D&D 5E The Door, Player Expectations, and why 5e can't unify the fanbase.

[TwinBahamut]

Seems like there are two major camps:

1) I want to play a fighter character/archetype that starts off mundane and then becomes a mythic hero (e.g., throw boulders, make demons run from their battle cry)
2) I want a fighter character/archetype that remains mundane, an extremely skilled fighter but one that can only do stuff that is grounded in the top edges of real life human skill, strength, agility, etc.

I am also going to assume the following :

A) D&D is a fantasy rpg that is geared toward characters that form teams to tackle challenges
B) D&D is a game and the majority of its players have more fun when their character has similar levels of importance and contribution (although not necc. via the same method!!) than other team members
C) Wizards are going to look more like their 3e version than the 4e version.

Since its stated aim is to be the game for everyone, it seems to me that DDN should try to provide the above two archtypes.

If C) holds true, then I think we end up with the Justice League / Avengers conundrum. How can Batman and Superman be on the same team? This is not just from comic books but any medium that has two protagonists with widely different “combat” power levels.

Here are the typical ways that fiction deals with this:
· The higher power level individual often has crazy limitations on their power that enemies can exploit (not really true of3e like D&D Wizards)
· The lower power level person often has other traits that allow that person to contribute something other than his fighting prowess. Batman has intelligence, connections, technology, money, etc.
· The author works hard to provide situations and challenges where the lower power person’s other, non-fighting traits can shine. Sometimes this is done well, sometimes it seems artificial.
· The lower power level person tends to have amazing luck / fate

For the [URL=http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=2]#2 [/URL] archtype to work, I think DDN needs to embrace some metagame / narrative mechanics to model the luck as well as give the fighter some interesting non-fighting options (intelligence, connections, technology, money, etc.) so they can contribute in ways other than raw combat power.

I'd argue that all of your analysis indicates that we should continue protesting C. 3E Wizards really do mess up the possibility of letting everyone shine in a game where players work together as a team of equals. Some things just can't be balanced, and the 3E Wizard is a square peg that won't fit into the round hole of a teamwork-focused game.

Justice League or Avenger type team-ups of characters with wildly different skillsets and power levels only work with extremely fine-crafted situations that play to specific characters' abilities and weaknesses. It only works in movies and comic books because there is an author who has total control over the scenario and is capable of writing things so that each character has a chance to be in the spotlight. It only works because of the artificial and thoroughly engineered nature of those stories. That kind of thing isn't very easy to do in a tabletop RPG. Unless D&D was heavily rewritten with concepts and premises that'd make 4E look like a retroclone, I don't think it would work out. At the very least, it would be the exact same thing as high-level 3E: a game that won't work unless either the players specifically agree to not use certain classes or the DM takes on an extremely tough burden of micromanaging campaign balance and encounter design. I'd rather avoid that, myself.

Having a balanced game would work a lot better than trying to make a deliberately (or accidentally) imbalanced game work within the contexts of A and B.

Still, you do make the perfectly good point that appealing to both people who want a mythic hero and people who want to be a more mundane warrior is a laudable goal. The tough part is finding a way to balance a warrior who can punt a demon so hard it smashes through enemies and terrain features like a cannon ball with a warrior who, well... can't.

One of the best ways to do this that I've ever seen put forward is to simply let the more mundane character break the game in a way no other character can. That is, balancing the classes around the idea of player balance, rather than character balance, and letting the player of the mundane fighter control multiple characters at once, whereas the players of more powerful characters like the mythic fighter or wizard still each can only control a single character. To use a LotR example, this would be something like letting one player control Gimli and letting another player control Sam, Merry, and Pippin.

You'd have to balance things out so that letting one character have triple the actions wouldn't be overpowered, but it certainly lets more mundane characters still contribute greatly to a team dominated by more powerful ones. In fact, fans of simple fighters would probably work well with such a concept, since each of the sub-characters under the player's control would by necessity have to be simple in order to keep the game moving quickly.

 

[Remathilis]

I think a low power bard would do something else to their pantaloons at the thought of fighting a dragon in melee But seriously, the big thing a fighter gets to do out of combat is be a low power bard???

Sure. Not everyone is good at everything. There are three columns: Combat, Exploration, Interaction. Fighters rank high in the Combat column, but lower in the other two. A high level fighter could get some social and buffs, and that's in addition to his "Kill you 11 ways to Sunday" abilities. Meanwhile the Bard is a Master of the Interaction column doing things with words and guile few fighters could dream of. He also can't fight his way out of a paper bag.

We call that "Balance Across Columns". Unless your Mythic Fighter is supposed to excel at all three. If so, there is another word for it that begins with "M" but it ain't Mythic.

