D&D 5E Tedium for balance. Should we balance powerful effects with bookkeeping?

[EzekielRaiden]

But still solid logic.

Tell a player "you have to keep track of the number of arrows your character has" and "suddenly" players don't want to be archers anymore. Perfect balance check.

No. That's exactly the opposite of what is being said here. What is being said is:

"You have to keep track of the number of arrows your character has"
"Oh. Okay. And if I do that, I do 10x as much damage as if I don't?"
"Yes, exactly. So, what else would you like to play instead?"
"What do you mean? I'll endure whatever tedium you throw at me to do 10x damage."
"....but it's so tedious!"
"Yes, and? Tedium is fine if it makes me win that hard."

Tedium doesn't work, because LOTS AND LOTS of players are perfectly willing to endure tedium in order to get enormous power. They will, of course, take whatever steps they can to minimize the tedium to the lowest possible level they can while still keeping all the power, but yeah, plenty of players will JUMP at the chance to do incredibly powerful things with tedious methods, hating every second of the tedium!

Well, voting is complex. And like I say the question is oddly worded.

How do you mean? It's very simple.

Is tedium--boring, mind-numbing, uninteresting, dull rules-manipulation--a valid way to discourage players from using degenerate strategies?

And the answer is, demonstrably,

hell no.

Because players will endure lots of tedium in order to become stupidly powerful. Even if that means they have less fun!

 

[Stormonu]

Oh, I think they know (and expect) that different groups are going to adopt or drop different rules. They have to establish a baseline or minimum bar and then let the DM/players decide if they want to raise or lower it from there - how complicated/powerful/immersive do you want it to be? 5E makes it mechanically easy to move it about, but player and DM inertia determines how far it in fact gets move - and how far they're willing to move it to get the game they want. Ideally, I think we all want a game that doesn't have to move up or down very far, much less in a completely different direction.

The question is, where are they setting the bar and how are they deciding it? Do they go with years of design experience? Actual test play? Surveys? Gut feelings? Nostalgia? Twitter posts?

I think it would actually behoove them to put the game at about the state it was at when Xanathar's was released - it'd been a year or two since the initial release and a fair bit of the holes and rough spots were being ironed out. Add any errata for a few of the system's proud nails, and that would be a baseline I'd be comfortable with. Then drop a couple "Advanced" books that give you options to add subsystems, details and different ways of doing things for those who want to delve deeper into the different areas of the game.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

But still solid logic.

no - it's effectively an anti-bandwagon fallacy. "people don't like it, so it's good!".

Tell a player "you have to keep track of the number of arrows your character has" and "suddenly" players don't want to be archers anymore. Perfect balance check.

or, more likely, they put up with it, keep exactly the same power level, and just...don't have fun doing it. does absolutely nothing for balance, completely ruins their gameplay experience.

(now, given, i don't think that ammo tracking alone would actually effect a player's desire to be an archer this drastically in either direction, but i'm engaging in your assumption of the degree to which this specific example would effect the player experience for the sake of argument. i actually think that, unless the number of arrowss the players will have access to is low enough that there's actually a risk of running out, the tracking will end up being completely pointless and only ever serve to occasionally make the player spend a tiny amount of money to buy a bunch of arrows so they won't have to worry about it again for a while - in other words, it'll add and discourage basically nothing.)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Agree to disagree. There's nothing wrong with downtime but it doesn't belong in the middle of an adventure just because you took a few unlucky Crits IMO.

Agree to disagree. Them's the breaks.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Tell a player "you have to keep track of the number of arrows your character has" and "suddenly" players don't want to be archers anymore. Perfect balance check.

also, hold on, another thing about this - if the only way to balance something is to prevent people from using it in the first place, then it clearly ISN'T balanced to begin with, and there's no reason for it to exist to begin with.

 

[Micah Sweet]

also, hold on, another thing about this - if the only way to balance something is to prevent people from using it in the first place, then it clearly ISN'T balanced to begin with, and there's no reason for it to exist to begin with.

Because things that aren't balanced shouldn't exist? Definitely a matter of opinion there.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Because things that aren't balanced shouldn't exist? Definitely a matter of opinion there.

things that are so imbalanced that the DM feels forced to essentially force players not to pick them probably shouldn't exist, yeah. if they're never gonna get used, why have them?

 

[mamba]

Sure. That's the point. Tedium used as an attempt to discourage degenerate strategy (=to "balance powerful effects") is a bad design approach. Both this and the previous are examples of this rule of thumb in action.

we are in agreement

 

[Stormonu]

also, hold on, another thing about this - if the only way to balance something is to prevent people from using it in the first place, then it clearly ISN'T balanced to begin with, and there's no reason for it to exist to begin with.

Well, sometimes you may include it for NPC (After reviewing some OSR rules, I firmly believe D&D's 9th level spells fall into that category) or have it statted out but gate it through treasure or other methods the PCs have little actual control over (such as Artifacts).

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Well, sometimes you may include it for NPC (After reviewing some OSR rules, I firmly believe D&D's 9th level spells fall into that category)

i mean in that case, just don't let PCs have it at all.

or have it statted out but gate it through treasure or other methods the PCs have little actual control over.

i wouldn't call treasure-gating tedium, so i don't see how this is particularly relevant.