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[+] Ways to fix the caster / non-caster gap
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<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9155365" data-attributes="member: 6877472"><p>I think the reason we don't see adventures with more emphasis on survival and exploration isn't hard to understand. When writing a prepackaged adventure, you have no idea what the party you're writing for is capable of. Do they have the skills to deal with a survival challenge? </p><p></p><p>You can't know, so any survival challenges you put into the adventure have to be softballs, because if you make an adventure that stops halfway through because nobody can bypass an obstacle- that's going to get you a lot of bad reviews and terrible sales.</p><p></p><p>I've seen this concept in some video games. The term I've heard used is "manageable difficulty". You come across a boss, and at first glance, it seems hard. If you have mastery of the game and good reflexes and pattern recognition skills, you can figure out how to win in fairly short order.</p><p></p><p>However, not all of your consumers are built that way. If they run into a challenge that they can't bypass, they'll ragequit and do something else. So your boss has blind spots. There are potential strategies that can be used that it can't handle well. Or maybe you just grind and collect consumables and just brute force your way through it- either way, you can get past the challenge even if you lack the ability to do it with style.</p><p></p><p>That's how these official adventures are made- you don't need the right team with the right abilities to win. But if you do, you make it look easy. And if the game is too easy, your consumers might reject it the same way they do if it's too hard.</p><p></p><p>But there's one thing most D&D characters who are built in the proscribed manner by the PHB's guidance can do. They can brute force their way through combats. Hence, most of what you see in these adventures is combat with occasional sprinkles of social encounters and exploration challenges for flavor, but none of these are brick walls- you just have to find a different way to get past them.</p><p></p><p>And heck, a skilled group might even be able to bypass combats. An optimized team might blast through them, but that's exactly what they want, otherwise they wouldn't be optimizing- you don't set out to be the best to feel like a chump struggling to get by, after all.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 9155365, member: 6877472"] I think the reason we don't see adventures with more emphasis on survival and exploration isn't hard to understand. When writing a prepackaged adventure, you have no idea what the party you're writing for is capable of. Do they have the skills to deal with a survival challenge? You can't know, so any survival challenges you put into the adventure have to be softballs, because if you make an adventure that stops halfway through because nobody can bypass an obstacle- that's going to get you a lot of bad reviews and terrible sales. I've seen this concept in some video games. The term I've heard used is "manageable difficulty". You come across a boss, and at first glance, it seems hard. If you have mastery of the game and good reflexes and pattern recognition skills, you can figure out how to win in fairly short order. However, not all of your consumers are built that way. If they run into a challenge that they can't bypass, they'll ragequit and do something else. So your boss has blind spots. There are potential strategies that can be used that it can't handle well. Or maybe you just grind and collect consumables and just brute force your way through it- either way, you can get past the challenge even if you lack the ability to do it with style. That's how these official adventures are made- you don't need the right team with the right abilities to win. But if you do, you make it look easy. And if the game is too easy, your consumers might reject it the same way they do if it's too hard. But there's one thing most D&D characters who are built in the proscribed manner by the PHB's guidance can do. They can brute force their way through combats. Hence, most of what you see in these adventures is combat with occasional sprinkles of social encounters and exploration challenges for flavor, but none of these are brick walls- you just have to find a different way to get past them. And heck, a skilled group might even be able to bypass combats. An optimized team might blast through them, but that's exactly what they want, otherwise they wouldn't be optimizing- you don't set out to be the best to feel like a chump struggling to get by, after all. [/QUOTE]
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[+] Ways to fix the caster / non-caster gap
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