D&D 5E Why Balance is Bad

[Umbran]

The way to cut the gordian knot is to recall that what I'm calling for has three distinct elements that make it work:

1) ...This makes the experience non-binary: Sam can still toss a rock (ie, do something), even if overall he sucks at combat. It's clearly not where he excels, but he can participate. In a tortured analogy to a play, he doesn't get this monologue, but he can be in the background as a member of the crowd and maybe even gets a line or two. So by "sidelined," I don't mean "can't do anything," I mean, "can't do much in comparison to someone who didn't choose to suck here."

Yes, but I think in so defining it, you miss some important points of human nature.

Your definition hinges on a technicality - technically, the player can take an action, yes. But technicalities are not satisfying to humans, generally. There are cases where the player can see pretty easily that no action they take will change the course of events in a meaningful way. "Yes, I can throw a rock, but in actuality, this encounter will resolve the same way whether I sit her and occasionally roll to throw a rock, or if I go outside and smoke a cigarette while you guys do the real stuff." Yes, he can throw a rock, but nobody will care if he does or doesn't.

At the point where their actions have no meaningful impact on the course of events, the typical player is sidelined, is sitting out, will get bored and disengage from the fiction, whether they technically can act or not.

2)Most challenges are brief, on the order of 5-15 minutes or so.

Yes, and while you seek that, I'll go off on the road to Shambala. We are apt to have similar levels of success in finding our respective goals

More seriously, though, again you miss a point of human psychology. That which resolves quickly and simply is not really a challenge to the player. Challenging the players requires engaging their mind and/or the nuances of what they have on the character sheet, and that takes multiple decision points for each player - and now we are talking time again.

Moreoever, in the sense of probabilities - fast challenges generally also need to be *easy* challenges (and thus not actually challenging). Take, for example, a coin-flip challenge. 50% chance of failure. Each time they have to go through one, their chance of overall success is chopped in half. After 7 such challenges, their chance to get through the chain is less than 1%! It is the same mathematics that makes critical hits more a problem for PCs than a tool for them.

And, the players will start to recognize the fast (and thus easy) challenges for what they are - mooks. And they'll start to treat them differently.

The other alternative is to make all challenges relevant, and somewhat difficult, but then they take time.

 

[I'm A Banana]

My players generally don't sit out - the fictional framing doesn't let them - but they will make untrained skill checks if that's where the fiction has landed them.

I've seen occasional untrained skill checks, but it's usually couched in terms of the player not being a good enough improv artist to spin some other skill. IE: "I can't think of way to use Endurance here....so whatever, I'll just chuck a Nature check."

And I'll note again that the explicit advice in the DMG doesn't seem comfortable with a player not being able to roll a skill they have a high bonus in on a regular basis during the SC: it basically recommends the DM includes skills the party is good at as primary skills for resolving the SC.

Again, Rorschach blots as the caveat. I'm not saying this is everyone's experience. But I am saying that the game seems set up this way, even if some tables have fixed/mitigated/changed it. And it is my experience.

OK. Let's just reality check this.

You want to play "an exploration God" who is about on a par with the 3.X rogue and AD&D Thief?

By "reality check," you seem to mean "shift the goalposts and set up a strawman about how I'm defending some other edition."

I've never held up 3e or AD&D as What I Really Want. I want a game where balance doesn't mean equal contribution to encounters. It's reasonable to believe a game called "D&D" could embrace this view of balance. This is a balance tables had sometimes realized and embraced before 4e, and hell, probably even during 4e (even if it ran counter to the design of the game). 4e doesn't quite do that out of the box, as designed, clearly emphasizing that every party member should shine in each encounter (not that such advice was always sacrosanct -- Rorschach blots and all -- though it was more clearly applied to combat). I've provided, I believe, pretty solid evidence of that, and that evidence has not been called into question. I think my only real mention of 3e was in saying that 4e's vision of balance was quite reasonable given the problems of 3e.

