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

[Son of the Serpent]

Bah, Humbug!

Elegance and minimalism has its place, but the term for an organism that doesn't grow is dead. We have evolved past the 3 classes and 4 races of OD&D (1974) by adding official options in supplements and periodicals. Well accepted options become core and the game expands to encompass new playstyles. Without official growth, there is no Dark Sun, no Ravenloft, no Eberron, no Ravnica. Official options keep things fresh, shake things up, and revitalize the game. The benefits gained from growing and adapting the game if worth the cost in grognard tears lamenting dragonborn in their Greyhawk.

Please dont ever be a biologist or a doctor.

It is nowhere near that black and white. There are in fact organisms thay do not "grow" throught their lives and they are some of the most successful.

They are generally very basic. But to say none of them are (in a way) advanced or evolved would be incorrect.

Case in point. There is a prion (for which very recently the following is held to almost definitely be true) that once in the VERY distant evolutionary past was highly communicable (some evidence says that in extreme scenarios it still is but that requires organ transplants. Very not the norm for it any more) and now only reproduces inside of specific groups of host species. Never venturing outside its environment. But having astoundingly high success at reproducing itself. It is the prion that causes alzheimer's disease believe it or not. It reproduces in two modes. One involves replication during the life of an individual host body and the other by having embeded genes in the host species to ensure it will continue living in the guilded cage it has planted itself in via those genes building a critical mass of it throughout an affected organism's life while also being able to spread throught the species via the host species manner of genetic recombination and reproduction cycle (conception). It has spread throughout a vast percentage of multiple species by living in the guilded cage of our genes and bodies. It paracitizes species as if a whole species and not just the individual is a host as it has hijacked our genes in a manner that allows it to be seeded in new individuals a percentage of the time whenever our genes combine to create a zygote. Very impressive. Furthermore its nearly impossible to destroy the molecule (yes. Its a single molecule life form. Some biologists accept this as the most basic form of life rather than a virus. Self replicating biological protein with a basic genetic blueprint) that causes a prion disease by means that wont kill the host. Furthermore this organism (the particular prion that causes alzheimer's) likely hasnt changed for eons. It has become a genetic disease that produces pathogenic affect within an individual as once it is produced by the body it then starts converting normal proteins into copies of itself. And it has hardly ever changed recently. Hardly evolved. It went from a pathogenic disease to a disease that essentially has a genetic boot process and a primarily pathogenic replication process after a critical point in many ways.

Another example of a more conplex lifeform that has done something similar (albeit to the benefit of creature hosting it)is the bacterium that became the mitochondria by joining its genetic reproductive cycle with our own cellular biology (and that of many other creatures).

These things have a large cage to live in but its rather specific and they do not step outside of it.

Fuethermore habitat range not expanding when a creature could easily do so is a well documented defense for higher more complex organisms to avoid disease, starvation, and unhealthy breeding patterns for certain creatures.

 

[BookBarbarian]

I tried to get into D&D for a few years. I'd hop on to the WotC forums and try to decide what I would make as a first character. Then I'd look at builds and guides, and give up on D&D again. Then a few months later I'd try again and give up again.

If there are enough newbies like me, than a large list of official options, even if they are all optional, can be intimidating to them.

I think the current measured growth is working for good enough.

 

[Garthanos]

Why would rolling a 1 make the character look stupid as a swordsman? All rolling a 1 means is that, in that 6-second period, the character failed to deplete the stamina/staying power of his/her foe. That doesn't mean the PC looked stupid.

I suspect in 6 seconds you will almost always exhaust both you and your adversaries staying power. Unless you both decided at that moment to rest and analyze for a rather unusually long span and chat before a subsequent flury,

4e reaping strike and 13th age are probably "realistic" ... Or some other games where you spend hp to perform maneuvers

LOL as opposed to the objection "oh my GOSH he never misses hand wringing hand wringing martial types must always be at the mercy of chance"

 

[pemerton]

@Garthanos - I'm happy with 4e Reaping Strike or other auto-damage powers. I'm also fine with systems where misses and even setbacks are possible.

I just don't think any of this means that the character has to look stupid. D&D allows that failure to deal damage to be narrated in any number of ways.

 

[Garthanos]

I just don't think any of this means that the character has to look stupid. D&D allows that failure to deal damage to be narrated in any number of ways.

