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

[Coroc]

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.

This.

It pretty much sums it up how it is to be resolved if we consider D&D being at least partial a Role Playing Game.

To elaborate a bit: There are some DM in whose worlds the heroes with their class levels are in fact the best of the regular folk, no matter if they are level 1 or level 20, they always can even mechanically outpace common folk. For the given RP - scenario : "player is the best swordsman in the world"
these kinds of game worlds are the best, because at any point this always can be proven, even mechanically.
2e had some campaign guide which gave advice on such scenarios fro mthe reverted POV:
Is it possible that player X is a 15th level cleric but only lowest tier in his church? Where his high priest might not even be level 1 but a commoner? Or that a king is only a level 0 commoner, so every fighter can easily take him out?
And the answer is yes that is totally feasible, e.g. the head priest might be a much more devout follower of the PC Xs deity, and the king is determined by birth and not by his levels in fighter or paladin class.
Their tasks are different to those of adventurers, they do not crawl around in the city sewers or some old mine to fight monsters but they lead a church or an empire.

In other worlds, if you would try to emulate every PC view (RP - wise) with a mechanical backbone, you would have to make the high priest of the party cleric be several levels higher etc.

 

[TwoSix]

Okay, as much as it's probably a waste of my time... let me try and explain it this way, as maybe this might make things clearer. I don't play with the whole "living world" idea that many people do. What I play and what is real is what happens at the table when it occurs at the table. That's it. In each and every campaign I run, only that which actually is presented in the story at the table is real and true. Nothing else. Anything that is in the Player's Handbook? Rules... abilities... races... classes... until they appear in the game in the story at the table, they don't exist. And it might never exist. Things in the Monster Manual? They don't exist until it shows up in the story in the

Nope, makes perfect sense. It’s exactly how I play.

 

[Coroc]

...
Does this run counter to a lot of other people's games? You betcha! No doubt! They have this whole campaign that plays out in their head, with thousands of events happening that are in no way connected to the players and their PCs at the table, and which the players never know or hear about.
...

If for any reason I have to improvise a session e.g. I have to d.m. on short notice and nothing prepared I handle it similarly. And also for the what happens in the world stuff: The rough table of events is given, but I am not a computer running "sims".
If it has no direct or indirect impact on my players or the main topics of the adventure, I do not care at all if in some barony 500 miles of some bloke falls from his horse or not.
The only thing I do differently - to a point - is that I predetermine classes races deities etc. and a rough selection of prevalent and rare mobs e.g. many undead or no demons or such.
With to a point I mean if e.g. someone joins late and wants to play some class I have not planned for but which would give me no trouble in retconning it in I deviate.

And I don't think that so many people do it differently than you or me, the only DMs who maybe do it differently are those who created a whole homebrew world and always run therein.
Or maybe canon freaks, who take everything official to letter as given, for some reason only they understand. The latter might become important for living world campaigns with different groups operating in different corners of the campaign world.

 

[pemerton]

Okay, as much as it's probably a waste of my time... let me try and explain it this way, as maybe this might make things clearer. I don't play with the whole "living world" idea that many people do. What I play and what is real is what happens at the table when it occurs at the table.

I'm not puzzled by this. For the most recent thread that I started on the issues of technique that you raise, see here.

What I've been discussing, a bit with you but more with @TwoSix, is some of the limits that D&D might impose for this sort of approach.

that wizard PC is the only one that exists and thus ipso facto they are the best.

That wasn't quite what I had in mind. I was envisaging something more like what was implied by your "best swordsman" example, which implies that the swordsman is the best of some number, not the best because sole.

I don't think that so many people do it differently than you or me, the only DMs who maybe do it differently are those who created a whole homebrew world and always run therein.

Not only them. For instance, when running AD&D as per the instructions in the DMG (p 39)., the GM has to tell the player of a 1st level magic-user "that they have just completed a course of apprenticeship with a master who was of unthinkably high level (at least 6th!)."

That can of course be ignored, although in my case it required some experience as a GM to realise that it could be ignored. But the whole existence of the spell book, the idea of training to gain levels (not part of 5e but part of AD&D), the existence of spell scrolls, etc - all imply a setting in which 1st level wizards do not represent the pinnacle of what is possible when it comes to mortal wizardry.

 

[Maxperson]

Unless the fighter has boots of flying and a gem of seeing at hand, yes.

That would be awfully convenient, as well as requiring a free hand and if the DM is running a game that makes sense, significant penalties to the fighter in trying to fight a combat while looking through a small gem.