The noncombat thief (or gardener) who sucks at Combat challenges is something I want 5e to strongly support. Also the antisocial barbarian who sucks at Interaction challenges and the pampered noble who sucks at Exploration challenges. Characters who do not shine in some kinds of encounters. It's not something I can look to 4e to strongly support (though, again, no doubts that some people make 4e work for them in that way -- it's D&D's most flexible ruleset ever, after all!). 5e must improve on that to win my precious weekend time.

Which is just another way of saying that "Balance Is Bad" probably isn't totally true, depending on what kinds of balance you're talking about and what kinds of games you're playing.

There are cases where the player can see pretty easily that no action they take will change the course of events in a meaningful way. "Yes, I can throw a rock, but in actuality, this encounter will resolve the same way whether I sit her and occasionally roll to throw a rock, or if I go outside and smoke a cigarette while you guys do the real stuff." Yes, he can throw a rock, but nobody will care if he does or doesn't.

At the point where their actions have no meaningful impact on the course of events, the typical player is sidelined, is sitting out, will get bored and disengage from the fiction, whether they technically can act or not.

You're excluding the middle.

In particular, this is where Bounded Accuracy becomes important in keeping the minor contribution meaningful. 1d8 damage ain't nothin', especially with 5e HP's. And having a low attack bonus matters a lot less when the AC's don't span 30 points. You can also increase breadth without mucking about much with depth (ie, "I've got three different attacks!" vs. "Well, I chuck a rock.")

The choice isn't between equal contributions and binary contributions. Big, healthy middle ground there to frolic in. And hey, if you want more to do during those encounters -- make your character accordingly! If you make a character whose main contribution to combat is rock chuckin', fully intentionally, you're saying that it's OK for you to be more of a spectator in the few minutes that the fight happens in.

The point about human psychology is taken into account, here: the rock-chucker isn't going to be interested in a combat. Period. Even if he could contribute the equal of the fighter, the player just isn't interested in being that kind of hero. It's not something he's going to be interested in no matter how long and complex it is. Give him a way to contribute to the game that matches the kind of hero he wants to be, and don't insist that he takes a backseat for hours at a time spent doing something he's not into, and you can give him gameplay that is going to engage him, actually, without making him fiddle about with parts that aren't really his bag in this go-around.

Yes, and while you seek that, I'll go off on the road to Shambala. We are apt to have similar levels of success in finding our respective goals

If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. The Land of the One Hour adventure is already here! Hell, it was kind here in 4e, only they called it an Encounter. Doable. If you're interested, I'm sure I could sell you an adventure like that.

That which resolves quickly and simply is not really a challenge to the player. Challenging the players requires engaging their mind and/or the nuances of what they have on the character sheet, and that takes multiple decision points for each player - and now we are talking time again.

Actually, again, this is intentional: the challenge, nuance, and decision points are not primarily found within our 15 minute encounters. Rather, they are found in the entire story of the adventure. D&D for me is a game about fantasy stories, fantasy adventures. Fantasy combats and interactions with fantastic creatures and the exploration of fantastic places are supporting elements in these stories, not the center-point. As such, the decision points and nuance should lie primarily at the level of the story, rather than the particular encounter. Which is not to say that the encounter is irrelevant, merely that it is subordinate: deciding as a party which events happen in the story is of greater weight. It is more important how you decide to deal with the dragon raiding the village than it is how you decide to whittle away its HP if you decide to fight it.

Besides, we don't want to make players who aren't interested in Pillar X or Pillar Y languish for long. If not everyone is going to be equally interested in every encounter because one or another isn't their bag, we don't want them dragged on too long a ride. If 15 minutes is enough for an entire episode of Metalocalypse to be immensely badass, it's enough for the party bard to do the same.

 

[Neonchameleon]

By "reality check," you seem to mean "shift the goalposts and set up a strawman about how I'm defending some other edition."

By reality check I mean "Quote you fairly and accurately and respond to what you are saying."

