Farewell to thee D&D

[Plane Sailing]

O.K. Here is where you are failing and failing utterly.

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If you have other problems its because you are failing to realize that

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No, you can have all the subjective opinion that you want, just as we can have all the subjective opinion to call your subjective opinion stupid.

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O.K. here is the real problem. You don't understand roleplaying games.

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Because you are whining about your own inadequacies to find the Aesthetic in a system you like.

The real problem is that you seem to have forgotten the basics of participating in ENworld. How on earth do you think it is acceptable to say the things I've highlighted above?

You're banned for 7 days, and if you behave like this again it will be longer.

 

[La Bete]

Also, Gothmog, those are some pretty interesting ideas you've got there. I might snap those up.

Like he said. Thanks Gothmog - those are some really interesting ideas!

Cheers

 

[The Little Raven]

But one thing they do all have in common: They are the most powerful people in their world.

Actually, that is not true of the characters you specified, and even some literary characters "proven" to be all-powerful are often defeated and cast down by "lesser" beings.

Gandalf is not the most powerful being in Middle-Earth, as evidenced by the fact that he cannot directly confront Sauron (the most powerful) ever, and can only confront Saruman after his resurrection as Gandalf the White.

Allanon is definitely not the most powerful person in the Four Lands, since he can't face Brona without a Swordbearer, he can't defeat the Demons without the Ellcrys (and nearly kills himself fighting the Dagda Mor in that dogfight), and can't defeat the jachyra, nor does he believe he can defeat the Mord Wraiths (as only a bearer of the Wishsong has such power). Other Druids in the series are depicted as equally limited, and those who are shown to be even more powerful are often subject to a great weakness: truth will destroy them.

 

[apoptosis]

Actually, that is not true of the characters you specified, and even some literary characters "proven" to be all-powerful are often defeated and cast down by "lesser" beings.

Gandalf is not the most powerful being in Middle-Earth, as evidenced by the fact that he cannot directly confront Sauron (the most powerful) ever, and can only confront Saruman after his resurrection as Gandalf the White.

Allanon is definitely not the most powerful person in the Four Lands, since he can't face Brona without a Swordbearer, he can't defeat the Demons without the Ellcrys (and nearly kills himself fighting the Dagda Mor in that dogfight), and can't defeat the jachyra, nor does he believe he can defeat the Mord Wraiths (as only a bearer of the Wishsong has such power). Other Druids in the series are depicted as equally limited, and those who are shown to be even more powerful are often subject to a great weakness: truth will destroy them.

What you say has a lot of truth in it and at the same time still does not really impact the underlying point that Celt has.

The above all have limitations so that the story would not be Gandalf does everything easily...the End.

The real questions is. People (including me) want an aesthetic where the scope of a magic-users ability can exceed the scope of a mundanes ability in specific instances.

What is the best mechanic to do this?

4E does not do this very well and frankly it was not trying to; that is the antithesis of the game design goal they had (and i am not real familiar with the rules but they do seem to be very good at approaching their goals). 4Es solution was to make the scope of all classes the same throughout the story. This of course does homogenize things a bit (which is not to say that classes play the same but that the variable distribution throughout the story has been ameliorated somewhat).

3E does do this but with some potential drawbacks that have been mentioned and for some people is way too extreme.

I thought 1E did a good job but of course there were some similar issues that 3E had though probably not as severe.

Now I think most people who are in this camp are not talking about the wizard character stealing all the spotlight throughout the story but about being able to have an impact in certain instances that far exceeds other characters. I think most people are happy to have the wizard as a lesser figure during other parts of the story.

This was the 1E model (how successful that was is open to debate). Where they had few spells but their spells would completely change the face of the encounter, but they had to hoard their spells carefully.

A broader question. How would others handle this issue. How would you make rules such that you can have wizards capable of extreme feats go adventuring with non-magic users and still have all players have a good time and share in the narrative with some equality.

Do some people think this is even possible with any version of D&D?

