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

[pemerton]

I think it is generally understood in this stance, that decisions made while not actually playing the game, such as those related to character creation, do not count. The desire is to have the player/character decision space unified whilst actually playing the game.

Of course, deciding that your PC doesn't die might well be seen as a move in the realm of PC building . . .

 

[EzekielRaiden]

People are saying things like "It is easy to kill characters if you want to" like the GMs wanted that and framing this as GMs vs players

Because there are several people in this very thread who do want that and who do see it as GMs vs players.

That is completely missing the point. I, as GM, don't want to kill the PCs, and I absolutely do want the players to have good time. Which means I want to give them actually exiting and challenging fights that are still winnable.

This requires a well-balanced game. Like...that's literally what "a well-balanced game" is: a game where you can have high confidence that you are giving the players actually exciting and challenging fights that are still winnable at an enjoyable rate.

And the game gives me basically no tools for achieving that. All the guidelines are so absurdly undertuned, that following them gets us just pointless boring slog with no challenge. I don't want, that, the players don't want that. So I just have to blindly guess how much overtuning the encounters will be enough to not to be a boring pushover but not a guaranteed TPK either. I've erred in the former direction several time in this guessing, and one day I err in the latter.

So, one might say, you've been given no tools to actually do what you want, and you have little to no information to actually work from in order to do what you want to do?

This is, you may not be surprised, exactly what I was saying 12+ years ago when criticizing "D&D Next."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Of course, deciding that your PC doesn't die might well be seen as a move in the realm of PC building . . .

The point is that when you need to make that decision, you're not in "between games planning" mode, you're "in game" mode, and in this philosophy making author stance decisions instead of actor stance decisions then is something to be avoided.

 

[pemerton]

In my view it's always going to be quite tricky to give encounter-level guidelines for a game that uses "adventuring-day" level resource management.

Classic D&D (OD&D, B/X, Gygax's AD&D) deals with this by encouraging a play approach where players make decisions about what combats/skirmishes they take on. This is facilitated by a convention that generally (not necessarily always) GMs present encounters to players in one of two ways: when the players have their PCs open doors; or when the wandering monster die comes up 1 (or 6, depending on one's rolling convention).

2nd ed AD&D deals with the overarching issue in a different way. It encourages the GM to more actively manage the presentation of encounters to the players (whether under the notion of "the story" or "the living, breathing world"). And at the same time it encourage the GM to fudge, or otherwise set aside the action resolution rules, to make things work out as desired.

I don't have a good handle on 3E, but I suspect in practice it relied quite a bit on the 2nd ed approach.

4e avoids the issue because it maps encounter-level guidelines onto a framework of predominantly (not entirely) encounter-level resource management. And my experience is that its guidelines work.

5e has the issue (because of its resource management structure) and doesn't promote the classic approach to dealing with it. It doesn't seem to fully embrace the 2nd ed AD&D approach either. Its approach seems to be to set encounter difficulty guidelines at a sufficiently generous (to the players) level that even a party that has suffered quite a bit of attrition from prior encounters is likely to be able to handle what is thrown at it.

If those encounter difficulties are stepped up, then I think that takes the game back into the 2nd ed AD&D approach.

 

[Zardnaar]

In my view it's always going to be quite tricky to give encounter-level guidelines for a game that uses "adventuring-day" level resource management.

Classic D&D (OD&D, B/X, Gygax's AD&D) deals with this by encouraging a play approach where players make decisions about what combats/skirmishes they take on. This is facilitated by a convention that generally (not necessarily always) GMs present encounters to players in one of two ways: when the players have their PCs open doors; or when the wandering monster die comes up 1 (or 6, depending on one's rolling convention).

2nd ed AD&D deals with the overarching issue in a different way. It encourages the GM to more actively manage the presentation of encounters to the players (whether under the notion of "the story" or "the living, breathing world"). And at the same time it encourage the GM to fudge, or otherwise set aside the action resolution rules, to make things work out as desired.

I don't have a good handle on 3E, but I suspect in practice it relied quite a bit on the 2nd ed approach.

4e avoids the issue because it maps encounter-level guidelines onto a framework of predominantly (not entirely) encounter-level resource management. And my experience is that its guidelines work.

5e has the issue (because of its resource management structure) and doesn't promote the classic approach to dealing with it. It doesn't seem to fully embrace the 2nd ed AD&D approach either. Its approach seems to be to set encounter difficulty guidelines at a sufficiently generous (to the players) level that even a party that has suffered quite a bit of attrition from prior encounters is likely to be able to handle what is thrown at it.

If those encounter difficulties are stepped up, then I think that takes the game back into the 2nd ed AD&D approach.

I reread the 2E guidelines recently.

They're some of the better ones. 4E gets praised but they in effect built a box and tried to fit everything in it.

Think the RC is decent as well. 5E is meh, 3E is OK by 3E standards but it's 3E.

1E/OD&D good luck.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In my view it's always going to be quite tricky to give encounter-level guidelines for a game that uses "adventuring-day" level resource management.

Classic D&D (OD&D, B/X, Gygax's AD&D) deals with this by encouraging a play approach where players make decisions about what combats/skirmishes they take on. This is facilitated by a convention that generally (not necessarily always) GMs present encounters to players in one of two ways: when the players have their PCs open doors; or when the wandering monster die comes up 1 (or 6, depending on one's rolling convention).

2nd ed AD&D deals with the overarching issue in a different way. It encourages the GM to more actively manage the presentation of encounters to the players (whether under the notion of "the story" or "the living, breathing world"). And at the same time it encourage the GM to fudge, or otherwise set aside the action resolution rules, to make things work out as desired.

I don't have a good handle on 3E, but I suspect in practice it relied quite a bit on the 2nd ed approach.

4e avoids the issue because it maps encounter-level guidelines onto a framework of predominantly (not entirely) encounter-level resource management. And my experience is that its guidelines work.

5e has the issue (because of its resource management structure) and doesn't promote the classic approach to dealing with it. It doesn't seem to fully embrace the 2nd ed AD&D approach either. Its approach seems to be to set encounter difficulty guidelines at a sufficiently generous (to the players) level that even a party that has suffered quite a bit of attrition from prior encounters is likely to be able to handle what is thrown at it.

If those encounter difficulties are stepped up, then I think that takes the game back into the 2nd ed AD&D approach.

Would you say one could summarize the 5e response as, in effect, an effort from the designers to try to not have a response?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I reread the 2E guidelines recently.

They're some of the better ones. 4E gets praised but they in effect built a box and tried to fit everything in it.

Think the RC is decent as well. 5E is meh, 3E is OK by 3E standards but it's 3E.

1E/OD&D good luck.

Aren't guidelines by definition trying to build a box and fit things inside it...?

 

[Zardnaar]

Aren't guidelines by definition trying to build a box and fit things inside it...?

Not really they basically boil down to don't be a dick and hit PCs with creatures they can't deal with. Eg lacking magic weapons for 50% of the group or whatever.

I stopped using 5E ones around 2014 15 at the latest. After going X5 over deadly and hitting 8 encounters.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Not really they basically boil down to don't be a dick and hit PCs with creatures they can't deal with. Eg lacking magic weapons for 50% of the group or whatever.

I stopped using 5E ones around 2014 15 at the latest. After going X5 over deadly and hitting 8 encounters.

I was referring to the 2e encounter-building guidelines you were comparing to the 4e ones.

 

[Zardnaar]

I was referring to the 2e encounter-building guidelines you were comparing to the 4e ones.

I paraphrased them. 2E basically don't be a dick. There's to much variance in party size, composition, skill levels, ability scores etc to account for it.

It's an art form not a science.