D&D 5E Just One More Thing: The Power of "No" in Design (aka, My Fun, Your Fun, and BadWrongFun)

[pemerton]

I expect Cortex+ will also support it well, though I don't know of a solid generic fantasy variant.

By way of illustrative tangent . . .

 

[DEFCON 1]

I really think that you are not explaining how your vision of D&D play fits with such basic features of the system as characters gaining in level, multiple PCs who have different strengths reflected in different mechanical features of their builds, default lists of antagonists which consist primarily of mechanical specifications of said antagonists, etc.

Even in 4e your vision would be hard to pull off. I don't see how it works at all in 5e. Especially when spells are factored in, which is something I've raised several times now but you've still not responded to.

At this point if you really don't get it from my multiple posts on the subject to all manner of different people, there's nothing more that I can say that isn't just a rehash of it. And sorry, but at this point it just doesn't matter to me if you understand how I play the game or not. It's fine. I mean, I've spent quite a bit of time trying to wrap my head around all of your multiple posts over the years about explaining "scene-framing" and the like, and at some point I just came to the conclusion that whatever that is... if it works for you, great. But I just don't care about trying to figure all of the nuances out anymore. Sorry.

 

[pemerton]

I think as soon as you run into any opposition in the narrative that mandates the use of mechanics, something is going to be formalized. And that's going to out some kind of bounds on the practical mechanic expression of the PC.

This. And it will only be compounded by cross-time comparisons where the PCs stats have changed. And even moreso in respect of magic, where player-side resoures are discrete bundles of capability ("spells") that (i) correlate to discrete sorts of fictional events (like eg walking between worlds) and (ii) are at least presented as correlating to discrete packets of capability within the fiction (in virtue of the preparation rules, spellbook rules, etc).

 

[pemerton]

My point originally was that there are people on the boards who equate game mechanics to a character's place in the narrative. That if a character doesn't have the "best" game mechanics available, then their character isn't "competent". Because how could you be "competent" if you knew you were leaving better mechanics on the table? To which I said that's a ridiculous way of looking at it, because even if you have the "best" mechanics for your character, you are still going to have a whole heap of failures. So those "best" characters are not the requirement for being "competent"... how the character is perceived in the game world does it.

In my posts I'm not arguing with this. I'm not talking about comparisons between actual PC builds and purely hypothetical PC builds. If everyone agrees to leave GWM (for instance) off the table then it's off the table. In my 4e play we have never used Expertise feats. That doesn't stop PC being great exemplars of their types. And the fighter PC, a dwarf, started with 16 STR and so has less than the hypothetically possible max strength. That doesn't stop him being an Eternal Defender who is one of the strongest beings in the cosmos.

I'm thinking about actual experiences in a game once the action resolution rules are invoked. That's why I fastened on (what was it?) a single attack for +3 to hit and 1d8 damage. I find it very hard to envisage a D&D game in which the action resolution experience produced by those stats would be consistent with being a great swordsman. (I guess there could be a one-shot in which the PCs are all built at low level and the kobolds, orcs etc are reflavoured as invading demons or great warriors or whatever, but I didn't take this sort of outlying case to be what you had in mind.)

 

[TwoSix]

This. And it will only be compounded by cross-time comparisons where the PCs stats have changed. And even moreso in respect of magic, where player-side resoures are discrete bundles of capability ("spells") that (i) correlate to discrete sorts of fictional events (like eg walking between worlds) and (ii) are at least presented as correlating to discrete packets of capability within the fiction (in virtue of the preparation rules, spellbook rules, etc).

Agreed. I think DEFCON 1's point got a little obscured, and more boiled down to "Just because a game element is usable in the character building portion of the game doesn't mandate its inclusion in the game narrative." If the needs of the game make it so that a 14th level champion fighter is "the greatest swordsman in the world", the fact that a hypothetical 20th level vengeance paladin could exist doesn't suddenly invalidate the fiction. As the DM, you simply need to frame your encounters in a way not to violate that constraint (or possibly challenge it!) if you've already accepted that concept as true.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm thinking about actual experiences in a game once the action resolution rules are invoked. That's why I fastened on (what was it?) a single attack for +3 to hit and 1d8 damage. I find it very hard to envisage a D&D game in which the action resolution experience produced by those stats would be consistent with being a great swordsman. (I guess there could be a one-shot in which the PCs are all built at low level and the kobolds, orcs etc are reflavoured as invading demons or great warriors or whatever, but I didn't take this sort of outlying case to be what you had in mind.)

