D&D 5E Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a forum issue. (In my opinion)

[Bedrockgames]

I agree with most of what you said, but I'm not sure how accurate this is. It seems to me that in the games earliest incarnations that XP and leveling are more directly a reflection of rewarding the player for "skillful play" and all that. Much more of a running "score", than representing something in the fiction of the character. As with many things D&D, as a simple method for emulating something....well its just too simple to do the job well. It doesn't even emulate how things work in fiction most of the time (where character development rather than advancement is far more often the rule of the day.) Nonetheless, even early in the game's history, as people started to push it towards a more story-focused mode of play, people began to interpret XP and advancement in this way.

i think xp in D&D has always been both a reward for skillful play and an attempt to emulate advancement through learning. How well it achieves this is a matter of opinion i suppose. I can't say i particularly agree with the remainder of your post. It being simple or not emulating genre telvision, doesn't mean it wasn't trying to reflect your character's growth through experience. Mst experience systems fall short under scrutiny because they abstract something that is quite complex.

 

[Imaro]

Yes but let's be honest here. All you have to do is start at the earliest posts on EN World and you'll see exactly the same thing said about 3e ten or more years ago.

The idea of player entitlement is hardly a new one.

DI

Did you think I was saying it was only a 4e thing, because I wasn't... However I find it hard to believe that a person who witnessed this throughout 3e suddenly saw it vanish entirely when they started playing 4e and so I was just providing my own experiences as a possible counter point...

 

[Hussar]

DI

Did you think I was saying it was only a 4e thing, because I wasn't... However I find it hard to believe that a person who witnessed this throughout 3e suddenly saw it vanish entirely when they started playing 4e and so I was just providing my own experiences as a possible counter point...

Well, really, what can the player bitch about if the DM is following the rules?

Particularly if you're using inherent bonuses. Now, you don't actually need any plussed weapons, they don't actually do anything. There's no stat boost items, to speak of, so, that isn't something that is going to be complained about. There's no DM control over character abilities - it's not like you have to quest for a horse or find a teacher/trainer for new spells, so, that's out of the hands of the DM.

What's left? Speed of advancement I suppose. But as far as entitlement goes, what would be the point? Entitled to what exactly? In 3e and earlier editions, if you didn't have certain items, some encounters either became very difficult or outright impossible. An enemy which needed higher plussed weapons than you had was virtually unbeatable. So, it became a point to remind the DM from time to time that having that plus 2 sword wasn't just me wanting the new shiny but wanting something so I wasn't going to die if I met some critter.

Like I said, what's left? What could the players be complaining about? Par encounters? That would be very, very difficult to judge from the players side really. It's not like monsters have strict CR and advancing or lowering monsters is so easy that you, as a player, can't tell just looking at the monster, what the level of that monster is.

It's not like 3e where if you meet two trolls, you know, most of the time, that this is a EL 7 encounter.

I believe this is the rationale for E6. It's true that the power curve of D&D has always been sharp. And this is an expectation that I think is baked in for most of us. If you're playing, you deserve rewards, and they'd better be tangible and large. I found that in running D&D, if the characters went more than a couple of sessions without gaining a level, the players start complaining. However, this rate of advancement leads to arguably untenable game world implications.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...m-issue-(In-my-opinion)/page112#ixzz2qtIiDG7J

But, again, this presumes that you play D&D as a world physics engine. Not everyone does that. To me, the mechanics are simply resolution mechanics and have no game world implications. They only apply to the PC's. Which makes world building a whole lot simpler and more robust. It's not like you actually play out the ten levels that that king has. You just whack on ten levels of whatever and that's the king. You don't engage the game mechanics at all. I'd argue that this is pretty much the way a lot of people design their campaigns.

 

[Ahnehnois]

But, again, this presumes that you play D&D as a world physics engine. Not everyone does that. To me, the mechanics are simply resolution mechanics and have no game world implications. They only apply to the PC's. Which makes world building a whole lot simpler and more robust. It's not like you actually play out the ten levels that that king has. You just whack on ten levels of whatever and that's the king. You don't engage the game mechanics at all. I'd argue that this is pretty much the way a lot of people design their campaigns.

