D&D 5E What does balance mean to you?

[hawkeyefan]

I think perhaps it comes down to left brain/right brain. Right brainers are much more quick than left brainers to throw up their hands and sling out the "its all up to your individual playstyle and DM choices" flag. Left brainers see balance achievable through examining norms and averages across playstyles and settings - we see it as challenging and complicated to do so, but definitively achievable. Right brainers see such endeavors as subjective folly.

So I doubt we will ever come to consensus here, and that's ok. But what I see as troubling here, as I percive it, is the lack of budge on the part of the right brainers - a sort of "give no quarter, we are on top in this edition" mentality as I see it. I suspect its unintentional - but I think a wiullingness to share here would go a long way. And to be clear, waving the DM wand is not giving ground - that is a definitively unattractive option to us.

I don't think it's a left brain/right brain thing, if I understand what you're going for....I think there are creative folks and there are analytical folks, and then there are the majority which possess elements of both.

I don't think that people are challenging your criticisms so much as the way that you express them, and how you want them to be addressed. You prefer linear, combat based adventures....and that's cool. But that's a deviation from what's expected in the design of the game, so it may require some adjustment to make the rules as designed work for you.

Your entire argument is based on a faulty division of games into black and white genres. You define D and D to be a certain type of game (RPG only), then use that definition to cordon off your turf. Just because the current edition favors a particular genre (RPG) at the expense of another of its traditional genres (miniatures), does not change what D and D is. D and D is 40 years of change, and there are many, many genres of players represented within its fan base, all of whom deserve a place at the table. You may choose to be inclusive and flexible or, as I say, cordon off your turf and alienate fellow fans.

I think this edition is the most open to an array of playstyles and approaches to the game. However, I think it achieves that be being incredibly moddable. So as the most easily changed version of the game, it can most easily accommodate a variety of playstyles.

I don't think this edition embraces roleplaying over combat, necessarily. I think they are given pretty equal weight. There are less rules for tactical mini battles than some prior editions, but those are pretty easily added. In my home game, we use minis more often than not, and I don't think doing so is all that difficult.

Off topic, I have to hand it to you hawkeye (not sure how to make that a hyperlink thingee), while you are often as demonstrative in your opinions and posts as the rest of us, you seem to carefully and adroitly avoid the escalation of rancor many of us seem to struggle with. You are an inspiration - well done sir !

Well I just had to retype my original replies because of this.....

Kidding! Thanks! I don't always manage to remain unsnarky, but I try.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Nod. I see it more as a minimal standard, a game needs to be balanced to some degree to be playable, and can always be better-balanced, but /just/ being well-balanced won't make a game successful. It is one of the things that can be directly addressed with design, though, so it's well worth trying for, and every edition of D&D, even 3rd with it's 'rewards for system mastery,' made some attempts.

And, of course, for D&D, in particular, being too-well balanced can be controversial.

Sure, balance should be considered in a variety of ways. I just don't think balance is the end, so much as a means.

Yep, that doesn't make it invalid or not worth considering or acknowledging.

Sure....I didn't think I said it wasn't worth considering. I think I even acknowledged a couple of times I think it's a good idea.

I mean, there are other ideas out there using the label of 'balance,' that doesn't mean that the idea of maximizing viable/meaningful choices is invalid just because the idea of "making everything identical" is also trying to claim the same jargon.

Sure, but that's what makes the term so difficult is my point. I can understand it's easier to type "balance" rather than "maximizing viable/meaningful choices" and I am capable of tracking folks' opinions over the course of a discussion at least partially, so I get where you are coming from....but then every time a new person jumps into the conversation, and they mention "balance", then we have to establish a new definitaion and pair it with a new poster, and so on.

Does it? I mean, people, often not even fans, have long complained about D&D, and each edition has addressed some of those complaints. There was controversy in the 80s, laughably, about D&D being 'Satanic' but, Demons & Devils were re-named for 2e. Vancian 'memorization' was roundly criticized for a long time, and it was re-imagined as 'preparation,' and is now spontaneous slot-casting. People complained about 3.x 'static combats' and 'rocket tag' and we got 4e 'dynamic,' 'set piece' combats, which people complained about, so we have 5e 'fast combats.'

The expectation that whining loud and long about D&D will eventually provoke a new edition, with new problems, certainly seems at least empirically justified.

It is /particularly/ overt, in 5e, that DMs can just jump in and fix things up, but it was how we traditionally ran D&D back in the day, it was explicit in 3.0 as 'Rule 0,' however thoroughly the community ignored it, and it's really not possible for a game to prevent such tinkering, even where it might not be 'needed.'

