D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back

[slobster]

I full well expect the average wizard to max Int and dump Str, I just think that it should matter that their Str is low. Even moreso, I think that it should matter if a character's Int, Wis, or Cha is low (or high). Too often in 3e, this was not the case. I get the sense 4e worsened the problem.

I'll agree that dumping one of your stats should have consequences, even if those consequences are mild and more related to flavor (you always put your foot in your mouth when you try to speak, everyone makes fun of you because you get short of breath after 1 flight of stairs) than they are deadly or enforced constantly by game mechanics.

In my experience 4E was no worse or better about this than 3.x, though of course experiences vary. I'm not really interested in hashing that out, because I don't think either of us are going to convince the other. I suppose I can see a few theoretical arguments to that effect (splitting defenses among the best of 2 stats comes to mind), but again in practice they never had that effect in my games so there you go.

Regardless of whether 3.x or 4E were better here, I'd be fine with 5E putting a bit more emphasis in telling the GM how to reward very high stats and riff on very low stats, without necessarily needing codified game mechanics and without devolving to "I'm going to punish you for your low Int score by forcing you alone into intelligence-based situations as often as possible!"

 

[Ahnehnois]

But, it /is/ possible to balance 3e 'easily' - if your campaign and DM style just happen to coincide with the tightrope act it takes to force balance on it. Rather like skipping through a mine field unharmed is 'easy,' as you as you just don't happen to step on any mines...

I guess a whole lot of people have that style, then...

Really, it's the other way around. There's one style or a small set of styles that breaks it, while everyone else is happy.

When you give a rationale for rejecting one mechanic, but accept it for another mechanic, that's inconsistent. When you reject a rationale when used to visualize a balanced mechanic, and accept it when used to justify an imbalanced one, (the arbitrary nature of magic, for instance - accepted when used to justify Vancian, rejected when used to enable alternatives), that inconsistency may imply an un-voiced agenda.

On what basis has anyone rejected any magic system? If you had an actual example of this kind of inconsistency, rather than a made-up one, it might carry more weight.

Balance isn't like dissociative mechanics, it's not some defined-just-for-the-edition-war slogan with a meaning that changes to suit, it's a long-standing principle of game design.

Your own definition of balance, however is. "Balance" like "tactical play" and "ease of DMing" are terms that have meaning, but which have been narrowly redefined and co-opted to become "defined-just-for-the-edition-war slogans".

For example, I could just as easily provide a long-winded rationale about how any form of per-day character abilities are not "fun" (as many believe). Fun is a far more fundamental game design principle than balance. You might very well reject that rationale, at which point, I could characterize you as rejecting all rationales and being anti-fun, and asky why everyone who plays 4e hates fun and why the company that makes it tried to stomp out whatever fun we could have playing non-caster classes.

Or I could choose not to do that.

I'll take it back if I ever see a hint of compromise on the issue.

I'd allow a Tiefling warlock PC to make a complex skill check.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But we found out that it wasn't just some radical squeaky wheels. It was a big chunk of the playerbase. My theory is it is as high as 75%. But you could argue differently (and will I'm sure).

I make no claim as to the relative size of the player bases who cleaved off with each rev-roll. The data are not available. Any 'theory' as to that size supporting this or that side of a debate is just wishful thinking.

I don't think 3e was super far from being balanced. I would work on some spells. I don't see the basics of D&D being imbalanced.

Some very basic things about D&D have always led to structural imbalance. Vancian casting vs all-at-will non-casters, being one of the most painfully obvious.

yeah we just aren't willing to accept just any mechanics. That is true. Mechanics are the game. Why play with ones you dislike instead of ones you do.

Well, one reason might be consideration for others. Balanced mechanics may not let you do /everything/ you want to with your character, for instance, but they let everyone at the table come as close as possible to what they want without leaving anyone in a position of mechanical irrelevance.

I don't believe like you do that balance is as hard as you say.

Perfect balance, as is so often pointed out, is impossible. What's harder than impossible?

Sure. But unlike you. I see the rejection of 4e as a firestorm like no other. Compared to any other edition it's a tidal wave next to a splash.

It was, indeed, unique in how successful it was. The important difference, I think, wasn't the content 4e, but the GSL vs the OGL. In the past, the initial 'splash' of rejection was short-lived, those rejecting the new thing had little to talk about after their initial disgust, and the only new, interesting things coming out were for the new system. The rejection faded away for lack of anything to latch onto.

