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

[Henry]

Further, I have no idea how you've suddenly jumped to the conclusion that balancing per-encounter means the levelling-in-13-encounters rule suddenly becomes invalid.

That "per 13 EL" rule, according to the designers, came from observing how people played. It was also instituted when most abilities were designed per-diem. That's why I question it when one makes such a large change.

You are saying that per-encounter balancing does all sorts of horrible things to verisimilitude, because people can kill 1,001 monsters before lunch. I am saying who cares about when lunch takes place, because it no longer matters in strict game-mechanical terms. Have it occur whenever is most appropriate for satiating your sense of disbelief.

I've always let the group decide when to call it a (game)day, and let them judge how far they felt they could go, whether there was a deadline in the adventure or not. If everyone's abilities (and likely hit points) refresh after each fight/encounter, then there's no reason to rest. Heck, just get rings of sustenance for the whole party, and every campaign arc is like a season of the TV show "24".

 

[hong]

That "per 13 EL" rule, according to the designers, came from observing how people played. It was also instituted when most abilities were designed per-diem. That's why I question it when one makes such a large change.

And your point being...?

I've always let the group decide when to call it a (game)day, and let them judge how far they felt they could go, whether there was a deadline in the adventure or not. If everyone's abilities (and likely hit points) refresh after each fight/encounter, then there's no reason to rest.

There is also no reason to gloss over people going to the toilet. Except, you know, how it doesn't contribute anything to the game. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Similarly, if everything is balanced per-encounter, you can also gloss over people sleeping every night. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Heck, just get rings of sustenance for the whole party, and every campaign arc is like a season of the TV show "24".

You say this like it's a negative thing.

 

[Mercule]

One of the big problems about not having full spellcasting in a prestige class is that it weakens the prestige class to the point of unplayability. There are very few exceptions.

I'm not particularly sympathetic, here. There are a number of reason why the current multiclass and PrC structure needs some work. This is one of them. The simple existence of classes like the Mystic Theurge is another.

What I'd prefer to see in 4E is to tweak the multiclassing/PrC system to work better in itself, rather than accepting the current problems. Make it so that classes like the Mystic Theurge aren't necessary to fix the gimped dual-caster issue. Make it so there is a way to scale back casting ability in proportion to other tricks granted by PrCs.

 

[jasin]

One of the big problems about not having full spellcasting in a prestige class is that it weakens the prestige class to the point of unplayability.

That just means the class needs more abilities. Which is actually a good thing: since even a single level of spellcasting is so crippling, by removing a single level, you make room for a whole bunch of other abilities.

Sure, a wizard 10/loremaster 10 wouldn't ever be quite up to par in spellcasting with a wizard 20 if loremaster only granted 9/10 levels of spellcasting. But you could give him a whole bunch abilities focusing on lore without making him overpowered.

Of course, delayed spellcasting would mean that a party with a loremaster instead of a straight wizard wouldn't have access to teleport at 9th, which might mess with some of the assumptions built in into the adventure. But it won't mess with them anymore than playing a bard rather than a wizard.

Just treat spellcasting PrCs as masters of their own thing rather than "wizard, now with specials" or a "cleric, now with specials". If you really want teleport at 9th and 9th level spells at 17th, you can always just, y'know, play a wizard 20.

 

[pawsplay]

1) I used to play Basic D&D, where virtually every level was a "dead level." The whole concept is basically bankrupt. Yes, you should get something for your level. No, that does not mean you should include "+2 to identifying cheeses by smell" so a level won't be "dead." Simplicity is a virtue. In addition, staggered progressions, like a fighter's feats or a caster's spell levels, encourage commitment to a core class.

That said, things could use a little tuning up. Not every progression has to be exactly the same. For instance, shifting the Fighter's Reflex save up two levels would start them at +1, and would cause 7th level to no longer be "dead." Some progressions could use a little jazzing up; one take on the Fighter would be to simply award another feat at 7th, 13th, and 19th levels.

There are no "dead" levels for pure casters; every one gains either a new spell level or a new slot at each level.

2) I don't like it. There are formats where they kind of thing works well, but D&D isn't it. A more mechanically simple game, with more anchors in a game reality and less in "balance" or tactics, could justify "per encounter." But basically, per encounter is just like using time, only instead of having the option to fudge one minute or five as "close enough," you instead don't have the option of falling back on how often you can do something in absolute terms. In my view, it only hampers the game. Three sentences could summarize the whole "per encounter" approach without touching times for those who want them.

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

Similarly, if everything is balanced per-encounter, you can also gloss over people sleeping every night. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Problem with that is the speed our sessions take place at. We generally cram at least 20 encounters into a single in-game day.

One of our campaigns ran for six months, and less than a week and a half of game time passed.

 

[JohnSnow]

Okay, this is interesting in that I partially agree with the designers on both counts. However, I do feel some things need to be taken into account as we look at this new paradigm or we will face the law of unintended consequences.