In specific you talked about "a thief reminiscent of older e's whose player has chosen to eschew combat in favor of being an exploration god," By a plain reading of that I understand that you think that a thief who was an exploration god was actually possible in editions before 4e. As I showed, it isn't. The only edition of D&D that has thieves that remotely qualify as exploration gods is 4e. (Indeed I've had a 4e fighter who was enough of a burglar to make 3e rogues and AD&D thieves turn green with envy.) 4e is here head and shoulders above any other edition there has been of D&D.

I've never held up 3e or AD&D as What I Really Want. I want a game where balance doesn't mean equal contribution to encounters.

And as I have demonstrated twice over you are tilting at straw men when you think that this is relevant. I've demonstrated how you have starkly misunderstood skill challenges at numerous levels. I've demonstrated how two characters of the same class in 4e can have very different levels of contribution to combat, one being twice as effective as the other in the opening rounds. 4e therefore certainly doesn't qualify.

So if you want a game where balance doesn't mean equal contribution to encounters literally any roleplaying game I can think of will qualify. Why is it even relevant that you want this when the counterexample does not exist within the realms of D&D (and I suspect not within the realms of tabletop roleplaying games unless you have clones)?

What does your request even mean? Because I can only see two possible interpretations:

1. You are stating that you want something to happen that has happened every time before. You are stating this because you either like seeing yourself type, or in some way think that the balance of D&D Next is going to be vastly, incredibly more comprehensive even than that of 4e and is going to actually institute uniformity.
2. You are repeating hackneyed and long debunked edition warrior talking points that I have debunked and shown to be absolutely false on this very thread.

I'm struggling to come up with a third explanation of why the statement that you don't want the almost impossible to happen is even vaguely relevant to this conversation.

It's reasonable to believe a game called "D&D" could embrace this view of balance. This is a balance tables had sometimes realized and embraced before 4e, and hell, probably even during 4e (even if it ran counter to the design of the game).

As I have shown it didn't run even slightly counter to the design of the game. Please stop spreading the falsehood that it did. If it had been in line with the game then the rogue wouldn't have had six starting skills in the PHB to the fighter's three, and the wizard's ritual casting. They'd have had the same amount of out of combat potential. And the fighter certainly wouldn't almost exclusively have had in combat utility powers while most of the rogue's operated outside combat. So please stop repeating the falsehood that direct equality of contribution rather than getting everyone up to the starting line was the goal. It simply isn't true.

4e doesn't quite do that out of the box, as designed, clearly emphasizing that every party member should shine in each encounter

Once more you are reading into the game design things that simply aren't there. It emphasises that each party member should have the chance to shine. If they can. That no one should be locked out of contributing and instead sitting on their ass while waiting for this section of the game to be over and they can get back to something they can do.

I've provided, I believe, pretty solid evidence of that, and that evidence has not been called into question.

. The evidence has not only been called into question, it has been shown that your reading of the evidence is incompatible with the game rules. If there's anything you have said to this effect that I haven't debunked, please repost it. The entire evidence base you are relying on so far as I can tell is a single line from 4e that says that everyone should have a chance to shine. Which isn't the same as saying that they must shine. I've been quoting the rest of the rules, showing what can be done, and illustrating by the actual examples in 4e.

I think my only real mention of 3e was in saying that 4e's vision of balance was quite reasonable given the problems of 3e.

This one I'll grant. You only mentioned the AD&D thief. The one with risible thieving skills. By 6th level a hide in shadows chance of 37% (remember that they can't move at the same time). A hear noise chance of 20%. An open locks chance of 47% - and if they fail they need to level up to try again. Calling them an exploration god is ridiculous IMO. You're asking for a thief that never was when the best implementation the thief has had at fitting its assigned role is 4e.

The noncombat thief (or gardener) who sucks at Combat challenges is something I want 5e to strongly support.

Why? Why can't you just say as a part of the ruleset "If you don't want a given proficiency you can just cross it off"? The same goes for the antisocial barbarian and the pampered noble. What, other than opportunities to min-max does additional support for incompetence bring?

 

[pemerton]

When I have complex plans and operations I just use unconnected skill checks to see if each phase of the plans exist. I still find the overarching structure of X successes before Y failures to be limited and getting in the way.