Actually, I think that's pretty relevant to what DEFCON 1 is saying. Basically, what I'm interpreting from his posts is this:

1) The relative potency of game mechanic elements is objective, at least within related categories. A 15th level wizard is more powerful than a 5th level one. An ogre is stronger than a 1st level fighter, but a 10th level fighter is stronger than an ogre.

2) The relative potency of narrative elements is subjective, and can vary from campaign to campaign. If we accept reskinning as viable, there's no strict relation between a narrative object and a game mechanic object until we declare one (usually as part of framing the scene.)

3) Once we add in declarations linking a game mechanic object to a narrative object, we implicitly add a host of constraints to any further declarations. If I define a 1st level fighter as a superior swordsman (and to be clear, this is about the DM and player both accepting this as true, not the player stating a character's belief), then definitionally, common guards and peasants must be assigned stats that would allow the superior swordsman to beat them. They might only have 2 HP, no stat above 12, and no weapon proficiencies, just as an example.
But, once that constraint is assigned, that will certainly have profound implications on how we frame further scenes, especially in regards as to how we assign mechanical opposition. We can't have the town guard show up as 4th level fighters because we've already made a declaration that town guards are inferior swordsmen to this 1st level fighter.

4) Our common fantasy tropes and use of defined stat blocks simply serve to do offload a lot of that decision making for us. That's why the 1st level "greatest swordsman" is so problematic; to maintain consistency, a large swath of our available tools, tropes, and assumptions have to be sidelined. In that game, 6 kobolds can ravage the town guard, and 2 ogres is an existential threat.

 

[pemerton]

Agreed. I think DEFCON 1's point got a little obscured, and more boiled down to "Just because a game element is usable in the character building portion of the game doesn't mandate its inclusion in the game narrative." If the needs of the game make it so that a 14th level champion fighter is "the greatest swordsman in the world", the fact that a hypothetical 20th level vengeance paladin could exist doesn't suddenly invalidate the fiction. As the DM, you simply need to frame your encounters in a way not to violate that constraint (or possibly challenge it!) if you've already accepted that concept as true.

If that's the pont then I agree - as per my egs from 4e play.

 

[pemerton]

If we accept reskinning as viable, there's no strict relation between a narrative object and a game mechanic object until we declare one (usually as part of framing the scene.)

<snip>

If I define a 1st level fighter as a superior swordsman (and to be clear, this is about the DM and player both accepting this as true, not the player stating a character's belief), then definitionally, common guards and peasants must be assigned stats that would allow the superior swordsman to beat them. They might only have 2 HP, no stat above 12, and no weapon proficiencies, just as an example.

<snip>

Our common fantasy tropes and use of defined stat blocks simply serve to do offload a lot of that decision making for us. That's why the 1st level "greatest swordsman" is so problematic; to maintain consistency, a large swath of our available tools, tropes, and assumptions have to be sidelined. In that game, 6 kobolds can ravage the town guard, and 2 ogres is an existential threat.

This is why I think that what is being described is hard even in 4e, which is the version of D&D that is closest to encouraging what you describe here. I think D&D isn't very well suited to a game in which town guards have 2 hp and 12 STR; because so many other parts of the game (the rules for stats and stat checks; for weapon damage rages; animal stats in the MM which factor into druidic spell casting; etc) push against it.

But if the claim is simply that hypothetical PC builds can be disregarded when locating actual PC builds in the fiction, that's something different and true. E6 is probably the best-known example of this. The 4e Neverwinter Campaign Setting is a published example. And any table can do this pretty easily.

And to make a concrete link between the preceding two paragraphs: using the town guard or cult thugs stats from the 5e MM, or a scenario, is going to be completely irrelevant to whether the best swordsman in the land is a 6th, 10th or 20th level fighter.

 

[Lanefan]

But the supremacy of magic vs martial is as old as D&D. My buddy in high school swears he should have won our impromptu PVP session between my fighter and his wizard. He may well have, if his hold person spell had worked. But my fighter walked away that day and Binkster wasn't going walk anywhere under their own power.

When the Fighter-vs-Mage throwdown happens, the first thing I say as the Fighter is always this: "If you're lucky, you'll get one spell away. Make it good, 'cause if I'm still moving afterwards you will not get off a second."

 

[Lanefan]

Of course not! Why am I getting special treatment here?!? Don't I deserve to be taken out of context and strawmanned like every other poster?!? What'd I ever do to you people to be treated with such... respect!

Simple.

You made sense, and that's so uncommon here sometimes that people just don't know how to deal with it.