D&D General What Should Magic Be Able To Do, From a Gameplay Design Standpoint?

[Micah Sweet]

It is generally not "heroic", in the sense of a tale focused on the doing of great deeds and the people who do those deeds, to spend significant amounts of time on activities like:

• Ensuring you have enough food to eat, water to drink, etc. If doing so is in fact a stiff challenge, it portrays the characters as too feeble to be truly great, and instead barely scraping by. If it isn't a particularly difficult challenge, it instead feels like busy work, which isn't any more "doing great deeds"-y.
• Finding shelter against the elements on the regular, not just when specifically delving into harsh and unforgiving territory. This is a bit looser because bravely delving the depths is a pretty established heroic act, but again, if you're needing to put in major effort merely to potentially have any kind of place to sleep, that is certainly gritty, but it pulls away from the doing-great-deeds emphasis and toward the ordinary and plain. Less epic adventure, more barely-surviving hobo.
• Evading hostile denizens/wildlife. Some amount of "evade the wildlife" is perfectly fine; we sort of expect that, because smart heroes pick their battles and don't just throw themselves into danger willy-nilly. But when it becomes a "you MUST avoid conflicts you haven't won before they started", again it pulls away from the heroic experience, because it makes the characters feel fragile, weak, and easily killed, rather than hardy, strong, and ready to challenge great threats.
• Fending off serious danger from (relatively) small threats. It's heroic to assault a dragon's lair and the kobold warren that serves said dragon. It's less heroic to stumble upon a kobold warren while doing something else and needing to turn around or avoid the warren because that's a genuine existential danger, it pulls away from the heroic experience because...well, it feels like you're basically saying "nope, can't do that, a small band of kobolds is just too dangerous for us". It's fine for a heroic experience to begin with small and weak opponents (how many games, tabletop or video game, begin with killing rats in absurdly spacious sewers?), but if that remains your focus across a broad swathe of the campaign, it no longer feels like a heroic experience in most cases, and instead feels like weak fools scrabbling in the dirt for pennies.

There might be other examples, but those cover the basics I think. It's an important issue, the feeling that you're a Big Damn Hero that isn't afraid of a little peril, and having too many (or too severe) things that drag the camera back down to dirt level will tarnish the heroism and turn the experience into gritty survival rather than heroic derring-do.

First of all, it isn't all the time, and secondly, it depends on what you think hero means. If you're taking it in the "good guy protagonist sense, survival activity has nothing to do with it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Even gear is lackluster and not really all that necessary. You just need food, healing potions, rope, a light source, and maybe something to poke or prod stuff with. And there's not a lot more gear you can buy anyways.

-You might say, but what about caltrops or vials of oil or acid? To which I'll say, unless you have prep time and a choke point, caltrops or ball bearings probably not worth it. Damage is so low compared to monster hit points, the cost to effectiveness ratio for things like acid are laughable.

Now you might be proficient in some useful tool, but you might even get that for free from a background (like Thieves' Tools).

I assume you're talking about the very limited official WotC rules here, because 5e has a lot more scope than that, let only other D&D-type games.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Precisely. They were not heroic. That's the whole point. The whole point of the Lord of the Rings is that it ISN'T looking at the obvious Hero. That Obvious Hero is Aragorn. For God's sake, he's literally the long-lost heir to the throne, descendant of an ancient bloodline, prophesied hero-king, wielder of the true king's sword reforged anew, his romance with the closest thing to an elven princess the setting has is literally seen as a reenactment of the greatest love story Middle-Earth ever bore witness to, etc., etc., etc., etc.

By comparison? Yes, absolutely Frodo and Sam are not heroes. They're channeling Tolkien's experiences fighting in the trenches of WWI, one of the least-heroic, most-horrible places we have ever sent the young and foolish to die for the glory of generals and emperors.

They are barely scraping by. They are hiding like rats. They are donning enemy uniforms to pass as goblins, because otherwise they'll be executed or they'll starve to death. And, in the end, Frodo falls to the Ring, showing that even his goodness is not absolute, it CAN be broken. It's only a fluke that gets the Ring destroyed at all--the greed and jealousy of Gollum, not the valor or virtue or stalwart heart of either character. Frodo is left a broken man, haunted by what he became in that moment, and Sam is chastened, his cheery disposition forever mellowed by the bittersweet taste of wisdom.

They are not heroes. Not in the ancient Greek sense, and not in the modern, Christianized sense. They are ordinary people broken on the wheel, who don't even actually save the day.

Getting to the Cracks of Doom was the heroic act. nobody could have withstood the Ring's allure at the end; Tolkien himself said this many times, and the scholarship backs this up in many places.

 

[Lanefan]

Not assumed. It's literally what the books tell us, and what Gygax himself wrote in the earliest texts. That's why I invoked that bit about how he describes HP, how a high-level Fighter being more durable than a trained warhorse makes it utterly ridiculous to argue that HP are meat.

Without (I hope!) opening the meat-vs-luck hit points debate again, it really is simpler to just see hit points as a variable mix of both and have done with it.