I only used skill challenges for their intended purpose: Combat with skills. Let's see if you can roll high enough to get through this part of the adventure without a penalty(normally in healing surges or damage but sometimes a minor story penalty).

I think that's either a fairly narrow conception of the intended purpose of skill challenges, or else a narrow conception of what "complex plans and operations" are for.

(I've deliberately said "narrow", not "flawed". I'm trying to describe, not criticise. Relative to a desired playstyle and play outcome there can be all sorts of reasons for applying some technique or conception narrowly rather than broadly.)

A more broad reading of "complex plans and operations" would see them as a way of moving from point A of and adventure to some other point (be it B, Z or something inbetween). In combination with the general "yes, but" tenor of the advice in the 4e DMG, the real questin is "will the complex plan or operation take you from A to B as you desire, or will it instead land you in B with a penalty, or instead in C which isn't quite where yu wanted to be"? When you look at it this way, that's just what a skill challenge is for by your own account of it.

A more broad reading of the purposes of skill challenges would focus on these passages:

PHB (pp 179, 259)
In contrast to an obstacle that requires one successful skill check, a skill challenge is a complex situation in which you must make several successful checks, often using a variety of skills, before you can claim success in the encounter. . .

A skill challenge occurs when exploration . . . or social interaction becomes an encounter, with serious consequences for success or failure.

DMG (pp 70,72):
When characters make skill checks in response to a series of changing conditions, with success or failure being uncertain, they’re in a skill challenge. Scouring the jungle for a hidden temple or persuading the duke to send aid to defend the pass might both be skill challenge encounters . . .

An audience with the duke, a mysterious set of sigils in a hidden chamber, finding your way through the Forest of Neverlight — all of these present challenges that test both the characters and the people who play them. . .

It’s not a skill challenge every time you call for a skill check. When an obstacle takes only one roll to resolve, it’s not a challenge.​

This isn't just about "avoiding penalties": it's about "success or failure" of a complex ingame situation with "changing conditions" (ie requiring more than just "one roll to resolve") being "uncertain" and having "serious consequence". To me, that seems to cover (indeed, to describe) complex plans and operations.

I think you different approach from mine (and [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]'s, I'm guessing) might be because you're running pre-written scenarios (eg LFR) so that the desired outcome of events has been pre-written in: the only uncertainty is the mechanical penalty the players will take on the way through (eg how many surges do they lose). This seems implicit in your reference to minor story penalties.

I think skill challenges work better when run with the conception of how things end up being much more open-ended (this puts more weight on serious consequences).

 

[keterys]

LFR definitely has a different style of doing the game, certainly.

Though I suspect that the lion's share of actual D&D play is somewhere between the LFR and pemerton sides of the spectrum.

 

[pemerton]

I've seen occasional untrained skill checks, but it's usually couched in terms of the player not being a good enough improv artist to spin some other skill. IE: "I can't think of way to use Endurance here....so whatever, I'll just chuck a Nature check."

And I'll note again that the explicit advice in the DMG doesn't seem comfortable with a player not being able to roll a skill they have a high bonus in on a regular basis during the SC: it basically recommends the DM includes skills the party is good at as primary skills for resolving the SC.

If you read the DMG's recommendation as you do, then the upshot is as I said upthread: there is no such thing as an "interaction encounter", because all encounters are designed to include some physical element (not unlike the forest fire you outlned upthread).

Conversely, if you actually look at the example challenge on p 76 of the DMG, which I think can fairly be described as an interaction encounter, then it has no listed role for physical skills, so for a player to bring his/her PC's physical prowess to bear s/he and the other players would have to push the fiction in that direction (not unlike what I illustrated in the actual play post I linked to upthread).

Your characterisation of how a player would engage a skill challenge - "I can't think of a way to use Endurance here" - strikes me as illustrative of a player not really engaged in the game. In a combat encounter, if one character has a devastating close burst attack but the targets are not all clumped together, then the party as a whole takes steps to change the fictional situation. I prefer it that a skill challenge be no different.

