D&D 5E (2014) Math v Character

[mips42]

Oh dear

It seems that I have opened the proverbial can of worms when that was not what I intended. Sorry.
These are not the droids you're looking for. Move along, move along.

 

[Umbran]

My experience is that it's much more likely, in reality, that the game tells you that you have a gun, and your gun, while different to the other guns, shoots just as hard, then you bring it to the gunfight, and find it's a paintball gun in a rocket-launcher fight. Only CharOp-capable players will reliably spot this kind of thing.

With respect - my experience has been that the CharOp capable players are the ones who will spot it, because they are the ones building the rocket launchers that the GM feels he needs to meet with other rocket launchers, so that the adventure ends up designed for rocket launchers.

Or, you have a RBDM, and trying to muddle through with paintball guns against rocket launchers is part of the point of the exercise.

In the end, this is a cooperative endeavor - if you don't get the heads of all parties involved together on what the style is going to be, you are setting yourself up to have issues. This is true whether you're playing D&D, or playing poker, or having a pizza and movie night.

 

[SkidAce]

That's because the focus of the games are different.

In many ways, CHAMPIONs isn't a game -- it's a tool that lets you build a game. The DM sets the expected limits to character design, world construction, etc. What comes out of that is a game presented like D&D presents itself.

D&D has pretty much already built all the power limits, acceptable combinations, etc. So when a DM tries to fiddle with that he is taken to task for fiddling.

I find my self on the other side of the fence from you usually (close enough to lean over and say "howdy" neighbhor).

This post of your I do completely agree with. CHAMPIONS is designed for YOU to design genre, power level, limit they powers etc etc.

---

I still like fiddling with my D&D settings every other campaign or so, but there is certainly less of an expectation of it when compared to CHAMPIONS.

Which IMO is a shame. I read and understand all the posts over the years saying D&D is not a toolbox. I still treat it that way and we have fun. Nobody should chastise a DM if he's gone to the trouble to customize a world/campaign for you. (Unless he is a Richard....don't be a Richard)

 

[Blackbrrd]

*shrug*. With the Jedi above, I effectively took a -3 relative to my optimum (and the other PCs) on use of all Force powers. I asked for, and got, no adjustments to suit. For the 3x branch of d20, a -2 isn't a huge deal. Just accept that you're not going to be the consistent heavy-hitter against some types of opponents. Find some other place to shine.

It was 4e, so -2 is quite noticeable. Anyway the player wasn't complaining. I am the DM and thought it would be a cool bonus to get brutal on all the damage dice, not just the weapon damage dice. The effect is that he misses a bit more, but when he hits, he hits harder. Very much in touch with the character concept (brute rogue).

Anyway, I am not disagreing with your position, I was just pointing out that D&D is a game that you can customize as you (the group/DM) wants. Doing small tweaks that are outside the rules can often make for better/more interesting characters and is much more fun that optimizing a character to death.

Sounds like your Star Wars character was fun to play. I made a choice I thought would go in the same direction in 3.5. I skimped on Strength to boost Charisma, even though I was going melee. I discovered how OP the Cleric actually is at higher levels, and I got an artefact very early on, so the character turned out OP anyway...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

With respect - my experience has been that the CharOp capable players are the ones who will spot it, because they are the ones building the rocket launchers that the GM feels he needs to meet with other rocket launchers, so that the adventure ends up designed for rocket launchers.

That's just not my experience - many games, including some versions of D&D, are happy to set the rocket launchers among the paintballs. It's not a result of DM dickery. I mean, good god, the entire game of RIFTS is built on "some of you are rocket launchers, some of you are paintball guns!" and it's never spelled out - though at least there it tends to be more obvious, with the problem being with the "middle ground" characters who look good but perform poorly.

There's also the "you start with a knife, and the other guy only has a pointy stick and harsh language, but at level 12, you'll just have a really sharp knife, and he'll have a homing rocket launcher and a jetpack" model, of course.

One thing that bugs me, I guess, is the sort of dishonesty - you so rarely see a game outside of the OSR field saying "You will be okay in fighting, and totally outclassed everywhere else!". I kind of respect a number of OSR games because they're a bit clearer on this.

In the end, this is a cooperative endeavor - if you don't get the heads of all parties involved together on what the style is going to be, you are setting yourself up to have issues. This is true whether you're playing D&D, or playing poker, or having a pizza and movie night.

Honestly, that seems like a bit of a cop-out to me. Some games make the cooperative endeavour a breeze. Others seem to go to great lengths to subvert or confuse expectations.

3.XE/PF was particularly problematic for me in this regard, because to really understand what could go wrong with it, you not only had to be pretty into mechanics, you not only had to either experience it going wrong, or read up on it, you had to understand what had made things go wrong and why, and that could be a hard thing to do.

My brother DMs PF and he still doesn't understand some of it's problems, because whilst he's very smart, he doesn't really grok that some of the things that are happening are because the system is causing them to happen, and that they're more or less inevitable.

It's not a trivially noticed or dealt-with issue and comparing it to everyone agreeing that this poker night is for fun, or that we are watching horror movies and will not be drinking too much this movie night seems really cheap.

Plus, if all you can do is say "Well, you can play a Fighter, but you're going to need to basically 'suck it up' a lot of the time, whereas the Wizard gets to have fun all the time", then I think it's fair to say that the GAME has serious issues, not you as a DM.

