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

[XunValdorl_of_Kilsek]

If my character could be replaced with a first level summon monster spell, I'd say that I'm not really as effective as I'd like to be.

If you want a concrete number, I'd guess from gut feeling that 66 per cent is probably around the minimum for me.

Losing 1/3 effectiveness for an encounter is noticeable but not crippling. Sounds about right to me.

After all, if the elemental has dr that the fighter isn't equipped for, that's about what the fighter would lose.

Few issues here. Every class could potentially be replaced by other classes and items. You do not ever need a wizard or sorcerer in a party. There is nothing a rogue with UMD cannot do that a wizard can. The problem is just because something could replace you doesn't mean it should be used when you are there. It's good for there to be spells that do some rogue type things just in case you don't have one. Why would a player waste resources when you can just as easily do the job? I don't buy this excuse.

 

[Sadras]

I mentioned 4e treasure parcels in my post. But as far as "player entitlement" is concerned, it's hard to distinguish these from (say) proficiency gains per level in AD&D, or the increased ability to hit by level on the attack charts, which I never heard described as "player entitlement".

Proficiency gains were optional in AD&D. It may be hard to distinguish treasure parcels from increasing BAB, but that confusion only happens when viewing 4e. So to a non-4e player, treasure parcels are seen as 'player entitlement' because an increasing BAB exists in every edition.

 

[Hussar]

Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a for...

Few issues here. Every class could potentially be replaced by other classes and items. You do not ever need a wizard or sorcerer in a party. There is nothing a rogue with UMD cannot do that a wizard can. The problem is just because something could replace you doesn't mean it should be used when you are there. It's good for there to be spells that do some rogue type things just in case you don't have one. Why would a player waste resources when you can just as easily do the job? I don't buy this excuse.

There's a difference though. Dropping a wizard out of a combat encounter for a wand wielding rogue might play out the same way but you are also replacing like with like. Instead of the wizard casting, the rogue is casting. You've just turned the rogue into a wizard because he's not doing anything rogueish.

OTOH if my ninth level rogue's contribution to a scenario can be duplicated by a celestial badger, I'd say there is a problem.

Note I'm specifically talking about combat here because I've never heard anyone bitch about the rogue having lots of skills. That part seems to be fine.

But the trend in DnD for a long time was if you are good in combat you should suck out of it. Thus fighters get two skill points per level. And vice versa. Having lots of skills means you should suck in combat.

Why not meet in the middle? Fighter gets more skills and rogue gets a combat power bump. Doesn't have to be equal. Maybe four skill points for fighter and relax the restriction on sneak attack down to specific creatures rather than type.

Isn't this pretty much what pathfinder did?

 

[S'mon]

I can't comment on 3E, but in 4e those items are, in affect, on the advancement table. The game is crystal clear about its mechanical expectations in this respect. Inherent bonuses are just one device for completely formalinsing this.

I wouldn't say it was crystal-clear; in the 4e PHB there is a combat example of an 8th
level PC with a +1 weapon. Elsewhere the game rather gives the impression that 8th level PCs should have +2 weapons by default, perhaps with an occasional +3 - since the first level 11 items start appearing when PCs are 7th level, according to the treasure tables. And Enchant Item lets 6th level PCs create their own +2 gear, but they need enough money to do so. Then DMG2 gives +2
Inherent attack bonus at 7th level.

I guess one could say there is a pretty clear expectation within about a 5-level spread: by 5th level PCs should have +1 items, by 10th level +2, by 15th level +3, 20th +4, 25th +5, and 30th +6? Again it doesn't actually say this in so many words. It's actually less prescriptive than 3e WBL in some ways, since the 3e system gives players near carte blanche on what to buy.

Perhaps the strongest 'metagame player entitlement' in 4e is the explicit 'wish list'? An obligation on the GM that the PCs find in-world the gear the players have requested OOC?
Naturally I don't use them.

 

[S'mon]

They got the maths wrong, in particular the damage maths.

I also think Expertise feats were part of it. My group plays without those feats and the players don't have any trouble achieving combat success.

My group, 16th level, just fought their first battle of the day - 8 PCs and a cohort vs mostly half-hp elites - starting -4 surges due to Necrotic influence. And they are now saying they'll die if they don't get another Extended Rest right away. Since there is a large force of bad guys approaching, this may mean they'll die.

 

[pemerton]

I think few regard hp as narrative though. Abstract, but not like mechanics that give players actual control of things traditionally in the hands of the GM.

Well, this thread tends to be conflating "narrative" and "metagame".

I think hp are obviously metagame: a character can't know that s/he can never die from falling down a 20' pit, or falling from his/her horse, or being shot at close range by an archer, but his/her player can know those things, and in typical D&D play will make decisions drawing upon that knowledge.

There are some players who don't agree - they think something like (i) hp are meat, (ii) injury typically consists in the shaving off of meat, and (iii) a person in the fiction always knows how much meat s/he has left. I personally find this very hard to swallow, but then I was one of those who quit AD&D for Rolemaster, with its different injury system being a major draw.

Are hp also narrative? Because I don't have a good handle on "narrative" as opposed to "metagame" I'll leave that for others to judge.

 

[pemerton]

Didn't this change with Essentials?

