Unintended(?) Consequence of No More X-Mas Tree?

[ruleslawyer]

Define what "balance" means to you.

In this context, the ability to predictably match a PC party to encounters of a given CR/EL.

Incidentally, that was a sincere question, not a challenge to your proposition. I agree that the wealth-by-level tables (as with CR) are a guideline, but deviating from guidelines can lead to some cascading issues, is all.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I maintain that this statement is untrue.

It is easy to run low magic at high levels in 3.X with a one simple houserule: Spellcasters gain normal level benefits at every second level. Thus, a houseruled 4th level wizard is equivalent to a 2nd level wizard. Don't like it? Don't play a spellcaster. After all, reducing the number of spellcasters is one of the necessary things to create a lower-magic game.

Because the higher level PCs are more vulnerable, lower-CR mooks are still a credible threat, and can be used as antagonists. Because the PCs are fighting lower-CR mooks, if you use the normal XP table, as they gain levels their rate of level gain with decline. This doesn't require a rules change from the DM; just some common sense.

RC

Unfortunately, it also creates a lot of problems. One being that it is absolutely no fun to play a wizard because you spend most of your levels gaining nothing at all and being fairly weak compared to everyone else.

Everyone will then play clerics or druids or sorcerers unless you make the same changes to all of them. Assuming you do, then you still have the problem with high caster levels meaning that even low level magic is overpowered in a low magic world. Unless you are halving their caster level as well.

Even assuming that, you have a problem with item creation feats still allowing you to create unbalancing items in such a world with no way to defend against them. Unless you get rid of item creation feats.

If you do all of that, you have a relatively low magic world. Likely none of the players will play any classes that cast spells. However, even if they do, you now have a severe disconnect between healing and hit points. It would take almost the entire spell list of a 15th level cleric (who was only caster level 7 with 4th level spells) to cure a 15th level barbarian from 1 hit point to full.

Plus, it creates a situation where PCs are in a high damage situations. The monsters they fight still get better attack bonuses, but without magic bonuses to AC, their defense never gets better. So, they just get hit more often with almost no healing.

Unless you never use creatures above CR 5 or so, when it is assumed the PCs have almost no magic and the ACs and attacks of the enemies are about right for a group with nonmagical armor and minimal buffs. But that means that the average fighter can power attack for a good 5 or 10 and still hit with all his attacks and kill every enemy in one hit. It would be kind of boring I would think.

 

[Njall]

Define what "balance" means to you.

It depends. In the context of this game, I'd say that "balance" doesn't mean "2 minutes of combat and 6 days of rest", for example. Or that it doesn't mean "make a DC 31 fort Saving throw or die. Too bad you'd only succeed on a 20, even though it's your good saving throw.".
In other words, both pc and monsters should have a decent % to overcome what the rules deem a commensurate challenge, and the PCs should be rewarded accordingly if they do.

Then you know it works.

Sure, that's because I've being saying for 2 pages that it doesn't work. At all.
And , you know, provided some actual reasons ( that have not been addressed ) to back up that statement?

Show me how AC compares to BAB at high level, without magic. Show me how saving throws compare to DCs. Show me how you can run a mid to high level campaign without healing magic being common and without spending 3 days in bed after every combat, and you might have a point. 'till now, you've only provided anedoctal evidence and assumptions, as opposed to maths.

Can you quote that somewhere?

Because, in every thread about 3e ever, whenever anyone ever suggested that there was a problem with DMs being forced to follow CR or the Wealth Per Level Guidelines, the immediate and overwhelming response has always been that these are guidelines.

What changed now?

RC

Why not? Crack open your DMG, page 135:

"The baseline campaign for the D&D game uses this "wealth by level" guideline as a basis for balance in adventures."

To me this reads a lot like "we call it a guideline, but you'd better follow it or balance is thrown out of whack".
Sure, we can Rule 0 just about anything in this game. This doesn't mean that it's necessarily a good idea ( or, in this case, that it will work anyway)

 

[Andor]

Again, D&D doesn't work without healing magic and magic items, at least at mid-high levels. If you tried to play LotR with D&D, the party would probably need 5/6 days of rest just to regain the lost HP after just about any fight.

