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yougi
2016-02-16, 10:30 PM
Me and a few buddies have had this arguments about the merits of D&D 3.5, 4 and 5. One point that we can't seem to agree on is the existence of out-of-combat abilities (OOCA): spells like Divination, or transportation (Water breathing, Fly, Teleport), or Enchantment (from Charm to ESP, including Zone of truths), or abilities like Tracking, Bluffing or Diplomacy (the skill, not the action). I can see how they can look interesting: you feel good using them, it gives you a checklist of problems you don't have to think about how to solve anymore.

That being said, I hate them, for multiple reasons:
- they substitute a roll, or even worse, an auto-win, to what should be problem solving, role playing, or creative thinking ("How will we get out of here with only 50ft of rope, two longswords and magical glue? Oh nevermind, TELEPORT!", or "Oh, you want us to help you with something before you let us in? CHARM!");
- they make players look at their sheets for solutions, rather than thinking and talking;
- it makes planning harder for the DM, balancing between making you feel good for having the abilities, yet having to find other ways to make it tense (you know how "you're lost in the desert without food" has no meaning if the group can magically make food and water appear out of thin air?).

In other words, my argument is that OOCA actually make everything that is not combat trivial, because they're, most of the time, insta-win buttons, or at least the absolute perfect tool, making any sort of thinking-outside-the-box unnecessary.

That being said, I also see the argument that 4E pushes you towards combat because it offers no non-combat abilities. I mean, you can still use your Scorching Ray attack to burn a rope holding an item 50ft up (or at least, you should be able to), but because it's presented as an attack, people don't think about it?

What are your opinions on this?

ImNotTrevor
2016-02-16, 10:47 PM
If the only thing you want D&D to be is Dungeon Combat Simulator, then sure. Those abilities are mostly pointless.

If you want it to be anything else, then some degree of OOCA will be necessary.

Warhammer 40k, the wargame, as no OOCA because there is nothing out of combat. The RPGs DO have them, because there are things that happen out of combat.

It depends on the focus of the system. Most systems dedicate a large portion of their pages to combat, which supports the idea that all RPGs are primarily combat based. (Even when they claim not to be.)

I personally like my OOCA in my systems because....most of the systems I use actually downplay combat. Or at least make it no more interesting than anything else in the system. (See Powered by the Apocalypse games, Dogs in the Vineyard, Freemarket, and some others for RPGs where combat is either trivialized, glossed over, or otherwise not emphasized at all.)

It depends on what you want out of your system. D&D is good at what it does... and to a certain degree you can beat it into submission to do other things, too. But other systems that are built with those other things as their core will do those things better for the same reason that a spear is better for stabbing than an axe is. Sure, you can stick a pointy bit on an axe but the spear's entire purpose is stabbing. It can't chop like an axe can, though.

So yeah, since D&D is built on combat sim, the OOCA likely feel pretty tacked-on and unfitting to the core concept of D&D (which evolved from Chainmail, which evolved from Historical wargames. Combat sims. Its in D&Ds DNA.) So I can see why people who come for the Combat Sim part dislike them. So find systems that entirely remove them or severely downplay them, and play those. You'll probably have a better time, granted your players are all chill with it. *shrug*

Half of enjoying this hobby to the max is finding the right system(s) for the experience(s) you want.

I might have swerved off topic.

OOCA: I like them because combat is not my main draw for RPGs. Without them, I'm playing a Wargame. Which is also cool, but not why I play TRPGs.

yougi
2016-02-16, 11:12 PM
If the only thing you want D&D to be is Dungeon Combat Simulator, then sure. Those abilities are mostly pointless.

If you want it to be anything else, then some degree of OOCA will be necessary.

Warhammer 40k, the wargame, as no OOCA because there is nothing out of combat. The RPGs DO have them, because there are things that happen out of combat.

It depends on the focus of the system. Most systems dedicate a large portion of their pages to combat, which supports the idea that all RPGs are primarily combat based. (Even when they claim not to be.)

I personally like my OOCA in my systems because....most of the systems I use actually downplay combat. Or at least make it no more interesting than anything else in the system. (See Powered by the Apocalypse games, Dogs in the Vineyard, Freemarket, and some others for RPGs where combat is either trivialized, glossed over, or otherwise not emphasized at all.)

It depends on what you want out of your system. D&D is good at what it does... and to a certain degree you can beat it into submission to do other things, too. But other systems that are built with those other things as their core will do those things better for the same reason that a spear is better for stabbing than an axe is. Sure, you can stick a pointy bit on an axe but the spear's entire purpose is stabbing. It can't chop like an axe can, though.

