D&D General Kicking the tires vs. puncturing the tires; being effective vs. breaking the game

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm not sure I would say that 4E was "unbreakable". Compared to 3.x perhaps, but that's a pretty low bar. I knew people that specialized in cheesing out PCs in 4E and would do things like ensure that the enemy couldn't get close and then attack the enemy use ranged attacks from a greater distance than the enemy had (sorry, too long since I played I don't remember the exact combo). Maybe it didn't "break" the game, but it sure did make it boring when he did this kind of stuff. Especially at higher levels the module we played for LFR simply negated PC's abilities because it was too easy to control the battlefield. I know the DMs occasionally got a bit frustrated with some of my PCs and I don't ever intentionally "bend" the rules.

Which is not really a knock against 4E, it's not like 5E is immune to this either. But no version of the game has ever been completely immune to cheese. Sometimes one person's effective PC is another person's cheese weasel.

Which would be why I was arguing that we shouldn't look for completely unbreakable and instead "pretty unbreakable."

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Can you make an unbreakable game? Starting with the broad definition of "game": Sure you can! I double-dog-dare you to try to break the game of Go while staying within the rules as written.

But Go's rules are extremely simple - downright elegant, even. The action space for play is highly restricted. RPGs traditionally have highly complicated rules, with much greater action spaces for play, in which much of the space may not even invoke the rules in a meaningful way.

An rpg…with some design space for characters…That many people would want to play.

I realize there are unbreakable abstracts in particular.

It seems to me the more variety you add the less stable the game. The more tightly comtrolled is harder to break. It often less fun.

Again thinking rpgs

 

[Umbran]

An rpg…with some design space for characters…That many people would want to play.

When starting on answering a question, you begin at the very basics, cases for which you have few open questions (like "what is an RPG?", what qualifies as, "some design space?" and so on).

As for wanting to play, about 75 million people in the world know how to play Go, and there's something over 20 million current players. of the game. If you don't like Go, you may substitute Chess, which has over half a billion players - it has Fool's Mate, which some might consider "breaking", so I started with Go.

It seems to me the more variety you add the less stable the game. The more tightly comtrolled is harder to break.

I'd expect that is generally accurate.

It often less fun.

Half a billion and more chess players are glaring at you. "Fun," is subjective, anyway, and so won't help you.

Again thinking rpgs

I mean, duh. This is an RPG site.

But if you want constructive discussion, you start with the easy case, and add complexity bit by bit. Jumping to the end leads to lots of unanswered questions behind you that may invalidate the thinking. Work with me here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm not sure I would say that 4E was "unbreakable". Compared to 3.x perhaps, but that's a pretty low bar.

I mean, compared to most popular RPGs 4E was very hard to break, like you had to have really in-depth system knowledge and access to specific Feats and abilities, generally. Most people didn't even work it out themselves, they just read a guide by someone on the internet. Whereas in a lot of RPGs there's some ability in the corebook which is just wildly overpowered to the point of being a joke - like Celerity in some editions of Vampire. Shadowrun and Cyberpunk had a ton of stuff which could "break" combat or stealth or other parts of the game. I managed to work out how to completely break stealth in 2E or 3E Shadowrun, with like two spells. I can't remember it now but it was really dumb, and I just thought of it on a lazy afternoon.

1/2/3E were very very easy to break, but in 1/2E it was usually down to magic items or certain spells, rather than something players could choose to do (so the DM was generally the one, even if unknowingly, doing the breaking), and 3E it was just "play a full caster and pick Feats that make your spells harder to stop and/or let you make magic items" boom done - you could do victory laps with stuff like PrCs but you were basically already there.

5E is even harder to break than 4E, particularly without multiclassing, because it's so straightforward. I think we're back to a situation where the most likely way it breaks is the DM manages to hand out overpowered magic items, but they have to go further than 1/2E. I've even been in a campaign where that happened - there are a lot of kind-OP items in 5E that don't need attunement, as it turns out.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is a more general thing, since I think applies well outside the D&D sphere:

I think a big part of it is based on two things:
1. The player thinking outside just their own personal interests in the game, i.e. caring about what impact they're choices will have on other players and the overall health of the game. I think some players--too many--don't do this, sometimes just because of their own tunnel vision (charitably), sometimes because they've been trained away from it by other players and/or GMs;
2. The player and (at least) the GM being the same page in regard to expectations; if the player thinks he's just trying to get up to an appropriate level of capability for his character, and the GM thinks he's gone over a line, this is inevitably going to be a problem--and IME, its not at all common for players and GMs to see this one differently, sometimes significantly so.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