Can you take a D&D party, strip it of magic items and call them "The Fellowship of the Ring"? Sure. Would it make for a fun game? Depends on the players and the DM.
Would it be balanced from a rules standpoint? Probably not.

And that wouldn't feel like the LotR to you? If you'll recall any wounded character in the books was laid up for days to weeks even with magical healing.

And if the game is fun for the GM and players... What further goal is there? I'm not sure what you mean by rules balance in this example, nor do I see what purpose it would serve if the players are happy with the flavor of the game.

 

[Njall]

And that wouldn't feel like the LotR to you? If you'll recall any wounded character in the books was laid up for days to weeks even with magical healing.

Yeah. Once. In an adventure.
The only character that had to rest in a bed for weeks was Frodo, BTW.
And it's not like he had to rest in bed after every minor combat.
And I could argue that he had to because of the poison more than mere HP damage.
The game is called "Dungeons and Dragons", not "Bandages and Pillows", you know? Else, we'd have "Chapter 7: Bedrest" after "Chapter 6: Combat" in the PHB

And if the game is fun for the GM and players... What further goal is there? I'm not sure what you mean by rules balance in this example, nor do I see what purpose it would serve if the players are happy with the flavor of the game.

Resting in bed might be fun, but it's not the focus of the game. If people play D&D they expect, you know, to explore dungeons and fight dragons.
You may play chess physically throwing pawns at the king and have fun, but it doesn't mean that the game is "working".

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Balance can refer to several aspects of the game:

Some of these aspects are directly or indirectly linked to each other.

"Spotlight Balance":
Each character gets an equal amount of spotlight in an adventure or encounter. (This can mean "number of actions per combat round" on a very low level, but it can also be "the ratio of combat encounters fighters and wizards usually excel in to the ratio of social encounters Rogues and Bards typically excel in").
Spotlight might sometimes be subjective. I think one of the most objective ways to measure is is to ask how much time each player gets to describe and act out his actions in table time.

"Party Balance"
The party as a whole is able to function in several situations. Party members contribute meaningful abilities that allow the party to work in different functions.
If party members can't do everything well, each party member must be able to contribute something meaningful to the party as a whole.

"Character Balance"
As a further aspect, if multiple party members have a similar part, neither of them is in general better or worse then the other taking that part.

"Combat Balance":
The party is able to fight against monsters designated as a challenge for them.

 

[Raven Crowking]

In this context, the ability to predictably match a PC party to encounters of a given CR/EL.

Well, then, I would say that no change to the rules could be "balanced" from that perspective. Indeed, I would argue that the rules themselves are not "balanced".

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Unfortunately, it also creates a lot of problems. One being that it is absolutely no fun to play a wizard because you spend most of your levels gaining nothing at all and being fairly weak compared to everyone else.

Everyone will then play clerics or druids or sorcerers unless you make the same changes to all of them.

Please note; I didn't say "wizards". I said "spellcasters". As soon as your character can cast a spell, the rule applies.

And, as the spellcaster can still do things no one else can, I believe that you will find that there are folks who still enjoy playing spellcasters. They just no longer become playable as "fighters in robes".

Regarding the magic level of the world, apart from the PCs that is set by the characters that the DM includes. It is really easy to simply not include a lot of spellcasting NPCs.

RC

 

[Brown Jenkin]

The only character that had to rest in a bed for weeks was Frodo, BTW.

And Faramir.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

To me this reads a lot like "we call it a guideline, but you'd better follow it or balance is thrown out of whack".
Sure, we can Rule 0 just about anything in this game. This doesn't mean that it's necessarily a good idea ( or, in this case, that it will work anyway)

Yeah, this is the thing a lot of people fail to take into account when they Rule 0 something out. The 3e rules were designed as a whole, and the the rules "talk" to each other way more than they did in 2nd or 1st. And I anticipate this becoming even more tightly integrated in 4th.

The idea is that if you want to create a balance (between different PCs, between the PCs and the enemies, between the PCs and their environment) you need to carefully control the numbers involved in the game.

