D&D 5E 2/18/13 L&L column

[pemerton]

I haven't read the last couple of pages, but wanted to reply to some of the replies to my posts.
[MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] is (as best I can tell) on the same page as me: I agree with all your posts at least up to 300.

Constrained or disincentivised, yes.

<snip>

And this is the root of the problem, yes - the fact that the "adventuring day" has not been well thought through. If it actually turns out to mean nothing, then the only meaningful aliquot is the encounter. Only stuff that gets used during encounters will actually be material, all else will be simply "colour" and "feel". That will make the "balancing characters across the adventuring day" a bit of a lame duck, though. If the adventuring day is material, however, then the addition of "encounters" to the "day" by specific classes will be an issue. Sounds like frying pan and fire, to me.

This is pretty much the point I was making, except I was adding an additional hypothesis: I've seen no evidence that the adventuring day will be material, and hence I've seen no evidence that the cleric which makes a given adventuring day more efficient will be more powerful.

In 4e, with a few exceptions (Essentials martial classes, variation across utility powes) everyone is on the same AEDU scheme, and so it doesn't matter to intraparty balance whether or not the adventuring day counts. I'm sure at some tables it does count, whether because of time-sensitive scenarios, leveraging action points and daily item uses, etc. I'm sure at some other tables it doesn't count, because the players have de facto authority over the pacing of extended rests. At those two different tables the resolution of any given encounter will be different - group 1 will worry about conserving surges, for instance, whereas group 2 will not - and that in turn may make some classes more or less valuable for that party's playstyle, but there will be no general pattern of imbalance in the game.

In Next, though, if the adventuring day doesn't matter than there will be intraparty imabalance - for instance, in a party with a cleric, that gets in 5 encounters between recharges, a fighter will be relatively more powerful; whereas in a party with my hypothetical rope-tricking magic-user, that gets in only 4 encounters between recharges, a fighter will be relatively less powerful (because the spell-casters will have more spells available per encounter).

But this doesn't tend to show that clerics are over-powered. If anything, it shows that clerics make fighters and rogues better, because making at-wills relatively more powerful compared to spells. It is in fact wizards, with their ability to speed up the recharge rate, who are the threat to intraparty balance!

The unit of measure is what happens in between full party recharges (in 5e, currently defined as the day). The actual unit of time is irrelevant.

Of course.

The relevant part is that a party restores all of their resources. In between these full recharges, the math takes over: a party can lose X resources and is expected to may Y successful die rolls (on average).

If a cleric makes it more difficult to wear down the party resources in that timeframe than any other class, then the cleric becomes more powerful than any other class.

Only if you define powers as "capacity to make succesful dice rolls within a given recharge period". But why should that definition be accepted? If recharge periods are under player control, then they are not relevant to measuring power.

That's all that matters, because difficulty (and XP and progress toward goals) is only relevant in that place between recharges. How many full recharges the party gets is kind of irrelevant for the purposes of determining challenge.

In the mechanical game terms (ie: XP is the goal), a cleric that extends the period between full recharges does that -- lessens the effort required to meet the goal. Each challenge becomes less.

This isn't true, in general.

For instance, suppose a party has, collectively, 20 units of challenge-defeating capacity (damage, let's say) between recharges. And suppose a cleric allows the party to endure 5 rather than 4 challenges.

With the cleric, then, the party can afford to deploy (on average) 4 challenge-defeating units per encounter.

Without a cleric, the party can afford to deploy (on average) 5 challenge-defeating units per encounter.

If the second party can in fact recharge more-or-less when it wants to, then it is going to find encounters easier to deal with, not harder: it will deply 5 challenge-defeating units per encounter (at the crudest, let's say it beats every encounter with fireball and death spell, then Rope Tricks and gets those spells back); whereas the cleric party is having to use every bit of tactical skill to defeat its 5 encounters between rests using only 4 units per encounter.

In these circumstances, the cleric has not made challenges easier.

(My analysis has one over-simplification - it is treating units of challenge-defeating capacity as fixed over the number of encounters, whereas in fact - given the at-will nature of some class abilities, especially martial ones - it grows with the number of encounters. But that wrinkle of complexity doesn't change the general thrust of my point.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

Only if you define powers as "capacity to make succesful dice rolls within a given recharge period". But why should that definition be accepted? If recharge periods are under player control, then they are not relevant to measuring power.

It's relevant for determining challenge. How many obstacles can your party overcome before they must recuperate? If the party fails to overcome that number of obstacles, they fail to meet their goal. In the case of 5e currently, the obstacles are monsters, the goal is one days' worth of XP, and if they retire before they accomplish that goal, they've failed to advance their characters as much as they could have.

For instance, suppose a party has, collectively, 20 units of challenge-defeating capacity (damage, let's say) between recharges. And suppose a cleric allows the party to endure 5 rather than 4 challenges.