Whereas for me, if "survival being the underlying first priority" is the name of the game, you've killed it. You've destroyed everything beautiful about D&D, and turned it into yet another dull meatgrinder where nothing interesting happens except by the fluke of the dice. Everything is just people being horrible to each other, grubbing for every last coin and a morsel. I deal with far, far too much of that in my daily life. Worries about whether we can make ends meet. Worries about whether we can put food on the table. Worries about violence near and far--wars and terrorism and gangs. Worries about drugs, both the prescribed and the proscribed.

When you reduce the world to nothing more than the grim algebra of necessity, when you treat heroism as a silly distraction, all you do is kill the joy and beauty that could come from the experience. At least for me.

I agree the grittiness can be overdone but to me that's no reason to excise it entirely.

I don't see either of those things as a positive, so yeah, of course I'm talking about that. I find there are (much, much, MUCH) better ways to represent the kind of thing you speak of, without all of the massive UNpleasant side effects of a "curve" that is functionally flat. Because that's what people keep pushing toward, over and over and over and over, as though that would somehow be amazing. It wouldn't be. There is, in fact, actual value in a curve that really does observably grow, in the level range people regularly play, rather than one where the threats you faced at first level remain incredibly dangerous at 10th.

I'm not saying something should remain "incredibly dangerous" from 1st all the way to 10th, but there's a huge difference between having a threat be viable from 1st to 6th level and having it only be viable in the 2nd-3rd range. 3e was awful for the latter.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

First of all, it isn't all the time, and secondly, it depends on what you think hero means. If you're taking it in the "good guy protagonist sense, survival activity has nothing to do with it.

I was using both the classical version (amazeballs incredible person doing amazeballs incredible things) and the modern Christianized version ("good guy protagonist"). Grubbing for food because you're starving detracts from the experience of being someone who saves the day, because you're spending all your time avoiding starvation, not saving puppies (or whatever).

And yes, it IS all the time in the kinds of things people are speaking about here. Survival as an everpresent danger. That's literally what Lanefan just said!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Getting to the Cracks of Doom was the heroic act.

I disagree. I think it was most certainly brave. I don't think it was heroic. Neither in the ancient Greek sense, nor in the modern Christianized sense.

nobody could have withstood the Ring's allure at the end; Tolkien himself said this many times, and the scholarship backs this up in many places.

Again, I disagree. It seems quite clear to me that Sam could have, because the Ring had nothing to tempt him with. How can you tempt someone who has no desires you can hook into? That was literally why Tom Bombadil was (briefly) considered by the council at Rivendell; Tom doesn't have any concerns or needs the Ring could possibly fulfill, so he's literally immune to the Ring and its temptations. The problem is, by having no concerns nor needs, he also cannot properly understand how dangerous the Ring is, and thus cannot act as a meaningful guardian for it. The very thing that makes him immune is the thing that makes him unfit as guardian.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Without (I hope!) opening the meat-vs-luck hit points debate again, it really is simpler to just see hit points as a variable mix of both and have done with it.

Sure. I have little desire to re-litigate it. I was simply pointing out that in Gygax's own words, luck and providence and other such things--in other words, the staples of outright heroic fiction, in the classical Greek sense--have to be factored into it. In other words, by Gygax's own words, pushing toward the (classical Greek) "heroic" is both an obvious and a necessary part of the game he helped build.

Is this the appropriate time to note that one of the level names for Fighter is, quite literally, "Superhero"? Eighth level, specifically, so there were (at least) two more levels after that before you hit "Name Level" and just became an Xth level Fighter. Heck, level 4 is called "Hero". So, by OD&D standards, you were supposed to be a "Hero" by 4th level and a "Superhero" by 8th, with more of your career left to go. Again, the very bones of D&D refer to that heroic style; Gygax almost surely meant it in the classical sense, larger-than-life people of power using that power to do incredible things in defiance of fate etc., but the premise has endured this whole time and remains the primary focus, certainly even more now than it was back then.

I agree the grittiness can be overdone but to me that's no reason to excise it entirely.

But you said that's what you wanted it to be about. That it would be the constant throughline, the primary focus essentially all the time, with everything else being demoted to barely-there, or at most occasional fare. That's why I responded as I did.

I'm not saying something should remain "incredibly dangerous" from 1st all the way to 10th, but there's a huge difference between having a threat be viable from 1st to 6th level and having it only be viable in the 2nd-3rd range. 3e was awful for the latter.

Okay. Here's the thing: That thing you just described, the exact same monster being perfectly viable from level 1 to level 6? That's how 4e worked. A level 3 monster is two levels above a 1st level party, totally doable but slightly riskier than alternatives. That exact same level 3 monster is level-3 for a 6th level party--a little easier, but still perfectly serviceable, especially in a pack of several with back-line support of some kind.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure. I have little desire to re-litigate it. I was simply pointing out that in Gygax's own words, luck and providence and other such things--in other words, the staples of outright heroic fiction, in the classical Greek sense--have to be factored into it. In other words, by Gygax's own words, pushing toward the (classical Greek) "heroic" is both an obvious and a necessary part of the game he helped build.

