D&D 5E What is balance to you, and why do you care (or don't)?

[James Gasik]

Sounds good in theory. In practice, though, at many tables that player would soon get flayed sideways for playing a sub-optimal character and-or in a sub-optimal way; and then what do you do?

If they're going to get flayed for being sub-optimal by jerk players, then they'd get flayed for being a Champion over a better subclass anyways, I would think.

 

[James Gasik]

The fact that all these house rules are not the same for everyone simply proves my point. How many house rules did you have in 1ed and how many were answering the same problems as the table next to you? In my case, the shared house rules were 5 pages long, and these were at about 12 or so different tables. All these rules were "needed" to have a consistent gaming experience across all tables as many players were going from one table to the others. Some rules (initiative and surprises in cases of duergar and rangers...) were even given pre-tournament simply because there were so many ways to "correct" the problem...

Most house rules in 5ed are for "preferences" and not for "conveniences and necessities" as was the case for 1ed. But don't you dare say anything against 1ed.

Worth noting that many groups didn't even understand all the rules of AD&D and so their house rules weren't always so much rulings as misunderstandings!

I was always that nerd who read the rulebooks cover to cover and was constantly being like "oh hey, there's a rule for that!". I thought I was being helpful, but I had more than one DM pull me aside over the years and say "we don't play it that way".

Worse was when people would argue with me and say "no such rule exists and I would know because I've been playing for X years". Then I'd show them the text and they'd throw a fit.

Like the time I was playing with a 2e group who thought you got multiple attacks with both weapons if you dual wielded...as if two weapon fighting wasn't already busted in 2e!

I showed them the rule, they looked at it, and continued to play with their hasted double scimitar of speed characters with 6 attacks per round while hasted (they were all Elves* of course, so who misses a few years of life when you can live for centuries?).

*a certain subrace that foolishly was granted the ability to have 19 Strength and Dexterity by a certain Book of Elves, no less...

 

[Helldritch]

It would be interesting, here or in another thread, to try and determine just how much general across-the-board overlap there was. I suspect there was quite a lot, and we'd find much common ground on:

You might be surprised...

--- dropping weapon-vs-armour-type rules

Kept as they were by the correction in the Dragon Magazine.

--- relaxing or eliminating level limits for demihumans

We enhanced them by two as if the demihumans were single classed. Nothing more. One thing of note, for dwarves we interchanged limitation for fighter and thieves...

--- dropping the gender-based stat differences (for Humans for sure, maybe for some demihumans also)

Done that immediately. One of my group was entirely girls and they would have shredded me apart for not doing so. And I agreed with them wholeheartedly.

--- dropping weapon-speed rules (and-or overhauling the entire initiative system)

This one was modified too. But weapon speed were not modified. Only the initiative itself as it was quite hard to understand...

--- addition of crit and-or fumble tables and rules

Done that and dropped it. Crit and fumble tables hurted more the players than the foes.

--- not giving xp for treasure

Never dropped that one.

--- ignoring a lot of what came out in UA.

We did that too. Especially the character creation method that derailed the game sooooo much by making paladins both a common class and a way too strong class by making it a subclass of the cavalier...

 

[Willie the Duck]

Like the time I was playing with a 2e group who thought you got multiple attacks with both weapons if you dual wielded...as if two weapon fighting wasn't already busted in 2e!
I showed them the rule, they looked at it, and continued to play with their hasted double scimitar of speed characters with 6 attacks per round while hasted (they were all Elves* of course, so who misses a few years of life when you can live for centuries?).
*a certain subrace that foolishly was granted the ability to have 19 Strength and Dexterity by a certain Book of Elves, no less...

If it was 2e, when they were hasted, they aged a year and thus had to make a system shock roll or die.

 

[Helldritch]

Worth noting that many groups didn't even understand all the rules of AD&D and so their house rules weren't always so much rulings as misunderstandings!

I was always that nerd who read the rulebooks cover to cover and was constantly being like "oh hey, there's a rule for that!". I thought I was being helpful, but I had more than one DM pull me aside over the years and say "we don't play it that way".

Worse was when people would argue with me and say "no such rule exists and I would know because I've been playing for X years". Then I'd show them the text and they'd throw a fit.

Like the time I was playing with a 2e group who thought you got multiple attacks with both weapons if you dual wielded...as if two weapon fighting wasn't already busted in 2e!

I showed them the rule, they looked at it, and continued to play with their hasted double scimitar of speed characters with 6 attacks per round while hasted (they were all Elves* of course, so who misses a few years of life when you can live for centuries?).

*a certain subrace that foolishly was granted the ability to have 19 Strength and Dexterity by a certain Book of Elves, no less...

Ho boy do I know the feeling.
One popular DM was barely able to read english and made it so that feign death could be cast on unwilling targets...
When I showed them the translation, they accused me of being dishonnest and went to an english teacher that confirmed what I had said. Needless to say that some of his players were mad at me as a feign death was even more powerful than power word stun... No one reads the DMG, but a lot misread the rules descriptions in the PHB as well...

 

[Lanefan]

If they're going to get flayed for being sub-optimal by jerk players, then they'd get flayed for being a Champion over a better subclass anyways, I would think.

I'm not so sure about this.

I think the reaction would tend to be quite different to the following two situations:

--- a player playing a sub-optimal class (here, the Champion) but trying to make the best of it; or
--- a player playing any class in an intentionally sub-optimal manner in order to simplify it.

The latter is what was suggested by someone upthread. I don't think it's a viable solution in the wild.

 

[Lanefan]

If it was 2e, when they were hasted, they aged a year and thus had to make a system shock roll or die.

I fixed Haste by making the aging effect work the same for everyone i.e. the target ages what would be the equivalent of a Human year in that species' lifespan. This means Elves (in my game anyway) age about 8-12 years depending on sub-race while a Part-Orc might only age 8 months or so.

I dropped the SSS roll requirement, though.

 

[James Gasik]

If it was 2e, when they were hasted, they aged a year and thus had to make a system shock roll or die.

You know, I didn't even ask about that. Bet if I did, I'd have gotten a "we don't play it that way" response.

 

[James Gasik]

I fixed Haste by making the aging effect work the same for everyone i.e. the target ages what would be the equivalent of a Human year in that species' lifespan. This means Elves (in my game anyway) age about 8-12 years depending on sub-race while a Part-Orc might only age 8 months or so.

I dropped the SSS roll requirement, though.

This is probably the fairest ruling, which of course, would reset the balance quo and make nobody cast haste- no sane person would risk it!

 

[James Gasik]

I'm not so sure about this.

I think the reaction would tend to be quite different to the following two situations:

--- a player playing a sub-optimal class (here, the Champion) but trying to make the best of it; or
--- a player playing any class in an intentionally sub-optimal manner in order to simplify it.

The latter is what was suggested by someone upthread. I don't think it's a viable solution in the wild.

I don't know, I've run into some jerks over the years. "OMG, why are you playing X race with X class, don't you know Y race and Y class is a superior build?"

Mind you, those jerks don't stick around long, when their "perfectly optimized builds" fail to perform in a real game. I got a chuckle recently at treantmonk's video about darkness and devil's sight- I saw that problem coming a mile away when I first saw the 5e Warlock and people were like "permanent advantage/disadvantage! It's broken!".