In which case, the "balance" of those mechanics is equally irrelevant to the world at large.

 

[Hussar]

In which case, the "balance" of those mechanics is equally irrelevant to the world at large.

Of course. What's your point? Balance only ever matters to the group that's playing. Imbalanced mechanics have zero impact on the larger world because game worlds are not built using those mechanics.

The only D&D game world built on D&D assumptions is Eberron. None of the others are. There's how many D&D settings just from TSR/WOTC? Ten, twenty? Only one of them gave the slightest toss about the mechanics of the game that was being used. It's always been world first, mechanics second. And the mechanics are pretty obviously meant for PC's only.

I mean, heck, how can you have a 3rd level sergeant in a town, when training him in 1e would have cost, at minimum, 7500 gp? It's 1500 gp/level to train (IIRC, it might be 1000). A 3rd level NPC costs more than a house. There's simply no way you could have that level of NPC in a town that small - no one could possibly afford to train him. Never mind that you might actually have multiple NPC's of this level in that small town.

In 2e, casters gained xp simply for casting spells. A wizard could gain about five or six levels, never leaving a town, in about six months simply by casting 1st level spells every day. Detect magic, or something innoffensive and you have double digit level casters in every town. Why not? It's by the rules. Well, it is, if you try applying the rules to rule building.

3e is even more egregious. The wealth of any high level PC would destablize national economies. Never minding things like the undead spawning rules. A truly "3e rules" world wouldn't work.

That's because the rules aren't meant for world building. If they are, I cannot see how you can see D&D as anything other than a colossal failure. The rules lead to utterly ridiculous ends.

The only difference between 4e and 3e in this respect is that 4e didn't sugarcoat things. It makes no bones that it isn't a world building system. 3e isn't either and it's certainly no better at it. But, it kinda tries to hide this behind all the world building advice in the DMG which tries to borrow from the mechanics and ignore all the bits that don't make sense. Thus you get the whole, "Monsters and NPC's are built using PC rules" 3e thing. (Which is solely a 3e thing) But, again, kinda sorta, because then you have to spackle up the issues with things like level adjustments and the like.

 

[Imaro]

Well, really, what can the player bitch about if the DM is following the rules?

Encounter guidelines aren't rules... and players can still bitch about them... when the DM doesn't seem to be following them...

Particularly if you're using inherent bonuses. Now, you don't actually need any plussed weapons, they don't actually do anything. There's no stat boost items, to speak of, so, that isn't something that is going to be complained about. There's no DM control over character abilities - it's not like you have to quest for a horse or find a teacher/trainer for new spells, so, that's out of the hands of the DM.

Ok, first inherent bonuses are optional and only came later in supplemental material, I responded to a post that said they never had the problem in 4e... which means even before those rules appeared. Second, why wouldn't whether one can purchase a horse or not be under the purview of the DM? A little confused about that one...

What's left? Speed of advancement I suppose. But as far as entitlement goes, what would be the point? Entitled to what exactly? In 3e and earlier editions, if you didn't have certain items, some encounters either became very difficult or outright impossible. An enemy which needed higher plussed weapons than you had was virtually unbeatable. So, it became a point to remind the DM from time to time that having that plus 2 sword wasn't just me wanting the new shiny but wanting something so I wasn't going to die if I met some critter.

And I've found the reverse to be generally true in 4e, in other words while 4e may not cause a tpk when following the encounter guidelines, those guidelines also don't seem to offer much, if any, of a challenge once PC's are at paragon and above, when they are used as presented in the book.

Like I said, what's left? What could the players be complaining about? Par encounters? That would be very, very difficult to judge from the players side really. It's not like monsters have strict CR and advancing or lowering monsters is so easy that you, as a player, can't tell just looking at the monster, what the level of that monster is.

It's not like 3e where if you meet two trolls, you know, most of the time, that this is a EL 7 encounter.