Is this the appropriate time to note that one of the level names for Fighter is, quite literally, "Superhero"? Eighth level, specifically, so there were (at least) two more levels after that before you hit "Name Level" and just became an Xth level Fighter. Heck, level 4 is called "Hero". So, by OD&D standards, you were supposed to be a "Hero" by 4th level and a "Superhero" by 8th, with more of your career left to go. Again, the very bones of D&D refer to that heroic style; Gygax almost surely meant it in the classical sense, larger-than-life people of power using that power to do incredible things in defiance of fate etc., but the premise has endured this whole time and remains the primary focus, certainly even more now than it was back then.


But you said that's what you wanted it to be about. That it would be the constant throughline, the primary focus essentially all the time, with everything else being demoted to barely-there, or at most occasional fare. That's why I responded as I did.


Okay. Here's the thing: That thing you just described, the exact same monster being perfectly viable from level 1 to level 6? That's how 4e worked. A level 3 monster is two levels above a 1st level party, totally doable but slightly riskier than alternatives. That exact same level 3 monster is level-3 for a 6th level party--a little easier, but still perfectly serviceable, especially in a pack of several with back-line support of some kind.

He mentioned 3e, not 4e. Not every comment is a veiled insult against your favorite edition.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure. I have little desire to re-litigate it. I was simply pointing out that in Gygax's own words, luck and providence and other such things--in other words, the staples of outright heroic fiction, in the classical Greek sense--have to be factored into it. In other words, by Gygax's own words, pushing toward the (classical Greek) "heroic" is both an obvious and a necessary part of the game he helped build.

Is this the appropriate time to note that one of the level names for Fighter is, quite literally, "Superhero"? Eighth level, specifically, so there were (at least) two more levels after that before you hit "Name Level" and just became an Xth level Fighter. Heck, level 4 is called "Hero". So, by OD&D standards, you were supposed to be a "Hero" by 4th level and a "Superhero" by 8th, with more of your career left to go. Again, the very bones of D&D refer to that heroic style; Gygax almost surely meant it in the classical sense, larger-than-life people of power using that power to do incredible things in defiance of fate etc., but the premise has endured this whole time and remains the primary focus, certainly even more now than it was back then.

While I acknowledge those level titles exist, I personally have ignored them as being anything other than pure fluff since day one.

But you said that's what you wanted it to be about. That it would be the constant throughline, the primary focus essentially all the time, with everything else being demoted to barely-there, or at most occasional fare. That's why I responded as I did.

You might be misreading me a bit: gritty survival isn't the focus all the time, but more a background-hum type of thing that every now and then rears its head during their doing of everything else.

Okay. Here's the thing: That thing you just described, the exact same monster being perfectly viable from level 1 to level 6? That's how 4e worked. A level 3 monster is two levels above a 1st level party, totally doable but slightly riskier than alternatives. That exact same level 3 monster is level-3 for a 6th level party--a little easier, but still perfectly serviceable, especially in a pack of several with back-line support of some kind.

Indeed, 4e seemed to have a flatter power curve at least in the low-mid levels.

My issue in that regard with 4e in particular is that the start point of that flat curve was so high - a 1st-level character in 4e was (relatively) light-years more powerful than a typical commoner, where I'd rather see the power difference between commoner (or 0th level) and 1st level be about the same as the difference between 1st and 2nd.

 

[pemerton]

Is this the appropriate time to note that one of the level names for Fighter is, quite literally, "Superhero"? Eighth level, specifically, so there were (at least) two more levels after that before you hit "Name Level" and just became an Xth level Fighter. Heck, level 4 is called "Hero". So, by OD&D standards, you were supposed to be a "Hero" by 4th level and a "Superhero" by 8th, with more of your career left to go. Again, the very bones of D&D refer to that heroic style; Gygax almost surely meant it in the classical sense, larger-than-life people of power using that power to do incredible things in defiance of fate etc., but the premise has endured this whole time and remains the primary focus, certainly even more now than it was back then.

I don't think we need to speculate about what Gygax had in mind; we can check Chainmail (my version says 3rd edition, 1975; I'm quoting from p 30):

HEROES (and Anti-heroes): Included in this class are certain well-known knights, leaders of army contingents, and similar men. They have the fighting ability of four figures . . . Heroes (and Anti-heroes) need never check morale, and they add 1 to the die or dice of their unit . . . They are the last figure in a unit that will be killed by regular missile fire or melee, but they may be attacked individually by enemy troops of like type (such as other Hero-types) or creatures shown on the Fantasy Combat Table. Heroes (and Anti-heroes) may act independent of their command in order to combat some other fantastic character. . . . A Hero-type, armed with a bow, shoots a dragon passing within range over-head out of the air and kills it on a two dice roll of 10 or better, with 2 puls 1 on the dice firing an enchanted arrow. Rangers are Hero-types with a +1 on attack dice.​

So I think we get a pretty good picture from this: Conan, Lancelot, Arthur, Aragorn, Prince Imrahil, Eomer, Bard and the like are all heroes. Mordred is an anti-hero. Elric I'll leave as an exercise for the reader!