On item 1, the whole notion of "no dead levels." This is very important for anyone with gamist tendencies. We all like "new tools to play with." I concur that new spells are "new tools," in one sense, but only if they allow the caster to do something new. Doing more damage isn't "new" - it's just "more," like getting a higher BAB, better Saving throws, or more hit points. Nice, sure, but not exciting.

I'm going to take a moment to rant on spell slots and preparing spells for a minute. The problem with it is that you have access to all these new spells, and it's great that your best fire attack now does 5d6 rather than 2d4, but what happened to the mage being able to do something totally NEW? The nice thing in a spellcasting system like True Sorcery (for example), is that as you level up, you learn new talents, and can not only cast better spells, but you have more types of spells you can cast. The improvements are very satisfying.

I remember in one of my 3e games, one of the other players and I were disappointed when we levelled up because we hadn't even gotten time to try out all of our new feats yet. So in that sense, we were levelling too quickly. We'd get several toys to play with, and before we'd tried them all out, we had new ones. This would be less of a problem if those powers scaled better. We had a lot of fun in our Midnight game, because using the powers of our heroic paths was "cool." They gave us something new every level. Unfortunately, that game died out as real life got in the way. We were clinging on, and barely surviving, but man, was it fun!

That issue of new toys is why we had issues with Castles & Crusades. Basically, after level 1, there's nothing to look forward to. Every fight is just "whack him." BOrrr-ing! I have no problem with C&C for a one-shot, but for a campaign, there's not enough there to really sink one's teeth into.

As anyone paying attention knows, my favorite game right now is Iron Heroes. Between stunts, tokens, challenges, and mastery feats, those classes get plenty of new toys to play with. An Iron Heroes combat feels exciting, even epic, even at low levels. Now, I haven't had a lot of play time with it, but I think everyone who has would confirm that. It is also balanced on a per encounter basis, which brings me to point 2.

Per encounter balance has good sides. Basically, you want a character to have the ability to pull out their "most powerful ability" only once every so often. If it takes time to make it work, they won't necessarily go to it just to wipe out a minor threat. Those, you just take out conventionally. The downside of saving up for your big ability works like this...you spend 3 rounds doing nothing, then strike decisively in round 4. If by contrast, you could have struck every round and been done with the same target in 4 rounds, you've literally gained nothing. When it is a benefit is facing the powerful opponent, where you can strike ineffectively for 9 rounds, just waiting to "get lucky" on the 10th, versus making delaying strikes, building up for a big finish. Your final blow is not so much the result of luck as of careful tactics. That rewards smart play and takes the whim of luck out of the scenario. Against some adversaries, if the characters never got lucky, they'd get squashed.

If you think about it, per day abilities (excepting hit points, more on that in a minute) don't make a whole lot of sense. Forget spells for a moment. Why can the barbarian only rage X times/day? That only makes marginal sense. Some of the other abilities, that are neither magical nor physically draining in the slightest, don't make any sense at all to be
limited to "X uses per day" - the Knights challenge ability (PHB II) for instance. However, the real problem isn't so much with those classes, which have other things they can do and will keep going. The barbarian doesn't make everyone stop when he's out of rages for the day.

The problem is the spellcasters. In my experience, they tend to burn through their abilities to make encounters easy, then make everyone rest for a day. Since nobody wants to go on if the cleric (especially) doesn't have any curing magic left, the game grinds to a halt when those classes run out of spells. The oft-cited "sweet spot" of D&D seems to be the levels at which the classes have enough staying power to keep going for a reasonable amount of time. Sure, most of the cleric's 1st level spells aren't much help at 4th level, but those spontaneously cast "cure light wounds" will help keep the party going through at least 4 encounters.

The game should be structured to keep play in the sweet spot. I'm convinced that the primary reason people like high-level play is that high-level spells and abilities are "cool." They usually represent new things you can do. There are monsters with more interesting abilities.

If combat could be made more interesting, people wouldn't feel the need for silly powers. How many players wouldn't get a charge being able to have the same effect on a battlefield as Gimli at Helm's Deep (taking out 50 of the enemy), Gandalf in Moria (fighting off the uber-baddy), or Legolas at Pelennor Fields (taking down an entire enemy regiment single-handedly), just to steal 3 examples from the Lord of the Rings films.

Since D&D parties adventure as a team, every one should have the same limit. As has been mentioned, people who want to keep the number of encounters limited have a very easy resource - hit points. If, for example, you instituted a simple rule that limited the number of hit points a character could recover in a single day, out the window goes the worry of characters facing every encounter "fully charged," so to speak.

Similary, you could have other rules that prevented spellcasters from "blowing their wad" of spells in every encounter. Ideally, to me, a spellcaster would resort mostly to reduced power spells, the magical equivalent of hitting someone with a hammer or shooting them with a crossbow. But they would be able to pull out their high-power abilities occasionally. If doing so drew on their hit points in some way (say by causing subdual damage), they would be limited by the same resource as other characters. However, if they burned through their high power abilities, they'd still have their low level ones. So there's no arbitrary stops. Characters would stop adventuring when they were too wounded to continue. Which might be significantly longer than an average person.

