D&D 5E Final playtest packet due in mid September.

[N'raac]

I have no problem with saying that a character of superior skill can overcome a deficiency in physical attributes. And D&D does place level-based bonuses as being greater than abilities and static modifiers for size and the like.

To me, that 14 WIS, 16 CHA half orc Barbarian we fleshed out a few pages back has a lot more to overcome (based on what that leaves to invest in other stats) than a 14 STR 19 DEX Halfling warrior, as far as being a great combatant (not necessarily great melee combatant, although we're getting a lot closer).

The conceit of a level in class X being the same as one in class Y is relatively new. After all, there used to be different XP requirements, making it pretty clear that a level in wizard was worth more than a level in thief. And I'm not aware of any edition that defines levels as a measure of overall ability, though it seems to be implied in some cases.

The concept of a level is a level is a level comes with the removal of variable xp costs. The concept that 1,000 xo, 10,000 xp and 100,000 xp characters would be comparable dates back further. The fact that Thieves needed less xp to gain a level always implied, at least to our groups, that thieves gained less from that level. This is also where Multiclassing has issues in the 3e model - going from 7th to 8th level Fighter or Wizard costs a lot more xp than advancing from 1st to second, but going from L7?/L1 W to L2 W costs more xp as going from L7? to L8? (including L7 W to L8 W) - why? Is it the right result?

I see nothing subtle about it. If the player picks a wizard, he probably expects that with enough training he can do things like change shapes or summon demon lords or grant wishes. If a player plays a barbarian, he probably expects to be an invincible and intimidating combat machine with a connection to the natural world. If a player plays a bard, he probably expects to be a great storyteller and a celebrity.

Looks like they all expect to do great things in the game, and since they all showed up as PC's, to get there by adventuring. If bards are poorer adventurers, then they have less of a shot at doing great things. I think they should all be capable of achieving great things. Why don't the wizard and barbarian also expect to be celebrities in their fields?

Who says it's a penalty? I distinctly recall, for example, that when I was a child, I would ask my father, a nurse, when he was going to get promoted to doctor. Obviously, this never happened. They're separate professions. An experienced nurse often has capabilities in excess of an inexperienced physician, and may even have some unique skills that the physician will never acquire. That said, if we were representing them as classes for an rpg, the doctor class would definitely have more powers than the nurse. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Both of them have value.

Ever hear the phrase "equal pay for work of equal value"? If we reflected them as classes for an RPG, and if they each needed the same xp to gain a level, I would definitely expect them to be of equivalent competence and utility at the same level. If either one is much more experienced, I would expect that one to be much more useful than the other. And if I could not justify that - if I felt the doctor would always be clearly better than the nurse at every level - then the Nurse would be an NPC class for precisely that reason. If I view a Bard as being a "poorer choice", it would also be an NPC class.

The same is true in any number of contexts, Aragorn is never going to be as good as Gandalf no matter how hard he works

Which one is a better archer? Which one, had more influence on the events in play and which one was an NPC intended to advance the plot as needed, but not to directly accomplish the goals of the campaign? JRR and his Mary Sue NPCs... In an Ars Magica game, I would expect wizards to rule the roost. In a D&D game, where we do not focus on wizards, I do not consider it desirable that the wizard be more powerful.

, nor is Merry ever going to be as good as Aragorn.

Ignoring which is a PC and which an NPC, and respective levels, who was better at hiding and gathering information stealthily? Would Aragorn have been able to rally the Hobbits back at the Shire? Again, different strengths and weaknesses with overall balance is my objective.

Counselor Troi is never going to match up with Captain Picard.

Does the Captain have the ability to sense emotions? Again, is her role best suited, in a specific game, to a PC or NPC? If the former, she should be equivalent in utility. If the latter, she can have an NPC class and be relegated to a secondary role. And, on the show, I would suggest she held a secondary role. I can't remember much in the way of great adventure arcs focusing on that character.

Jim Gordon is never going to be Batman.

Again, I'd call him a clear NPC. In Hero Games parlance, a Contact, maybe a Follower, perhaps a Dependent NPC. NOT a PC, not by a long shot.

I don't know anything about these particular experiences, but I know that in my experiences with those systems, there have been plenty of times where a character seemed unbalanced, but we later discovered some clause written in the rules that clearly addressed the issue. I have a close to encyclopedic knowledge of 3e, and I miss things. I'm more inclined to believe that faults lie with people rather than rules (which again, I include myself in).

