Unearthed Arcana Light, Dark, Underdark - November's Unearthed Arcana

Interesting stuff.

 

[Serpine]

A friend of mine pointed out recently that in some respects, 2nd Edition AD&D was the best-balanced version of the game so far - because the focus of balance wasn't between PCs, but between characters in the world. The limitations inherent in the system (level limits, class restrictions, etc) were built around world-building and the relative power of societies.

I don't really buy it. Saying dwarves couldn't be mages or limiting the levels of non-humans may have claimed it was trying to balance society, but it was just a mechanic to force people to play humans against their personal preferences. Since high-level adventurers are ultra rare in all groups and tend to keep to themselves, the impact of their strength to the culture is low. The vast majority of elf civilians were not max level, just baseline elf strength, so limiting their few legendary heroes from being stronger didn't impact their basic cultural strength. That instead is dictated by population, history, and technology which are macro-RP concerns the players usually have no power over or particular interest in.

Likewise forcing high level characters into management positions didn't serve to make them balanced: It just made them stop being adventurers (which is only balanced in a nihilistic "if nobody is a hero anymore, then everybody is equal" sort of way). A wizard hiding in a tower, a cleric training acolytes in a temple, a thief pretending he is the Godfather, and an army wandering around the kingdom are not a party anymore and interact mostly through diplomacy or commanding minions in unrelated areas of control. It is "equal" only in terms of removal of any relevant mechanics / basic gameplay and becomes irrelevant as soon as a threat to the kingdom forces them to run into a dungeon again (at which time character class balance is once more an important factor).

In other words: "Yay I can be part of the privy council! Now I feel balanced with the wizard because he is *also* an impotent bureaucrat." No. Just... no.

 

[Ath-kethin]

I don't really buy it. Saying dwarves couldn't be mages or limiting the levels of non-humans may have claimed it was trying to balance society, but it was just a mechanic to force people to play humans against their personal preferences. Since high-level adventurers are ultra rare in all groups and tend to keep to themselves, the impact of their strength to the culture is low. The vast majority of elf civilians were not max level, just baseline elf strength, so limiting their few legendary heroes from being stronger didn't impact their basic cultural strength. That instead is dictated by population, history, and technology which are macro-RP concerns the players usually have no power over or particular interest in.

Likewise forcing high level characters into management positions didn't serve to make them balanced: It just made them stop being adventurers (which is only balanced in a nihilistic "if nobody is a hero anymore, then everybody is equal" sort of way). A wizard hiding in a tower, a cleric training acolytes in a temple, a thief pretending he is the Godfather, and an army wandering around the kingdom are not a party anymore and interact mostly through diplomacy or commanding minions in unrelated areas of control. It is "equal" only in terms of removal of any relevant mechanics / basic gameplay and becomes irrelevant as soon as a threat to the kingdom forces them to run into a dungeon again (at which time character class balance is once more an important factor).

In other words: "Yay I can be part of the privy council! Now I feel balanced with the wizard because he is *also* an impotent bureaucrat." No. Just... no.

Saying that dwarves were inherently anti-magical gave them certain abilities and shaped their implied culture. Not being wizards was a side effect of that. And your feelings toward having followers illustrates why I believe the feature was removed; many people just didn't want to bother and felt that tracking and using followers lessened their own characters' abilities. Our experience simply wan't the same.

In general, superior numbers will win a battle, and having the ability to amass such numbers was a big part of the fighter's power. Remove that feature, and you have a dude poking guys with sharp sticks. And somehow, that is expected to be balanced against the guy who can put him to sleep with a word, turn him into a frog, or summon beings from another dimension to serve him. Might as well try to mechanically balance a rat with a lion.

Clearly, mileage may vary on this point. But we (that is, my circle of 10-15 rotating friends at the time) never really ran into balance issues until 3rd Edition made it an issue. And one of my favorite features of the Character Narratives in Primeval Thule is it brings back followers.

 

[Savevsdeath]

The simple solution to power imbalances between casters and noncasters is not to make the noncasters bring along an army. The solution is to make the noncasters epic and powerful in the ways they should be - a high-level Fighter, Ranger or Rogue should be on par with the likes of Beowulf, Hercules, Batman, Hawkeye, and Captain America, not 'just some guy swinging a pointy stick'. But noncasters aren't allowed to do that, because it's 'not realistic/too anime/insert silly reason here'.

In fact, a leader of men-type character is just one possible way to go with a high-level noncaster. I'd like to see it supported mechanically along with the fighter who can fight armies by himself and cross miles in a single leap and the Ranger who is an undetectable guerilla warfare machine in his favored environments and the Rogue who is so skilled he can steal anything - strip a castle of all its valuables down to its foundations, or even steal intangibles like your love for another.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The simple solution to power imbalances between casters and noncasters is not to make the noncasters bring along an army. The solution is to make the noncasters epic and powerful in the ways they should be - a high-level Fighter, Ranger or Rogue should be on par with the likes of Beowulf, Hercules, Batman, Hawkeye, and Captain America, not 'just some guy swinging a pointy stick'. But noncasters aren't allowed to do that, because it's 'not realistic/too anime/insert silly reason here'.
.

Who says they aren't allowed to do that. Even back on 1e, a high level fighter could go toe to toe with a freaking Tyrannosaurus Rex and win. That sure seems just as epic as anything any of those guys have done.

 

[Kalshane]

I think CQS is way too much (I'm in agreement with others that removing the +1 to hit is probably the easiest way to balance it.)

I don't have any issues with Tunnel Fighter. The PC is giving up their Bonus Action in anticipation of getting additional AoOs. Considering the number of situations where I actually expect a horde of enemies to try to rush past the fighter in the same round are fairly limited, I don't have an issue with a PC focused on stopping hordes of enemies from rushing past him to actually do it.

