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

[Micah Sweet]

Oh, there's a very simple approach to fixing that.

Don't let them.

Seriously. Don't let them optimize the fun out of it. I completely agree that that's a serious issue, and it's one that genuinely affects 5e because they absolutely left the barn door WIDE open for it. But you absolutely can close that barn door without producing a game that is dull, boring nothing where no choices matter etc. etc. It just requires a lot of testing...and actually setting design goals rather than useless feel-good phrases that are (intentionally or not) a mere smokescreen for "we're going to do what we were going to do anyway, and we'll massage the data to ensure it." (Seriously, an absolute crapload of the surveys and polls for "D&D Next" were pure push-poll trash. Some of those polls literally did not let you say no to a proposed idea. I'm not even joking.)

This is why I can't respect WotC's publishing stance, no matter how financial sense it makes (and I admit that if course it makes sense from that perspective). They mostly just care about profit, and there's no profit motive for them to do what you're suggesting, so they don't.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I...don't see how. People don't want to file taxes. People don't want, as I noted, meaningless deaths that dead-end all of the things the deceased cared about. They don't want to deal with reams of bureaucracy and hours and hours spent doing menial tasks while Nothing Much Happens, even though every single one of these things is and has been part of human life for more than two thousand years, and most of them have been part of human life for as long as there have been settled humans.

The vast majority of things that actually look like "real life" aren't on the table. So...what exactly do you think is left of real life, once we've replaced all the depressing and pointless and grating parts with fantastic elements? Because I'm pretty sure the only things that are left are, as I said, the ones compatible with drama.

So what? Dramatic things can still happen in a setting that mostly operates like the real world with fantastic elements. The rules or the DM certainly don't need to force that drama either, it can just emerge from player decisions through their PCs, using information the PCs have available. Plenty of games do it to one degree or another.

 

[Micah Sweet]

While we agree on some things in this thread, we have different perspectives on this.

WotC is not a survey/polling company trying to collect scientific data about what the typical person/RPGer/D&D-player/whomever thinks about various options for D&D. WotC is a commercial publisher trying to make sure that it sells lots of copies of the stuff that it publishes. If it wants to use so-called "polls" or "surveys" as marketing devices, and of ways of making prospective customers feel like they are part of the design process, that's their prerogative! If some of the responses also serve as useful market research, well, good luck to them! They're not doing anything illegal or even unethical in the way they do this, as far as I can see.

Perhaps they should honest about this then, and admit to said public that these are marketing tools deployed to maximize the profit potential of their product, and not actually aimed at making the best game creatively.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The most basic, or primordial, conceit of D&D is that there are places in the world - let's call them "dungeons" - where groups of people and creatures hang out in numbers that are (within some limits of plausibility about what human warriors might do) able to be confronted and defeated by a small group of warriors using skirmish-style tactics. And that these dungeon-dwellers are "clustered" in groups that, at least in broad terms, correspond to the ability of a particular "level" of warrior-band to defeat. And that in these same places, marvellous wealth can be had - and can be taken and enjoyed by the warriors who discover it on a finders-keepers basis, without being subject to any rules that might arise from family law, rights of manorial lords or sovereigns, meaningful taxation, etc.

That is already so far from reality that the notion of "looks like real life" really has no work to do.

Real life with fantastic elements. And if that's true, why do they bother to provide an explanation for said dungeons' presence in the world at all, as the vast majority of them do?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

"Historical berserkers" were people wearing bear shirts. Actual battle-rage does not have reliable historical attestation, and the closest thing we can get is, effectively, psyching yourself up with drugs before a battle. That's not at all the same thing.

It is the fantasy version that. Regardless, it is something the character can decide to do, it is not a meta decision.

How is that not the case? I don't see how you can possibly claim that, particularly when it's fuelled by a resource that runs out.

I mean to me it is rather obvious that manoeuvres are things the character knowingly decides to use. Like they could in-character say "I'll disarm the guard" etc. Granted, it having a limited resource is a bit weird and gamey, but at least it is not a weird than in 4e, where you for some inexplicable reason could do each stunt only once. But personally I would still design this a bit differently.

