I'm sick of symmetries

[Li Shenron]

I guess I am in the minority, but recently I am become bored and annoyed by the "mandatory" symmetry of D&D. If there's a game idea for good characters, immediately there has to be the same correspondent for evil characters, and it better be as symmetric as possible or "it's not fair". Once good and evil are done, there has to be something exactly the same for law and chaos! If there is something related to fire, there has to be something equivalent to water/earth/air, or electricity/sonic/acid/ice...

I used to like these sort of things, especially the symmetries in planar cosmologies, but now I feel like it's so futile and it also somewhat lacks imagination. Am I coming to terms with my age, or am I just disillusioned watching too many "Monk" episodes? I don't want to be Monk-ed!

I want some stronger asymmetries from now on in my campaigns. I want more things without a similar counterpart, not just with regards to alignment and natural elements but for example also with character races, I want them different!
I'd let go planar symmetries as well, they seemed great to me once, but now I can't stop thinking about how unnecessary they really are...

Rant over

 

[jdrakeh]

Dualism leaves a bad taste in my mouth wherever I encounter it.

 

[Yair]

Dualism leaves a bad taste in my mouth wherever I encounter it.

Huh
The perfect symmetry in rules is certainly unimaginative and not interesting. Some things, the core, should be available I think - things like Protection from X, having both a Celestial and Fiendish template, and so on.
But going beyond that is not nice at all. There is no reason that the Fiendish tempalte be a mirror image of Celestial, for example. Having it different is much more interesting.
So I agree - giving different opposite sides in D&D equal footing is not to my liking.
I liked the idea of Chaositech for this reason - something noughty to give Chaotic guys. I did not like (what I understood of) the execution, nor that it was apparently aimed at Evil rather than Chaos. Oh well.

But dualism? Dualism is great. It's nothing like symmetry. It's asymmetry. The darkness is not the mirror image of light, it is the lack thereof, it's complete negation. Dualism is about how things are different, not how they are the same.
Surely we want evil to be different from good in our games, no?

 

[Zappo]

I hear you! IMC, I don't bother with symmetries, though I don't go out of my way to prevent them either. "Because Good has it" is not a valid argument to create an Evil something, and it certainly isn't a valid argument to create an Evil something that is just as the Good one except that it does unholy damage instead of holy. At the same time, I'm not bothered by the existance of Protection from [alignment] spells. A modicum of symmetry is part of the natural laws in a way.

The worst part of this symmetry fashion is with elemental effects. Fire orb, acid orb, lightning orb... ugh. Each of them the same, save for some special effect. Apparently, shooting energy, gas or fluid has no effect on the shape or range of the spell. Or the psion energy powers? One power, choose the damage type?

Those are really bad design from a RP point of view. They turn energy type into "just a word".



This leads me a bit off topic - effects that are 100% metagaming are becoming a problem. Worst offender: the FR spell that gives a +10 to any single skill check. It doesn't make sense. How would a character describe it? "Uh, it helps you in swimming but not weight lifting; or engineering but not bardic lore; or jumping but not running; or searching for traps but it still won't be useful unless you're a rogue... I don't know really, I guess the gods must have a reason".

 

[Desdichado]

You can always just use the one aspect of it you want and ignore the others. Just because there's a paladin class doesn't mean you need to use the blackguard class to balance it, for instance.

I'd rather have the option and not use it than want it and not have it.

 

[Thia Halmades]

Good morning.

Without leafing through my dictionary to fiddle with the exact terminology, I fall firmly on the side of "Good and Evil are different." It's not complicated, and it certainly isn't hard to show mechanically. One of the things that came to mind while reading Li Shenron's post was the BoED vs. the BoVD. Two books, both about their subject matter, Exalted vs. Vile feats, Cancer Mage vs. Anointed Knight, what have you. They did a really good job showing mechanically how you can buff up either side, while using content which made them entirely separate.

Dualism/dichotomy are as much a part of the 'real world' as they are in D&D; art imitates life. The general consensus is that there's a Heaven & Hell. Good & Evil. But the two are in no way 'equal', other than they hold a sort of counter balancing weight to each other. The balance can swing, the balance can change, one side can win more wars than another, and so on.

I'm with her on this one; I don't need symmetry; I need asymmetry. The two sides aren't 'separate but equal' - they are distinct entities which bear little or no resemblance to each other.

 

[Umbran]

I want some stronger asymmetries from now on in my campaigns.

Well, you could just try working with the Core rules. Outside of the spells, they don't have many of the symmetries you're talking about. Certainly the Core class selection isn't symmetric.

Beyond that - last time I checked, the DM was supposed to comb through and pick and choose what they want in their game. From that standpoint, it makes a lot of sense to present symmetric possibilities in products, so that the DM can choose either or both. Everything outside the core is optional, and ain't nobody stopping you from taking one side and not the other.

 

[WayneLigon]

More than likely, 'game balance' is the answer you're looking for. Sure, it would be more realistic that different energy types behave differently - they should all have different areas of effect, different effects, different saves, etc. The reasons why it's not like that should be pretty obvious.

1. More complication means more to remember, more to go wrong, and more special cases to take into account when crafting encounters. More paperwork. More confusion.

2. Yes, it might be better for the various energy types to hehave differenently but that also means that one or two of them are automatically going to be 'better' than the others. You don't really want that from a game design standpoint. Instead of people using various effects, you come down to one or two. Then we'd ge threads about 'How come no-one ever invented an Orb of Water or Orb of Ice?'

 

[jmucchiello]

More than likely, 'game balance' is the answer you're looking for. Sure, it would be more realistic that different energy types behave differently - they should all have different areas of effect, different effects, different saves, etc.

Or you could vary just one of those things. Take area of effect: Fire should blast, lightning affects a line, cold can be a cone and acid should be an emanation (or fog). Now you can't have an orb of lightning because lightning effects should be lines.

 

[jdrakeh]

Surely we want evil to be different from good in our games, no?

I dislike painting things in simple black and white (the only option that dualism in design presents), prefering to explore a wide range of different colors instead.