The Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse: Ideas you think D&D's better without

[RevTurkey]

Blimey it amazes me how much stuff people come up with to talk about how game systems work. Must be zillions of words written about the ins and outs of D&D mechanics and fluff.

How many words written in the ENWORLD forums about this sort of thing I wonder?

Incredible

 

[Ahnehnois]

The problem is, the spectrum isn't merely between "roleplayers" and "powergamers". There's also the "worldbuilders" or the "simulationists". Mechanically balanced, dramatic games hold no interest for them if they also don't cater to their genre versimilitude, and that is often directly antagonistic to the needs of mechanical balancing. Quite simply, one side wants a cow, one side wants a hamburger, and the game can't give us both.

That's one thing.

But I think you've rather mislabeled the powergamers. There's a good size group of people who care very much about the game as a mechanical entity, but who hate balance. They're trying to build the best character they can, and the bigger the power differences between different choices, the more engaging the "build" side of the game becomes.

To want the kind of parity of character options that a few people on these boards tend to advocate, you give up not only the verisimilitude, the genre emulation, and the drama, you also give up the satisfaction of system mastery and building a powerful character. What's gained in all of this has never been clear to me, other than sparing the feelings of whichever people cannot deal with the idea that their character might not be the best but are simultaneously unwilling to build one that is.

 

[Manbearcat]

To want the kind of parity of character options that a few people on these boards tend to advocate, you give up not only the verisimilitude, the genre emulation, and the drama, you also give up the satisfaction of system mastery and building a powerful character. What's gained in all of this has never been clear to me, other than sparing the feelings of whichever people cannot deal with the idea that their character might not be the best but are simultaneously unwilling to build one that is.

Considering I'm one of the advocates you mention, I'm going to veto your take here. In the totality of my experience and presently at my table:

- Versimilitude is an illusive concept. One man's versimilitude is another man's fiddly, silly, "gamey", unfulfilling, or overwrought.

- Tight PCC balance, and tight PC:challenge balance makes it easier for me to emulate genre and to focus on the drama, pacing and climax as I'm freeing up undue mental overhead that would be spent on forcing balance a priori or manipulating it mid-stream to instead focus on genre-relevant material/tropes that yields dynamic scene openers, compelling challenges, and complications born of the output of PC action meeting the machinery of the resolution mechanics.

- Yes, tight PCC and PC:challenge balance does indeed reduce the impetus toward mastery of system and does tend to be at tension against building powerful characters that break the math of the game. This is also a feature for my table.

- I'm not sure of "sparing the feelings of whichever people cannot deal with the idea that their character might not be the best but are simultaneously unwilling to build one that is" but I do suppose it spares certain players' feelings in that it generally equillibrates spot-light sharing and again, my own feelings, as its an emergent quality of play rather than one I force/impose.

Due to my nature and my work, I'm not a big fan of "eyeballed" or "kinda sorta" calibration. I want tight, explicit math and error bars. Wide confidence intervals make me twitch. I don't want to twitch while I'm running a leisure activity/game because the downside of fuzzy challenge math is TPK...accidentally...or BBEG anti-climactically crushed in 2 rounds...accidentally. I want to focus on the creative side of the game and on composing compelling, genre-relevant scenes/challenges that my players can engage with and resolve. Tight math lets me do that. Its equal parts functional for play and equal parts anxiety-reducing placebo.

 

[pemerton]

I wouldn't say it constrains the freedom of the player to choose. Rather, it imposes consequences for the choices the player makes.

homogenizing the races makes race choice meaningless. I like each race to have advantages and disadvantages.

by making all the races the same you eliminate choices. If race A and race B have different stat mods, then I can make a meaningful choice between them between them based on what I want my character to do. If they're the same, there's no mechanically meaningful choice.

I don't think this is a bad thing, because it makes your choices all about RP.

I agree with Systole that you don't need mechanical consequences for a choice to be meaningful - because the choice can still make a big difference in the fiction. And not just as colour - if halflings are notorious holedwellers and dwarves famously dour orc-slayers, for instance, the choice of race should make a difference in social interaction regardless of any mechanical difference.

That said, I think fiddly mechanical differences is one of the most sacred of D&D cows, so I can't see it going anytime soon.

