D&D 5E The tyranny of small numbers

[AbdulAlhazred]

Firstly: I see what you did there. (Bolded for emphasis.)

Secondly: it is incredibly refreshing to have someone, ANYONE, try to debunk the idea that spotlight balance is the end-all, be-all, cure-all technique. Or even admit that it could ever be faulty. I've had so many discussions where folks will just refuse to engage AT ALL "because spotlight balance."

Well, it is a 'selective debunking' at most. I mean its actually another of those endless dimensions where people's preferences play a strong part. While I doubt there are too many people who think having one PC take center stage for several sessions in a row is a great idea, there may be some who think its OK if its for one part of a session, or an encounter, etc. Personally, I'd say that an ideal game would say "well, you can have the spotlight at ANY time, if you wanted it bad enough!" and then naturally make it easier to get in situations that match up with your archetype. So, a thief probably shines when sneaking around and stealing stuff, but the fighter might pull a super sweet move, if the player is REALLY sold on this being his moment. Now, as to if you can design a game that consistently does that... 5e probably isn't it, lol.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I was not able to open the archive but have found this a few places. I did not happen to see this when I posted the the OP but just came across this when reading about bounded accuracy. Not saying designers are always right either but found it interesting!

Also sorry for the formatting. It was wall of text so I tried to fix it and messed it up.

“This was described by Rodney Thompson in Legends & Lore (June 4th, 2012) on the Wizards of the Coast website. This is no longer available on their web site, so I quote from it here:”

The basic premise behind the bounded accuracy system is simple: we make no assumptions on the DM’s side of the game that the player’s attack and spell accuracy, or their defenses, increase as a result of gaining levels. Instead, we represent the difference in characters of various levels primarily through their hit points, the amount of damage they deal, and the various new abilities they have gained. Characters can fight tougher monsters not because they can finally hit them, but because their damage is sufficient to take a significant chunk out of the monster’s hit points; likewise, the character can now stand up to a few hits from that monster without being killed easily, thanks to the character’s increased hit points.

Furthermore, gaining levels grants the characters new capabilities, which go much farther toward making your character feel different than simple numerical increases.

Now, note that I said that we make no assumptions on the DM’s side of the game about increased accuracy and defenses. This does not mean that the players do not gain bonuses to accuracy and defenses. It does mean, however, that we do not need to make sure that characters advance on a set schedule, and we can let each class advance at its own appropriate pace. Thus, wizards don’t have to gain a +10 bonus to weapon attack rolls just for reaching a higher level in order to keep participating; if wizards never gain an accuracy bonus, they can still contribute just fine to the ongoing play experience.

This extends beyond simple attacks and damage. We also make the same assumptions about character ability modifiers and skill bonuses. Thus, our expected DCs do not scale automatically with level, and instead a DC is left to represent the fixed value of the difficulty of some task, not the difficulty of the task relative to level.

 

[James Gasik]

I had to read those quotes a few times to even attempt to grok what is being said here. It seems to be that "player characters will get better accuracy, but when exactly that occurs isn't really a concern for our design". Not sure what I think about that- so basically, at some point, a player will add +2 to attack, damage, and save DC's, but whether it occurs by level 8 or level 20 isn't planned for.

The only design benchmarks considered are damage and hit points? Strange...

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I had to read those quotes a few times to even attempt to grok what is being said here. It seems to be that "player characters will get better accuracy, but when exactly that occurs isn't really a concern for our design". Not sure what I think about that- so basically, at some point, a player will add +2 to attack, damage, and save DC's, but whether it occurs by level 8 or level 20 isn't planned for.

The only design benchmarks considered are damage and hit points? Strange...

I thought it very odd. But then read elsewhere that armor class goes up pretty slowly? Have not done any analysis on the truth of that.

Secondly, higher level characters are meant to find lower level creature as still a threat by design.

I have not generally played to supremely high level in 5e before we go in a new direction so only know mid level

 

[nevin]

Statistics facilitate success. Success, in general, is more desirable than failure. Hence, players will seek things that increase their success.

Statistics are not equivalent to interest. Most players are pretty confident they can play a character that is interesting. Low stats, high stats, middling stats, none of those really matter for whether you play an interesting character. Interesting-ness is much more a function of the interaction between player and DM, regardless of system.