To me, your comments above imply that the 3e rules were balanced, and the perception of imbalance arose because something in the rules was missed. However, the rest of your discussion (especially the "class" issue which I just snipped...) indicates the game is unbalanced, this is deliberate and it is appropriate. Colour me confused!

I don't know what this "balanced" game would look like, but I doubt I'd play it. I don't see how it's easier to start from an unnatural perspective designed to serve one metagame agenda, and build the roleplaying and the game parts back in.

I don't believe the three are incompatible. If anything, "Role Playing" (such an action would be dishonourable - if we stoop to their level we have already lost) and "Game" (Torch to the Groin gets the best bonus) are the aspects that most often come into conflict. "Balance" neither supports nor discourages "Role Playing". "Game" suggests everyone has an equal chance to "win"/succeed, which suggests equity, fairness and balance.

 

[Ratskinner]

Balance is fine but...
1) many DMs enjoy the rules as a pseuso-naturalistic physics engine. In such context, "balance" can only appear as an external metagame consideration.
2) D&D has a pretty heavy tradition of naturalism trumping protagonism
3) I don't believe in achieving "balance" in a context where Fly/Scry/Fry effects are appearing on the Mage spell list at legacy levels. Because of the Compatibility objective, Next can't be balanced. The unfortunate decision of allowing 3e free multiclassing (which constrains each and every level of each and every class to be balanced against each other) creates expectations that can't be fulfilled.
By the way, I am personnally torn between naturalism and protagonism. One-trick ponies are obnoxious, but those profiles do exist in real life, and are even archetypal. Should they be banned for meta game reasons ?

I kinda agree and disagree.
1) Yes, but D&D didn't start that way (you didn't even get stat-bonuses to hit). Both gameplay and pseudo-natualistic physics have pretty obviously suffered from the repeated attempts (as time has gone by) to layer more "realism" onto the D&D chassis. Even Gygax rails against this. The very abstract foundational mechanics of D&D (AC, HP, etc.) don't really support "realistic" play and honestly fight against it at every turn.
2) I think it'd be more accurate to say that D&D did not begin with the presumption of protagonism. It has, at various times (2e, 4e) made the presumption of protagonism, but it has never (to my eyes) been a successful enough simulation to say that naturalism trumps protagonism. (And the presumption of protagonism isn't the same as saying "adventurers are a cut above", either.)
3) It definitely makes life more interesting. Perhaps that's one of those "Modular" things? Although, honestly, I'm not sure their worried about "compatibility" so much as "evokes the feel of."

 

[pemerton]

Hope that's illuminating.

Thanks for the reply. I've not encountered the issue in racial terms before. For me it's always been caster/non-caster.

 

[gyor]

Looking at the Calendar for September my guess is the packet will come out on eithercThursday the 12th, Monday the 16th, or Tuesday the 17th. I basically discounted the first week and the first part of the second week, the last week and the last part of the third week, and Friday the 13th for tradition, and any weekends.

Anyone want to start a pool?

 

[gyor]

Looking at the Calendar for September my guess is the packet will come out on eithercThursday the 12th, Monday the 16th, or Tuesday the 17th. I basically discounted the first week and the first part of the second week, the last week and the last part of the third week, and Friday the 13th for tradition, and any weekends.

Anyone want to start a pool?

 

[Ratskinner]

Even before discussing any mechanical jargon, I can't imagine that a player sees all those concepts as being of exactly equal overall usefulness in any particular campaign. They are obviously different, and which one will play out better obviously depends a lot of what type of game you're playing, as well as a lot of random unpredictable things that happen during play.

To some extent, certainly. However, you seem to be making some false equivalencies. For instance, "exactly equal overall usefulness" is not equivalent to "play exactly the same" nor is "balanced". I doubt that anyone here is arguing for a type of balance where all characters are equivalent and identical in all ways. What I think we would be arguing for is a game where all the players and character types within the genre have a reasonable expectation of being commensurately competent contributors toward concluding the adventures and stories within the game. Although I think we would all object to a game where the Barbarian (to use the example du jour) is objectively superior and dominates the other classes a priori.

