D&D 5E New take on why expertise dice is a bad mecanic

[Jeff Carlsen]

What's more important in the end, though, believable combat mechanics, or balance?

Believable combat mechanics.

You said that HP was not believable. Note the threads about the hatred of hit points.

Note the people who support a stamina mechanic.

There are a number of people who want their martial combat mechanics to more closely follow the real world, and have long challenged D&D traditions. To us, daily or encounter powers for martial characters are moving in the wrong direction.

How magic works doesn't factor into it because martial abilities have nothing to do with magic. They could, but they don't, and we don't want them to. (except the monk. Magic is part of his story).

The fighter and the rogue are extraordinary. They do things that aren't really possible, but that are exaggerated extensions of reality. This is good, but is not the same as magic. That's what Expertise Dice help represent. They allow the fighter to be extraordinarily good at fighting without magic at high levels, while still following the more believable mechanics.

 

[Li Shenron]

So, I take it you're for making sure there's no overlap on the Sorcerer, Wizard, or Cleric spell lists, right?

I don't think this has ever been a huge problem. Those classes have always been different enough, except when you start adding tons of supplements into the game... then it usually happened that there are enough non-core Clerical spells to allow a Cleric to become a Wizard with armor, double hit points, and better attack bonus.

But in core D&D, those 3 classes have always been different enough that some spells in common aren't the problem. Fighter and Rogue are different enough anyway, but if Expertise Dice is given also to Paladin, Ranger, Barbarian etc, there is a real risk that nothing or almost nothing remains unique to the Fighter.

What really caused the enthusiasm around ED was not the mechanic itself (it's good, but alone it could have not generated such hype): it was the fact that for once in the history of D&D the Fighter was both cool and unique.

I understand the desire for diversity, but there's a value in simplicity too - especially in the core. It makes for cleaner balance and easier pick-up-and-play functionality just for starters. One of the major pit-falls D&D can fall prey to is insisting on overloading the core game rules with a lot of layers of complexity in the name of simulation or making every class its own special little snow-flake mechanically.

I totally agree.

So far my favourite 5e playtest package has been the 2nd: every class was still fairly simple, and the Fighter was the only one to have ED, it was his own "schtick"... but to a Fighter (which as a start it's really always the simplest class, with large numbers but no additional tactical features) it still didn't make it particularly complex: spellcasters had spells to learn (strategic choice) and use (tactical choice), rogue had skills and a bunch of extras, fighter had styles for ED.

Now they are adding too much stuff!! Once again all other classes are more complex than the Fighter. Once again the Fighter doesn't feel so unique.

I'd much rather see diversity in expertise dice consumption and/or generation put into modules. That said, I'd like to see at least some of those module options included in the initial PHB or DMG right at product release.

If we end up having ALL classes with some ED, then I agree... better have ED as an optional module. If everybody has it, it's actually very easy to make it optional.

Especially in an high fantasy system. So imagine you are this fantasy monk, you want to feel awsome and kick this guy on the other side of the room. So you use your special maneuver, fly through the room and kick the guy for X damage and he's projected on the wall where he take some more damage, etc. You feel happy as a super special monk.

...

Expertise dice are basically an at-will ressource but limited by round. I argue that you cannot have cool stuff using a system that is purely at-will and I look at what they give us in this package and that's a pretty big confirmation in that regard.

Well I'm not a fan of superheroes RPG, and this feels a bit like that...

But anyway, you CAN have superpowers in 5e, if you put them into feats, which you/they are free to design to be at-will, encounter, or daily powers because feats have no strict rules (except the general idea that all feats should be roughly equally worth).

 

[Warbringer]

First, I'm in favor of expertiae dice as a universal mechaism, the fighting mechanism.

Second, apart from the fact the maneuvers in general aren't sexy yet, ED are simply a flexible powers system (in 4e teminology), though granted, at will only. I've already commented in this thread about how i believe that we will see feats and class features granting limited "encounter/short rest" and "daily/long rest" power ups.

I'd like to see classes gain differentaition through powering up the pool through actions ... Rogue- you can trade comabt advantage for +2 dice; Paladin - when use use your protection from evil or smite class features you gain an extra d10 die to your ED pool - ranger when combating or tracking your favored foe, increase all the dice in your pool by 1 category (d4 become d6, d6 become d8 etc); Swordmage - you may use you ED to increase the damage done by your spells, or convert a spell you know into an extra die/dice to your pool (1st d4, 2nd d6, 3rd 2d4, 4th 2d6, 5th 2d8, 6th 3d6, 7th 4d8 ...) and damage from these extra dice is considered magical in nature.