It seems to me the error here is thinking that people want those higher numbers because it will make their characters more interesting. This is false. People want the higher numbers because they wish to succeed as often as they can. Whether the character is interesting is a completely separate question.

It's deeply frustrating to deal with people constantly treating optimization in the most reductive, dismissive, non-discussable way possible. It'd be really nice if folks would (a) have a more open mind about the motives behind optimization, and (b) didn't assume that literally absolutely 100% of people who care about optimization EXCLUSIVELY care about it and don't give a crap about ANYTHING else.

it's not that they don't care about anything else. It's that most of them care more about Optimization than anything else because it leads to more successful outcome. in versions prior to 5th a DM could hand out more magic items to the players that didn't and keep some semblance of equality now with attunement that option is greatly limited. Experienced DM's won't care they'll just tweak change etc. new DM's with mixed groups will hate the optimizers or the non optimizers because of the grumbling they cause.

 

[James Gasik]

But really, AC is kind of static as well. A heavy armor user can get 2 more AC once they can afford plate, so call that ~level 5. A medium or light armor user has to wait til level 8 (assuming 16 starting attribute) to get their +2 AC.

There's not a lot of AC boosts beyond that- you might get a Fighting Style for +1 AC, or something equivalent. Then you basically have to hold out for the DM giving you the opportunity for magic items to increase defense- which are also subject to the "bounded accuracy" design.

There's a sidebar in Xanathar's that makes it pretty evident that the developers assume players will get magic weapons at some point, but not exactly when. Which I find amusing, given that magic items are optional content, and the DMG doesn't really give much guidance about when a player should/could expect a magic weapon. In some games, they might never get such!

I assume magic armor and other defensive items fall into this same philosophy, where they are assumed to appear, but aren't specifically designed for.

Let the DM beware, I suppose. "Oh what's that, you have an Eldritch Knight in your game with a Staff of Power, a +3 Shield, +3 Plate, a Cloak of Displacement, and the Defensive Fighting Style for AC 29 and all enemies have disadvantage to attack? Wow, good luck figuring that out, lol!"

 

[EzekielRaiden]

it's not that they don't care about anything else. It's that most of them care more about Optimization than anything else because it leads to more successful outcome.

I assert that this is a hasty generalization, one that contributes to frustrating and unproductive shouting matches, rather than actual discussion.

in versions prior to 5th a DM could hand out more magic items to the players that didn't and keep some semblance of equality now with attunement that option is greatly limited. Experienced DM's won't care they'll just tweak change etc.

You can design systems that make such "tweaking" only necessary for edge cases, rather than a constant "it has to happen in every game, frequently, with only intuition as your guide."

new DM's with mixed groups will hate the optimizers or the non optimizers because of the grumbling they cause.

One of the greatest failings of 5e, indeed one of the few failings I consider to be utterly objective, completely unrelated to what I prefer games to be designed for and instead an outright "this should never have happened" problem, is that it is just really, truly awful at providing DMs with tools and useful, concrete advice. This extends beyond the books themselves and to the community at large; for several years after release, the most common response to any thread or reddit post of someone asking a rules-related question was either "you're the DM, you figure it out" or "ask your DM, it's their job to know." Both of these answers were, of course, completely useless every time it was a DM asking this question, and yet the people saying it would more often than not double down rather than, y'know, trying to build and teach.

So yeah. 5e was designed in such a way that optimization is still just as prevalent as it ever was, but DMs have fewer and less-obvious tools for addressing those problems, and the support and advice to help fresh-faced newbie DMs get into it simply not very good.

But I guess they had to avoid as many 4e-isms as they could, and "giving DMs really really good, effective advice and highly functional, flexible tools" is pretty clearly a 4e-ism.

 

[tetrasodium]

I assert that this is a hasty generalization, one that contributes to frustrating and unproductive shouting matches, rather than actual discussion.


You can design systems that make such "tweaking" only necessary for edge cases, rather than a constant "it has to happen in every game, frequently, with only intuition as your guide."


One of the greatest failings of 5e, indeed one of the few failings I consider to be utterly objective, completely unrelated to what I prefer games to be designed for and instead an outright "this should never have happened" problem, is that it is just really, truly awful at providing DMs with tools and useful, concrete advice. This extends beyond the books themselves and to the community at large; for several years after release, the most common response to any thread or reddit post of someone asking a rules-related question was either "you're the DM, you figure it out" or "ask your DM, it's their job to know." Both of these answers were, of course, completely useless every time it was a DM asking this question, and yet the people saying it would more often than not double down rather than, y'know, trying to build and teach.

