D&D General Reification versus ludification in 5E/6E

[James Gasik]

If you're going to really lean in to differentiation, I don't think you can do better than Fantasy Craft in a D20 base. 6 categories of proficiency broken into 4-6 specialty sub groups with 4 weapons each, all with distinct properties, plus an additional customization system.

This is true, one of the better parts of that system. The different types of damage, not so much. After witnessing a group trying to take down an enemy where one guy was doing stress damage, another doing...subdual damage? And the third doing normal damage, which resulted in taking three times as long to defeat enemies, the whole idea lost it's luster.

Though maybe I was missing a rule about that- never saw a rulebook that more needed hyperlinks in my life.

 

[James Gasik]

More importantly, would the playerbase accept such a rule?

No idea. I mean, cynical me says, no, probably not, if it's all downside. Not that I'm sure there's much of an upside, beyond "verisimilitude" (which is important to some). I tried to model gear damage in an abstract fashion, where you could earn Strife levels if you lacked resources, which slowly penalized your gear.

When I polled my group about my houserules, they voted that the one they liked the least, lol.

But it's just like critical tables, hit locations, and specific injuries. There are some people who like that sort of thing. I remember being regaled by a friend of mine talking about his Runequest game where he hit a guy in the shield with an axe with a lucky roll, and ended up cleaving through the shield, through the guy's armor, and nearly severing the enemy's arm off, and his eyes lit up with joy at the memory.

I wondered how he'd feel if it had happened to him, lol, but I didn't ask!

 

[James Gasik]

Level Up makes use of helmets, and gear durability (although I might have gotten that from somewhere else, I use a lot of homebrew).

Out of curiosity, what does Level Up say about helmets?

 

[Pedantic]

This is true, one of the better parts of that system. The different types of damage, not so much. After witnessing a group trying to take down an enemy where one guy was doing stress damage, another doing...subdual damage? And the third doing normal damage, which resulted in taking three times as long to defeat enemies, the whole idea lost it's luster.

Though maybe I was missing a rule about that- never saw a rulebook that more needed hyperlinks in my life.

Given that they all worked the same for the minionesque "standard characters" that would have to be a special character which are supposed to be relatively climatic, and if you're failing subdual/stress saves the desire should be death spiraling pretty quickly, I don't think it's a huge problem.

Plus FC really did seem to expect you'd carry a bunch of weapons and swap them out, and even if you weren't doing that, you could use the damage conversion rules to swap types at a -4 to hit and 1/2 damage if you wanted to focus in on whatever track the creature was failing most.

 

[James Gasik]

Given that they all worked the same for the minionesque "standard characters" that would have to be a special character which are supposed to be relatively climatic, and if you're failing subdual/stress saves the desire should be death spiraling pretty quickly, I don't think it's a huge problem.

Plus FC really did seem to expect you'd carry a bunch of weapons and swap them out, and even if you weren't doing that, you could use the damage conversion rules to swap types at a -4 to hit and 1/2 damage if you wanted to focus in on whatever track the creature was failing most.

The problem is FC really rewards you for overspecializing in a particular weapon type with it's feat chains (even more so than in 3.x, so that's saying something!). So you can end up with a rapier user specializing in stress damage to whom switching a weapon out is like cutting off their arm. And yeah, against normal enemies, it's not a problem (I had to go back and read the book again). It does lead to some weirdness against "boss" enemies though that we didn't foresee in our first campaign.

In fact, there were a lot of things we didn't foresee lol, which is why after two campaigns, the books started gathering dust on the shelves. Which was sad, I thought the system had a lot of promise, but it really needs someone to say "hey, when you make your characters, here's some things to keep in mind".

 

[Lanefan]

no, I have never seen this as anything more than an unwelcome nuisance in CRPGs that have it, and a TTRPG makes it worse by making me track this

A relatively quick-and-simple way to do it that still gets the point across goes something like this:

--- on each visit to town or at the start of any other noteworthy downtime, each player rolls a single d20 (per character, if playing more than one)
--- a high or even high-ish roll means the character's mundane gear, armour, etc. is still in good enough condition to carry on
--- a low-ish roll means some mundane gear has broken or failed and it'll cost d50 gp to replace it
--- a very low roll means something significant and-or expensive has failed, at which point you'll have to get a bit more granular and determine just what needs to be replaced or repaired - armour? shield? weapon(s)? etc.

Edit to add: the one piece of mundane gear that really needs attention here is the humble backpack, without which the typical adventurer is really hosed.

 

[Pedantic]

The problem is FC really rewards you for overspecializing in a particular weapon type with it's feat chains (even more so than in 3.x, so that's saying something!). So you can end up with a rapier user specializing in stress damage to whom switching a weapon out is like cutting off their arm.

I'm not so sure that's true. You might get a +damage class feature to a specific damage type, but the highest level of specialization you can get is generally tied to a weapon group, not to a specific weapon. Fencing Blades is still 5 different swords.

Definitely though it's probably best to think of stress/subdual damage primarily as debuffs, given they take down opponent's accuracy and sometimes defense. FC hands out a lot of breadth via tricks but it's not obvious that you're going to want to pull all those levers, in response to whatever the NPC is doing.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm not so sure that's true. You might get a +damage class feature to a specific damage type, but the highest level of specialization you can get is generally tied to a weapon group, not to a specific weapon. Fencing Blades is still 5 different swords.

Definitely though it's probably best to think of stress/subdual damage primarily as debuffs, given they take down opponent's accuracy and sometimes defense. FC hands out a lot of breadth via tricks but it's not obvious that you're going to want to pull all those levers, in response to whatever the NPC is doing.

I'm not trying to spread disinformation, I may be wrong about things, especially since it's been over a decade since we played FC. My memory was that of a player trying to get to the top level of a feat tree and him declaring that "as long as I do stress damage, I can do x, y, and z, and it's awesome!"- and it certainly sounded awesome at the time, but then against our first major foe, it was really underwhelming.

In the way that attacking a skeleton with a hammer was underwhelming because they were immune to it's subdual damage was. But again, maybe my memory is faulty or we had an imperfect understanding of the rules. I left the book downstairs so I can't check at the moment.

I'm not trying to pick on FC, beyond it's rulebook layout, lol. I save my ire for games that completely wasted my time, which are blissfully few in number.

 

[Pedantic]

In the way that attacking a skeleton with a hammer was underwhelming because they were immune to it's subdual damage was. But again, maybe my memory is faulty or we had an imperfect understanding of the rules. I left the book downstairs so I can't check at the moment.

Lol. Yeah, that is the classic biggest poorly thought out rules implication of tying subdual/fatigue to blunt weapons. It also interacted poorly with constructs.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Again, we're not going to agree here. I believe that every single nerf to casters is justified and more. But, really, the fact that the spell as written was such a massive PITA at the table, grinding the game to a halt plus gift wrapping a big smelly present to every optimizer out there, it desperately needed the rewrite.

The fact that, as you say, the spell did "vastly more than deal damage" is the deal breaker for me. Sorry casters, you get spells that deal damage OR get ONE effect. Not spells that let you do ten thousand different things.

Nope. Your exaggerated desire for balance will never nerf the fun out of the game, sorry.

And again, as many times as it takes, the goal of making the caster choose between damage and utility could trivially have been accomplished with a set of stat blocks that each have a different focus/usage. And no, it would not be better design to make each effect/use/focus a separate spell.

Bigby’s Hand is a better designed game element than the several individual Bigby’s X Hand spells of the past.

Rough balance is cool. 5e has that. As much as I love 4e, the game does not need to be that tightly balanced, and the players and dm have more freedom in a more loosely balanced game.