With the cleric, then, the party can afford to deploy (on average) 4 challenge-defeating units per encounter.

Without a cleric, the party can afford to deploy (on average) 5 challenge-defeating units per encounter.

Just to keep things applying regardless of class, I'm going to flip your 20 units into 20 HP, since not every class is going to play with an expendable active resource, but everyone's going to have HP's. Essentially, HP's are encounter-defeating capacity anyway, ultimately.

With a cleric, the party loses 4 hp in each of 5 fights.

Without a cleric, the party loses 5 hp in each of 4 fights.

Thus, the cleric helps the party earn more XP in a day, and thus is seen as "necessary" to one degree or another.

If the second party can in fact recharge more-or-less when it wants to, then it is going to find encounters easier to deal with, not harder: it will deply 5 challenge-defeating units per encounter (at the crudest, let's say it beats every encounter with fireball and death spell, then Rope Tricks and gets those spells back); whereas the cleric party is having to use every bit of tactical skill to defeat its 5 encounters between rests using only 4 units per encounter.

That extra encounter, with its extra XP, means that the party with the cleric has performed better at their goals for the day (since XP is a measure of progress toward your goal) than the party without one. During the 4 encounters that each party faced, the party with the cleric was not as challenged as the party without one, since they had enough left over to go for another whole challenge.

 

[Libramarian]

The fact that there are groups of jerks about somebody has to play a cleric and be a healbot at least suggests issues with game design deficiencies. Yes? Saying that, "This isn't a problem because you can avoid the problem," doesn't stop it being a problem...

I suppose it would depend on the frequency of the problem, but my instinct is to say that the game shouldn't try to stop jerks being jerks.

I think they should start from a baseline of the kind of impact that bringing a Cleric into the party has in Basic or AD&D, and then tone that down a little bit in both directions (reducing the Cleric's healing capacity, particularly during extended rest periods, as well as give other classes damage mitigation abilities). But I DON'T think that perfect balance between a party with a cleric and a party with another fighter should be the goal.

Ideally a party with at least one member of any of the core classes should be better than a party without that class. But this especially should be true in the case of the Cleric I think.

Satisfying the traditional support Cleric fan strikes me as similar to the Gnome fan thing: in themselves, they're a pretty small minority, but because D&D is such a social game (not so much for the aforementioned jerks, I guess) if you piss them off you're liable to piss off their entire group which multiplies the effect.

I think we're at least getting closer to the real bone of contention here, because this sounds pretty much like "I think clerics should be more powerful than other classes" to me. That a cleric -- and a cleric alone -- makes the game harder to die in, and thus easier to play. Without this feature of turning a risky adventuring day into something without as much risk, it's not fun to play a cleric. Unless a party with a cleric is outright better than (rather than just different from) a party without one, the cleric isn't worth playing.

Which means that the cleric carries more weight and importance than any other class in the game. Play a barbarian instead of a fighter, or a bard instead of a rogue? Sure. Play a druid instead of a cleric? NEVER. You play a druid AND a cleric. Because the cleric makes the party better.

I should note that I don't think this is wrong, per se. It's a fine way to play. I just question the wisdom of making that the assumed baseline mode of play.

I should also note that I may be misunderstanding your intent there. I'm certainly not trying to put words into your mouth. I'd just note that changing the duration of adventuring days almost by definition makes the party more powerful (they're able to have more encounters, fight more things, get more XP, gain levels faster, etc.).


Sure, but I think you may be misunderstanding the goal of this. The goal is not to deprive players of the fun of buffing and healing the party. The goal is to ensure that the buffs and heals that the cleric is capable of aren't considered necessary to get a "full adventuring day" in. If no one in the party chooses to play a cleric, that shouldn't be a problem. If someone WANTS to play the support unit, they should be able to, and get the fun of buffing and healing the party, but if nobody wants to do that, the game should run differently, but not worse.

Even if having a Cleric in the party does result in a tangible in-game benefit (i.e. assuming that time is a resource), I still want to question your assumption that a party capable of fewer encounters on average per day is necessarily less fun for the players at the table. That seems like the game playing different, but not worse, to me.

Some people voluntarily choose to play videogames at harder difficulty levels, right?

I think you're working under the assumption that gamism starts right during character creation. I prefer character creation to be pretty light on the gamism I think. I expect players to fight like bastards in the middle of a dungeoncrawl, but not so much during character creation. I see that as more analogous to choosing your difficulty before beginning to play a videogame (in terms of its meta-gamist(?) status).

What's important is transparency, not balance. It's OK to have unbalanced characters and parties (within reasonable bounds) as long as the game explains it clearly. Then you can relativize your in-game success to your starting power, just like playing an asymmetrical war game or strategy game.