I'd recommend Reserve Points as presented in Iron Heroes or Unearthed Arcana as a wonderful way of extending character staying power and taking care of the "walking bandaid" problem, while not affecting per encounter balance. Basically, every character in Iron Heroes is walking around with an appropriate level "heal" spell that replenishes him to full capacity. It's the equivalent of the whole party walking around with 4 cure spells (of sufficient power to heal one character completely) in reserve. That's 4 CLW at Level 1, and so on. It is NOT the equivalent of a massive wand of cure light wounds that lets you keep adventuring until the spellcasters "run out of spell slots."

So I personally favor per encounter balance, with hit points being the only real "per adventure" limiter. I am in favor of any shift of the game to increase the fun factor and eliminate absurd situations like characters camping out in dungeons at 11 am.

My two cents.

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

If combat could be made more interesting, people wouldn't feel the need for silly powers. How many players wouldn't get a charge being able to have the same effect on a battlefield as Gimli at Helm's Deep (taking out 50 of the enemy), Gandalf in Moria (fighting off the uber-baddy), or Legolas at Pelennor Fields (taking down an entire enemy regiment single-handedly), just to steal 3 examples from the Lord of the Rings films.

Dude, if you can get a combat system that does that without getting dull on the repeat, I'll worship you as the Patron God of Combat Rules.

Similary, you could have other rules that prevented spellcasters from "blowing their wad" of spells in every encounter. Ideally, to me, a spellcaster would resort mostly to reduced power spells, the magical equivalent of hitting someone with a hammer or shooting them with a crossbow. But they would be able to pull out their high-power abilities occasionally. If doing so drew on their hit points in some way (say by causing subdual damage), they would be limited by the same resource as other characters. However, if they burned through their high power abilities, they'd still have their low level ones. So there's no arbitrary stops. Characters would stop adventuring when they were too wounded to continue. Which might be significantly longer than an average person.

That's one of the ideas I'm contemplating. A level X mage should be able to use his level (X-5) spells as easily as snapping his fingers. Similarily, a level (X-1) mage should be able to use level X spells at a risk of blowing himself to bits from overload.

For example, a level 5 mage would be able to cast level 1 spells about as often and as repeatedly as the archer could fire arrrows. However, casting off his level 5 spells would take a bit out of him; he'd tire out from the effort. If he wanted to kitchen sink on a spell, he could, at the risk of blowing himself into a wet red splat; but if he pulled it off he'd have set off the equivalent of a level 6 or 7 spell.

Sound good?

 

[blargney the second]

I like the move towards no dead levels: it's more interesting to gain levels.
I like the move towards per-encounter: no more fight & rest. One-use magic items become the resource that determines when they're going to stop looking for trouble.
-blarg

 

[JohnSnow]

Dude, if you can get a combat system that does that without getting dull on the repeat, I'll worship you as the Patron God of Combat Rules.

Actually, I gave up trying. With stunts, challenges, tokens and zones, the Iron Heroes ones are close enough for me. Combat takes a bit longer sometimes (especially when the rules are new), but it's much more interesting - feels like an action movie.

That's one of the ideas I'm contemplating. A level X mage should be able to use his level (X-5) spells as easily as snapping his fingers. Similarily, a level (X-1) mage should be able to use level X spells at a risk of blowing himself to bits from overload.

For example, a level 5 mage would be able to cast level 1 spells about as often and as repeatedly as the archer could fire arrrows. However, casting off his level 5 spells would take a bit out of him; he'd tire out from the effort. If he wanted to kitchen sink on a spell, he could, at the risk of blowing himself into a wet red splat; but if he pulled it off he'd have set off the equivalent of a level 6 or 7 spell.

Sound good?

Well, I'm actually looking at doing something similar. However, I'm looking at it from a different paradigm than the standard D&D spell list. For instance, I'm not sure one needs more than 2 levels of dead. The current game has three. I'm looking at rescoping the game's 10 levels of spells (0-9 is 10 levels...) to top out with level 10 spells being the ones that allow instantaneous travel anywhere, raise the dead without penalty and so forth. The damaging spells should be roughly equivalent to the way they are now. I'm just going to linearize them and take out the silly divisions that exist for entirely "D&D" reasons. The idea is to extend the sweet spot into the highest levels, with the wahoo factor coming into play at levels 17-20. Characters should be able to do cool things with spells, and constantly get new magical effects to play with, but there's no reason the system needs to stack more and more wahoo effects on top of one another.

Various magic systems have instituted the notion of subdual damage for spellcasting. In at least some cases, you can go for spells over your "safe limit," but the damage becomes lethal instead. It allows for characters to overreach themselves to achieve massive effects, but there needs to be:

a) A risk of failure.
b) A price for success.

There probably shouldn't be a penalty for failure (not always at the very least) because there's already a penalty for failing: the spell doesn't work. That alone is pretty bad, so double-penalizing is kinda messed up. Now, there's nothing wrong with leaving open the remote possibility of a catastrophic failure. You know, just to keep magic from being too reliable...