Subtraction is easier than addition

[Alzrius]

Okay, I'll admit the title for this thread isn't perfectly indicative of the point I'm looking to make. A better thread title would be "When determining what you want your D&D game to be, it's easier to subtract materials you don't care for than it is to create new materials from scratch."

Unfortunately, I couldn't fit all of that into the title bar.

Now, I recognize that once you've added a particular element to your game, it's hard to remove it. For example, if you find that you're unhappy with the nature of high-level play, there's little you can do that will de-level your PCs (unless 5E brings back the level-draining undead! HINT HINT WOTC! ).

However, when you're crafting what sort of campaign feel you want - before the game-play starts (or at least before it gets very far) - it's far easier to simply remove the parts of the game that are already there that you don't like, than it is to realize that something specific is missing and figure out what it is, and how to add it.

This is why I get fundamentally nervous when I hear all of the talk about 5E "flattening the power curve" on player-characters. What if you like the existing power curve in 3.X/4E/Pathfinder? Leaving aside all of the snide responses of "well then just don't play 5E," this creates a problem in that the game, for all its talk of modularity, is now unable to support the play-style you want.

I think that a lot of people think that the modular nature of 5E is based around addition; namely, adding in the options you want. But that's incorrect. 5E's modular nature sounds like it's fundamentally based around subtraction - you have the gestalt whole of the options that are presented, and then you subtract the parts that don't work for you. This is a small but vital distinction, because this latter view means that anything that isn't part of that gestalt of the whole of the options is something the game necessarily can't support.

Now, I know that they've said that future products will add new options, so perhaps I'm worrying needlessly. But that's still not very reassuring, not when you consider how well trying to add new options to the game after it's already fully-formed has gone over in past editions - 1E's Unearthed Arcana, 2E's Player's and DM's Options books, 3E's Epic Level Handbook and Deities and Demigods, and even 4E's Essentials - adding new options to the game after it's already been designed is hard to do.

I want 5E to be truly broad in everything it offers. The power curve should be as heavy as it is in 3.x/4E/Pathfinder; it's easily limited with E6 and other ways of decoupling "rewards" from "increased (combat) power." The more it can do in its initial release, the easier it is to subtract the parts we don't like right out of the box than to have them awkwardly added on later.

 

[ferratus]

*phew* I thought this was going to be a post from someone trying to defend THAC0 again.

As for the premise of the thread, I think it is fairly easy to disprove. The D&D rules system is a system, a programming system if you will to create worlds, dungeons, monsters, and characters.

Adding new modules in object oriented programming is always easier than modifying an all-encompassing procedurally coded program.

I don't see how that would be any different with D&D, and it is why 4e is much more customizable in taking out and adding in game elements than any D&D edition that came before it. 4e is the first object-oriented version of D&D.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Neither subtraction nor addition is particularly easy if they haven't been designed to be easy. Quick, remove alignment fully from 2E. Or remove skills from 3E. Or add a new class to 4E.

If you want something to be easy with modular design, the best thing to do is to design things to be swapped in an out, and then include at least two or three of these things as examples. If one of these modules is set up to more or less nullify that aspect, then that is well-designed "subtraction". If one of these modules adds a whole new aspect to the game, then that is well-designed "addition".

Addition and subtraction both work best when there is a set of things to add to or subtract from.

 

[Hassassin]

You are comparing subtracting something with building something up from scratch. IMHO, a more relevant comparison is removing material from the core rules and adding a new supplement. The latter is easier in 3e at least.

There's of course the distinction between rules and options. Rules are harder to add/subtract than options, but in either case my experience is that adding is simpler.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Nah, you can make a shallow power curve steeper pretty easily. Just add a + level bonus to everything and you're done. Level one monsters have very little chance of hitting a level 10 character under this model.

Compare that to E6, which is a kludge (albeit, a well designed one) to some. People like to gain levels, and E6 unfortunately doesn't allow that after level 6. While it does address the issue it was intended to solve, it comes with a lot of unnecessary baggage.

IMO, additive is the right design philosophy for a system intended to be inclusive of many different play styles.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don´t know if they really want to flatten the power curve... maybe they want to flatten attack bonuses and defense bonuses... which is a good idea.

 

[Deset Gled]

Okay, I'll admit the title for this thread isn't perfectly indicative of the point I'm looking to make. A better thread title would be "When determining what you want your D&D game to be, it's easier to subtract materials you don't care for than it is to create new materials from scratch."

Your point is valid, but is foiled by the way it is perceived by players/customers.

