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<blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8592155" data-attributes="member: 93670">At first glance before coffee my initial thought was &quot;hmm that could be a good card to keep in the deck&quot;, but it's a card that carries a lot of problems [USER=6747251]@Micah Sweet[/USER] mentioned them. That card is one that deploys plot armor &amp; that might be ok in old editions where the death &amp; dying mechanics don't already basically grant plot armor at all times but not in 5e.&nbsp; When I hit a Alice for 187 hp(or whatever) in the first round of a fight I want to last a bit with a mook's max damage crit &amp; fudge that down players don't know it.&nbsp; Those players will likewise not know when the monster legitimately rolls snake eyes against an almost dead bob who then proceeds to live so he can kill the 7/xx monster Alice just crit with a his 3 point hit that saved the day at the last minute after feeling like he has been baggage for most of the session for whatever reason.&nbsp; Back to the video's point though. Assumptions of table variance are a big problem in discussions about d&amp;d, especially wrt table size for all the reasons he mentioned. In a 2-3 person game it doesn't matter much if Alice is wildly more effective at something Bob &amp; Cindy don't do but in a 4-5 person group with Dave &amp; Edith it's almost certain that Alice is going to share a party role &amp; need with someone else making it more important for the GM to (as he put it)&quot;compare one class to another &amp; see how they dip into the action economy&quot; or consider&nbsp; a different problem of &quot;how does a class that has resources that can run out sit in a group with another class that can just do its thing every round &amp; never runs out of anything&quot;.&nbsp; It's more important for the GM of a large group to do those things because there's only so many times that the GM can dramatically fudge the dice or <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman" target="_blank">create a job for aquaman</a> before the efforts just draw attention to the problem &amp; make things worse.&nbsp;I run 4-5 person tables with long duration campaigns &amp; pretty much always have. The strengths &amp; problems I see are going to be different from those that someone running a game for 2-3 people to the point where questions like &quot;what constitutes excessive charop/powergaming&quot; is likely to be an entirely different scale just as how it can or should be dealt with at one table might not apply to the other.&nbsp; Often I see someone say that x is a problem because it causes P &amp; Q under these conditions only for someone to come along&nbsp; just flatly stating that x is not a problem&nbsp; because the person bringing it up is an aberration not reflective of the game. I don't think that he really touched on it, but another big communication roadblock of assumptions I often see is in if someone uses ToTM battlemats or capable VTT/Digital tabletops.&nbsp; In the past that was often a clear &amp; obvious &quot;well that's a totm/grid&quot; issue I don't see &amp; it was still largely the case till pretty recently because roll20&nbsp; started causing player PC load issues as it grew much beyond the larger chessex mats making it still largely totm/battlemat.&nbsp; As VTT's &amp; digital tabletops became more capable they started sliding into a midway between ToTM &amp; battlemat strengths&amp; weaknesses with strengths &amp; weakness of their own that don't always map clearly to either of the others.&nbsp; Given that I found what looks to be two or three AR d&amp;d projects <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=AR+d%26d&amp;rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS977US977&amp;oq=AR+d%26d&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j0i7i8i30l4j69i60l3.4937j0j7&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8" target="_blank">in the first few search links</a> I expect those will bring their own gameplay riches &amp; rough edges that don't map well to the three we know &amp; love today.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="tetrasodium, post: 8592155, member: 93670"] At [I]first[/I] glance before coffee my initial thought was "hmm that could be a good card to keep in the deck", but it's a card that carries a lot of problems [USER=6747251]@Micah Sweet[/USER] mentioned them. That card is one that deploys plot armor & that might be ok in old editions where the death & dying mechanics don't already basically grant plot armor at all times but not in 5e. When I hit a Alice for 187 hp[I](or whatever)[/I] in the first round of a fight I want to last a bit with a mook's max damage crit & fudge that down players don't know it. Those players will likewise [I]not[/I] know when the monster legitimately rolls snake eyes against an almost dead bob who then proceeds to live so he can kill the 7/xx monster Alice just crit with a his 3 point hit that saved the day at the last minute after feeling like he has been baggage for most of the session for whatever reason. [B]Back to the video's point[/B] [B]though[/B]. Assumptions of table variance are a big problem in discussions about d&d, especially wrt table size for all the reasons he mentioned. In a 2-3 person game it doesn't matter much if Alice is wildly more effective at something Bob & Cindy don't do but in a 4-5 person group with Dave & Edith it's almost certain that Alice is going to share a party role & need with someone else making it more important for the GM to (as he put it)[I]"compare one class to another & see how they dip into the action economy" [/I]or consider a different problem of [I]"how does a class that has resources that can run out sit in a group with another class that can just do its thing every round & never runs out of anything"[/I]. It's more important for the GM of a large group to do those things because there's only so many times that the GM can dramatically fudge the dice or [URL='https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman']create a job for aquaman[/URL] before the efforts just draw attention to the problem & make things worse. I run 4-5 person tables with long duration campaigns & pretty much always have. The strengths & problems I see are going to be different from those that someone running a game for 2-3 people to the point where questions like "what constitutes excessive charop/powergaming" is likely to be an entirely different scale just as how it can or should be dealt with at one table might not apply to the other. Often I see someone say that x is a problem because it causes P & Q under these conditions only for someone to come along just flatly stating that x is not a problem because the person bringing it up is an aberration not reflective of the game. I don't think that he really touched on it, but another big communication roadblock of assumptions I often see is in if someone uses ToTM battlemats or capable VTT/Digital tabletops. In the past that was often a clear & obvious "well that's a totm/grid" issue I don't see & it was still largely the case till pretty recently because roll20 started causing player PC load issues as it grew much beyond the larger chessex mats making it still largely totm/battlemat. As VTT's & digital tabletops became more capable they started sliding into a midway between ToTM & battlemat strengths& weaknesses with strengths & weakness of their own that don't always map clearly to either of the others. Given that I found what looks to be two or three AR d&d projects [URL='https://www.google.com/search?q=AR+d%26d&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS977US977&oq=AR+d%26d&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i7i8i30l4j69i60l3.4937j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8']in the first few search links[/URL] I expect those will bring their own gameplay riches & rough edges that don't map well to the three we know & love today. [/QUOTE]

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