So, OT1H, I agree, and don't blame designers for designing 5e as a 'starting place' from which the DM creates the game he wants, rather than being plug-and-play, since that was the only way they'd come close to meeting any of their pie-in-the-sky 'big tent' goals. But, OTOH, I also find the desire to evaluate, judge, and bitch about the current state of the game understandable.
At least, this time around, it's hasn't sunk to the level of edition warring.

I suppose. For me, my first attempt for anything in the game that I don't like is to try and fix it myself, not ask/tell WotC to fix it for me. And for the edition of D&D that I enjoyed the least, I can tell you why, but even while doing so, I understood the approach that edition was going for, and I wouldn't have expected to see them implement things that seem contrary to that approach.

So with 5E, I see one of the key design elements is to make things easy to modify. They're saying "here's this system, and here's how you can change it to suit your specific needs." So when people ignore that element of the design and instead call for permanent changes to be made that run counter to the designers' intent....yeah, I think that's safe to cal "odd".

Not surprising, maybe, but odd.

 

[iserith]

Come on bud, sending us off to play another edition is not cool...

Except I didn't.

But from a practical standpoint, playing a game that is more in line with your preferences seems the best solution. I play both D&D 4e and D&D 5e, depending on what I'm going for. My "playstyle" changes to what I think best fits the game.

Comrade please examine your behavior as well - you edited out a snippet from a larger text, that, when taken out of context, appears snarky. Seems argumentative on your part.

The additional context around what I quoted doesn't excuse comparing others to predatory animals.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I think it's necessarily a sign of good encounter design that the PCs, by application of their skill, can trivialize a challenge that, by the numbers, is Hard, Deadly, etc. Or the reverse - an easier encounter is made harder because of poor application of skill. It means that the players' decisions matter which is to me a good thing.

An encounter like the one you describe is good. I totally agree that rewarding good tactics makes the game more fun. Having all of the encounters like that is boring. An interesting game has a variety of types of encounter.

 

[iserith]

An encounter like the one you describe is good. I totally agree that rewarding good tactics makes the game more fun. Having all of the encounters like that is boring. An interesting game has a variety of types of encounter.

Do you mean that some challenges should maintain a certain level of difficulty no matter what decisions the players make?

 

[shoak1]

Do you mean that some challenges should maintain a certain level of difficulty no matter what decisions the players make?

uhhhh thats not my quote

 

[Corwin]

I suppose you could get to the point where there is almost no need for a DM other than to read the module and narrate to the players, and to roll dice for the monsters....

Hey! Don't knock Hero Quest! I love that game!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Sure, balance should be considered in a variety of ways. I just don't think balance is the end, so much as a means.

Exactly. Balance is just a quality that games have to varying degrees.
It's placing in a qualifying round, not crossing the finish line in the finals.

Sure, but that's what makes the term so difficult is my point. I can understand it's easier to type "balance" rather than "maximizing viable/meaningful choices" ....but then every time a new person jumps into the conversation, and they mention "balance", then we have to establish a new definitaion and pair it with a new poster, and so on.

Meh, other terms get hammered out. I'd be happy to use a different term. I do get tired of the retreat into subjectivity and 'opinion' cards being played to shut down discussion, though.

So with 5E, I see one of the key design elements is to make things easy to modify.

The genius of it is deeper than that.

3e wasn't exactly a lot harder to modify than 5e is, in the technical sense of the design chops needed to come up with a variant that'd make some aspect of it a little better, or a little more in line with the campaign you want to run. The big difference is in the likelihood your players would lynch you for doing it. OK, literally lynch was pretty unlikely, I'm sure it never actually happened. Point is, the acceptance of variants & house-rules was at an all-time low in the 3.x era, it was all about the RAW, even though 3e, up front, presented Rule 0 as the no-law of the land, just like freak'n Storyteller's 'Golden Rule.' Over years, a few variants of 3e emerged, E6 and 'Core Only,' being the two that leap to my mind, both merely limit the game to a sub-set of itself, and both are nailed down, up-front, so the campaign still respects a RAW, just a different RAW.

5e doesn't just give Rule 0 lip-service early on and forget about it, WotC doesn't just mouth 'Rulings not Rules' as a platitude on-line. The central role of the DM in every facet of the game from the core resolution mechanic on out is relentlessly emphasized. It creates an expectation that the DM /will/ be changing things, not merely that he is able to.
And, you can't easily ignore it. The game /needs/ the DM there, making rulings, to work. There's no D&D without the DM.

They're saying "here's this system, and here's how you can change it to suit your specific needs." So when people ignore that element of the design and instead call for permanent changes to be made that run counter to the designers' intent....yeah, I think that's safe to cal "odd".

Not surprising, maybe, but odd.

Heh, OK, for that definition of 'odd.'

This thread, though, is just discussing balance (and, I suppose, the lack thereof in 5e, specifically), rather than demanding WotC-enforced solutions to the 'problem.'