Personally, my biggest fear for ED is that players will hum and ha every turn; i know the rules are simple, but we've all had players that don't even think about their options until their turn, even when they aren't texting or calling for pizza, or grabbing dew from the fridge.. and so i am in favour pllayers having combinations prepared (ala powers) ...

 

[CroBob]

Believable combat mechanics.

You said that HP was not believable. Note the threads about the hatred of hit points.

Note the people who support a stamina mechanic.

There are a number of people who want their martial combat mechanics to more closely follow the real world, and have long challenged D&D traditions. To us, daily or encounter powers for martial characters are moving in the wrong direction.

How magic works doesn't factor into it because martial abilities have nothing to do with magic. They could, but they don't, and we don't want them to. (except the monk. Magic is part of his story).

The fighter and the rogue are extraordinary. They do things that aren't really possible, but that are exaggerated extensions of reality. This is good, but is not the same as magic. That's what Expertise Dice help represent. They allow the fighter to be extraordinarily good at fighting without magic at high levels, while still following the more believable mechanics.

So "because it's magic" works as an explanation for why someone forgets how to do something until a few minutes later, but "because he can't focus on it right away after doing it once" doesn't work on a super-human (unrealistic) kick?

Also, what would "Stamina" do that "Hit Points" don't, such that it's more realistic? Could you direct me to a thread, as I actually haven't seen them?

 

[technoextreme]

The original fiction for wizardly spellcasting was that they literally had to memorize the spell in order to then cast it later in the day. This got modified into preparing the spell in order to cast it later in the day, and then became unclear. The rules of magic, as I said, might have been based on the idea that you can only memorize so much at once. If you think of it like preparing for an exam, you have some limited capacity to keep all the information in your head, and after the exam is over, more often than not, you actively relax and feel mentally drained. There are only so many exams you can prepare for in a single day.

So what you are saying is that we should go back to At-will mechanics for all the classes because I don't mysteriously forget stuff just because. After a while I usually am able to recall it instantly without any memorization.

We have a real world model for physical combat, and in reality you can try to perform complex physical tricks more than once per day. You could try to perform them every six seconds, but again, in reality these tricks are tiring and sometimes require a degree of concentration. So, if you want a process simulation, such that you can decide what your character does based on in-world cues, you don't want to limit the use of physical abilities by encounter or day, but make them always available, or consume some sort of energy which does need time to recover.

And yet no character class in D&D ever came close to actually modeling someone who is actually proficient in fighting namely because some of the people I've known who are really good fighters never actually had the functional idiocy that are baked into D&D fighters. And mind you its even a problem in 4th edition.

 

[Blue]

Hero System has the same repeatable powers action after action, but they have a concept called "pushing" which uses up a limited resource (endurance) at a much higher rate than other things. So you can go the extra mile, but not often and it could mean that some other action you're taking a recovery (doing nothing) to get back endurance.

Swiping this, what about if there was a pool of extra expertise dice that only refreshed at the end of the scene?

 

[pemerton]

I don't like expertise dice because they don't rely on cues from the game world.

Some of the manoeuvres don't seem well-suited to this: for instance most of the check-boosters, like Mighty Exertion, Lighting Reflexes etc are more like traditional feat bonuses to a particular ability. That's not to defend them against your criticism - but I'm not sure how to adapt them to meet your criticism.

Maybe for some like Cleave, Whirlwind Attack etc you could require the player to situate their use of the manoeuvre within the previously narrated fiction? Or grant some sort of bonus when this happens? For example, if I attack target A in round 1, then in round 2 if I attack target B but Cleave or Whirlwind to A I get a bonus die to damage, reflecting that I've already set up my position against A?

Do you have a way of adjudicating or changing Power Attack or Combat Expertise in 3E/PF to meet your concern?

 

[LostSoul]

Some of the manoeuvres don't seem well-suited to this: for instance most of the check-boosters, like Mighty Exertion, Lighting Reflexes etc are more like traditional feat bonuses to a particular ability. That's not to defend them against your criticism - but I'm not sure how to adapt them to meet your criticism.

I am not sure. I find that it helps to imagine how a particular character fights/acts and then design fictional cues specific to that character. I'd probably design the system differently to make fictional cues work with it, though.

Do you have a way of adjudicating or changing Power Attack or Combat Expertise in 3E/PF to meet your concern?

No.