After whiffing a few times in a row... ummm I see why people feel it looks stupid and that is a valid emotional response I am not writing it off.

BTW: I prefer reaping strike to the blanket fatigue or what have you of 13A because it CAN be characterized as a special character ability of "When doing something basic I never miss "

 

[Fenris-77]

I think there's some middle ground here. If we set aside the 'best in the land' part for a second I'll take a stab at rewording DEFCONs point. There are a lot of players who pretty much auto-plan their feat tree as part of their concept. They want their character to the best they can be at the thing they are designed to be good at. I don't have a problem with that - you use the tools you have at hand and those players are approaching their character mechanically. However, you can also approach the character from the other end. Here i'm going to change the rhetoric a little, let's say the character's belief is "I am a deadly swordsman and I will prove myself the best in the land". That's a really cool character belief (like Burning Wheel good). I completely agree with DEFCON's take on how that belief works from a narrative perspective at the table as well. You don't need any mechanical support to do things this way. but that wasn't the point - the point was that the narrative side, the character belief side, is (or can be) a much more potent way of realizing that concept at the table. Obviously you need some mechanics in place, and good decisions about character build will help, but it doesn't need to be optimized.

@DEFCON 1 - If I've dropped the ball on what you were trying to say please chime in.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Why would rolling a 1 make the character look stupid as a swordsman? All rolling a 1 means is that, in that 6-second period, the character failed to deplete the stamina/staying power of his/her foe. That doesn't mean the PC looked stupid.

One does not necessarily equate to the other. I didn't say rolling 1s makes someone look stupid... I said your PC will roll a whole heap of 1s (meaning they do not succeed in what they are trying to do a whole bunch of times), and occasionally your PC will look stupid. Which is true. Like occasionally your PC will drop to 0 HP and "fall unconscious", which for the "greatest swordsman in the land" seems to happen quite often and could easily be defined as "looking stupid". The way the game works, all PCs are meant to fail via mechanics much more often than they usually do if we were looking at them purely in a fiction or story sense.

I think there are few D&D players who would think best sorcerer in the land as a PC label and personality quirk is a substitute for having access to spell slots. And if those spell slots are only 1st or 2nd level ones, that might tend to suggest that the description is a bit of a misnomer given that everyone knows there are casters of higher level spells out there in the world.

The mechanical framework of 5e makes it hard for me to take seriously that a character with (say) a single attack per round with +3 to hit and doing 1d8 damage is really the best swordsman in the land.

Which is what I originally said. Many players (like you apparently) fall into the group that equates game mechanics with ability. But by that way of thinking... the "best swordsman in your land" has to be like a 20th level character because that's the best mechanical definition you have available in this game of Dungeons & Dragons. Or at the very least-- the best swordsman has to be the highest level sword-wielding character in your campaign setting. If you can't take a +3 / 1d8 PC seriously as the "best swordsman in the land"... then the numbers of every other character level are just as poor and ill-defining up until you reach that final character who is the highest level in your game, and thus gets the title of "best swordsman in the land". Which if that is what you wish to play, more power to you.

I, however, find that way of thinking needlessly restrictive, because it means that any character you start with at like 1st or 3rd level , is by definition a piece of garbage, because their mechanics suck compared to most other leveled characters in the setting. By equating mechanics to story, every starting character HAS to be an "Apprentice" type of character. Which, granted, is how WotC kind of defines the Levels 1-4 tier so it does have its place... but personally I think that's a stupid way of looking at it. Doing that means your narrative goes all over the place. You make a level 1 character that you describe as 10 year veteran in the military before becoming an adventurer? Well, that PC must have really blown as a soldier if they're only level 1 at this point and by the mechanics they suck compared to the other level characters in the setting. Doesn't matter that they are a 10 year veteran... if the mechanics define how good they are, then this level 1 veteran adventurer just blows. Not exactly how I prefer to look at things.

So I just get around that whole thing by not equating game mechanics to the fiction of the world. You can be a well-known swordsman even at 1st level in the narrative, because narrative doesn't care about mechanics. It is what someone does in the story (before, during and after the campaign) that determines how good they are, and how well-known they are, and how well-respected. If you make a PC and define them in the story as a 10 year veteran in the military, then that PC has the status, knowledge, and skill of a 10 year veteran and gets treated as such, regardless of whatever level they start at for purely game purposes.

