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

[Ancalagon]

Good point. I'd extend that to say that you need to trust your table. It's two separate, but related, issues.

The first is the spotlight issue. If the players at the table have conflicting ideas about what is "fun," that can cause problems. It is very difficult for even the best DM to adequately design campaigns and encounters when one (or a small number) of players derives their fun from wringing all possible mechanical advantage, while the rest of the players do not ... and vice versa. Or, put another way, it tends to work best when the players have a general consensus as to the style they are going to play. Otherwise you end up with the old "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit" problem, which tends to lead to table strife.

The second is what I call the treadmill. The reason that (IMO) many tables don't worry overly much about efficiency after some period of time is because difficulty is just a treadmill of increasing speed. If everyone is optimizing, then the DM has to increase the challenge levels. Absolute difficulty might be increased, but relative difficulty remains the same. And all that really matters from the player perspective is relative difficulty. In my opinion, given the constraints of most D&D editions (including 5e) you can maintain a sweet spot of play for far longer if you don't try and wring every possible mechanical advantage. YMMV.

This "not everyone optimizes" is a big problem in 3.X and pathfinder 1e games. The gap between an well optimized character and non-optimized one is immense, esp when you start hitting level 7 or so (your angel summoner/BMX bandit comment is on the nose). Reducing that gap to a much more manageable level was a significant improvement in 5e. You can optimize if you want, and you will be better, but only a moderate bit.

 

[pemerton]

This "not everyone optimizes" is a big problem in 3.X and pathfinder 1e games. The gap between an well optimized character and non-optimized one is immense, esp when you start hitting level 7 or so (your angel summoner/BMX bandit comment is on the nose).

I've heard this about 3E (a lot) although I've not played enough 3E to see it myself.

In AD&D my main experience around optimisation is with wizard, and to a lesser extent cleric, spell load-outs. For fighters its mostly about having a high STR and/or CON and then hoping to find good magic gear!

There is also a big difference between good and bad play in AD&D, again especially around spell-casting.

Reducing that gap to a much more manageable level was a significant improvement in 5e. You can optimize if you want, and you will be better, but only a moderate bit.

If we just focus on to-hit chances: if they default to around 60% to 70% with a standard PC, then eking out an extra +1 is less than a 10% increase in the to-hit chance. If it also adds to damage, but damage is already (say) an average of 8 per hit, then that's only a bit more than +10% damage. Even if that's 20% extra DPR that's not likely to be terribly noticeable at the table, I don't think, especially at lower levels where one might anticipate combats with larger numbers of lower-hp foes (ie the classic humanoid rabble) and hence at least some of that extra damage will disappear in "overkill".

In my 4e experience choices made in play were generally more important than build choices, in terms of evident impact on effectiveness at the table. I wouldn't be surprised if this is at least sometimes the case in 5e, although maybe not as much as in 4e given the more generous base maths, and maybe not as important as spell casting in AD&D given the more generous memorisation/casting system.

 

[Cleon]

I think we've had this discussion before. If we were being intellectually honest there I think we all know there is one solution, one race, one class, one fighting style, one attribute. Gnomish paladin with dual rapier style with an attribute of awesome.

The only problem would be how to set up significant obstacles. How can you counter the ultimate in awesome?

That's obvious. The significant counter-obstacle is a gnomish blackguard with dual rapier style, an attribute of awesome and a really cool hat.

Ahem.

Anyhow, I've only just started reading through this thread so don't know if (or how much) this has been addressed, but to me the key element of "The Power of No" in D&D game design is to balance class viability.

Not in the sense of ensuring that every class is equally effective in every circumstances, but so that whatever class the Player picks they feel they're making a useful contribution MOST of the time and have moments to "shine in the spotlight" on rare occasions.

Third edition was particularly bad at this. There were some martial classes who couldn't do anything better than what a minion summoned by a wizard could do while the spellcaster did something else.

 

[Blue]

I don't think this is true - or, at least, that it need be true - in a list-based game that depends heavily on minutiae, of which D&D is the quintessential example.

D&D has had new stuff added to its lists - new spells, new traps, new monsters which either have new special abilities or combine old ones in new ways, new classes, etc - from day one. Some of it is not very good. Some of it is broken as you describe. But that's not universally the case, and I'm not even sure that it's typical.

There's no reason I know of to think that the lists of stuff that were put out in the 5e PHB represent some sort of optimised exploitation of the possible design space, such that anything further is likely to be degenerate in some fashion.

I describe nothing "broken" or even talking about overly optimized, please go back and read the thread. Sorry, sore point you're the second person to just read just one out of context and assume things that aren't part of what I am saying.

What was being discussed was that along the power curve, some things are more efficient in general usage than others, so get taken/combined/used more. How primary weapon wielders very, very rarely take simple or other suboptimal weapons. This isn't a problem, this is just nature of the beast. How races that add to the prime ability score of a class are paired much more often than races that don't help the class. None of this is bad at all. There's no judgement here. It's just a description of common play. And yes, it will have exceptions.

Here's a thought experiment about what I mean with adding content. Take a list of twenty non-identical numbers in the 80 to 120 range. I tell you and four friends of yours that I will each give you money equal to the number you pick. No gotchas. You'll most like pick the top five numbers among the group of you. It might be that someone's lucky number, or birthday or something is up there and they take something different. But odds are you take the top five, and even better odds that four of the top five are taken.