I quite liked it when character classes progressed at different speeds. Can we resurrect that long dead sacred cow please? It sort of made sense to me that learning some things took more time than others

I don't really understand this. For instance, in 1st ed AD&D I (i) give thieves d8 hp, (ii) increase their XP requirements, and lower their max HD (from 10 to 8 or 9, say), so that they get the same average hp per XP, (iii) increase the percentile boost per level in their skills, and (iv) tweak their combat and save tables to give a bit more of a boost per level, and now I have exactly the same mechanical benefit per XP earned, but with fewer levels.

And I could do the same thing in the other direction, dropping their HD to d4 but stretching out their XP over more levels.

In short, because a "level" has no meaning except as defined within the mechanical framework of the game - it has no in-fiction meaning - than having levels earned quicker or slower by different classes doesn't represent anything meaningful within the fiction either, as far as I can see.

 

[pemerton]

No worries, we'll back you up. The Fighters vs Spellcasters thread is pretty much burned out, anyway.

When you posted this I hadn't made my latest contribution!

But you and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] are doing a good job in this thread!

 

[Manbearcat]

I wouldn't like to see it slaughtered altogether but I would be interested in seeing the effect of "XP only on meeting the loss (not death) condition" for orthodox D&D. For instance, I think it would have been interesting to see the effect on 4e Skill Challenges in play and how the greater culture would have responded to it. I have some ideas of what it would have been for both, but it would be interesting to test the hypothesis.

 

[RevTurkey]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]

eh? I thought we were talking about the way things work in a rulebook not how they work around your gaming table.

The game has levels, classes and hit points and ability improved as you go up the levels. Perhaps the road travelled is harder for a Wizard than say a Thief or Warrior? I liked that players made a decision to either go for a class that progressed quickly but was ultimately weaker at the higher levels than another. It created different power curves and made character choices more interesting.

If you average things out and make progression more similar for all classes...then yes you get a more balanced game. Easier to manage and run but for me less satisfying because of it's lack of nuance and complexity.

Does this make sense to anybody but me?

 

[Imaro]

@pemerton

eh? I thought we were talking about the way things work in a rulebook not how they work around your gaming table.

The game has levels, classes and hit points and ability improved as you go up the levels. Perhaps the road travelled is harder for a Wizard than say a Thief or Warrior? I liked that players made a decision to either go for a class that progressed quickly but was ultimately weaker at the higher levels than another. It created different power curves and made character choices more interesting.

If you average things out and make progression more similar for all classes...then yes you get a more balanced game. Easier to manage and run but for me less satisfying because of it's lack of nuance and complexity.

Does this make sense to anybody but me?

This does make sense and I think it's how most people view/viewed the game...IMO of course.

I also am not so sure about a level not having an in-fiction meaning (though I would argue it's implicit as opposed to explicit) since abilities based in the fiction are very much tied to leveling. In the fiction a level Y wizard can cast level x spells... A level Y fighter has X skill points, a level Y Barbarian can rage X number of times per day... this are all things that are in-fiction and tied to level.

 

[Hussar]

You beat me to it. The difference in, frex, damage output is going to be pretty small. It's highly unlikely that the difference between winning and losing a fight will be whether you chose halforc or halfling for your racial adjustments. Any competent DM will design encounters to be appropriate to your party anyway.

Bold mine.

Again, really? So, anyone who runs a static, sandbox campaign is an incompetent DM? Anyone who runs a module is an incompetent DM?

I really don't think you meant to say that. Tailored encounters are not the be all and end all of D&D.

 

[TwoSix]

This does make sense and I think it's how most people view/viewed the game...IMO of course.

I also am not so sure about a level not having an in-fiction meaning (though I would argue it's implicit as opposed to explicit) since abilities based in the fiction are very much tied to leveling. In the fiction a level Y wizard can cast level x spells... A level Y fighter has X skill points, a level Y Barbarian can rage X number of times per day... this are all things that are in-fiction and tied to level.

Well, that's an interesting thing. Training rules and level titles from the older editions point towards level having a in-fiction meaning. I think it was 3e's equal XP table and especially the use of CR that led to level being viewed as a metagame construct that evaluated character potency for the determination of equitable encounters. (Of course, the decision to make the change in 3e sprung from somewhere, as I can remember discussion about whether equivalent XP should equal equivalent potency all the way back in rec.games.frp.dnd).

In general, I would see the plateaued leaps in capability in 3.X/4e as being narrated as a more gradual increase in capability, even if that doesn't directly correlate with the mechanics. Of course, if you view character resources as being capabilities the character is actually aware of, that sort of narration may be more difficult.