 

[SKyOdin]

Its funny, me and a couple of friends talked about how D&D should be like the Avenger's movie.

Captain America should be a Paladin: leading from the front and doing heroic things, being a shiny example.
Iron Man is a wizard: flying, shooting lasers, outthinking his foes.
Hulk is a Barbarian. Smash!
Thor is a Fighter with a kickass magical weapon.
Hawkeye is a ranger/archer with an awesome array of magic arrows.
Black Widow is a Rogue; quicky, sneaky, manipulative.

Each character got a moment to shine in the movie. Each did his schtick, and had a moment or two where they were the hero. Sure, Black Widow couldn't beat Hulk in a fight, but she did figure out how to stop Loki and pull off an amazing stunt to do it.

D&D should try to balance its game for more moments like this rather than try to make Hawkeye and Black Widow on par with Thor and Hulk in a fight.

Unfortunatly, that only works in a movie or comicbook because the writer has complete control over the scenario and actions of the characters, and uses that control to tailor-build a scenario in which each of the characters is confronted with something uniquely suited to their abilities. That kind of set-up is generally much harder to do in D&D, and often less than desirable.

For example, a DM could try to replicate this by custom building a series of challenges designed to be solved by each of the PCs. However, in D&D, that approach is full of faults. First of all, it presumes the player's recognize how to get past the challenges without stonewalling. Second, there is always the possibility that the particularly powerful PCs could invent solutions to solve the challenges designed for the weaker PCs. Third, creating this kind of challenge requires a lot of effort and rules mastery on the DMs part. Finally, solving a challenge solely because the DM designed it just so that you could solve it can be less than satisfying.

More than anything, one of the best parts of D&D are players applying their imagination to solve problems and how story arises organically from gameplay. Neither of those are helped by balance that is so tenuous that it requires elaborate set-ups in order to work. It is much better to have a balanced, robust game that lets all of the players shine regardless of the challenge, and allows them to solve problems their way.

 

[SKyOdin]

Sure. Not everyone is good at everything. There are three columns: Combat, Exploration, Interaction. Fighters rank high in the Combat column, but lower in the other two. A high level fighter could get some social and buffs, and that's in addition to his "Kill you 11 ways to Sunday" abilities. Meanwhile the Bard is a Master of the Interaction column doing things with words and guile few fighters could dream of. He also can't fight his way out of a paper bag.

We call that "Balance Across Columns". Unless your Mythic Fighter is supposed to excel at all three. If so, there is another word for it that begins with "M" but it ain't Mythic.

I would say that every class should excel at all three. I don't see a compelling reason otherwise. Why should some characters sit out during large chunks of the game?

 

[Remathilis]

I would say that every class should excel at all three. I don't see a compelling reason otherwise. Why should some characters sit out during large chunks of the game?

Well why have classes if everyone is going to be the same. If everyone is equally good at fighting, sneaking, healing, talking, searching, and baking a cake as everyone else, there isn't much need to for classes. Take one class: name it Munchkin, and let him do everything. I guess that would explain why you want your fighters using magi... uh, supernatural powers though.

 

[pemerton]

Do you want fighters to be filled with ambient magic such that they can do more? Can it be dispelled?

A dragon can still fly, a troll still regenerate, and a titan still stand, run and jump, inside an anti-magic field. Why wouldn't a fighter be the same?

Lets define "magic" as something that breaks the known rules of nature (a dangerous claim since we don't know all the rules. Lets pretend for a moment that our understanding of physics and chemistry are sound, if not complete).

The fighter represents the natural world as we know it. Since nobody in our mundane world jumps 500 ft, neither does he. He can still do some amazing things (fall off mountains and live, survive multiple stabbings) but in the end he is locked into a world of doing only what real people can do in this world.

Two comments.

First, dragons, trolls and giants break known rules of nature. By your definition, they are still magic. Yet in no edition of D&D do they lose their abilities to fly, regenerate, jump etc in side an anti-magic field. So your definition of magic does not seem to match that used in the game.

Second, it can't be true both (i) that a fighter is locked into doing ony what real people can do in this world, and (ii) that a fighter can (reliably and predictably) fall of mountains and live. In other words, fighters are already absurdly tough in some respects (mostly, enduring and delivering physical punishment). So there seems to be no in principle reason why this shouldn't be extended to other domains of activity.

But traditional fantasy elements has, in my opinion, at least a thin veneer of respectability and suspension of disbelief. Dragon pseudo-physiology even gets a section in the Draconomicon.

The Draconomicon is not an examle of traditional fantasy, precisely because it pretends to be scientific.