I want to remind/clarify at this point that what I have in mind is really a pretty minor difference between parties with Clerics and parties without. I don't think it's wise to aim for perfect parity.

Probably because XP is an incoherent blend of a reward mechanic and a pacing mechanic. I assume the DM is "supposed to" stop rewarding XP if they use the patrol restock as a Gauntlet-style monster generator. Although in a simulated world, there can only be X amount of monsters in the cave, right? Why wouldn't you use a war of attrition if that allows you to reach your goal of cleaning out the caves, and simultaneously gives you the mechanical satisfaction of earning XP? Kill a few goblins with arrows, try again tomorrow.

I personally feel that's why it's superior to give level ups at narratively appropriate times, not when the XP counter flips over. Ideally, there would still be a reward mechanic for smart strategic play in keeping with the D&D core ethos. I think more loot/more magic items would be the most fitting.

Something like the Chrono Cross model (a PS1 video game circa 2000) would also work, I think, although it might feel less "D&D". Reaching character goals sets your level, which is your current maximum potential. XP must be spent to train the abilities to reach the maximum potential.

Or getting most of your XP from treasure instead of monsters.

At the end of the day, whether a class called warlord can heal or not, whether a class without magic can heal or not, they're moving away from proportionate healing. And doing so, apparently, because they believe there are a significant number of customers who won't accept what HP have explicitly been since at least the release of the AD&D 1e DMG, and what they haven't wavered from being since.

That pretty much no-sells me on the game right there, not because those people are having badwrongfun, not because proportionate healing is the only way to make a good game, but because it exemplifies the design philosophy of "um, um, this won't offend people who don't currently buy our products, right?"

D&D came about from Gygax and Arneson experimenting at the table with what they found fun, with a very specific style of play. Every good RPG since has come from strong ideas about what would be fun, not from an anemic excuse for market research.

The AD&D DMG does not support proportionate healing.

 

[Garthanos]

getting most of your XP from treasure instead of monsters.

thats a feature of 1e... in effect it created an expected wealth per level before there was one, not sure about the numbers but it felt like the xp * .75 or some such.

 

[Garthanos]

The AD&D DMG does not support proportionate healing.

That always felt like an error... oh look you are a really healthy dude but it takes you longer to get better than the sickly fellow. Oh look you the young guy on the ground dying and the guy next to you barely injured lets give the barely injured guy a massive magic to fix him and slap a cure light wounds on the dying guy... that will do the trick.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

The AD&D DMG does not support proportionate healing.

It does, however, specify that HP are not simply the amount of physical punishment a character can take.

It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness).

It doesn't call out morale as being part of that, either, so one can feel free to interpret it as totally not allowing that one thing you don't like and declare victory, if that's what one enjoys.

Of course, morale was a separate set of rules in AD&D...

 

[Balesir]

Satisfying the traditional support Cleric fan strikes me as similar to the Gnome fan thing: in themselves, they're a pretty small minority, but because D&D is such a social game (not so much for the aforementioned jerks, I guess) if you piss them off you're liable to piss off their entire group which multiplies the effect.

I don't disagree with the sentiment of satisfying fans of various classes/races, but why does that entail making them more powerful than other classes/races? We see this, too, with the wizard afficionadoes. If any putative future D&D is to provide cleric fans with "properly powerful" clerics, wizard fans with "properly powerful" wizards, fighter fans with "properly powerful" fighters and rogue fans with "properly powerful" rogues, what is going to be left as merely "average"? It reminds me of the latter day miners union leader, Joe Gormley, who once said it was his aim that "no-one should be paid below the national average, and miners should be paid above the national average" - thus demonstrating either breathtaking ambition to transcend the laws of reality, or a complete ignorance of the meaning of the word "average".

I think you're working under the assumption that gamism starts right during character creation. I prefer character creation to be pretty light on the gamism I think. I expect players to fight like bastards in the middle of a dungeoncrawl, but not so much during character creation. I see that as more analogous to choosing your difficulty before beginning to play a videogame (in terms of its meta-gamist(?) status).

This is really quite interesting; my immediate thought was "well, of course gamism starts right during character creation", but I'm obviously missing something. I did wonder, hitherto, where the "step on up" element came in the play of "fantasy effin' Vietnam". If you have no choice but to battle through some Nietzchian nightmare of random death, how are you "stepping up to a challenge"? But this would explain it - and I wonder how widespread this approach is among "Combat as War" fans? Is taking some selected degree of suboptimal party and/or character build where you select just how big a set of cojones you are going to display?

 

[steeldragons]

It's relevant for determining challenge. How many obstacles can your party overcome before they must recuperate? If the party fails to overcome that number of obstacles, they fail to meet their goal. In the case of 5e currently, the obstacles are monsters, the goal is one days' worth of XP, and if they retire before they accomplish that goal, they've failed to advance their characters as much as they could have.