Yes. Because "magic" is the universal excuse. Only non-magical things must bear the yoke and lash of "no meta decisions." It's just another round of requirements that keep non-magical characters in the "realism" ghetto.

No. Sure, magic is easier to justify, as even in-universe it can work however you want. But it was you, not me, who tried to insist that several non-magical features were meta even though you don't need to interpret them that way.

But that's explicitly not immersion.

Yes it is.

The player cannot possibly be feeling that fear. They can, at absolute best, be choosing to model that fear or that bravery. That choice to model X instead of Y cannot even in principle be mapped to the character's choices.

Then, to be frank, you're just bad at immersion. You absolutely can feel the character's feelings. Granted, it probably is more shallow than if you literally were there, but with good "method acting" and a GM who is good at making the world feel real you can get close. LARP obviously is the best vehicle for this, but people constantly do it tabletop games too, and it seems weird to me that some wouldn't. To me that's basically the goal and point of playing these games, so if you can't see it then we aren't going to agree on much.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

What does this mean?

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

Who are these posters? Show me the textual evidence that proves this rather uncharitable point.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Unfortunately, nothing I have ever seen suggests that "spotlight balance" is actually effective in any meaningful sense. It's a lovely idea, that doesn't actually work in the D&D space, because one of the classes has as its thing "bend the rules of the world to do what I want done."

You cannot have meaningful "spotlight balance" when one group of characters gets to decide how concentrated the spotlights are, and the other group is dependent on them.

There is one way that I know of wherein "spotlight balance" is achievable while playing D&D, and what classes are being used has nothing to do with it. Unfortunately... most players don't play their RPGs in this way so they don't get to experience it.

Talking in character most of the time and focusing on story.

When story and characterization is the primary focus of gameplay-- the players saying what they want their PCs to do and speaking with NPCs the DM controls (negotiation, exploration, argument, planning, invention, etc)-- then the spotlight all becomes about how often people step up to talk and what it is they they wish to say. And if you want to throw some ability checks in there too just to get some mechanics into the game, that's fine too.

But this is exactly how the "weapon-using characters" get to easily be in the "spotlight"-- contribute to the game all the time and at much greater levels, oftentimes more than the "magic-users" can do. Because everyone can come up with ideas and talk about them, and it doesn't matter what your class is or what game mechanics you have at your fingertips when you do so. When the group needs to accomplish something, then the Fighter player can come up with the idea and solution and present it to the team and get the "spotlight" on their discovery... even if the solution is for the "Wizard character" to use their X, Y, or Z spells in somesuch way to accomplish it.

Now sure... the mechanically-focused tables will say "No! If the Wizard is the one who uses their spell mechanics to cast the spell to solve the problem, then they are the ones who got the spotlight!" (even though the Fighter player is the one who actually thought of the idea and had control of the table as they worked it out and presented it to the group). And if some people play at tables like that... when only the use of the numbers on a character sheet count as "spotlight time"... then my point is going to be a poor one for them. But that's fine. My style and focus of playing RPGs is an exceedingly small minority and we've all known that for decades. But if "spotlight balance" is really such an important thing for some players... then changing their game's focus to be about characterization and talking in character and improvising discussion and such is a great way to do that while still being able to play D&D (if changing your game away from it to one with more mechanical spotlight balance isn't going to fly.)

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

My preference is for a combination of the Classic and 2nd edition approaches, where the PCs make decisions about what to face, based on what they know of the living, breathing 2e-style world they live in, without DM fudging of the results.

 

[ezo]

Even before you begin play proper, you have fundamentally violated the principle that the ONLY experiences one may have are those that map to real life.

Here's the problem: HAD vs. HAVE. The backstory, building your PC before you play, etc. is the HAD. You as a player get to decide most, if not all, of that. There are certainly games out there with random PC generation in more aspects (race, background, ability scores, even class) but since people generally want to play some concept they have in mind, these aren't as popular and usually just for a lark or something.