I come back the next day with the same offer but now I've expanded the list with five more numbers so it's now 25 in total. Again, you will most likely pick the top five numbers. It doesn't matter if a number picked was there yesterday or new. There's still only five of you doing the picking.

Now, picking a character is a lot more complex then the one-dimension scenario I described. But if you think across a good number of D&D games, there will be some rough character builds you see again and again. Maybe the bear totem barbarian, or the great weapon master vengeance paladin. Or whatever. And some you rarely see, like the beastmaster ranger, or the four elements monk.

And then things shift when new stuff comes out. SCAG introduced the attack cantrips and suddenly there were a lot more melee types with them. It's a new, fun, and viable/efficient build. Which comes at the opportunity cost of that player in that campaign playing something else. It's just displaced one player from something that existed before.

 

[Lanefan]

Anyhow, I've only just started reading through this thread so don't know if (or how much) this has been addressed, but to me the key element of "The Power of No" in D&D game design is to balance class viability.

Not in the sense of ensuring that every class is equally effective in every circumstances, but so that whatever class the Player picks they feel they're making a useful contribution MOST of the time and have moments to "shine in the spotlight" on rare occasions.

This is a very good distinction you make here, when you say a class needs to be able to make "a useful contribution MOST of the time" - as opposed to ALL of the time, which to me is where 4e overdid it in its equalization.

There should also be times, as you say, when a class can shine in the spotlight; but by the same token there's nothing at all wrong with the opposite: occasions now and then where a class likely isn't going to have much to contribute. (classic example: 1e Illusionist vs undead)

It's then on the DM to ensure that she's mixing up her adventure types (e.g. an undead-based dungeon crawl is followed by a city intrigue adventure is followed by an Ogre-bashing adventure in the wilderness etc.), such that each class gets a chance to show its stuff.

 

[Blue]

Only if you ban multiclassing outright (an idea which for many reasons I'd be right on board with).

Otherwise everyone and their little dog Toto is going to dip one level of Fighter just to get that permanent damage boost, no matter what their primary class(es) might be.

You're assuming you use the highest class damage. 13th Age handles it by dropping your weapon damage class a die if they aren't even.

 

[pemerton]

picking a character is a lot more complex then the one-dimension scenario I described. But if you think across a good number of D&D games, there will be some rough character builds you see again and again. Maybe the bear totem barbarian, or the great weapon master vengeance paladin. Or whatever. And some you rarely see, like the beastmaster ranger, or the four elements monk.

And then things shift when new stuff comes out. SCAG introduced the attack cantrips and suddenly there were a lot more melee types with them. It's a new, fun, and viable/efficient build. Which comes at the opportunity cost of that player in that campaign playing something else. It's just displaced one player from something that existed before.

If your argument was true in general, then every spell added to the wizard spell list would be a bad or at least unhelpful thing. Whereas in fact I would conjecture that additions to the MU/wizard spell list is the single most frequently published game element in the history of D&D. (Maybe there have been more monsters. That could be the only rival category.)

I also don't see how you reconcile your argument with the fact that the class list, and within that the lists of class abilities, has changed and (generally) grown over the history of D&D. The introduction of paladins, rangers and barbarians almost certainly has reduced the number of fighters who get played. Just as the introduction of warlocks, sorcerers and druids probably reduces the number of MUs/wizard played. Is that an argument against the introduction of those classes? Is there some virtue in playing the "original" stuff?

I also don't see that the notion of opportunity cost is salient here. In my main 4e game no one played a rogue. But the guy who played a ranger might have played a rouge instead had there been no ranger option. But it's not a cost to our table (opportunity or otherwise) not to see a rogue in play. Just as it's not any sort of cost that in all my years of AD&D play I've never seen anyone memorise Affect Normal Fires.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[pemerton]

Um... that’s the definition of opportunity cost.

If A is playing a Ranger, then the opportunity cost of playing the Ranger is the class (or classes) he is not playing. In your example, the Rogue.

That’s not a normative judgment, but an observable fact.

An opportunity cost must be something foregone that is of value.

I don't have an economics textbook ready to hand, but here is WIkiepida (grabbed from the Google search page):

When an option is chosen from alternatives, the opportunity cost is the "cost" incurred by not enjoying the benefit associated with the best alternative choice. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines it as "the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen."​

I've bolded the bits that are references to value. (I'm ignoring here the reference to best alternative choice, which is there in the first sentence but not in the dictionary quote.)

Not every alternative foregone is an opportunity cost. When I buy eggs rather than cheese there is an opportunity cost (given that I enjoy eating both). Perhaps when I decide to serve eggs tonight rather than cheese there is an opportunity cost in not serving cheese, though more would need to be known about the case to be sure (eg if no one is in the mood for cheese, there's no cost). To repuporse an example from (I think) Mary Midgley and GEM Anscombe, the fact that I serve eggs rather than mud does not mean that there was an opportunity cost of not being served mud.

EDIT for TL;DR: Opportunity cost is not just a synonym for a choice was made among mutually exclusive possibilities.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*