New Design Paradigms - What are they and are they good or bad?

[Psion]

Tch. The point is that difficulties like "what happens if you rage out of combat" or other supposed problems with measuring by encounters never seem to have been that insurmountable before. Nor are they that insurmountable now.

WRT balancing abilities that are useful outside of combat, I invite you to propose a mechanism that's going to solve it. I've yet to see one.

I'll be impressed if you can achieve that much. Even if you can do that, I still feel you would be doing a disservice to the game by excluding time-based balancing mechanisms, which provide for the differing texture of the classes and team based nature of the game.

 

[hong]

WRT balancing abilities that are useful outside of combat, I invite you to propose a mechanism that's going to solve it. I've yet to see one.

D00d, it ain't that big a deal. If people have thus far managed to avoid taking 20 on Search on every 5' square in the dungeon, due to an unwritten contract not to bog the game down, they can continue doing the same here.

I'll be impressed if you can achieve that much. Even if you can do that, I still feel you would be doing a disservice to the game by excluding time-based balancing mechanisms, which provide for the differing texture of the classes and team based nature of the game.

Or you could just roll the dice, kill the monsters and take their stuff.

 

[Li Shenron]

I've got mixed feelings about issue #1.

Sometimes it seems quite ridiculous to me. Kid playing a Cleric looks at the empty 20-level table, compares it with the Ranger's or Monk's and think he's sooo weak

Anyone having played the game for a few levels should have no doubt that a new known spell level is WAY worth being called a new special ability.

For an immediate improvement, just write "Spells level 2nd" et al in those lines of the class table, and suddenly half of the problem is solved.

But then I think it's true, that it would make anyone happy if ANY level would bring at least ONE small benefit other than increasing numbers (hp, bab, skills, st, caster level, special abilities' DC, spells per day...). It's just nice to think you've actually got one extra new piece of character.

But then again I can only laugh at the idea that: if you are given an ability at a certain level that has a name ("Rope Mastery") and grants +2 in Use Rope, you feel like it's a full level; instead the 8 skill points you get to spend in the same level in anything you wish taste like a "dead level". It's quite silly

 

[Roman]

Yes, the metagaminess of the encounter is another negative issue of per encounter balancing. Apart from the fact that it is metagamey, its nature leads to a host of problems:

1) The frequency of use of abilities and their duration outside of encounters/combat
2) The potential for various manipulations of the encounter mechanic (e.g. the PCs are in a dungeon and in order not to let their accumulated ability run out they purposefully draw out the encounter by joining it with what would have been other encounters...)
3) The problem of artificial differentiation between major/long encounters and multiple encounters

In theory, this could be soveable, by having a balancing system based on say 5 minutes rather than on encounters. 5 minutes (or some other reasonable number) would be long enough not to have to worry about durations in a vast majority of encounters and would eliminate the majority of the above-mentioned abuses, but it would be able to deal with the extremes (long encounters... or many very short encounters).

I would not be opposed to such a mechanic for some abilities or some classes, but I would prefer even that not to become a universal balancing system, since it still does not allow for class design trade-offs between staying power and peak power and it also still does not allow for a gradual depletion of power in long-term endurance situations, race against time situations, or other similar conditions.

 

[Li Shenron]

Issue #2 is much more severe IMHO...

It implies re-evaluating some old habits of the D&D adventures.

If this is done for the next edition of D&D I'm actually in favor of it, because I prefer editions to be significantly different and not "patches" . I just think it's something not to be taken lightly. In fact I think it deserves a design team effort like the one which was done for 3.0. Slowly shifting into that direction doesn't seem a good idea to me, better to design everything from the ground up.

 

[Greg K]

Instead of everything being reduced to feats, I would like to see more 'paths' for each class.

Actually, what I want to see is something akin to d20Modern with feat and talent trees. I don't know if that qualifies as paths, but it is what I meant by choices of feats and abilities.

 

[RFisher]

1: If any rule gets abandoned when everyone involved is drunk, it needs streamlined. This is called the Fosters Test.

2: It should be possible to fit anything you can imagine into the game. If it's not, you're doing something wrong.

3: If we're not having fun, something's gotta be changed.

What is the precedence for when the rules come into conflict? Does rule 1 or rule 3 reign supreme? Or is it a RPS thing?

What if you have a recovering alcoholic in the group?

 

[Henry]

Issue #1, Dead Levels, I'm OK with seeing classes built so that they get something every level; fighter levels 5, 7, and 11 used to annoy me every time I played one. But with a caveat: I'm fine witn including levels 3,4,6,8,9,12,15,16,18 and 20 in the calculation, because you ARE getting something at those levels no matter what class you play; it's when the only thing you get is BAB, or hit dice, or more spells, that bugs me. And I don't think it should be as one class compared to another class; it should be as one class compared to all levels.

Issue #2, the "per-encounter" shift, I DEFINITELY don't like. I don't mind it as an option, but seeing it as the way all of D&D might go in a few years' time annoys me greatly.

Satori's example above:

"Gandalf save us from the Balrog!!".
"Sorry mate I used my high level spells against the Orc with class levels....your swords will have to do".

I'm not sure if I find it any less believable than Gandalf saying, "Ask the Balrog to stop fighting us for six seconds! Then it'll be a new encounter!" In both cases, Gandalf needs to rest - but I'd believe it more as "tomorrow" than "one minute from now."

...And it would be nigh impossible to have the PCs have a dozen encounters in the day.

On the contrary, if clerics received their healing "per encounter" then we could well see some first level characters enter The Dungeon of Doom in the morning, and come out at 8pm that night at 10th character level! If people used to complain about someone unrealistically achieving ten levels in two weeks, I can only imagine the fits received at that kind of paradigm-shift. Site-based adventures would have to be radically altered, and encounter-driven adventures, where encounters are sparse, would have to be the norm.

If all of D&D changes to a "per-encounter" basis, XP awards will need to be shifted to "per session" than "per challenge" (say the PC's get 300 xp x level per game session or similar). Also, healing will have to be curtailed and most spells rewritten. Imagine regaining all a wizard's spells or cleric's heals and summons every time a fight broke out. They would have to be sharply curtailed in numbers available per encounter. Also, the definition of "encounter" would need to be rigidly defined even more than it is now; an "encounter" would be picking out a neighborhood stray dog and killing it, so it needs to be "one or more creatures intent on violence whose combined EL equals the average character level" or similar.

 

[Greg K]

Issue #2, the "per-encounter" shift, I DEFINITELY don't like. I don't mind it as an option, but seeing it as the way all of D&D might go in a few years' time annoys me greatly.

Agreed. Then again, a lot of the design decisions from the current team have been annoying, imo.

 

[shilsen]

On the contrary, if clerics received their healing "per encounter" then we could well see some first level characters enter The Dungeon of Doom in the morning, and come out at 8pm that night at 10th character level!

Actually, I was saying that in the current paradigm it's near impossible to have a dozen encounters in the day. In the "balancing per encounter" setup, it would be possible, and I think having the option can be a good thing.

I think an important factor in it working, however, would be the removal of XP by combat encounter. Ideally, I think, XP should simply be awarded on a per session basis according to how fast the DM wants PCs to advance.