When starting on answering a question, you begin at the very basics, cases for which you have few open questions (like "what is an RPG?", what qualifies as, "some design space?" and so on). As for wanting to play, about 75 million people in the world know how to play Go, and there's something over 20 million current players. of the game. If you don't like Go, you may substitute Chess, which has over half a billion players - it has Fool's Mate, which some might consider "breaking", so I started with Go. I'd expect that is generally accurate. Half a billion and more chess players are glaring at you. "Fun," is subjective, anyway, and so won't help you. I mean, duh. This is an RPG site. But if you want constructive discussion, you start with the easy case, and add complexity bit by bit. Jumping to the end leads to lots of unanswered questions behind you that may invalidate the thinking. Work with me here.

 

[Lanefan]

How many of our complaints about editions A B or C a function of our approach?

My guess would be most if not all.

So many concerns just have not been a problem for me where others seem to think it’s game breaking?

Is an unbreakable game really possible? If it was, would the flavor be leeched out of it?

First challenge: define "broken".

For some, even the slightest imbalance between characters (or even an appearance of imbalance) is broken. For others, characters can be out of balance to rather imposing degrees before they even see the game as cracking, never mind breaking.

And that's just between characters. Beyond that: some see a game as broken if it's in general too easy to "win" or succeed, others if it's too hard. For some, a game can be or become broken by its pacing and-or advancement, be it too fast or too slow. For some a game can be or become broken by too much or too little attention being paid to minutae. And so on.

Is an unbreakable game really possible? Technically, I suppose it is, but to work as intended it'd a) have to be so tightly rules-ed down that any player-side creativity would be crushed; and b) exclude many players who would see it as broken by some definition before even engaging with it.

 

[jgsugden]

It all comes down to your definition of a broken game. Some people think the game is broken if one class is slightly more powerful than another, while other people think the game is fine so long as everyone could be having fun under the RAW.

I've played with optimized PCs, inefficient PCs and everything inbetween. I've seen people have fun playing all sorts of characters - and to that end, I say 5E is pretty break resistant ... and if you find it broken, it isn't the game part of the 'you and game' combination that is at fault.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I mean, compared to most popular RPGs 4E was very hard to break, like you had to have really in-depth system knowledge and access to specific Feats and abilities, generally. Most people didn't even work it out themselves, they just read a guide by someone on the internet. Whereas in a lot of RPGs there's some ability in the corebook which is just wildly overpowered to the point of being a joke - like Celerity in some editions of Vampire. Shadowrun and Cyberpunk had a ton of stuff which could "break" combat or stealth or other parts of the game. I managed to work out how to completely break stealth in 2E or 3E Shadowrun, with like two spells. I can't remember it now but it was really dumb, and I just thought of it on a lazy afternoon.

1/2/3E were very very easy to break, but in 1/2E it was usually down to magic items or certain spells, rather than something players could choose to do (so the DM was generally the one, even if unknowingly, doing the breaking), and 3E it was just "play a full caster and pick Feats that make your spells harder to stop and/or let you make magic items" boom done - you could do victory laps with stuff like PrCs but you were basically already there.

5E is even harder to break than 4E, particularly without multiclassing, because it's so straightforward. I think we're back to a situation where the most likely way it breaks is the DM manages to hand out overpowered magic items, but they have to go further than 1/2E. I've even been in a campaign where that happened - there are a lot of kind-OP items in 5E that don't need attunement, as it turns out.

I guess this kind of gets at what I am asking.

I did not really enjoy 4e. No shade just one opinion in millions. It had good structure though.

It seems the more you cobble together/variety the dicier it gets.

You can I think include all of the optional rules and still be ok with the right group. But really if people want to break things they can in 5e with multiclassing.

With old editions and few levers to pull I guess you can roll godly stats but then one errant blow can take you down bed for the era of stat inflation. Magic items were a bigger player though…

 

[Thomas Shey]

I guess this kind of gets at what I am asking.

I did not really enjoy 4e. No shade just one opinion in millions. It had good structure though.

It seems the more you cobble together/variety the dicier it gets.

You can I think include all of the optional rules and still be ok with the right group. But really if people want to break things they can in 5e with multiclassing.

With old editions and few levers to pull I guess you can roll godly stats but then one errant blow can take you down bed for the era of stat inflation. Magic items were a bigger player though…

Well, its kind of almost a tautology, that the less things you control about a character, the harder to cook the books on them it is. But the flip side of that is that it decides to block imbalance by forcing you into the game (and random rolls) idea of what your character is like.

Seems too high a price to pay to me.