With the OGL and 3pps ready to produce whatever the hold-outs wanted, there was no holding it back. As Pathfinder took off, feeding on the ire of the hold-outs, they, in turn, grew emboldened at it's success and 4e's 'failure.'

3.5 shows a good constrast. 3.5 was released to a storm of controversy, but it was released under the OLG with it's own SRD. 3pps had no reason not to go on making d20 stuff using the latest thing. The controversy was very real, but it didn't have teeth, because there was no 3.0-clone to wallet vote for.

5e, then, doesn't really need to worry about mechanics as much as it is making a show of doing - mechanics will never please everyone. The playtest is good to keep buzz going for the line through this no-real-products interregnum following the destruction of 4e by the edition war, but the real deciding factor will be how it's rolled out. If it's a d20 game with an SRD and it can generate /some/ 'excitement' 3pps will jump on the bandwagon and it'll have that momentum. The only danger is not making it attractive enough to past fans who have retro-clone support going (which, by now, is everyone but 4e - which can't be legally 'cloned' to anywhere near the extent other eds were), including Pathfinder, of course.

OTOH, if 5e 'goes it alone,' as a standard-issue proprietary system, it'll have every d20 producer competing with it, directly, using retro-clones whose fans already find to be more D&D than D&D. A tougher row to hoe.

If, inconceivably, 5e takes an anti-OGL approach like it did with the GSL, it'll have to appeal slavishly, indeed, to the retro-fans to have any hope of heading off a further explosion of support for Pathfinder and the other retro-clones.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I guess a whole lot of people have that style, then...

A lot of people have been playing D&D for a long time. Either they figure out one way or another how to play it without it falling apart on them (simply not playing it to very high level, for instance), or they fix it, or they learn to like the way it breaks (especially once you have the system mastery to break it in your favor).

Really, it's the other way around. There's one style or a small set of styles that breaks it, while everyone else is happy.

The prescription to balance 3.x at higher levels includes things like: Never allow the 5MWD, anytime the party tries to rest before you've managed to squeeze a few rounds of relative ineffetiveness out of the casters, you have their Rope Trick or MMM dispelled or their planar sanctum breached or lever them with extreme time pressure or whatever it takes. Provide the party with false or misleading information as to what threats will be faced in the 'day' to come - yes, even though they have all manner of divination spells to see through such things. Make liberal use of anti-magic fields and zones, but tone down the encounters that include them to be handled by the non-casters at their now greatly-reduced strength. Provide non-casters with 'make work' encounters and challenges that are too trivial to expend spells on (depends on cracking down on resting, above). Populate encounters with 'sacrificial' enemies whose only purpose is to look bad-ass enough to draw the inevitable first wave of SoDs and the like, then start the real encounter. Etc, etc, etc...

It helps if you have some player restraint, too - if the skilled optimizer plays the fighter, while the casual player has fun with a blasting sorcerer, you'll have a lot fewer issues with caster dominance.

"Balance" like "tactical play" and "ease of DMing" are terms that have meaning, but which have been narrowly redefined and co-opted to become "defined-just-for-the-edition-war slogans".

'Tactical play' certainly has suffered from that. It's been taken from having a broad, interesting range of options in combat, to 'playing on a grid.'

Personally, I like a fairly expansive definition of Balance. Otherwise you fall into absurdities like 'balance just makes everyone the same.'

For example, I could just as easily provide a long-winded rationale about how any form of per-day character abilities are not "fun" (as many believe).

Fun is entirely subjective, so, yeah, I'm sure you could.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Sure, /ad populum/ is always convincing.

Your "3e is unbalanced because of 'well-known' character builds posted on line" thesis is less convincing

The prescription to balance 3.x at higher levels

i.e. your prescription to balance a game under unusual circumstances. High level itself is unusual.

None that I've noticed. It's martial dailies that have been roundly rejected for a contradictory universe of subjective non-issues.

Basically, what you're alluding to is the idea that magic is different that things that aren't magic. That's subjective, but it is an issue. A big issue, actually.

Read everything Emerikol's ever posted.

Given his (or her) post count, I probably have. I'm not seeing it.

'Tactical play' certainly has suffered from that. It's been taken from having a broad, interesting range of options in combat, to 'playing on a grid.'

Just like to highlight points I agree with.

Personally, I like a fairly expansive definition of Balance. Otherwise you fall into absurdities like 'balance just makes everyone the same.'