(Here's to hoping that, post-PHB, that is going to be less of an issue, of course! )

 

[Ratskinner]

I don't see why I should have to choose.

Why can't I have a mathematically/systemically solid character that also plays like the archetype I want?

This doesn't have to mean strict mathematical equality, but it does have to lead to me not getting out-shined in the area I want to be awesome in all the time.

IME and IMO, that can only happen in games that approach the rules structure and purposes very differently than D&D traditionally does. It always seems to involve using more "meta"* mechanics and open acknowledgement of the (story or plot) purpose of said mechanics. 4e tried to take some steps in that direction...and we all know how that turned out. (Regardless of our individual opinions on how successful/good/welcome it was or not.)

*I personally don't like that term, since "metagame" already means something else entirely. Nonetheless it seems common parlance.

 

[Storminator]

Quite honestly, I don't care if my fighter sucks compared to another. I'm playing MY character the way *I* want. If they want to min/max and that's how they have fun, good for them. I'm more interested in the story that I'm involved in than in "winning".
Having said that, I agree that there should not be one thing that is better ALL THE TIME and I definitely agree with the idea of 'balanced enough'.

It's never the Dex fighter vs the Str fighter that's the issue, because they play differently. It's when your friend says "that's cool! I'll play a Dex fighter too and can have witty repartee while we dash around and defeat the bad guys!"

And you bring a fighter with leather armor and a rapier, and he brings a fighter/scout/swashbuckler/dervish with a rapier and a dagger in the offhand, and is just like the character you wanted to play, except so vastly better it's like you weren't even there.

That sucks.

PS

 

[mips42]

For anyone interested, http://www.critical-hits.com/ has a article that touches on this subject.

 

[Emirikol]

With respect - my experience has been that the CharOp capable players are the ones who will spot it, because they are the ones building the rocket launchers that the GM feels he needs to meet with other rocket launchers, so that the adventure ends up designed for rocket launchers.

I still think that more GMs could solve this problem by stopping with the rocket launchers and instead implementing more non-hit-point dilemmas:

hostages
diplomacy
diplomacy that doesn't suck/boring that actually has character power consequences
progressive insanity that has power consequences
x.p. for not killing things/thinking outside the box to reach solutions for scenarios that don't cater to the murder-hobo
(in fact, eliminate all x.p. for killing things anyways..why is this so controversial???)
progressive disease solutions
progressive poison solutions
progressive negative mutation or power effects for taking the easy way out


I blame adventures being the same old 1974 dungeon crawls 180 out of 200 times..but what do I know. I didn't play in the 70's. I played in the 80's.


[EDIT: THE POINT OF MY THREAD: when players are encouraged to escalate their damage per second and hit points and armor class and the GM fails to challenge them any other (of 1,000 ways), of course they're going to come back with more rocket launchers.

If the only way to suffer/die as a character is from the same old hit points/AC/Damage, then what do you think you'll get? It's insanity and I wonder if some GMs are trapped because they've never tried another dang game system in their lives and would be terrified to port in those ideas if they did.

Characters have 6 statistics. You mean you don't have a suffer mechanic for each one? Nope. Just hit points. Everything else is a laughable condition. OK, solve that problem and make conditions (that can affect each statistic) matter more.. a lot more. Otherwise you get the same old twinked out characters with personality being an excuse for "that annoying guy in your group who speaks in a funny accent that forgot his +1 modifier last round that makes me so annoyed cuz he don'ts appreciate the craft of twinking characters."

This whole thread has been useful, as it got me thinking about how to port in more of those elements. Temporary damage on a miss..heh...how's that charisma feeling after your last botched diplomacy roll?

]

 

[Hussar]

Math is important in that it incentivises certain choices. Storminator's swashbucklers (which would be a kick ass name for a rock band) example highlights this perfectly.

If the math says choice A is clearly better than choice B, then the most rational choice is A. That doesn't mean you cannot choose B, you certainly can, but, now you're deliberately choosing a handicap, whether you want to or not. And, as time goes on, the mechanical disparities tend to flatten choices. I always use 2e's Two Weapon Fighting rules as an example of this. TWF in 2e is flat out better than anything else you can do in melee. It just is. You are doubling your damage output at the very minor cost of a weapon proficiency (after a melee weapon or two and a ranged weapon, how many do you really need?) and a single point of AC.

After the Complete Fighter came out, I never saw anything but two weapon fighter types (and clerics as well after the Complete Priest allowed clerics to do it too). Everyone played it because it was just that much better than any other choice.

That's why math matters. If the difference between A and B is 1 point of average damage or 1 point of AC? Probably not going to factor into choices all that much. But, if you can wear heavy armour, then most people are going to wear the heaviest armour they can, because, thematically, there's not much difference between one or the other, and full plate protects you the best (depending on edition). So, everyone who can wear metal armour eventually winds up in full plate. ((Presuming you're not a swashbuckler Dex type of course - I'm talking about heavy armour wearers))

So, yes, the math does matter. I don't think it matters quite as much as people want to make it out to though. Minor mechanical differences generally aren't going to get in the way of player choices. But, if the math is too far out, then certain choices simply make a lot more sense. In AD&D, why play a straight thief, when a MU/Thief lags only one level behind (at most) and you gain the full suite of MU spells? In 3e, why take a 4th level of fighter for your Fighter/Wizard, presuming the campaign will go into high levels, knowing that you just lost access to the most powerful spells and everything you really wanted from the fighter class came in the first level or two anyway?

That sort of thing.