Now, over in another thread, one of the board Cptns, is going on about how WotC just has to change things to 'fix' the resting elephant problem, and the solution I think he's advocating for (or maybe I'm projecting, because it's one I've used myself), is for the DM to rule whether and how often rests can be taken, and how long they take, based on the nature of the campaign at that point. (ie you explore a densly-populated dungeon, 'short' rests are genuinely short, taking minutes as you catch your breath but continue running on adrenaline; while long rests require returning to the safety of town; or you trek across a desert, you can benefit from sleeping 6+hrs once per day but the benefit is only that of a short rest, long rests are available only if you spend a full day in an oasis)
Thing is, that's not counter to the intent of 5e design, at all. It's rulings-over-rules, just like the core resolution mechanic.

I guess the takeaway on that digression is that there's some reflexive defensiveness against any criticism.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Meh, other terms get hammered out. I'd be happy to use a different term. I do get tired of the retreat into subjectivity and 'opinion' cards being played to shut down discussion, though.

Well I wasn't trying to shut down discussion. Just trying to be clear about what is actually being discussed!

The genius of it is deeper than that.

3e wasn't exactly a lot harder to modify than 5e is, in the technical sense of the design chops needed to come up with a variant that'd make some aspect of it a little better, or a little more in line with the campaign you want to run. The big difference is in the likelihood your players would lynch you for doing it. OK, literally lynch was pretty unlikely, I'm sure it never actually happened. Point is, the acceptance of variants & house-rules was at an all-time low in the 3.x era, it was all about the RAW, even though 3e, up front, presented Rule 0 as the no-law of the land, just like freak'n Storyteller's 'Golden Rule.' Over years, a few variants of 3e emerged, E6 and 'Core Only,' being the two that leap to my mind, both merely limit the game to a sub-set of itself, and both are nailed down, up-front, so the campaign still respects a RAW, just a different RAW.

5e doesn't just give Rule 0 lip-service early on and forget about it, WotC doesn't just mouth 'Rulings not Rules' as a platitude on-line. The central role of the DM in every facet of the game from the core resolution mechanic on out is relentlessly emphasized. It creates an expectation that the DM /will/ be changing things, not merely that he is able to.
And, you can't easily ignore it. The game /needs/ the DM there, making rulings, to work. There's D&D with the DM.

Exactly...the Rulings Not Rules and focus on DM judgment and in modifying the rules....all of that speaks to the design approach. More so than any other edition of the game, in my opinion.

Heh, OK, for that definition of 'odd.'

This thread, though, is just discussing balance (and, I suppose, the lack thereof in 5e, specifically), rather than demanding WotC-enforced solutions to the 'problem.'

Now, over in another thread, one of the board Cptns, is going on about how WotC just has to change things to 'fix' the resting elephant problem, and the solution I think he's advocating for (or maybe I'm projecting, because it's one I've used myself), is for the DM to rule whether and how often rests can be taken, and how long they take, based on the nature of the campaign at that point. (ie you explore a densly-populated dungeon, 'short' rests are genuinely short, taking minutes as you catch your breath but continue running on adrenaline; while long rests require returning to the safety of town; or you trek across a desert, you can benefit from sleeping 6+hrs once per day but the benefit is only that of a short rest, long rests are available only if you spend a full day in an oasis)
Thing is, that's not counter to the intent of 5e design, at all. It's rulings-over-rules, just like the core resolution mechanic.

I guess the takeaway on that digression is that there's some reflexive defensiveness against any criticism.

Sure, and I get that. I think fans of something are more likely to defend it in a discussion. that's not to say that fans of 5E cannot admit its flaws.

I also suppose that sometimes the conversations from thread to thread can affect each other. In many of my recent comments on this thread, I was addressing one poster's desire for WotC to fundamentally change their design approach....but this also kind of reminds me of the discussion you're talking about, where I think similar expectations have been voiced, and to which my reply is usually "they're not going to change it, expecially since they have given you the tools to change it yourself".....so I guess sometimes that becomes my rote answer for such seemingly similar requests.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Exactly...the Rulings Not Rules and focus on DM judgment and in modifying the rules....all of that speaks to the design approach. More so than any other edition of the game, in my opinion.

I the sense that it's more like an end unto itself than a fall-back position this time around. Classic D&D was little bi-polar about variants - sometimes EGG would lecture you to be very cautious in messing with a swath of the game, and others urging you to make it your own. 3e's acknowledgement of the DMs prerogative with rule 0 was almost dismissive.

...where I think similar expectations have been voiced, and to which my reply is usually "they're not going to change it, expecially since they have given you the tools to change it yourself".....so I guess sometimes that becomes my rote answer for such seemingly similar requests.

I go there myself, a lot. 5e's greatest strength is the DM running it.