Emphasis mine.

Simply put: No, it's not. "Determining challenge/How many obstacles the party can overcome before they must recuperate" is not relevant at all...unless you make it so.

Set up your adventure. Plan/populate your encounters. Sure, the onus is on the DM to be [or try to be] "even/fair"...a 1st level party shouldn't be expected to go head-to-head with 6 trolls, for example. But maybe a party of 10 or 12 PCs (even without clerics!) could do...a few die and the rest celebrate their good fortune...If it seems too easy after a battle or two, up the ante. If they're getting pummeled in room #1, reign it in a bit.

But the "How" [and IF] the party gets through them is up to the players! Their choices with their characters. If they CHOOSE not to have a cleric (because it is a players'/group choice. The big bad game system is not forcing anyone to do anything) then their capacity to handle the adventures will reflect that. Maybe some obstacles will be easier (like finding something or enduring a particularly hot or cold environment), maybe some will be more tough (like, against undead). But they play, they fight, they learn. They enjoy or they don't....with or without a cleric or potions or short rests...or parries or sneaky-based DR or the hundred other things in this thread that don't need to be in the Basic game...and, likely, WILL be in the Standard or Advanced game ('cept, probably, sorry, "proportionate healing"...since maths is hard but maybe it will be presented as an option for Standard or Advanced...who knows?!).

The system does not choose (nor does it care nor is out to get the players, since it is a game and not a sentient conscious thing) "that we must have a cleric or we're not going to be able to go 5 encounters instead of 4?!" That is a concern or importance that those arguing it are assigning to the game. "DAMN YOU, GAME! You're not being FAIR cuz I don'wanna play a stewwwpid cleric! N' you can't make me!"

If they bite off more than they can chew, it's up to the PLAYERS to decide, not the DM (and, least of all, the game system), if they back up, go rest, "come back tomorrow", and, yes, heal/get healing. Or they can push through, get lucky, maybe go down in a blaze of glory...OR handle things just fine, kill the beast, get the girl, win the booty and live to adventure and save another day.

hmm. Kinda feel like I got on a bit of a tangent there...or are replying to more than the quoted post...so 'pologies for whatever does not apply. But it's just all been bottling up and, I guess, just how I feel on the various issue being discussed.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But the "How" [and IF] the party gets through them is up to the players! Their choices with their characters

Yes, and if they choose to get through the encounters in a way that is less efficient, they have failed at meeting their goals for the period between recharges.

Which means that anything that lets them handle more challenges is required for efficient play. And if a cleric alone enables the party to have more challenges, the cleric is going to be required.

I still want to question your assumption that a party capable of fewer encounters on average per day is necessarily less fun for the players at the table.

It's only less fun if any of the players considers fiero to be important -- overcoming challenges and meeting goals. Which, I think, a significant enough number of players do that it would be a problem to have the basic game pretend like that's not going to happen.

I think you're working under the assumption that gamism starts right during character creation.

I'm working under that assumption because that assumption is true often enough to warrant working under it. If it didn't happen, I'd expect to see more dwarven bards and elven barbarians. Yet, in part because those are not optimal choices, those become rarer in play.

This isn't a binary, of course, and not every group gives a flip, but it's a pressure that does exist.

What's important is transparency, not balance. It's OK to have unbalanced characters and parties (within reasonable bounds) as long as the game explains it clearly. Then you can relativize your in-game success to your starting power, just like playing an asymmetrical war game or strategy game.

My problem is that forcing someone to choose between playing the character they WANT to play, and playing the character they feel the MUST play (or weaken the entire party and create a more difficult challenge for everyone) is an unfair choice to force someone -- especially a newbie -- to make. I don't think D&D players should have to choose between effective in mechanical terms and cool in their own minds. If the cleric is better than any other class, that's a choice we're forcing on them.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Like I mentioned above, different tables are going to feel this differently, and it might not happen everywhere. But it's like 3e's CoDZilla problem, or 4e's grindy combat problem, or 2e's Complete Book of Twinks problem: some tables don't experience it, but that doesn't mean it's not a real problem that shouldn't be addressed.

The needle the designers need to thread on that is to solve the problem, without ruining the play experience for those who never had the problem.

What complicates that is when the problem is seen as just part of the game folks want to play. The line between a bug and a feature can be blurry, and no one wants to stop folks from enjoying the game how they like. I feel that the criteria for the basic version of the game are unique in that we'd like it to (a) deliver the purest, distilled essence of classic D&D, and (b) not present artificial barriers to entry, aimed as it is as newbies.

Are "clerics are more powerful" such a part of A that any loss in B is fine?

Personally, I don't think so, but I am a well-known rogue agent with a reckless disregard for authority, a chip on his shoulder, and a cool set of shades that metaphorically conceal my true feelings from all but the one woman who can melt my heart of ice.