D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[Crimson Longinus]

Why? And don't say tradition or use the fact that you like attrition.

Because the game is target audience beyond just you.

That is logistical play and again, you're going to get ground down no matter what. It's the same amount of 'consequence' as the trolley problem.

Why are you not engaging with what I actually say? Your comment is a complete non sequitur. Having limited amount of resources to overcome a limited amount of obstacles do not mean you will "get ground down no matter what." It is what makes strategic play possible.

In any case, do you think it reasonable expectation that D&D would do away with spell slots, and turn all class features and spells into at-will abilities, and have HP recover to full at the end of combat? Because that's what not having attrition would mean. I don't think it is reasonable, D&D will never be that sort of a game, so complaining that it isn't seems utterly futile.

 

[overgeeked]

That's irrelevant.

Not really, no. TTRPGs not being competitive games is the heart of the matter.

Think about it like this. What would the response be if the referee used "tech" to win?

The players would lose. Always.

Referee: "I control the world and can do anything I want. Rocks fall, everyone dies. Huzzah, I win again. This game is so easy. You guys should really step things up. You're not even a challenge for me."

And the players would leave. Always.

TTRPGs are not competitive games between the referee and the players. Nor are they competitive games between the players, typically. It's not special pleading, it's recognizing the facts of the matter.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Because the game is target audience beyond just you.

Or you.

In any case, do you think it reasonable expectation that D&D would do away with spell slots, and turn all class features and spells into at-will abilities, and have HP recover to full at the end of combat? Because that's what not having attrition would mean

That'd be pretty awesome.

 

[Vaalingrade]

TTRPGs are not competitive games between the referee and the players.

B-but consequences!

 

[Tony Vargas]

They came in from other regions bringing supplies with them. They're raiding the countryside far and wide because the adventurers hired to stop them decided to take a quick vacay. They're eating the villagers. They're eating whatever monsters ever eat in a dungeon. What throws verisimilitude out the window is that that a group can repeatedly just have a fight or two, go away for a week and expect to fight the same level of challenge because the orcs are just going to sit around doing absolutely nothing.

It's generally easy to rationalize punishing players for deviating from the expected day length (or week length, if you go that way), yes... generally...

...But, If the players are exploring an ancient tomb, untouched for centuries, that only they know the location of, and they decide to retreat from a powerful construct guarding one of the inner chambers, re-seal and cover the entrance, rest up, make a new magic weapon capable of harming said construct, and come back to dispatch it later, well, that's just 'bout Smart Play, i'n'it?

You could rationalize a punishment there, and if you don't, the players may realize they can slowly grind away at the challenges in the tomb, methodically, one challenge and one long rest at a time, which would render the whole resource-attrition balancing act moot. But, if you do, they players may realize you're forcing things and their decisions don't really matter.

Really, there's three things being discussed here as if they were one thing, because, in D&D, they're all affected by resource mechanics, hp/HD and Slots, primarily:

1. Pacing: Stories need it, games need it, life has it whether it wants it or not. Things happen at different paces in different times places and situations, sometimes frantic, sometimes methodical, sometimes hurry-up-and-wait. A lighting raid, a methodical exploration, a dangerous wilderness journey, a traditional dungeon - time pressure varies and challenges come at you at different rates in each.
2. Stakes: Your characters are risking their imaginary lives and you're managing their abstract game resources, for a purpose. To gain levels, at minimum, that's built-in. To gain loot is not as built-in as it used to be. You can even be trying to accomplish something in the context of the world, rid the land of evil monsters, save innocent lives, make a name for yourself, etc... There will generally be risks, and there can be trade-offs and unintended consequences to minimizing those risks, in-fiction, hard-coded, or meta-game.
3. Balance: A cooperative game that presents choices that are strictly inferior is a game being dishonest with it's players. The players either get wise and powergame making the game less challenging or get suckered and are a drag on the rest of the team. D&D is such a game, but it has a strategy to ameliorate it: the Adventuring Day. Classes are given unequal resources, but players are forced to manage those resources over a carefully calibrated series of challenges that strain them to the point that those with superior resources run our or must conserve them, putting in poor performances relative to the higher baseline of the classes that have fewer resources.

An issue we run up against is that most solutions that get floated don't address all three of those. They focus on just a single issue, and leave the other two out, or even make an issue worse.

Like, obviously, just laying it on the DM to force grueling enough adventuring days may reduce class imbalance (3), but it gets in the way of the DM pacing his campaign as he might like (be that driven by realism or drama or something else), and it artificially limits the players' agency to set Stakes by focusing resources on a short day.

