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The Door, Player Expectations, and why 5e can't unify the fanbase.
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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5968033" data-attributes="member: 54877"><p>For me, it's two things: Scaling and Consistency.</p><p> </p><p>Scaling -- D&D having covered a wide range of play, I'd like it to scale from low powered to high powered. I'm fine with level being the main power scale, since it traditionally has been. I'll entertain replacement suggestions if people want level to mean something else. I'm fine with lopping off the very ends of the extremes of grit and mythic if that is necessary to make the game work and/or putting those into optional rules. But I want that scaling in there.</p><p> </p><p>Consistency -- I want my scaling somewhat consistent. It need not be lockstep, every class, every level (necessarily), but it does need to be fairly close. I don't mind, for example, wizards, fighters, rogues, and clerics passing each other in raw power by a bit every few levels, as long as you could graph it and see the lines twisting and turning fairly close to a median consistent for all of them. </p><p> </p><p>For me, this is verisimilitude. It is not plausible for me that spell casters run off the scale with every descreasing limits while non casters hit a ceiling that never moves, game after game, world after world. The fiction of D&D is generaly that non casters matter more than that. The mechanics should support it.</p><p> </p><p>Now, ideally, I'd also like that separate scale that I mentioned earlier, so that if I wanted to run a game where fighters and wizards became very broadly competent, but never hit mythic power levels, I could do that. Or if I want to keep them more narrow but mythic, I can do that. Or I can mix and match. </p><p> </p><p></p><p>The confusion comes because there are several camps:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Those that would be happy with everyone becomes mythic, eventually.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Those that would be happy with no one ever becomes mythic, but at higher levels a spellcaster or item can occasionally pull off something mythic (e.g. allow wish but be nasty about consequences).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Those that aren't going past about name level anyway, so they don't see and/or care about this.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Those that have a <strong>particular</strong> idea of verismilitude for D&D as -- "Caster eventually bend things however they want, non casters don't."</li> </ul><p>The problem with the latter group is that so often they seemed to have confused their preference for verisimilitude with some kind of "inherently more realistic fantasy conception" when all it really amounts to is "the way D&D has sometimes been." </p><p> </p><p>It's inconsistent. I like consistency. I agree with the original Alexander Pope quote, "Foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," more often than the deliberate inversion by Emerson later, which so many people quote today. Really, it depends upon the particular little minds in question which is more appropriate, but Emerson's version has so caught modern attention, that reflection upon why he would invert it is rare. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5968033, member: 54877"] For me, it's two things: Scaling and Consistency. Scaling -- D&D having covered a wide range of play, I'd like it to scale from low powered to high powered. I'm fine with level being the main power scale, since it traditionally has been. I'll entertain replacement suggestions if people want level to mean something else. I'm fine with lopping off the very ends of the extremes of grit and mythic if that is necessary to make the game work and/or putting those into optional rules. But I want that scaling in there. Consistency -- I want my scaling somewhat consistent. It need not be lockstep, every class, every level (necessarily), but it does need to be fairly close. I don't mind, for example, wizards, fighters, rogues, and clerics passing each other in raw power by a bit every few levels, as long as you could graph it and see the lines twisting and turning fairly close to a median consistent for all of them. For me, this is verisimilitude. It is not plausible for me that spell casters run off the scale with every descreasing limits while non casters hit a ceiling that never moves, game after game, world after world. The fiction of D&D is generaly that non casters matter more than that. The mechanics should support it. Now, ideally, I'd also like that separate scale that I mentioned earlier, so that if I wanted to run a game where fighters and wizards became very broadly competent, but never hit mythic power levels, I could do that. Or if I want to keep them more narrow but mythic, I can do that. Or I can mix and match. The confusion comes because there are several camps: [LIST] [*]Those that would be happy with everyone becomes mythic, eventually. [*]Those that would be happy with no one ever becomes mythic, but at higher levels a spellcaster or item can occasionally pull off something mythic (e.g. allow wish but be nasty about consequences). [*]Those that aren't going past about name level anyway, so they don't see and/or care about this. [*]Those that have a [B]particular[/B] idea of verismilitude for D&D as -- "Caster eventually bend things however they want, non casters don't." [/LIST]The problem with the latter group is that so often they seemed to have confused their preference for verisimilitude with some kind of "inherently more realistic fantasy conception" when all it really amounts to is "the way D&D has sometimes been." It's inconsistent. I like consistency. I agree with the original Alexander Pope quote, "Foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," more often than the deliberate inversion by Emerson later, which so many people quote today. Really, it depends upon the particular little minds in question which is more appropriate, but Emerson's version has so caught modern attention, that reflection upon why he would invert it is rare. ;) [/QUOTE]
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