Or absurities like "4e is balanced but no other version of D&D is"

Fun is entirely subjective, so, yeah, you could.

So's balance.

If it's an honest rant, it'll say something about you - but not much about the game.

That much is certain, whether we're talking about fun, balance, or anything else.

 

[Obryn]

You are right that different fluff can make something associative that was formerly dissociative. So it is a combination of fluff and mechanics. It's how they relate. If I dropped the fighter and just used the paladin then I could rationalize dailies. As I did above.

OK. Good. "Because it's magic." Magic guys get "plot coupons" because of magic, and non-magic guys don't.

So? I like mundane fighters. I like mundane rogues. But I want to play a non-magical hero, in these cases not a magical one. So yes I want those classes limited in some ways to represent the fact they aren't using magic. It doesn't mean they have to be less fun to play. And it doesn't mean they can't use magic items. But it does mean innately they don't do magical tricks.

Nobody is arguing that your average Human Fighter should be teleporting and throwing fireballs. But I think your notion of what constitutes a "magical trick" is overly broad and restrictive.

-O

 

[triqui]

No, it isn't.

Well, that's a creative definition. I don't define balanced as being "equally easy to dump".

Balanced means they are equally valid.
For example, in 3e, Stats like Charisma and Constitution aren't balanced. Charisma means jack, and you can dump it without any problem, except for the characters that need it as a primary stat (like bards and sorcererers). Constitution, on the other hand, is absolutelly vital (pun intended). If you dump it, you'll die, because it is just too damn powerful (modifying your hp every level).
In 4e, while there is not a perfect balance, the stats are much closer. You could dump Con, instead of Cha, because Con is balanced with Cha: none of them is incredibly superior to the other, as in 3e. Both will give you benefits if you have them high, but the benefit of a high CON isn't as overpowered as in 3e, and the benefit of a high CHA is much better than in 3e (you get everything 3e gives you, plus Will defense).

So yes, the impossibility to dump CON in 3e makes that edition abilities less balanced. That's what balance menas: all weight the same. It's not true in 3e, a few abilities weight much more than the rest.

Ask the same thing of PCs. If two PCs are balanced over the course of one possible type of encounter, are they balanced? If you're going to posit a game with open-ended possibilities, balance in that game needs to occur outside of the typical encounter. If a monster has a daily ability, and using that ability once during each day of its enture in-game lifespan would cause problems, it's not balanced, even if it plays fine during a short straight-up combat.

That's one of the major flaws of 3e way of thinking. The belief that PC and NPC are equal, and what makes PC balanced also has to make NPC balanced. It does not. PC live in a completelly different standards. Nobody cares if the Goblin King spent more points in his abilities, or has more money in magic items than his vassals. But a lot of players would complain if PC rangers have more points for his abilities than, say, PC fighters. Outside of encounters, the monster abilities do not cause problems, because they are there for DM plot advance. If you need a Dragon to create a ritual that builds a black-hole that threat the entire cosmos as part of your plot advance, so be it. If you don't need it, who cares?

More to the point, most monsters will be used for some purpose other than a 6 round straight up combat encounter against an on-level party at some point.

True. So what?

So basically, what you're saying, is that two independent, free thinking players could build characters that aren't balanced with each other? Guess the system's not that balanced (which was my point).

No.
Chess is balanced. You can't beat Kasparov. That does not make Chess unbalanced, makes you an awful player if compared with Kasparov. Chess is balanced when Kasparov plays against Karpov. Anything that has enough complexity to be able to develop system mastery, is going to have some people more adept to it than others. That includes Rock-scissors-paper. So unless you want to keep the system down to "tic-tac-toe" or "toss a coin" level, you always will have some free thinking players with different skill levels at the game.

On the other hand, even the best optimizers of D&D, can`t build a fighter that plays on the same league than a optimized full spellcaster. So its imbalance is not a matter of one player being worse than the other at it, but one class being superior to others. It's like playing chess without rooks.

The broader point is that these definitions of balance are extremely narrow. If you're playing in a scenario that is exactly what the designers envisioned, then they might work, but if you aren't, they don't. Ergo, the system itself isn't balanced, the playstyle it supports (enforces) is.

If the classes are balanced among them, that will be so in whatever scenario they run. You might find the game to be harder, or easier, if you don't run in the envisioned scenario, but the balance among them is there. If you run fewer combats per day than the designers envisioned, then daily powers are going to make those combats a cakewalk. But that's true for both the fighter, or the wizard, as they both have daily powers. It doesn't hold that way in 3e, because there's much more disparity between classes. If you happen to play fewer encoutners per day, classes with dailies will outshine those without them, going nova.