 

[ExploderWizard]

For me, Knockdown is a condition that tells you the creature is "knocked down" long and strong enough to make a (mechanical) difference. You might use a purely narrated knockdown to explain why another hit (or flurry of blows) landed, but it didn't gain the mechanical representation of it as Combat Advantage. It was represented by the fact that your dice came up high enough to hit.
If you want, every type of narration that is not represented in mechanical bonus, penalties or conditions is represented by the dice rolls. (Though of course, your interpretation of the dice rolls combined with the mechanical ements _and_ your desired theme or feel of a scene result in the game world narration.)

I am totally cool with narrating regular attacks with cool descriptions. The problem in 4E is that so many actions and conditions are "keywords" that have mechanical meaning beyond the narrative. The real problem I keep bumping up against with 4E is that the SYSTEM and the GAME THEORY seem to be at odds with one another.

The DMG gives great advice on running a game the way YOU want with lots of great suggestions on making stuff up to suit your tastes.

The PHB is a huge clumsy collection of mechanics that is at odds with the DMG. Its a monster made of text that takes over 350 pages to tell you what you can and can't do.

As a whole the system is confused about what it wants to be. I like games where story is the important element and rules don't have to make sense but It helps if the game is RULES LITE (Basic D&D for example).

If a game is going to have involved complex rules then I expect those rules to make sense and for the system to have overall internal consistency. (GURPS for example)

Good old Basic D&D. Its easy to make things up, monster and NPC design is a snap, and the rules are simple and stay out of the way.

 

[Ourph]

A broader question. How would others handle this issue. How would you make rules such that you can have wizards capable of extreme feats go adventuring with non-magic users and still have all players have a good time and share in the narrative with some equality.

Do some people think this is even possible with any version of D&D?

I think 4e does a great job of this with the combination of combat magic and rituals (which can never really be used in combat). It may not be a perfect solution but it's at least as elegant as any other system I've experimented with that tries to achieve the same goal, including a number of my own house rules.

 

[apoptosis]

I think 4e does a great job of this with the combination of combat magic and rituals (which can never really be used in combat). It may not be a perfect solution but it's at least as elegant as any other system I've experimented with that tries to achieve the same goal, including a number of my own house rules.

I guess in some ways it does depending on how you look at it.

From my perspective it completely does not do this and is one of the worst of systems for this. The wizard has pretty stable power distribution throughout the story and it is very very similar to every other class (this is of course by design).

Rituals do change this a bit i imagine but there is also the added issue that rituals are not specific to wizards (or clerics) but are pretty much available to all.

So I would have to definitely disagree that 4E does this, my feeling was that the design was to specifically not do this.

Edit

I didnt mean to shoot down you comment like that. Maybe i am seeing the 4E approach from a specific viewpoint. If you think of a better angle to look at this issue from a 4E viewpoint i would like to hear it.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

A broader question. How would others handle this issue. How would you make rules such that you can have wizards capable of extreme feats go adventuring with non-magic users and still have all players have a good time and share in the narrative with some equality.

Do some people think this is even possible with any version of D&D?

Well, it hasn't been done that, instead we seem to be jumping from one "extreme" to the other. So maybe it is impossible, or the designers just weren't smart enough to figure it out (for now).

But in the end this might come down to the idea of creating the "perfect" game system. But that is a goal we try to achieve, but it's not something we really can achieve. I don't think you can appeal to every player. You just can appeal well to a large enough set of players. And it doesn't matter which edition of D&D we're talking about, each of them did that at their time.

For example: One attempt to reach your goal might be to give players on non-wizards more "narrative" control (but not the character). Torg did something like that for superheroes and some races. You got improved mechanical abilities (superpowers, racial attribute bonuses), and in exchange had to pay an adventure cost in possiblities, the game meta-game resource for all kinds of stuff. You used possibilities to improve character skills, or to improve die rolls, or to reduce damage taken.