For instance, an entirely encounter-focused game, like the 7th ed of Gamma World, where you recover all your hp and other resources after every encounter, means any pacing is possible, and resource-balance is a non-issue, but what are the Stakes for preparing for a tough battle or blowing through several? Nuthin' every battle you go in exactly the same.
There are no stops to pull out. Similarly, the 13A solution (quick rests every encounter, full heal-up every 4th encounter) solves (1) and (3) handily at the cost of (2) - 13A adds it back with the option of a 'campaign loss' to full-heal-up early, but I doubt that's entirely satisfying.

 

[overgeeked]

For instance, an entirely encounter-focused game, like the 7th ed of Gamma World, where you recover all your hp and other resources after every encounter, means any pacing is possible, and resource-balance is a non-issue, but what are the Stakes for preparing for a tough battle or blowing through several? Nuthin' every battle you go in exactly the same.

Not exactly. The resources you have on your character sheet, derived from your race, class, background, etc may always be the same. But through interacting with the world you gain and lose allies, consumables, magic items, gear & equipment, money, reputation, titles, etc. All those diegetic things that you acquire in the world that's not necessarily a +1 to this or extra spell slot to that.

There are no stops to pull out.

There absolutely are. Burning through all those diegetic resources. Sacrificing what you've gained.

Similarly, the 13A solution (quick rests every encounter, full heal-up every 4th encounter) solves (1) and (3) handily at the cost of (2) - 13A adds it back with the option of a 'campaign loss' to full-heal-up early, but I doubt that's entirely satisfying.

You make it satisfying by remembering the stakes are the fictional bad thing happening and your loss of all those diegetic resources. The character is not limited to the character sheet. If you only ever focus on the sheet you miss a whole lot.

 

[Tony Vargas]

you gain and lose allies, consumables, magic items, gear & equipment, money, reputation, titles, etc.

Gamma World 7 did have two resources outside the basic encounter-based system. Alpha Mutations, which were also an encounter resource, but changed randomly, either within or between encounters, so they were a less dependable encounter resource.

And, Omega Tech, which you found, and generally functioned at least once before breaking down. So that was a 'stop' you could pull out.

You make it satisfying by remembering the stakes are the fictional bad thing happening

Stakes can always include that, but the ability to conserve or recharge resources to focus on an important challenge is still mechanical. The stakes can be there, the players can decide which are the most important, but if they don't have the agency to put more into the most important ones, it's decidedly less meaningful. Yes, it can be added back in with exogenous resources like found items or allies, but, that can lead back to the DM applying force to make the system work.

Otherwise, yes, an encounter-based design could be a very good solution. And, relative to the status quo, an encounter-based game would have one of three problems the current design falls prey to.

 

[soviet]

They came in from other regions bringing supplies with them. They're raiding the countryside far and wide because the adventurers hired to stop them decided to take a quick vacay. They're eating the villagers. They're eating whatever monsters ever eat in a dungeon. What throws verisimilitude out the window is that that a group can repeatedly just have a fight or two, go away for a week and expect to fight the same level of challenge because the orcs are just going to sit around doing absolutely nothing.

Do you ever seriously go into depth about what the monsters eat? The ecology of monster infested regions or caves has never been a strong point of D&D so maybe the orcs are just eating all those strawmen being thrown out left and right.

I thought it was a living breathing world that the DM merely channels, and all consequences are natural and unfabricated?

 

[Pedantic]

Not really, no. TTRPGs not being competitive games is the heart of the matter.

Think about it like this. What would the response be if the referee used "tech" to win?

The players would lose. Always.

I'm not casting the situation as players vs. GMs, and I definitely agree with the GM as a necessary source of relatively unbiased obstacles (frankly I quite like CR systems and think the GM should probably have a thumb on the scales so that the PCs, presumably unlike most adventurers, generally get a string of roughly level appropriate encounters). I'm saying that the players should be expected to read the rules available to them and try to leverage those rules for victory; it's weird special pleading to ask them not to try very hard, or to care much about overcoming obstacles like they would in other games.

Referee: "I control the world and can do anything I want. Rocks fall, everyone dies. Huzzah, I win again. This game is so easy. You guys should really step things up. You're not even a challenge for me."

And the players would leave. Always.

TTRPGs are not competitive games between the referee and the players. Nor are they competitive games between the players, typically. It's not special pleading, it's recognizing the facts of the matter.