 

[Coroc]

That would be awfully convenient, as well as requiring a free hand and if the DM is running a game that makes sense, significant penalties to the fighter in trying to fight a combat while looking through a small gem.

Well everything comes with a twist...

 

[Oofta]

Well everything comes with a twist...

Along with assumptions of an edition that's been out of print for decades, precast stoneskin, having fly memorized and available. The wizard wins initiative along with being out of range.

 

[DEFCON 1]

That wasn't quite what I had in mind. I was envisaging something more like what was implied by your "best swordsman" example, which implies that the swordsman is the best of some number, not the best because sole.

Yes, it does imply there are other swordsmen in the land, you are correct. And there probably are. But until one of them shows up in the game, we not only have no idea who, or how many... but we also do not know what their mechanical representation is.

Now in this hypothetical scenario where this player of mine made the offer of characterization for their level 1 Fighter that they are the greatest swordsman in the land... if I was to throw an opponent at them to allow them to show off this characterization... I'd probably go with one of the exceedingly low-CR NPCs, like the Guard. And as part of the story the PC would get to show off their skill. My guess would be that they'd be able to defeat this "swordfighter" opponent, thus expanding their resume and reputation. Now if they happened to lose... then that obviously is now true, and the player would need to change their representation in the story (or not, and thus maybe their character has evolved into a delusional or arrogant one). But assuming they won, and as this PC gained mechanical levels, other higher-powered NPCs would get introduced into the game to present challenges to the character. Like I might move on to use the 'Gladiator' NPC statblock at some point for a new challenger.

Now those of the "living world" concept of campaign design would probably ask "Where was this 'Gladiator' NPC back when the character was claiming to be the best swordsman back at level 1?" A perfectly reasonable question for those people who play that style, and a legitimate query that would seem to belie the PC's original claim. The answer of course being that until I needed that NPC to challenge the character in the story, he didn't exist.

The thing is... there is a very specific reason why I run my games in this way: I think Class game mechanics are just as nonsensical as Hit Points for narrative purposes. Quite frankly... any attempt to align what you get for leveling up with any sense of story and narrative presents results that I think are just incongruous and rather dumb. The game allows for characters to level up at whatever speeds the DM decides, which means depending on the types of adventures and the inclusion or lack of downtime... PCs can go from Level 1 to Level 15 over the course of like a single week or two in-game (if you are playing a megadungeon or something). A wizard PC starts at the entrance of the megadungeon pew-pewing a pair of Magic Missiles each day, but two weeks later in-game they are dropping Meteor Storms on people. It's completely ridiculous from a narrative perspective that they've somehow gained all this power over the course of two weeks. But the game allows for that to happen.

As a result, I just choose to handwave all of it. I pretend that the "power" a character has does not align to anything or necessarily "exist" within the fiction. The game mechanics of leveling and the powers/spells/features they get are given to players in this game because it is a game after all, and getting these new shinies every bunch of sessions is fun. But because they make no sense for whatever story we are trying to tell, I keep them separate from the story. The whole "If druids can grow huge plants every day, why is anyone in the kingdom going hungry?" conundrum. I handwave it all. They are game mechanics just to make the game run effectively as a game, nothing more, nothing less. The Cleric can raise people from the dead with a 3rd level spell because of "game", and not because this is something that actually happens in the narrative world the game is set in. Because from my perspective... to try and rationalize the combination of the two (mechanics and story) is a road towards madness.

 

[Maxperson]

Along with assumptions of an edition that's been out of print for decades, precast stoneskin, having fly memorized and available.

There are many spells the Magic User can use to win. Those were just a couple.

The wizard wins initiative along with being out of range.

That's far more likely than the fighter just always happening to be right next to him. Remember, this is mid to high level. The magic user could just trap the fighter inside a Wall of Force until he's ready to kill him. Or some other spell that removes the fighter long enough. Rock to Mud for example.

In Fighter vs. Magic User examples, the fighter has to start close to the Magic User in order to win.

 

[Oofta]

There are many spells the Magic User can use to win. Those were just a couple.


That's far more likely than the fighter just always happening to be right next to him. Remember, this is mid to high level. The magic user could just trap the fighter inside a Wall of Force until he's ready to kill him. Or some other spell that removes the fighter long enough. Rock to Mud for example.

In Fighter vs. Magic User examples, the fighter has to start close to the Magic User in order to win.

Not in my personal experience when we actually played it out in 1E. In 5E it will depend on too many factors to list.

You're making a lot of assumptions about what the wizard will have available while also assuming the fighter has nothing beneficial.

But I will chalk this up to one of the silliest arguments I've gotten involved with lately. Can we talk about who would win a fight between Superman and Batman next?