Who says it's a penalty? I distinctly recall, for example, that when I was a child, I would ask my father, a nurse, when he was going to get promoted to doctor. Obviously, this never happened. They're separate professions. An experienced nurse often has capabilities in excess of an inexperienced physician, and may even have some unique skills that the physician will never acquire. That said, if we were representing them as classes for an rpg, the doctor class would definitely have more powers than the nurse. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Both of them have value. Where would we be without nurses?

I do not find that rpgs where one character class gets to give orders to the other find much popularity, and I very much doubt you will find many players who consider "must follow another player's orders" to be a class feature. Beyond that, I don't think that's a very good analogy at all.

The same is true in any number of contexts, Aragorn is never going to be as good as Gandalf no matter how hard he works, nor is Merry ever going to be as good as Aragorn. Counselor Troi is never going to match up with Captain Picard. Jim Gordon is never going to be Batman.

Neither real life nor any of the fiction we create to relieve us from it is solely about the best and the brightest, nor are opportunities ever equal for everyone. If anything, a class system explicates and encourages inequalities. After all, what does the word "class" mean in real life? I don't think people of a lower class are less valuable or interesting. In the context of a game, I don't think playing a lesser class is bad or wrong.

The problem here is that we are playing a game. The game in question bears some of the trappings of fantasy media, myths, and legends; but it is emphatically not a game about creating such. When we compare the game to fiction, we must accept that. D&D has generally been a very poor "genre emulator" as far as reproducing genre stories. (D&D is hardly alone in this regard, the fraction of rpgs which utterly fail to recreate the stories of their genre is very close to one. Which isn't to say that a game can't evoke the same sort of feeling, many games succeed at that to some degree.) Stories do not operate under any sort of mechanical regime that even approaches the sort of "realism" that you seem to advocate.

I don't know what this "balanced" game would look like, but I doubt I'd play it. I don't see how it's easier to start from an unnatural perspective designed to serve one metagame agenda, and build the roleplaying and the game parts back in.

err...you do realize that you are advocating a particular metagame agenda, right?

and um....the other agenda you're talking about doesn't prevent roleplaying and that implying such is insulting, right?

 

[Ratskinner]

Thanks for the reply. I've not encountered the issue in racial terms before. For me it's always been caster/non-caster.

In this case race and class are the same. The caster/non-caster thing, IME, was a much greater problem in 3e than it was in previous editions. My belief is that that was a (perhaps unintended) side effect of making magic so much more reliable. 2e had some of it in the various kits and classes. Frex, IIRC, Bladesingers from The Complete Book of Elves had high stat requirements and also had great abilities, which only served to magnify each other. Towards the end, with the whole Skills and Powers era, it seemed like there wasn't much point in playing anything but a highly customized elven cleric or cleric multiclass. (IME, anyway.)

 

[Cyberen]

[MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION], [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] : thanks for your comments !
By "pseudo-naturalistic physics engine", I mean departing from real-world physics is kind of a (mostly unexpected, I guess) feature of the rules : the rules define the physics, which define the world and its particular genre. It sucks hard at emulating any real or particular fictional world, but can provide a very compelling experience, from both sides of the screen : exploring for the players, tinkering for the DeMiurge (I guess it's what @howanwhy99 alludes to when he describes his D&D).
IMHO, a naturalistic ruleset focuses on the verisimilitude of the link between cause and effect. "Balance" is a vice : stronger causes should cause stronger effects, and as levelling is a measure of input (experience gained) rather than efficiency (output), some imbalance is "naturally" expected.
4e has shown that D&D is not married to naturalism, and showcased the strength of focusing on normalizing the output according to level...but it lost some features (and some players/customers) doing so.
I am tired of game mastery, but I think naturalism has a lot going for it. For instance, my group playstyle involves "emerging protagonism" : if, for some reason, a NPC takes a central role in the unfolding story, he can be promoted to PC status as the DM invite a new player (it's also a convenient way to replace casualties, as our group is not biased against explorational hazards such as starving to death ). This habit is clearly well supported by 3e take on NPCs built on the same chassis as PCs. It also creates interesting characters, such as a goblin sneak whose life was spared to serve as a guide (great fun, Gollum-style, but clearly a weaker PC than the rest of the group). I also find that having absolutely no assumption concerning what is playable or not opens interesting story venues. Of course, I fully endorse a disclaimer on those imbalanced options, to avoid trap choices, but having those options not supported by 4e was a big disappointment.