Such a system can work nicely for spellcasters. Imagine every character had a resource, let's call it "Control Points" (I am just remember the d20 Farscape game, that had some good ideas, but was mostly a failure in design and balancing IMO). A wizard might either gets less, or needs to spend them on his magical abilities. He can eventually spend his conrol points to create a large fireball that deals terrifying damage to everyone inside. But non-spellcasters might be able to use this control points to reduce the damage they take, or get a reroll, or make up a connection that can help them out, or initiate a skill challenge that lets them seduce an NPC.
This could certainly achieve a measure of narrative balance between the spellcaster.

But then - what do these control points represent in the game world? Do they have an equivalent? You might make a point that control points for wizards describe mana, but what are they for mundane characters? Divine Luck? What if my setting doesn't have gods, or I am playing an atheist in a world were the gods hate atheist?

And so, you end up alienating a subset of players that don't like such "meta-game" mechanics, that want everything to have an equivalent in the game world. (Torg circumvents this by making possibilities a reality of the world - some people actually know about the existence of possibility energy and how to use them, and that's the reason for the break-out of the Reality War on Earth. But if you wanted to use the system outside this context, you do no longer simulate anything)

And there are also other design considerations. If you're running a lot of combats and not a lot of seduction or skill challenge scenarios, being able to spend lots of control points to deal massive damage to a large area is still way superior to the ability to swing a sword, even if the mage can do it only once per day why you had enough points to reroll your attacks for 10 combats. You will probably end up doing what the wizards wants to do (in D&D, this was resting), if that is what can recharge his control points. The powers of the wizard are just to useful to not use them if you have a choice.
The other option is removing that choice, but then you end up with a wizard that is inactive for a long time.

You can't make everyone happy all the time. You have to pick your priorities.
I suppose the 4E design team might have been lead by marketing and has made design decisions as they seem to appeal to the largest market marketing could identify and categorize. Or they just did what they personally preferred. Or it's a mix of both, or a coincidence of both...

 

[Ourph]

Rituals do change this a bit i imagine but there is also the added issue that rituals are not specific to wizards (or clerics) but are pretty much available to all.

I think that depends on how you view characters who cast rituals. Is a character who started out as a Fighter, then trained in Arcana and learned to cast Rituals still a "Fighter" in his own eyes and the eyes of the other characters or is he something else? In my opinion, a character who trains in an area that is normally outside his specific "career" and then gains magic powers related to that knowledge has transcended he boundaries of his original class and become "wizard-like" or "cleric-like" enough to count as a member of those groups, even if the sum of his abilities isn't exactly the same as a normal member of that class. In fact, if your point of view is that being capable of "extreme feats" that alter the very fabric of the world through magic is the defining feature of a Wizard (or Cleric) then that's even further justification for considering anyone who acquires that power to be part of that group. From that perspective, rituals are still only available to Wizards and Clerics, some of those character just come to be Wizards and Clerics through non-standard routes.

 

[apoptosis]

Well, it hasn't been done that, instead we seem to be jumping from one "extreme" to the other. So maybe it is impossible, or the designers just weren't smart enough to figure it out (for now).

But in the end this might come down to the idea of creating the "perfect" game system. But that is a goal we try to achieve, but it's not something we really can achieve. I don't think you can appeal to every player. You just can appeal well to a large enough set of players. And it doesn't matter which edition of D&D we're talking about, each of them did that at their time.

For example: One attempt to reach your goal might be to give players on non-wizards more "narrative" control (but not the character). Torg did something like that for superheroes and some races. You got improved mechanical abilities (superpowers, racial attribute bonuses), and in exchange had to pay an adventure cost in possiblities, the game meta-game resource for all kinds of stuff. You used possibilities to improve character skills, or to improve die rolls, or to reduce damage taken.

Great Post.

I actually really like the idea of narrative control as a way to equalize players and have thought about using that in several systems. But I agree that many might not appreciate such a system.

But mostly wanted to chime in that i really like your overall thoughts on the matter.