D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[EzekielRaiden]

The non-minion ogres in 4e all have around 100 hitpoints. A rogue paragon could be dealing nearly that with a daily. I'm not really convinced that the "swat ogres away like flies" play you're envisioning would be at all common, barring literal minions.


What do you mean by "aren't absolute"?

An absolute statblock is universally true. A goblin is this one set of data, always. The abstraction is the one and only abstraction valid for capturing what "a goblin" is. It is absolute.

A relative statblock is...relative. it represents what a goblin means in context.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That may be your preferred abstraction, it's not mine.

Given I literally quoted the thing you used as the basis of previous arguments, I don't agree. At all, in fact. So, what was wrong with the New Simulationism definition, that you should reject it now when it is inconvenient to you?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have no issues with someone saying that they prefer BitD for Ocean's 11 style heists. That's stating a preference.

But what you're saying is "That game you and millions of people enjoy? It's a piss poor game."

I'm saying its not really good at any one thing, because it tries to do too many, and is carrying decades old baggage in doing most of them when it was designed in a quick and dirty fashion.

That's worlds away from "piss poor". I've seen games I'd characterize that way, and they have immensely less excuse for their problems than I see D&D as having its.

So if you want to be offended by my saying I don't think D&D does any particular thing particularly well, feel free. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people enjoy it, and the latter does not say anything about its particular quality, because there are all kinds of things a lot of people enjoy (including me) that aren't exactly great at what they're doing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Training? I think you're making too much of this. And you've failed to address my point that literally anyone can be a fighter; any heritage, any culture, PC or NPC. Every class has unique features that result from a training regimen, supernatural imbuement, or other diagetic cause, even if the specifics aren't laid out to my personal satisfaction every time.

There is no such thing for Fighters. They just do get better at things because the rules say so. You are now inventing post hoc explanations to justify why the mechanics would be the way they are. Numerous times, you have rejected this kind of reasoning as utterly unacceptable, as incompatible with the very idea of simulation. Now it's fine. Why?

And who said any of this is "beyond mortal"? Where is that written? In 5e and it's derivatives, every heritage has the same ability score cap. How they get there can vary. Now, at the highest levels those caps can sometimes be exceeded, but I would argue such high level folks really do transcend things.

Barbarians do not have a 20 cap. When they reach level 20, their cap is 24 (5.0) or 25 (5.5e.)

And now notice how you are, happily I might add, using the game abstraction to justify the world being different. The abstraction leads, and the world follows. Wasn't that unacceptable just a little while ago?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A creature's statblock can change over the long term as it ages and deteriorates, or learns and develops new skills, or whatever; but as most campaigns don't span all that much in-fiction time there isn't usually time for those changes to occur. Therefore, for play purposes stat blocks might as well be locked in.

PCs are bizarre in that they gain abilities and hit points etc. at a ridiculously fast rate in the fiction. Even in our system where advancement is by modern standards very slow, you can easily go from 1st to 10th level in three in-game years; and that's stupid-fast IMO when compared to the rest of the surrounding setting. In the WotC editions where training downtime isn't required a character can go from 1st to 20th in half an in-game year or less.

As such, PCs aren't the best thing to use as benchmarks here.

In-fiction consistency is (or should be!) our master, and the mechanical abstractions should serve that first and foremost.

Which blows up internal setting consistency. Just because a character perceives something to be a certain way doesn't mean that's the way it really is in the fiction (if it did, Illusionists would rule everything!).

To the last bit: it does.

What it also does is flatten the power curve. The PCs get more powerful as they level up but the foes do not correspondingly get mechanically weaker. They just are what they are, and you've still got to do 20 points of damage to this Orc to kill it whether you're 1st level or 20th, and if at 20th level you only roll 1 on your damage die you've got to hit it again (baked-in by-level bonuses notwithstanding, and IMO those get out of hand at higher levels).

No. It doesn't.

It enhances setting consistency by ensuring that a particular threat is experienced how it should be, within the world. Because our abstractions of power and danger are flawed. The world isn't. We should adjust our abstractions in order to accurately represent the threat a thing presents.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The ASI should be tied to - and forced to go on - the prime stat for the class. A Fighter should only be able to ASI Strength (or maybe Constitution), for example, as an abstraction of the idea that she's been pumping iron and so forth in any downtime she's had while adventuring. That at least makes it somewhat diegetic, thouugh it's still pretty gamist.

Good luck getting that to change.

 

[Hussar]

Every game will have tradeoffs but it seems to me that the people who say things like D&D doesn't do anything well are really just expressing an opinion that they like some other game better.

No.

The truth is that some of us recognize the limitations of a given system and don't pretend otherwise. That some other systems might do something better or suit a particular playstyle better is a pretty supportable opinion. "D&D is fine for what it does" is perfectly fine to say. "I play D&D because it's a great system for simulation" is a bit of an odd hill to die on.

 

[Hussar]

I have no issues with someone saying that they prefer BitD for Ocean's 11 style heists. That's stating a preference.

But what you're saying is "That game you and millions of people enjoy? It's a piss poor game."

Which literally no one has actually stated here.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Which literally no one has actually stated here.

Yeah, how someone can read "D&D tries to do too many things to be good at any one of them" as "piss poor" escapes me.

I do think its never even been halfway good at simulationist concerns, but that may be my perception of what doing that looks like. I think its been somewhat better at being a game (though a lot of versions have been too lateweight for me in that area) and trying to support genre and some dramatic tropes.

 

[Hussar]

Right, we're leaving out steps. The proposed structure is creative agenda->design goal->mechanic. Pointing out a mechanic doesn't serve an agenda is pointless (in no small part because RPGs still struggle with successful implementation all the time); what was the design goal the mechanic tried to implement?

4e's minion rules points to a missing design goal for simulation (something like "entities in the game should have consistent mechanical representations") not a failure of implementation.

See, but that's the thing. Is that a design goal for simulation? If entities in the game should have a consistent mechanical simulation, doesn't D&D rather fail in that regard? After all, the PC's are not consistent, at all. There is a massive difference between a 1st level character and a 20th level character that is far beyond simply becoming a better swordsperson. And, if we look at other systems where simulation is a goal then we do see that entities in the game do have consistent mechanical representations. After all, a GURPS character does not change very much over the course of its lifetime. A Traveler character doesn't become ten times tougher over the course of its career.

Not only that, but, in most versions of D&D, entities are not consistent. There's no such thing as an "orc" in 3e D&D. Doesn't exist. Every orc is based on an NPC class which means there is no consistent mechanical representation. Thus we get 20th level orc smiths that are more powerful than trolls, despite the fact that an orc is weaker than a troll. None of the humanoids in 3e are consistent because humanoids in 3e are represented by classes which are based on the level system, which is not consistent. My orc smith becomes a better smith by killing goblins? How does that work?

Even in AD&D, there is no real consistency since being a leader of orcs suddenly grants me significantly more HD and HP. Does that mean when an orc leader is killed, another orc suddenly hulks out and gets 4 times tougher?

This idea that D&D has ever had consistency in mechanical representations is not true.