The 1st and 2nd edition game design philosophy appeared to be closer to "design each rule by itself and see how they worked together afterwards." For instance:
1) Fighters, Paladins, and Ranger should be the best fighters, so lets give them the best THACO.
2) Since there is magic, people would make weapons that are magical, and +1 through +5 would be a good range.
3) This monster should have slightly tougher hide than a rhino and a rhino has an AC of x, so we'll make this one 1 lower.
4) It would make sense for people to make magic items that make you as strong as a giant. Giants have 20-25 strength, so the items give you that.

The 3rd Edition design appears to have started with the 2nd edition numbers as the BASIS for everything, but then proceeded to try to patch some of the "holes" in the system. For instance:
1) In 2nd Ed, some DMs were handing out +5 items at 3rd level, others +1 items at 20th level. It caused a lot of players to complain that monsters were WAY too easy or WAY too hard. Plus, DMs were complaining that they didn't know what were appropriate magic items for different level characters. So, we create the wealth by level guidelines and price out the items so they can only be afforded at the levels they are supposed to be at.
2) In 2nd Ed, there were complaints that a fighter didn't need to have any strength at all since he could buy a belt of giant strength and make up for it, so we change it to a bonus instead of a set number.
3) People would stack large amounts of spells and magic items together, so we make bonus types so as to avoid over stacking of bonuses.

And the new rules they came up with were based on their new assumptions:
1) We know that the average 10th level fighter has a +3 weapon, a BAB of 10 and a strength of 22 (assuming starting at 16, getting two points by going up levels and getting a belt of giant strength +4), that gives +19 to hit. We want them to hit around 60% of the time, so we'll set the enemies AC at CR 10 to around 28. If we want an enemy to be hit more often, we lower the AC, if we want it to be hit less often, we raise it.
2) We know that PCs can fly around level 5 and therefore any written adventure will assume the PCs can find away around a pit easily around that level
3) The average fighter of level 10 has 94 hit points so it can survive 9 rounds if an enemy hits them for 10 damage a round. We can set the monster's hit points to enough that the group can kill it in 9 rounds and it will feel like a close call.
(and a bunch more)

It is the assumptions that they are talking about when they refer to rules that "talk to one another". If the magic items are removed from number 1, it decreases the fighter's chance to hit by 25% and his damage by around the same. If damage now goes down, it causes the assumption in number 3 to be wrong causing the fighter to die BEFORE the enemy(this is obviously a simplification as you actually have to find out the enemies rough chance to hit against the expected AC and factor into the equation about how much healing the fighter should expect each round, but rather deal with the complicated math, I'm just showing the concept behind it). The idea is: Change any of the assumptions, cause problems with other rules.

There weren't the assumptions (or at least, not nearly as many) in 1st and 2nd Edition. Balance was entirely left in the DMs hands rather than the rules. And there wasn't much balance in the rules themselves, so you couldn't do much to make it worse.

The problem is that 3rd Edition started with the numbers of 2nd Edition and just tried to patch the problems. It still had a lot of the problems caused by those 2nd Ed numbers.

What I think you'll see in 4th Ed is that they are starting to put a tighter reign on the numbers in order to fix the issues with 3rd. For instance:
1) Because all monsters were designed using monster levels and the equations were too variable, one creature would end up with an AC of 30 while another one with the same hit dice would end up with an AC of 14. So, we stop using an equation to figure out the numbers for monsters, we just set them to whatever we need.
2) Because of the differences in BAB amongst classes 1 class could hit every time while another one missed every time. We'll set the BABs to exactly the same.
3) Because of the variations on what magic items people bought or were offered by their DM, sometimes members of the same class at the same level would vary wildly in their to hit and damage at the exact same level. We change the equations so that the numbers work without any magic items at all levels and limit the bonuses that magic items can give so as not to vary it too much.

However, now that they've filled in a lot of the variables with static numbers or smaller amounts of variation, you'll find that all parts of the rules will talk to each other more often and with more certainty. Thus, it will be even harder to make changes to the rules without causing the house of cards to fall down.

It seems simple to change one thing and assume that it won't cause problems. And some games will not even notice the problems since they don't focus on that part of the rules. You might not notice that battles take 5 rounds to finish whereas for the normal group they take 2 rounds. And it might not matter if you fight less encounters per day and get more chances to rest. There is still, however, a ripple effect caused by a change to the wealth by level guidelines. The further away the PCs are from the charge the more of a ripple is created and the more things about the game you need to change to keep the game intact.