I feel like you're arguing about something orthogonal to my point. In my cooperative game example, one of the GM's roles is analogous to a deck of Invader cards and a random event system, or in Slay the Spire, to the randomized pools of enemy encounters that fights are drawn from on each floor. Nothing requires the GM to be treating the game as a competition with the players for the players to try and win.

 

[Pedantic]

It's generally easy to rationalize punishing players for deviating from the expected day length (or week length, if you go that way), yes... generally...

...But, If the players are exploring an ancient tomb, untouched for centuries, that only they know the location of, and they decide to retreat from a powerful construct guarding one of the inner chambers, re-seal and cover the entrance, rest up, make a new magic weapon capable of harming said construct, and come back to dispatch it later, well, that's just 'bout Smart Play, i'n'it?

You could rationalize a punishment there, and if you don't, the players may realize they can slowly grind away at the challenges in the tomb, methodically, one challenge and one long rest at a time, which would render the whole resource-attrition balancing act moot. But, if you do, they players may realize you're forcing things and their decisions don't really matter.

Really, there's three things being discussed here as if they were one thing, because, in D&D, they're all affected by resource mechanics, hp/HD and Slots, primarily:

1. Pacing: Stories need it, games need it, life has it whether it wants it or not. Things happen at different paces in different times places and situations, sometimes frantic, sometimes methodical, sometimes hurry-up-and-wait. A lighting raid, a methodical exploration, a dangerous wilderness journey, a traditional dungeon - time pressure varies and challenges come at you at different rates in each.
2. Stakes: Your characters are risking their imaginary lives and you're managing their abstract game resources, for a purpose. To gain levels, at minimum, that's built-in. To gain loot is not as built-in as it used to be. You can even be trying to accomplish something in the context of the world, rid the land of evil monsters, save innocent lives, make a name for yourself, etc... There will generally be risks, and there can be trade-offs and unintended consequences to minimizing those risks, in-fiction, hard-coded, or meta-game.
3. Balance: A cooperative game that presents choices that are strictly inferior is a game being dishonest with it's players. The players either get wise and powergame making the game less challenging or get suckered and are a drag on the rest of the team. D&D is such a game, but it has a strategy to ameliorate it: the Adventuring Day. Classes are given unequal resources, but players are forced to manage those resources over a carefully calibrated series of challenges that strain them to the point that those with superior resources run our or must conserve them, putting in poor performances relative to the higher baseline of the classes that have fewer resources.

An issue we run up against is that most solutions that get floated don't address all three of those. They focus on just a single issue, and leave the other two out, or even make an issue worse.

Like, obviously, just laying it on the DM to force grueling enough adventuring days may reduce class imbalance (3), but it gets in the way of the DM pacing his campaign as he might like (be that driven by realism or drama or something else), and it artificially limits the players' agency to set Stakes by focusing resources on a short day.

For instance, an entirely encounter-focused game, like the 7th ed of Gamma World, where you recover all your hp and other resources after every encounter, means any pacing is possible, and resource-balance is a non-issue, but what are the Stakes for preparing for a tough battle or blowing through several? Nuthin' every battle you go in exactly the same.
There are no stops to pull out. Similarly, the 13A solution (quick rests every encounter, full heal-up every 4th encounter) solves (1) and (3) handily at the cost of (2) - 13A adds it back with the option of a 'campaign loss' to full-heal-up early, but I doubt that's entirely satisfying.

Honestly, the best implementation of stakes I've seen at the table was in the 3PP module Strangers in Ramshorn, which arguably just took the old Gygaxian "You cannot have a meaningful game if strict time records aren't kept," concept and ran with it. It uses a slightly modified gritty realism resource recovery schedule and all of the modules factions, monster threats, town events and so on are plotted on a timeline. Each time the PCs take a week off to rest, each problem they haven't resolved ticks forward and progresses, causing specific changes to the wilderness surrounding the central town, with different permutations based on the order they've tackled challenges in.

I found it thoroughly convincing, and quickly adapted the process for my homebrew. Players felt immediately and intensely that their choices mattered, carefully parceled out their resources and agonized over whether they had done enough to slow down their foes and could afford to rest, or if they had to rest to be able to continue. Building a timeline of faction/monster/enemy plans is now a significant part of my prep, and I keep time records, admittedly somewhat loosely down to whatever scale is appropriate.. Technically this limits the kind of goals I can set out for PCs, in that they have to care about what will happen to places and people in the setting if they don't intervene, and obviously it requires some improvisation as new factions emerge in importance, or an unusual solution to a problem or change to the basic state of affairs emerges, but it's worked quite well.