System Shock checks in Polymorph.

Only Polymorph Other triggers a system shock check (for the target - so in fact it's 2x SoD). But Polymorph Self only confers movement and shape, but no other abilities. Strong, but not comparable to 3E polymorph.

 

[keterys]

For comparison, the statement:
"Every PC should have a chance to hit the monster" is probably a pretty good one, but doesn't mean that every PC hits every attack in every encounter.

I think that fairly and swiftly sums up the counterargument. But I could be wrong

 

[I'm A Banana]

If you read the DMG's recommendation as you do, then the upshot is as I said upthread: there is no such thing as an "interaction encounter", because all encounters are designed to include some physical element (not unlike the forest fire you outlned upthread).

It's risking quibbling over semantics, but I'd tentatively say that any encounter made with the goal of influencing an NPC's actions -- regardless of the nature of the skills or character abilities used to do so -- likely qualifies as an Interaction encounter. The inclusion of physical skills (such as Athletics) into that model doesn't necessarily mean that the encounter isn't an Interaction encounter.

Though it's certainly true that SC's as written don't necessarily care about the boundaries of pillars. Which, come to think, makes them in their Rorschach way not a bad example of what I'm talking about with longer encounters firing on all three pillars -- a skill challenge that was big and complex and involved attack rolls to slay the dragon and Stealth checks to steal the MacGuffin and Diplomacy checks to trick the kobold cultists is pretty much equal to what I'm talking about with big, epic encounters that don't just rely on combat.

Your characterisation of how a player would engage a skill challenge - "I can't think of a way to use Endurance here" - strikes me as illustrative of a player not really engaged in the game. In a combat encounter, if one character has a devastating close burst attack but the targets are not all clumped together, then the party as a whole takes steps to change the fictional situation. I prefer it that a skill challenge be no different.

The players have been engaged in that they're looking for a way to contribute that's effective -- looking for the biggest bonus to drop on the challenge. And I've seen plenty of close bursts shot into the faces of one creature (especially at-wills).

"Every PC should have a chance to hit the monster" is probably a pretty good one, but doesn't mean that every PC hits every attack in every encounter.

Yeah, I'm on board with that for D&D, too!

Though, as an irrelevant aside, I actually am quite fond of the idea of getting rid of a roll for success....but that's the fevered dream of a madman, and not something I'd try to sell typical D&D on, so anyway....

 

[Manbearcat]

The players have been engaged in that they're looking for a way to contribute that's effective -- looking for the biggest bonus to drop on the challenge. And I've seen plenty of close bursts shot into the faces of one creature (especially at-wills).

KM, doesn't the following reasoning strike you as a bit of a tautology:

The way my group plays 4e noncombat conflict resolution (the Skill Challenge) turns on the primacy of player consideration for the effectiveness of the resource deployed (step on up or Gamist agenda), often (or always) to the exclusion of the context of the fictional positioning surrounding the resource deployed. Neither the GM nor the table as a whole demands the inverse (fiction first or genre credibility) approach. Therefore, 4e Skill Challenges are, for all intents and purposes, mostly or wholly indifferent to the fictional considerations. And that is unsatisfactory.

I keep seeing the equivalent of that being put forth. Pick skill that provides the best % chance for success vs DC. Press Skill Button. Win.

As if entrenched ideologues should be as easily moved off their positions toward capitulation by nifty backflips (Acrobatics), benchpressed tables (Athletics) as they are blackmailed by uncovered rumors (Streetwise) or devastatingly poignant allegories (Diplomacy). Instead of reasoning him into a corner, would Lincoln have been just as likely to move Thaddeus Stevens to moderate his tone when presenting a unified front on the 13th amendment to the United States Constitution if he would have done backflips or 200 pushups?

I mean, of course a conflict resolution system yields aesthetic dysfunction if we push it in that direction.

 

[Manbearcat]

If the above made any sense, then King's Courts, Senates and the professions of Barrister and Judge would just as likely be comprised of gymnasts and power-lifters as they are orators, philosophers, and rhetoricians.