So yeah. 5e was designed in such a way that optimization is still just as prevalent as it ever was, but DMs have fewer and less-obvious tools for addressing those problems, and the support and advice to help fresh-faced newbie DMs get into it simply not very good.

But I guess they had to avoid as many 4e-isms as they could, and "giving DMs really really good, effective advice and highly functional, flexible tools" is pretty clearly a 4e-ism.

It goes one step further on that bolded bit by lowering & outright removing any hurdles a player might face in trying to optimize around any effort at addressing problems from the gm.

 

[Remathilis]

That's not what the metagame or meta for short is. That's just optimisation.

The metagame or meta for short is the game beyond the mechanics of the game. It's looking at what the other players are doing and using that to influence your plans. It says that if most of your possible opponent's are going rock to be paper even if the paper options in theory have a lower DPS - but the advantage over rock counteracts that.

Metagaming is however a bit of a dirty word in RPG circles and the nearest thing most groups have to a meta is to turn up e.g. with waterbreathing and swim speeds in a pirate campaign.

As mentioned above, THE Meta is a term used in gaming to describe the top tier strategies and builds of a certain game, including those not necessarily what the designers intended. For example, a certain deck in Magic the Gathering might lock out a bunch of otherwise competitive decks by being able to stop their main strategy every time. Thus, those decks must evolve to The Meta that there is a good chance that the deck will be played by an opponent and thus they will lose if they do, by attempting to neutralize the Meta deck. The same is true for cooperative games like MMOs: high level endgame content groups often require certain sets and strategies to be used to maximize success rates. It could also include utilizing mechanics the game didn't intend but isn't exactly cheating: wave-dashing, animation cancelling, unintended synergies, etc.

I think it's important to accept that for some people doing that is a big part of their gameplay fun. THEN after accepting it to design so those players can have it and other deeper/more nuanced styles of optimization bred gameplay have room to flourish in the other 5 stats(or other areas) for players who find fun in those areas instead. Some editions do that better than other editions.

I'm not saying it's bad per se, in any sort of competitive content, it's a necessity. My point was to suggest that D&D is unique because unlike other games, the Meta can be set by the DM or adjusted on the fly. You can't control what a raid's mechanics in a game are or what decks you'll face in a Magic tournament, but your DM can control for that, and barring a few exceptions like Organized Play, Meta adherence isn't as necessary as it is in other games. You can play to the best Meta in D&D, but it's less detrimental than in other games if you don't.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

My point was to suggest that D&D is unique because unlike other games, the Meta can be set by the DM or adjusted on the fly. You can't control what a raid's mechanics in a game are or what decks you'll face in a Magic tournament, but your DM can control for that, and barring a few exceptions like Organized Play, Meta adherence isn't as necessary as it is in other games. You can play to the best Meta in D&D, but it's less detrimental than in other games if you don't.

The main issue here is...actually doing this is hard. Like, one of the hardest problems in game design. Creating an environment that is strategically deep and choice-rich is extremely difficult. The vast majority of the time, you will by accident create a dominant strategy, even when you don't want to. This issue will only be exacerbated if the game's systems are heavy on obfuscation, doubly so if the game is lacking in solid, comprehensive DM tools and advice.

The formal design term for this situation is "asymmetrical design," though some folks like to use the incredibly misleading term "dynamic imbalance" instead. ("Dynamic imbalance" is not actually better if it is imbalanced; instead it is better if it is balanced in such a way that it leads to transitive loops and non-trivial comparisons, aka, balance within an asymmetrical system, rather than imbalance in a symmetrical system.) And asymmetrical design is hard! That's why few games go for absolute asymmetry, and instead leverage overall symmetry (e.g. 9th level spellcasters are all highly symmetrical overall) augmented with chosen asymmetry.

That's the heart of the "I pay designers to design, not so that I must then re-design their work all the time" criticism of 5e. Every airplane requires some adjustments in flight, that's fine; what is not fine is having to play the equivalent of an F-117 Nighthawk where it can ONLY fly because of constant, continuous fly-by-wire adjustment.