As I said... most of you don't seem to play that way. Which, hey... whatever. You do you.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think there's some middle ground here. If we set aside the 'best in the land' part for a second I'll take a stab at rewording DEFCONs point. There are a lot of players who pretty much auto-plan their feat tree as part of their concept. They want their character to the best they can be at the thing they are designed to be good at. I don't have a problem with that - you use the tools you have at hand and those players are approaching their character mechanically. However, you can also approach the character from the other end. Here i'm going to change the rhetoric a little, let's say the character's belief is "I am a deadly swordsman and I will prove myself the best in the land". That's a really cool character belief (like Burning Wheel good). I completely agree with DEFCON's take on how that belief works from a narrative perspective at the table as well. You don't need any mechanical support to do things this way. but that wasn't the point - the point was that the narrative side, the character belief side, is (or can be) a much more potent way of realizing that concept at the table. Obviously you need some mechanics in place, and good decisions about character build will help, but it doesn't need to be optimized.

@DEFCON 1 - If I've dropped the ball on what you were trying to say please chime in.

No, that's pretty much along the lines of what I mean. By using game mechanics to define ability and status, you shut down entire backgrounds, histories and intentions just due to the incongruity. So long as there's another level to gain, you aren't that great. Or even that good. So you better make up a "farm boy" backstory for every PC you create because anything else just makes no story sense if you have to start mechanically at level 1 or 3.

 

[Remathilis]

Please dont ever be a biologist or a doctor.

It is nowhere near that black and white. There are in fact organisms thay do not "grow" throught their lives and they are some of the most successful.

They are generally very basic. But to say none of them are (in a way) advanced or evolved would be incorrect.

Case in point. There is a prion (for which very recently the following is held to almost definitely be true) that once in the VERY distant evolutionary past was highly communicable (some evidence says that in extreme scenarios it still is but that requires organ transplants. Very not the norm for it any more) and now only reproduces inside of specific groups of host species. Never venturing outside its environment. But having astoundingly high success at reproducing itself. It is the prion that causes alzheimer's disease believe it or not. It reproduces in two modes. One involves replication during the life of an individual host body and the other by having embeded genes in the host species to ensure it will continue living in the guilded cage it has planted itself in via those genes building a critical mass of it throughout an affected organism's life while also being able to spread throught the species via the host species manner of genetic recombination and reproduction cycle (conception). It has spread throughout a vast percentage of multiple species by living in the guilded cage of our genes and bodies. It paracitizes species as if a whole species and not just the individual is a host as it has hijacked our genes in a manner that allows it to be seeded in new individuals a percentage of the time whenever our genes combine to create a zygote. Very impressive. Furthermore its nearly impossible to destroy the molecule (yes. Its a single molecule life form. Some biologists accept this as the most basic form of life rather than a virus. Self replicating biological protein with a basic genetic blueprint) that causes a prion disease by means that wont kill the host. Furthermore this organism (the particular prion that causes alzheimer's) likely hasnt changed for eons. It has become a genetic disease that produces pathogenic affect within an individual as once it is produced by the body it then starts converting normal proteins into copies of itself. And it has hardly ever changed recently. Hardly evolved. It went from a pathogenic disease to a disease that essentially has a genetic boot process and a primarily pathogenic replication process after a critical point in many ways.

Another example of a more conplex lifeform that has done something similar (albeit to the benefit of creature hosting it)is the bacterium that became the mitochondria by joining its genetic reproductive cycle with our own cellular biology (and that of many other creatures).

These things have a large cage to live in but its rather specific and they do not step outside of it.

Fuethermore habitat range not expanding when a creature could easily do so is a well documented defense for higher more complex organisms to avoid disease, starvation, and unhealthy breeding patterns for certain creatures.

You've all convinced me by attacking my one-sentence analogy. D&D should only be the original 70s box set and supplements since D&D reached its limits after it's early years and cannot possibly expand beyond it. The game is simply too full and further expansion will kill it. Can the supplements and begin the OD&D reprints, D&D is unable to grow any further. Its reached its limit.

Next up, why Star Wars ended in 1983, Doctor Who stopped after the 7th Doctor, and Star Trek was never a thing after the OS.

Damn, diaglo was right all along...

 

[Umbran]

There are species of animal including Kangaroos which grow throughout their lives but exhibit no particular longevity.

Such animals grow as large as their environment and diet will allow, and then stop when they've reached the limits of their places.