 

[Ratskinner]

@N'raac , @Ratskinner : thanks for your comments !

You're welcome.

By "pseudo-naturalistic physics engine", I mean departing from real-world physics is kind of a (mostly unexpected, I guess) feature of the rules : the rules define the physics, which define the world and its particular genre. It sucks hard at emulating any real or particular fictional world, but can provide a very compelling experience, from both sides of the screen : exploring for the players, tinkering for the DeMiurge (I guess it's what @howanwhy99 alludes to when he describes his D&D).
IMHO, a naturalistic ruleset focuses on the verisimilitude of the link between cause and effect. "Balance" is a vice : stronger causes should cause stronger effects, and as levelling is a measure of input (experience gained) rather than efficiency (output), some imbalance is "naturally" expected.

Without objection to anything you said, I think the tricky part is the "verisimilitude". By which I mean, verisimilitude is definitely in the eye of the beholder. Different observers, perhaps using different fictional inspirations, have different expectations of the fictional "physics". So when, as you recognize, you have a ruleset that attempts to create a "physics" but then fails at it.....you're left to your own devices as a DM...that is, to fill in the blanks or override the system. In my own experience, I've had much better luck with systems that pull back the level of mechanical resolution, often to what people around here annoyingly (to me) call "metagame" level. (Although I certainly recognize how that can drive some people nuts.)

 

[Ahnehnois]

I doubt that anyone here is arguing for a type of balance where all characters are equivalent and identical in all ways. What I think we would be arguing for is a game where all the players and character types within the genre have a reasonable expectation of being commensurately competent contributors toward concluding the adventures and stories within the game. Although I think we would all object to a game where the Barbarian (to use the example du jour) is objectively superior and dominates the other classes a priori.

Of course not. But has there ever been any version of D&D where any class actually was that? I think the barbarian's a tad better than some of the other classes. It's not dominant. I think the bard's a tad worse than the other classes. It's not worthless. Shades of gray. Certainly, they're both "commensurately competent contributors", one just naturally contributes a little bit more, on average, all things considered.

I do not find that rpgs where one character class gets to give orders to the other find much popularity

No wonder people hate those "leader" classes so much.

Beyond that, I don't think that's a very good analogy at all.

You seem to think that the main difference between one profession and the other is that one gives the other orders. This is not at all the case. One has a doctoral degree and a so-called unlimited license to practice, while the other does not. And that's just the start of it.

I think modern professions are very good analogies for classes. Are doctors balanced with lawyers? With horticulturists? With prostitutes? With fighter pilots? No. But then again, it depends on the situation. Same for fantasy "professions". In D&D, I can create a gladiator, an enchanter, a warlord, a dilettante, an assassin, an academic, etc. etc. How could all of those things ever be balanced?

The problem here is that we are playing a game. The game in question bears some of the trappings of fantasy media, myths, and legends; but it is emphatically not a game about creating such.

Really? What is it about? Balance?
Not that this territory hasn't been covered before, but creating a story is sine qua non to the experience of D&D; by playing the game you are doing so, regardless of your intent or perspective, regardless of the nature of the story, regardless of whether you record it, etc.

Stories do not operate under any sort of mechanical regime that even approaches the sort of "realism" that you seem to advocate.

Holy over-generalization, Batman! I don't know about you, but I consider storytelling and playing D&D to be closely related activities. I use a similar process for both. Several of the people who've played D&D and gone on to film and TV careers have reported similar things.

err...you do realize that you are advocating a particular metagame agenda, right?

No. What would that be?

and um....the other agenda you're talking about doesn't prevent roleplaying and that implying such is insulting, right?

You do realize that this isn't at all what I was getting at, right?

Roleplaying and balance are independent concepts. The latter doesn't take the former and bash it with a stick. It's just secondary, that's all. My point is that this balance concept isn't essential or even helpful for creating a roleplaying game, and indeed, one could make a great roleplaying game without even considering the concept as you're defining it here and while allowing wildly unbalanced characters that D&D would never dream of.

Balance is simply a separate agenda, essentially a callback to the tactical wargame roots of D&D, and an attempt to recreate said wargame in a different context. I tend to see D&D as the standard bearer for rpgs, rather than as being specific to any one tradition. My opinion is that those roots just aren't all that important, and that trying to create it falls under the "fine, but not essential" category, along with other legacy issues and specialized playstyles.