 

[triqui]

I would define it as them all being important, but different, for each single character.

I full well expect the average wizard to max Int and dump Str, I just think that it should matter that their Str is low. Even moreso, I think that it should matter if a character's Int, Wis, or Cha is low (or high). Too often in 3e, this was not the case. I get the sense 4e worsened the problem.

Your sense is wrong. In 3e, a fighter get's nothing for having a high charisma (other than higher bonus in charisma skills). In 4e, he gets that, plus a high Will defense. In 3e, a wizard gets nothing for having a high STR (other than higher encumbrance and str skill mod). In 4e, he get's all of that, plus a higher fortitude save.

In addition to that, 4e has riders. A 4e fighter get bonuses to his powers for having a high dex when using appropiated weapons. 4e wizards had bonuses to different implements, and riders based on stats other than INT ("push WIS squares" etc).

You can argue that 4e didn`t do *enough* (I also think so, and 5e saves by stat is a good step), but for sure, it did lessened the problem. Every stat is more important to any character in 4e, than it is in 3e, except CON, which was diminished from "must have" status to "it's nice to have" status.

 

[Obryn]

Part of it's identity is unashamedly as an "Ars Magica Lite".

Going back to here - the reason Ars Magica works is because everyone is playing a Magus. And everyone is also playing their hangers-on. Because the system acknowledges there is no way in which Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit are even playing the same game. So unless you're suggesting D&D incorporate a troupe system, or suggesting that it's ideal that Wizards are the real game, and Fighters get to ... um ... travel with Wizards, I don't think this is a good model.

-O

 

[triqui]

You are right that different fluff can make something associative that was formerly dissociative. So it is a combination of fluff and mechanics. It's how they relate. If I dropped the fighter and just used the paladin then I could rationalize dailies. As I did above.

So? I like mundane fighters. I like mundane rogues. But I want to play a non-magical hero, in these cases not a magical one. So yes I want those classes limited in some ways to represent the fact they aren't using magic. It doesn't mean they have to be less fun to play. And it doesn't mean they can't use magic items. But it does mean innately they don't do magical tricks.

Ok, so the problem isn't that you want magic to be inherently better than martial/mundane, it's just that you need to rationalize it so it does not break your suspension of disbelief.

Let's see if we can agree with this:

Wizards have powers that allow them to damage several people in an area (lightnign bolt), can overcome hit points (hold monster), instantly kill a monster (finger of death), disable them (blindness), become too hard to hit (Displacement), and too hard to kill (stoneskin).

Let's see if I can build some martial movents that can be balanced toward those, without feeling "magical".

Let's suppose a power where you charge in a line, attacking with your sword everybody in your path. That's equivalent to a lightning bolt.

Let's create a power where you make an Intimidating shout, and a target cower in fear in his place.

Let's creae a power called "beheading" (or "heartseeking", to use it with arrows), that instantly kills a creature who fail saving throws, or have a certain treshold of hit dice/hit points (like Power Word to Kill)

Now let's go with a power called "gouge", that makes a creature that fails the save to be blinded.

Then let's make a "dodging stance", which makes you dodge 50% of the incoming attacks, just like Displacement does.

And now let's build a "defensive stance" which gives you DR 10, like stoneskin. As hit points aren't meat, but also stamina, will to fight, dodge, and ability to turn a big hit into a lesser hit, this damage reduction does not come from your skin being hardened (as the spell), but from you being better at dodging, parrying, and turning hits into glances.

There you go. As you don't like martial dailies, we can have two options:
1) those are at-will. Yep, the wizards will cry. But we don't care about balance, it's not a problem that a class is inferior to other, as long as there is in-world verosimilitude, and this powers are verosimile for a mundane character. The wizard will be clearly inferior in combat, but if we didn't worry about the fighter being inferior, we don't really have to worry about the wizard being inferior. Unless, of course, the problem is we secretly really want fighters being inferior, period, and everything else is just a excuse to rationalize it.

2)If 1) doesn't work, we can give the fighter a set pool of points called "fatigue" or "stamina" or "adrenaline". He can use those to activate this skills, until he is too tired to do any more. He can repeat them, to avoid "plot coupons". He, as a character, is aware of this powers being tiring, just like he is aware of his hit points. So it's not dissociative.

Would you accept this solution?