clint_L]

Oh, I wouldn't say they are a total joke. I used them religiously all the time to great effect.

But, I do so with the understanding that 5E is an attrition game. If I allow the PCs to rest all the time, etc. I don't expect a Moderate encounter to do much against them---at best it will do what it is meant to do---deplete some resources.

I don't play 5e as an attrition game, at all, so I have design the encounters that do happen very much with balance in mind, taking into account that the party will likely be starting with almost full resources. Encounter design has a massive impact on balance, and when I screw it up, I really screw it up!

 

[Oofta]

Oh, jeez... REALLY??? DUH!!! I mean, come off of it, what sort of comment is this???


And...

The poster said they don't understand why others complain about difficulty in challenging PCs, and then give two encounter examples which by design are Deadly and Hard. My point was if you are only using Hard and Deadly encounters, by default you are fairly certain of challenging your PCs.

The issue for those other DMs is they (probably?) don't want to have to use Hard and Deadly encounters all the time just to feel they are challenging the PCs (and players). If you go by the guidelines in the DMG of 6-8 medium/hard encounters, you aren't going to have that feeling of really challenging the PCs, especially with the suggested two short rests as well.

Hopefully that is clear enough for you.

My only points are that A) what's deadly for one group is only moderately dangerous for another group and B) it's always going to be up to the DM what difficulty a group can handle.

There is no one size fits all and the encounter rules in the 2014 DMG are aimed at the low end. For some groups I never throw anything other than hard fights and we generally have 4-6 fights between long rests (occasionally more, occasionally less). Other groups? I'd be worried about a TPK by the second fight.