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Kicking the tires vs. puncturing the tires; being effective vs. breaking the game
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<blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 9111295" data-attributes="member: 20564"><p>Okay, "broken" as a ruleset to me is Pun Pun. For those not familiar, it was a literally all powerful yet legal creation back in D&D 3.5ed using rules, subclasses, and creatures from various different books that slotted together in a loophole-ly way to make a ridiculously omnipotent character.</p><p></p><p>But the premise of "Night level 'competitive' play vs. more standard doing what seems cool and works" doesn't work <em>at all</em> for me as a divider. Both are valid modes of play, with different tables having different preferences. As long as the party is roughly the same power level, the DM can challenge them. They have, after all, all the monsters. Splitting out optimizers with system mastery is just as wrong of a concept as splitting out new or casual players and saying they are playing wrong.</p><p></p><p>A much more interesting point of "breakable" is in a game like D&D where relative power level is important*, how do we put everyone at the same level. I know that I willingly tune or detune characters to match the power of the group, and really 5e makes it generally easy to be in the same ballpark as long as a player doesn't shoot themselves in the foot such as with poor multiclassing choices or low prime ability scores (you will feel a +1 mod when everyone else has +3 or +4).</p><p></p><p>Some games have mechanics to correct for this over time. For example a common mechanic in many PbtA games is to mark their XP equivalent on a failed roll. So characters that fail more often will increase in power level so that the party is consolidated. But with the level-based approach of D&D that's not granular enough, and also D&D has never tried to balance the number of rolls per class so a direct port isn't a good fit.</p><p></p><p>So right now we have that power level of characters can vary both on the system mastery of the player (including "borrowed" system mastery using a guide or build from others) as well as the intentions of how strong a character they want to build.</p><p></p><p>* I mentioned games where "relative power level is important". Part of that is that a common solution for challenge is lethal combat, and a failure penalty for that is character loss, which is much more punitive then in many other games where failure is just a downbeat like in any story, movie, or novel. Many games that don't put <em>player</em> fun-reducing penalties on <em>character</em> or <em>party</em> failure don't need to have everyone as balanced. Marvel Heroic Roleplay for instance can have a buddy barhopping night with Thor and Hawkeye, and both characters will feel important and have time to shine, even though their power levels aren't even in the same postal code. Masks: A New Generation explicitly has a playbook where you have no powers but still want to be a superhero, and a playbook where you have so much power you can't always control it. No problems mixing either of them along with other heroes or each other. While it's a foreign concept to the type of game D&D is, where balance is important for a DM to consistantly provide challenges and give everyone spotlight, other types of games can deal with it in significantly other ways.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Blue, post: 9111295, member: 20564"] Okay, "broken" as a ruleset to me is Pun Pun. For those not familiar, it was a literally all powerful yet legal creation back in D&D 3.5ed using rules, subclasses, and creatures from various different books that slotted together in a loophole-ly way to make a ridiculously omnipotent character. But the premise of "Night level 'competitive' play vs. more standard doing what seems cool and works" doesn't work [I]at all[/I] for me as a divider. Both are valid modes of play, with different tables having different preferences. As long as the party is roughly the same power level, the DM can challenge them. They have, after all, all the monsters. Splitting out optimizers with system mastery is just as wrong of a concept as splitting out new or casual players and saying they are playing wrong. A much more interesting point of "breakable" is in a game like D&D where relative power level is important*, how do we put everyone at the same level. I know that I willingly tune or detune characters to match the power of the group, and really 5e makes it generally easy to be in the same ballpark as long as a player doesn't shoot themselves in the foot such as with poor multiclassing choices or low prime ability scores (you will feel a +1 mod when everyone else has +3 or +4). Some games have mechanics to correct for this over time. For example a common mechanic in many PbtA games is to mark their XP equivalent on a failed roll. So characters that fail more often will increase in power level so that the party is consolidated. But with the level-based approach of D&D that's not granular enough, and also D&D has never tried to balance the number of rolls per class so a direct port isn't a good fit. So right now we have that power level of characters can vary both on the system mastery of the player (including "borrowed" system mastery using a guide or build from others) as well as the intentions of how strong a character they want to build. * I mentioned games where "relative power level is important". Part of that is that a common solution for challenge is lethal combat, and a failure penalty for that is character loss, which is much more punitive then in many other games where failure is just a downbeat like in any story, movie, or novel. Many games that don't put [I]player[/I] fun-reducing penalties on [I]character[/I] or [I]party[/I] failure don't need to have everyone as balanced. Marvel Heroic Roleplay for instance can have a buddy barhopping night with Thor and Hawkeye, and both characters will feel important and have time to shine, even though their power levels aren't even in the same postal code. Masks: A New Generation explicitly has a playbook where you have no powers but still want to be a superhero, and a playbook where you have so much power you can't always control it. No problems mixing either of them along with other heroes or each other. While it's a foreign concept to the type of game D&D is, where balance is important for a DM to consistantly provide challenges and give everyone spotlight, other types of games can deal with it in significantly other ways. [/QUOTE]
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