The damage potential of area effect spells are astronomical in ideal situations (where hordes of enemies are in tightly packed formations) but since those situations don't come up that often, it's not a big deal, either.

 

[Uchawi]

Less stick poking and more maneuvers for martial classes is what 5E sorely misses. It is such a simple concept, yet ignored except for a token effort with the Battlemaster.

 

[Serpine]

Saying that dwarves were inherently anti-magical gave them certain abilities and shaped their implied culture.

Their implied culture was they were greedy miners that liked axing people, and that somehow they were also crafters of legendary weapons and runes even though they didn't have magic, except they did have magic since they could still be clerics (and their small saving throw bonus was just as effective against cleric magic, so they really shouldn't have had that option either logically). Now that they can be mages, their culture has not changed except to be less contradictory about crafting and clerics. Almost every race back then could rise as a thief unlimited: That did not imply widespread kleptomania in dwarf, elf, gnome (pre-kender), and halfling cultures. Half-orcs, in spite of being forced to live by their wits on the fringe, couldn't advance all the way as thieves (because it was to hard obviously) but their shocking lack of intelligence and culture allowed them to max as a *more sophisticated* version of the class: assassins (the class the DM couldn't tell you could learn mastery of all poisons unless you thought to ask).

And your feelings toward having followers illustrates why I believe the feature was removed; many people just didn't want to bother and felt that tracking and using followers lessened their own characters' abilities. Our experience simply wan't the same.

Oh I liked followers and strongholds. It just felt like a different game then D&D that was thrown in at an arbitrary level. Basically you've been playing chess and suddenly without warning (or you doing something to really justify this happening) the Risk and Monopoly boards get pulled in... Your army couldn't follow you into most dungeons, towers, planes of existence, dragon lairs, etc and if they could they would all probably die thanks to low level traps and environmental effects being everywhere. So mostly the army was left guarding your house while you still were being shown up by the wizard in the field.

In general, superior numbers will win a battle, and having the ability to amass such numbers was a big part of the fighter's power.

Of course nothing (other then the DM being a jerk) prevented the wizard from hiring, animating, constructing, conquering, or summoning his *own* army of pointy stick (or worse) wielding followers. So now it becomes a wizard with an army vs a fighter with an army, so advantage still wizard. Okay, sure the fighter got them without roleplay, but that doesn't make it culturally or mechanically balanced, especially since the wizard could still fireball the frontline (from behind the safety of *his* minions) and start inducing high end morale checks.

Personally I find army involvement in a campaign works out better when the party as a whole serves as commanders of the same force and earn that force via concrete actions. Then they are all invested in its role in the story and it isn't just about the fighter attempting to overcompensate.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Less stick poking and more maneuvers for martial classes is what 5E sorely misses. It is such a simple concept, yet ignored except for a token effort with the Battlemaster.

Not ignored. They saw it in 4e. Which they considered a business failure and appealed to too small of a group of players, and got tons of feedback that supported that in the form of the surveys and gamers voting with their wallet. I'm sure it was a conscious decision to not go the same route 4e did by giving the mundane classes all kinds of powers and abilities that pretty much made them not mundane. So not ignored.

 

[JohnLynch]

1. Plenty of pre-3e fans really like the feats in 5e. Like me.

That's great. But it doesn't change why feats were made optional in the first place.

2. Levels 1-3 PCs aren't weak. That's a subjective opinion.

Actually it's an objective fact when compared to 4th edition characters. 1 unlucky hit can take a character from full hit points to unconscious. You admit this by saying

a level 1 PC in 5e is still pretty robust. Maybe not as robust as a level 1 PC in 4e, but 4e is a pretty short time period in the history of D&D

You also confirm it by saying

Those levels weren't designed to be weaker to balance multi-classing per se, but to allow those gamers (and there are a lot of them) who prefer the "zero to hero" model.

In 4th ed you went from hero to God. So yes, 5th edition characters are weaker at level 1 when compared to 4th edition characters.

As for the multiclassing balance, this was an additional reason provided in the playtest as to why level 1 characters got so little. As you admit

There was an element to prevent level dipping from min/maxers, but that wasn't the reason why they designed those levels like they did.

The fact there was more than 1 reason is why I provided more than 1 explanation.

The feel of your post seems to suggest you think I was saying optional feats are bad or starting at zero and becoming a hero is also bad. Nothing could be further from the truth. 5th edition's central purpose was to get fans of prior editions to come back and play 5th edition. Including design choices to target those fans is a good thing. I also quite like that feats are chosen over ability score increases because it makes choosing a feat a real choice, even when there's only one or two feats you want. I also like zero to hero because as you said, it's simple to start at a higher level (my next campaign is starting at level 2).

 

[Sacrosanct]

That's great. But it doesn't change why feats were made optional in the first place.

Well, it's certainly not to please pre 3e fans like you claim

Actually it's an objective fact when compared to 4th edition characters. 1 unlucky hit can take a character from full hit points to unconscious. You admit this by sayingYou also confirm it by sayingIn 4th ed you went from hero to God. So yes, 5th edition characters are weaker at level 1 when compared to 4th edition characters.

As for the multiclassing balance, this was an additional reason provided in the playtest as to why level 1 characters got so little. As you admit The fact there was more than 1 reason is why I provided more than 1 explanation.
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I was hoping your reply wasn't going to be this. That's why I kept repeating the D&D context for the life of it. 4e was a blip on the D&D radar, and if you're using that as the base comparison, that's....pretty flawed. D&D existed long before 4e. So when you say a level 1 PC in 5e is weak when it's only weak compared to a version that was out for a very small time period of the game, it doesn't make a lot of sense. You need to compare the entire history of D&D when you start doing comparisons of one edition.