Tradtional fantasy is Beowulf or Tolkien or Little Red Riding Hood (confining myself to NW Europe). None of these feels the need to explain how wolves talk or dragon's breath fire. These things don't stand in need of explanation. That's what makes it fantasy and not science fiction.

I have no problem with high-level fighters flinging mountains or wrestling rivers into a new course. D&D has always trumpeted it's roots in myth and folklore. So it should put its electrum pieces were it's mouth is. Sure, we could introduce Girdles of Mountain-Flinging and Gauntlets of River-Wrestling into the game. Then we'd have an explanation! Everything would be so logical! Whee!

This!

It's like the fighter wants ssoooooooooo badly to jump every day once a day and that it's. Does he have a sort of points pool that can be applied to various things he wants to do soooooooooo badly, or is it just for jumping?

I've never seen more heroic jumping and running in my game than since the fighter PC took the Mighty Sprint encounter utility power. For me, the desirability of this sort of thing - and more of it, and more epic versions of it - is not theorycraft. It's a desire that the game deliver more and better of what it already has.

Why can't other people mentally and physically prepare themselves in order to perform exploits?

Because they are not fighters!

I might as well ask why other people can't memorize spells. It's just reading a book, right? Fighters have memories, too.

Agreeing with SKyOdin and Fifth Element: why do other people's prayers not bring down divine wrath or blessings? Because they're not clerics, imbued with divine grace.

It's a premise of the game that only some people are holy enough, only some learned enough, only some tricksy enough, and (in the case of fighters) only some are tough enough.

So town guards haven't been assumed to be fighters for at least two editions now.

They weren't fighters in 1st ed AD&D either. They were 0-level humans, generally incapable of progressing in level. (In B/X they may have been either Normal Humans or 1st level fighters.)

 

[Fifth Element]

Well why have classes if everyone is going to be the same.

Yes, that's exactly what we're talking about.

Or not. Classes can be good at combat, but in completely different ways. Wizards and fighters, for instance. One blows bunches of things up from a distance, while the other smacks them in the face. Hard. If you think the wizard and fighter are the same in combat, because both are good at it, I don't know what to say.

Similarly, classes can be good at exploration in different ways, and good at interaction in different ways.

 

[Fifth Element]

It's a premise of the game that only some people are holy enough, only some learned enough, only some tricksy enough, and (in the case of fighters) only some are tough enough.

I like how you put this.

 

[SKyOdin]

Well why have classes if everyone is going to be the same. If everyone is equally good at fighting, sneaking, healing, talking, searching, and baking a cake as everyone else, there isn't much need to for classes. Take one class: name it Munchkin, and let him do everything. I guess that would explain why you want your fighters using magi... uh, supernatural powers though.

Because "everyone is able to contribute" is not the same thing as "everyone does the same stuff". In combat, fighters mix it up in melee, while wizards blast stuff with fireballs.

When doing exploration, the fighter climbs, dives underwater, and moves boulders out of the way. The wizard uses magic to dowse things, create magic lights, and creates magic barriers to ward off the elements.

For interaction, the fighter uses his social skills and contacts to gather information, while the wizard uses magic to probe people's minds.

Or whatever. There is plenty of room to give characters various different tools and mechanics to approach these general different situations.

Heck, we don't even need to break this stuff up along class lines. Elements such as exploration or interaction could potentially be handled by character choices other than class. As long as every player character can contribute on all three categories, the game will work right.

 

[pemerton]

How can Batman and Superman be on the same team? This is not just from comic books but any medium that has two protagonists with widely different “combat” power levels.

Here are the typical ways that fiction deals with this:
· The higher power level individual often has crazy limitations on their power that enemies can exploit (not really true of3e like D&D Wizards)
· The lower power level person often has other traits that allow that person to contribute something other than his fighting prowess. Batman has intelligence, connections, technology, money, etc.
· The author works hard to provide situations and challenges where the lower power person’s other, non-fighting traits can shine. Sometimes this is done well, sometimes it seems artificial.
· The lower power level person tends to have amazing luck / fate

<snip>

I think DDN needs to embrace some metagame / narrative mechanics to model the luck as well as give the fighter some interesting non-fighting options (intelligence, connections, technology, money, etc.) so they can contribute in ways other than raw combat power.

Ron Edwards has made a similar observation in the context of RPG design more generally:

"Balance" might be relevant as a measure of character screen time, or perhaps weight of screen time rather than absolute length. This is not solely the effectiveness-issue which confuses everyone. Comics fans will recognize that Hawkeye is just as significant as Thor, as a member of the Avengers, or even more so. In game terms, this is a Character Components issue: Hawkeye would have a high Metagame component whereas Thor would have a higher Effectiveness component.​