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

[Vaalingrade]

Supernatural for certain. Non-traditional magic according to their statement. Again, that's how language works. If you call out something as not in the traditional sense, it's automatically that thing in a non-traditional sense.

It can (and this case is) also denote something analogous, but not the same.

Laser surgery is not surgery 'in the traditional sense' as it is not cutting anything, but burning it away. It's not really the same as surgery, but it's the closest thing our language has for it. D&D has just slowly lost the language to explain how fantastic is not exactly supernatural and supernatural is not exactly magical.

It's squares in rectangles. This type of shape is not a square in a traditional sense, but it has four sides and some right angles, but they're not all equal.

 

[tetrasodium]

Sure, though I don't like those existing (apart revivify, which is more like instant battlefield CPR.) I want death to be rare, but if it happens, I want it to actually mean something, I want the survivors be able to process it as a real loss and move on. The revolving door these resurrection methods create is terrible for drama, they make the death not a real death, merely a temporary inconvenience.

All of those diamonds were super important treasures for the party in the past. Finding or getting up the coin to buy a better one was a big deal because the players felt like they needed to spend that coin on stuff that adds to power & such. Yet in 5e I quit giving them out & just gave up at some point because A: it's so hard for PC's to die & B: I noticed that more often than not the immediate fate of said diamonds was more often than not to be sold off to buy almost anything else.

I don't mind those spells being in the PHB, but I do mind the way 5e both made them trivial and convinced players that they should never be in a position to even receive one of those spells

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, though I don't like those existing (apart revivify, which is more like instant battlefield CPR.) I want death to be rare, but if it happens, I want it to actually mean something, I want the survivors be able to process it as a real loss and move on. The revolving door these resurrection methods create is terrible for drama, they make the death not a real death, merely a temporary inconvenience.

Depends on how difficult it is to pull off the res IMO. And like @Lanefan says, if resurrection is off the table I'd like some of those other long term consequences back.

 

[cbwjm]

When saying "AD&D" do you mean 1e or 2e here?

I ask because IME dual-wielding in 1e in effect means trading defense for offense, and that loss of defense makes you that much more vunerable to getting knocked off before your increased offense (often as dignificant to-hit penalties) can carry the day.

2e, I think, made dual-wielding much more attractive.

How did 1e differ from 2e when it comes to dual wielding? In 2e you have a penalty to hit for all attacks (-2/-4) which was offset by your dexterity reaction adjustment, and the second weapon had to be smaller than your primary weapon or a dagger. I know later supplements also helped offset the penalties. You still had to trade in defence for offence, more significant once magical shields turned up at later levels.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've done a lot of consideration on the topic; my personal opinion is that D&D-milieu games would be improved if "classes" were all explicitly diegetic elements with an obvious layer of supernatural capability.

Even a "Fighter" should have a level of supernatural capability and resilience that is obvious within the fiction.

Welcome to Earthdawn.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Welcome to Earthdawn.

Kind of my thought too. That's a cool specific setting.

 

[pemerton]

I think that for your standard milieu "D&D-play" (assuming a group of 4-5 characters with loose ties investigating unfamiliar sites of danger and complication), actor-stance play is generally assumed as "virtuous" or "skilled" with some heavy caveats.

Those caveats revolving around the fact that the player is one among many, and making decisions "as a character" that impact party cohesion or the progress of the exploration negates any "virtue" found within the actor stance play. This can be ameliorated by deciding prior to play to not play a "lone wolf", or a character who would make active choices to disrupt party cohesion.

"I love actor stance - provided that the character whose motivations I instantiate has none, other than to hang out with like-minded ciphers who enjoy meeting quest-givers and taking on their quests, adopting the most tactically effective means to succeed at those."

When I think of actor stance play, I think of it in the context of characters who have commitmets, relationships, things they love and hate, which may - as is human nature - bring them into conflict with other people, even ones they are close to.

The whole hive-mind adventuring party trope is already off the table, if actor stance is what we are hoping to emphasise in our RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

OK. It was really not about realism though, it was about being meta or not.

I don't see that having the will to live need be any more meta than evoking anger in oneself.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Is 'actor-stance' some known thing or is it new as of this thread?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

"I love actor stance - provided that the character whose motivations I instantiate has none, other than to hang out with like-minded ciphers who enjoy meeting quest-givers and taking on their quests, adopting the most tactically effective means to succeed at those."

When I think of actor stance play, I think of it in the context of characters who have commitmets, relationships, things they love and hate, which may - as is human nature - bring them into conflict with other people, even ones they are close to.

The whole hive-mind adventuring party trope is already off the table, if actor stance is what we are hoping to emphasise in our RPGing.

You can give the characters reasons to hang out together in the character generation phase. Pretty basic. But yes, sometimes situation develops in such a way, that those reasons no longer hold. This might mean someone needing a new character. That's fine.