Once people know about additional material that has been added by the system, they generally judge other aspects of the game using their full knowledge as a baseline. So once a fun/cool/powerful aspect of the game is added, people expect the baseline game to match that level of fun/cool/power. We all know this by it's traditional name, Power Creep, but it could be expanded to cover options, flavor, and verisimilitude.

This causes problems for both players and developers. For the players, it means the DM has to find ways to politely exclude materials, and that the players have to be accepting of it. This may sound like an easy task, but it can get hairy. If Player 1 buys a new splatbook based on his character concept and is then told by the DM it's not allowed, he's not going to be the happiest player in the group. Or, if Player 2 sees that you allow Player 1's splatbook, but for some reason you disallow the splatbook that Player 2 wanted to use, it can escalate the problem further. I have always dealt with this by saying "You can use the core rules, plus A, B, and C, with other material requiring discussion" instead of "X, Y, and Z are banned", because it makes things seem more permissive than exclusive, but it's not a perfect solution.

But the problem doesn't end there. The more splatbooks that exist, the more difficult it becomes for the DM to manage his players' expectation of a game. Eventually, you hit a point where the baseline level of the game can fluctuate so badly that players from one group have a completely different understanding of the game than others, which can make starting new games more difficult. It also makes it harder to discuss the game (at places like ENWorld) because people don't always have a common point of reference for the game. Or worse, they assume different points of reference and start edition wars over it.

Too many options also makes things difficult for developers, because they cannot design in a vacuum. They have to write new material assuming every other option exists. The only alternative is to insert a section at the start of the book saying what other options it has been tested with. This would probably work okay for a third party, but there would be internet riots if WotC published a PHB 4 that was expressly not compatible with PHB 2. You eventually hit a point where further development of the game is stiffled by material that's already been released. And let's not even get into discussion about the way that some new material is designed to be more uber as a way to increase sales.

So, while I think your stance is fine in theory, I think it fails in practice. At the end of the day, I'm an addition fan.

P.S. Does this count as an addition war?

 

[ExploderWizard]

A long gaming life of system tinkering has led me to the opposite conclusion.

I was adding material to B/X games without much of a problem. New spells, phased initiative, expanded reaction and morale tables, etc. Nothing was so hard coded into the engine that 3 things would need fixing for every change.

Subtracting things I didn't like from 3E took more work. Lets say I want to remove opportunity attacks. This flows into things like making spellcasting even more powerful (if that was possible) and rendering a lot of feats useless. Whole builds become invalidated.

A simple core is a toolkit that DMs can use to build what they want. A complex core is pre-fab game that encounters issues when you start removing chunks.

Some people like having everything designed for them out of the box. Others (like myself) who are long time hobbyists want to hit things with a hammer until they fall into place just so.

Simple core + optional individual modules of complex expansion is the way to go. Both groups have a chance to get more of what they want.

 

[Rex Blunder]

"It's not a problem if the DM can fix it" is a fallacy, but I think this is one problem the DM can actually solve!

"Flattening the power curve" only changes the interaction between high-level and low-level creatures. Creatures of the same level have the same power relative to each other.

The DM can choose not to provide opponents of vastly different levels. That's already how 4e works: level 15 PCs never fight level 5 monsters.

(Personally, I think that flattening the power curve is great, but my preference doesn't invalidate Alzrius's preference for the reverse).

 

[Ainamacar]

I think whether addition or subtraction is better is a bit of a red herring. The lesson I take from programming is writing good interfaces is hard. (Having written some less-than-stunning interfaces in my time.) That's because interfaces mediate the interaction between modules, whether they are being added or taken away, and it is in the breakdown of that interaction where problems typically occur.

Whatever framework exists for 5e needs just enough of a shared language so that the various modules know how to talk to each other without knowing what other modules are being used. For example, a wounds system might redefine how hit points work in addition to adding "wound" to the game's lexicon, but other module's interaction with this one must be done through the hit point interface. Of course, maybe the framework also defines "condition", in which case the wounds module merely introduces another kind of condition that interacts with other modules in a predictable fashion, but also has a bunch of mechanics unique to itself.

I don't see any reason why attack/defense/skill scaling can't be done in the same way. At a basic level the way attacks, defenses, and skills operate does not change whether they scale or not. Besides guidelines for building encounters, what really changes if one goes from +1 per 4 levels to +1 per 2 levels? More difficult would be increasing the disparity between low defenses and high defenses, etc. with level, which is easy to implement (increasing select ability scores for example) but has broader implications for how the game feels, particularly for swinginess and the relative benefits of specialization. The d20 can only handle so much variance before things get ugly, and I expect the default for 5e here will be much more tightly controlled than in past editions.