Maybe - I'm not an expert on this aspect of Essentials. As I understand it, the rarity rules in Essentials changed the treasure parcel rules. I think wishlists are still expected, however, except for Rare items. So I would see it as closer to a change to hit point rolls in place of fixed hp per level, rather than something more fundamental (Rare items being an exception here).

by treating character wealth as equivalent to a character's Base Attack Bonus (etc), part of the character, it creates an expectation that the GM will hand out wealth in-world. This rubs some people (me included) the wrong way.

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It hits my versimiltude meter, and you know I value world-sim play.

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I like treasure as an in-world reward; something you may or may not gain based on in-world events.

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My own preference in 4e is to use Inherent bonuses and leave treasure acquisition entirely to the Fates.

That makes sense - especially if you use pre-Essentials daily item limits to control excessive item reliance.

In my game I don't use inherent bonuses but use the "level up items" option from Adventurer's Vault - so the number of genuinely new items discovered is fairly low. An exception is the Rod of 7 Parts, which can't level up without a new part being discovered, but who is surprised that an adventurer bearing the Rod should periodically find himself coming across new bits ot it?

It may be hard to distinguish treasure parcels from increasing BAB, but that confusion only happens when viewing 4e. So to a non-4e player, treasure parcels are seen as 'player entitlement' because an increasing BAB exists in every edition.

I don't really follow this.

S'mon's dislike of the 4e approach makes sense to me (though I don't personally share it) - he wants the GM to have control over the ingame stuff, and to manage that in a world-sim style, and therefore doesn't want the players to be able to inject their own preferences into it, which may well be arbitrary relative to the established fiction of the world. He also has a mechanical solution: inherent bonuses, which give PCs the enhancement bonuses the game's mechanics require without impinging on the ingame fiction in the way items do.

But someone who looks at 4e and judges it wrong just because it has mechanical featuers - like an assumption of enhancement bonuses - that other editions don't - simply looks ignorant to me. It's like saying that 3E must be broken because a high level fighter can have 200 hp, which an AD&D PC couldn't have: ie wrongly projecting the framework of one edtion onto a different mechanical system.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Are hp also narrative?

Frankly, I think that's in large part a question of intent. I think the intent was to make a pure simulation, but it's one that fails so badly that people have to try and rationalize it using metagame logic. It's hard to tell the difference between a failed attempt at abstract simulation and a successful metagame mechanic.

 

[Sadras]

S'mon's dislike of the 4e approach makes sense to me (though I don't personally share it) - he wants the GM to have control over the ingame stuff, and to manage that in a world-sim style, and therefore doesn't want the players to be able to inject their own preferences into it, which may well be arbitrary relative to the established fiction of the world. He also has a mechanical solution: inherent bonuses, which give PCs the enhancement bonuses the game's mechanics require without impinging on the ingame fiction in the way items do.

But someone who looks at 4e and judges it wrong just because it has mechanical featuers - like an assumption of enhancement bonuses - that other editions don't - simply looks ignorant to me. It's like saying that 3E must be broken because a high level fighter can have 200 hp, which an AD&D PC couldn't have: ie wrongly projecting the framework of one edtion onto a different mechanical system.

Actually I follow S'mon's reasoning, our group played with an inherent bonuses simply for the sim-world reasoning, my answer was merely in response to your previous comment where you said it is hard for you to distinguish between an increasing BAB and treasure parcels as 'player-entitlement'.

The mechanical system of 4e forced treasure, previously a reward system, to become part of the core mechanics of the game which according to my personal view fuels 'player entitlement'.

Here's the thing, by the mechanics being as they are (PCs must have treasure parcels), it affects the setting/the world. The 200hp of a fighter in 3ed should be compared to the increase in hp of the monsters in 3e - not to the hp of a fighter in AD&D. The hp change of a class did not affect the setting, the inclusion of treasure parcels do. And the players know they're 'entitled' to treasure, its in their deity-damn book which gives rise to player entitlement.

So the mechanics force upon me a specific setting (not the one I want to play) through treasure parcels thereby increasing 'player entitlement' and you're saying I cannot judge those mechanics as wrong? I'm not bashing 4e here, please, I played it I had plenty of fun out of it, even used the inherent system, we are probably going to steal plenty of ideas from it for Next, but treasure parcels (for me, it appears not for you) created a sense of 'player entitlement' that was certainly there in previous editions (for mag items), tacitly perhaps, but when it became part of the core mechanic fueled that entitlement fire.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

If my character could be replaced with a first level summon monster spell, I'd say that I'm not really as effective as I'd like to be.

If you want a concrete number, I'd guess from gut feeling that 66 per cent is probably around the minimum for me.

Losing 1/3 effectiveness for an encounter is noticeable but not crippling. Sounds about right to me.

After all, if the elemental has dr that the fighter isn't equipped for, that's about what the fighter would lose.

what you said gave me an idea for what I think is a good rule of thumb... 1/2 by 1/3

my new rule is it is ok for you to be either half as effective in a third of your encounters or to be two thirds as effective in half of your encounters as a worse case scenario.

but in 3e you could lose ALOT more... if you don't have ranks in UMD and or have a low cha becoming a spell caster isn't much of an option. so fighting with 2 daggers that each hit deals 1d4+2+5d6 as your damage then you drop to 1d4+2 you are losing 5-30 (avg17.5) damage... that is a large drop in efficiency.