Obviously were are talking fantasy here, so I expect many experiences in the game that aren't mapped to real life, but by keeping all those that can be mapped to real life as close as possible, it allows me to feel more like I am in the game.

When you begin play, it is the HAVE, your HAD time is over for the most part. Now your choices have consequences you have no control over. And shouldn't IMO. This is where the dice come in...

As long as the dice (combat rolls) indicate you continue to live, you get to make choices on what your PC does in their life. You don't get to decide if you get hit or not, what damage you take, if you make or fail a saving throw, etc. all the time. PCs can use features to hedge their bets, of course, but when it comes to death saves you are entirely in the hands of Fate.

I don't understand the relevance of this statement to what I was saying, so I cannot meaningfully respond to it.

The relevance is in the HAVE. You make many choices in the game (just like IRL), and those choices have consequences dictated by the whims of chance--i.e. the dice rolls:

When do you act in combat? Initiative roll.
Do you get hit? Attack roll.
How bad is the hit? Damage roll.
Are you poisoned? Saving throw.
Do you successfully climb the cliff? Ability check.

IRL if I go to climb a cliff, I don't just "get to decide" that I climb the cliff. I have to actually try it. My skill, the conditions, etc. are all factors that will go into whether or not I climb it in the end. I might get to tired, I might get injured, etc. and have to climb back down. I might even fall!!!

In RPGs, this is where the dice come in. The dice determine the outcome most of the time--and easily could be ALL of the time. Certainly factors such as skill, features in the game, etc. can impact the results and we have the choice in those to a point, but that is as far as it goes.

When it comes to death saves, your PC is unconscious. No skill, very few features (if any???), etc. can help you. You are entirely subjected to the whims of Fate. This is how it should be IMO. It is the one certainty IRL we have no control over (despite how much we like to think we do) and so should be the one certainty in an RPG that has the same impact. There is no "will to live" involved that the player gets to decide nor should there be IMO.

It is the risk you take every time you enter combat or expose yourself to harm or danger. Allow it to become "player's choice" and frankly speaking you just removed all the fun from the game. No real risk, no real chance of ultimate failure because you know what--you cannot die. That would NEVER work for me.

I...don't see how. People don't want to file taxes. People don't want, as I noted, meaningless deaths that dead-end all of the things the deceased cared about. They don't want to deal with reams of bureaucracy and hours and hours spent doing menial tasks while Nothing Much Happens, even though every single one of these things is and has been part of human life for more than two thousand years, and most of them have been part of human life for as long as there have been settled humans.

The vast majority of things that actually look like "real life" aren't on the table. So...what exactly do you think is left of real life, once we've replaced all the depressing and pointless and grating parts with fantastic elements? Because I'm pretty sure the only things that are left are, as I said, the ones compatible with drama.

It depends greatly on the group. Some players love tracking every oz. their PC is carrying. What supplies to they have left, what ammo? Paying taxes on treasure gained when you return to the king? What? You DON'T think the king will want his share? LOL!!!

AD&D had regular checks just to see if your PC became ill or caught a disease. Some groups used these rules (like mine) while others don't.

The same is true in 5E. Some groups like the "survival" aspect of the game, tracking food, water, and ammo. Others handwave it away and don't worry about it.

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.

As I posted, I use the guidelines to great success and have done so for the near six years I've been playing 5E. The issue is more the guideliens don't fit your style of play, which makes them useless to you, and maybe in the new DMG they will address the more 4E style of play option and present guidelines for that.

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

And outside the use of dice, sure. During downtime, the game doesn't have dice to determine if your PC was hit by a cart and run over and died, etc.

But once dice are involved--all bets are off. Your "choice" ended when you decided to bring the dice into the picture (for the most part anyway... you can often choose to remove yourself from that situtation, but you often can't).

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

GM vs. players? Really? Who? Even the most "aggresive DM" on these boards has never stated anything like that IME.