But the PC's can know this, especially if a DM isn't reskinning or leveling monsters (in the same way it would only be true in 3e if he isn't using class levels, templates or reskinning)... in that situation it works just like 3e. Beyond that PC's know what the encounter guidelines are for their PC's and after playing for a while get a feel for how difficult or not encounters should be. So no, I don't think it's that hard to judge and I've seen pplayers that straight out ask a DM what level was that encounter, when things didn't go their way.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The only D&D game world built on D&D assumptions is Eberron. None of the others are.

Really? It seems to me that the settings I'm aware of leverage the distinctive D&D mechanics very strongly. For example, FR was clearly built with the idea of magic dominance in mind (I assume you must play there, since I'm not aware of any other setting where this is true), whereas Dark Sun uses the classes very differently.

Of course, this whole line is a bit silly because pretty much every homebrew setting is built using those assumptions.

And the mechanics are pretty obviously meant for PC's only.

Yes, all those pesky example NPCs built with the same mechanics are clearly not meant to be used. All those references to organizations based on PC classes are clearly referring to the other PCs that other groups are playing. Obviously.

That's because the rules aren't meant for world building. If they are, I cannot see how you can see D&D as anything other than a colossal failure. The rules lead to utterly ridiculous ends.

Ridiculous? Yes, a world with wizards and dragons and flumphs is ridiculous. I kind of take that as a given. I think it's abundantly clear that any fictional world, whether fantasy or not, does not work. We all have to suspend our disbelief to play D&D. We have to suspend disbelief to watch Law & Order, for goodness sake, and that takes place in the "real world". It's simply impossible to imagine a world that works the way reality does, because reality is so complex, because we understand our own world so little, and because of the sheer computational limits of the human brain.

Just because the human mind lacks the ability to create a completely functional alternate universe does not invalidate the idea of world building.

But if the rules aren't for world building, imperfect as they are, I don't know what benefit we gain by using them at all.

 

[Bluenose]

Really? It seems to me that the settings I'm aware of leverage the distinctive D&D mechanics very strongly. For example, FR was clearly built with the idea of magic dominance in mind (I assume you must play there, since I'm not aware of any other setting where this is true), whereas Dark Sun uses the classes very differently.

Of course, this whole line is a bit silly because pretty much every homebrew setting is built using those assumptions.

I have literally never seen a single setting, homebrew or otherwise, where the implications of the Profession skill for economics is given the slightest lip service. All professions are equally lucrative, income is highly variable month-by-month. That's observably not the case in published settings.

As for FR being built with the idea of magic dominance, I think that's in the wrong order. FR was made with magic dominance in mind, then became a D&D setting, then D&D became more magic-dominated. That's my take on it.

 

[Cadence]

Yes, all those pesky example NPCs built with the same mechanics are clearly not meant to be used. All those references to organizations based on PC classes are clearly referring to the other PCs that other groups are playing. Obviously.

Didn't he give five paragraphs of examples in his post (#1125) where GM's essentially have to ignore the rules as far as the vast majority of NPC go so that exp/advancement/cost don't lead to mathematically absurd ends.

 

[Ratskinner]

The only D&D game world built on D&D assumptions is Eberron. None of the others are. There's how many D&D settings just from TSR/WOTC? Ten, twenty? Only one of them gave the slightest toss about the mechanics of the game that was being used. It's always been world first, mechanics second. And the mechanics are pretty obviously meant for PC's only.

Wha? Funny 'cause it seems to me that the planar structure of Planescape is fairly well based on the alignment rules. That seems a pretty vulgar "footprint" of the rules on that setting. Which isn't even to mention all the funky "subtle" ways that alignment splits the universe into 9 "teams". D&D has a lot of that kind of thing, actually. Many moons ago I tried to convert my homebrew 2e world into Fudge, and I was amazed at how many things I noticed were influenced by things like D&D's presentation of magic, etc. Nowadays when starting a Fate game...there's just no comparison. I have a great deal of difficulty looking at most D&D settings, professionally published or homebrew, without seeing the imprint of the base mechanics of the game on the world.

That's because the rules aren't meant for world building. If they are, I cannot see how you can see D&D as anything other than a colossal failure. The rules lead to utterly ridiculous ends.

On the general point, however, I totally agree.