So yeah, since D&D is built on combat sim, the OOCA likely feel pretty tacked-on and unfitting to the core concept of D&D (which evolved from Chainmail, which evolved from Historical wargames. Combat sims. Its in D&Ds DNA.) So I can see why people who come for the Combat Sim part dislike them. So find systems that entirely remove them or severely downplay them, and play those. You'll probably have a better time, granted your players are all chill with it. *shrug*

Half of enjoying this hobby to the max is finding the right system(s) for the experience(s) you want.

I might have swerved off topic.

OOCA: I like them because combat is not my main draw for RPGs. Without them, I'm playing a Wargame. Which is also cool, but not why I play TRPGs.

I guess I didn't make my point clear (and will edit that in the OP): my argument is that OOCA actually make everything that is not combat trivial, because they're, most of the time, insta-win buttons, or at least the absolute perfect tool, making any sort of thinking-outside-the-box unnecessary.

Vitruviansquid
2016-02-16, 11:18 PM
Out of combat abilities are great.

The way DnD uses them is not.

It is a cardinal sin of game design that DnDs which aren't 4e give you out of combat abilities but do not seek to balance them between characters. 4e mysteriously nods toward this balance but doesn't go all the way by giving each class the same number of trained skills.

It is stupendously awful the way DnD gives so many out of combat ways to solve problems that are completely unpredictable. It makes the DnDs at once the RPG most necessary for GMs to improvise in and one of the most difficult for GMs to improvise in.

edit:


I guess I didn't make my point clear (and will edit that in the OP): my argument is that OOCA actually make everything that is not combat trivial, because they're, most of the time, insta-win buttons, or at least the absolute perfect tool, making any sort of thinking-outside-the-box unnecessary.

Well, they're not usually insta-win buttons in most RPGs I've seen.

yougi
2016-02-16, 11:21 PM
Well, they're not usually insta-win buttons in most RPGs I've seen.

Would you care to give some examples to this man who's only played games where they are?

OldTrees1
2016-02-16, 11:34 PM
I like mechanical abilities provided they are not an exclusive list of capabilities. The defined nature gives me something to plan around/with in addition to my creativity.

That said everything that is designed can be judged to see how it compares to the design rules the situation dictates. Think about every reason you hate them, those are actually design rules in disguise (rules that the specific abilities you hate are failing at).

Consider this ability from 3.5's Silver Key PrC
Crafty Hands (Su): At 2nd level, you develop the ability to manipulate mechanical devices with your mind, allowing you to make Open Lock and Disable Device checks at a distance of up to 60 feet.

I like this out of combat ability since it adds a flavorful competence ability to the trapsmith/locksmith but does not replace existing skill.

@yougi
Would Crafty Hands count?

yougi
2016-02-16, 11:52 PM
I like mechanical abilities provided they are not an exclusive list of capabilities. The defined nature gives me something to plan around/with in addition to my creativity.

That said everything that is designed can be judged to see how it compares to the design rules the situation dictates. Think about every reason you hate them, those are actually design rules in disguise (rules that the specific abilities you hate are failing at).

Consider this ability from 3.5's Silver Key PrC
Crafty Hands (Su): At 2nd level, you develop the ability to manipulate mechanical devices with your mind, allowing you to make Open Lock and Disable Device checks at a distance of up to 60 feet.

I like this out of combat ability since it adds a flavorful competence ability to the trapsmith/locksmith but does not replace existing skill.

@yougi
Would Crafty Hands count?

I totally agree with you: if the ability grants you an additional tool around which to plan, I'm all for that. For example, a PC having a dog, which can scent stuff, keep guard, fetch things, possibly be used for diplomacy or even diversion, that's a tool to plan around which fosters creativity; a Dominate Person spell is not. Usually, granted abilities (by class, race, item, whatever) are of the latter category.

To your example in particular, I can see it being used creatively. It however completely kills the possibility of traps setting off to a bad roll to hurt anyone (since everyone's 60ft away). It's not a part of RPGs I care for, so I think Crafty Hands is an example of an OOCA done well, but some people might argue it completely solves an OOC situation.

Alex12
2016-02-17, 12:16 AM
You can take my OOCAs away from me when you pry them from my cold dead hands.

Combat is not always the focus of the game, and most OOCAs are not always auto-win buttons. Looking at your examples.

"How will we get out of here with only 50ft of rope, two longswords and magical glue? Oh nevermind, TELEPORT!"
Assuming D&D/PF, this burns a fairly high-level spell, can be neutralized in several different ways, and assumes that a spellcaster powerful enough to teleport himself and his party out of wherever they're stuck would even get caught in something that can be escaped with only the stated resources.

"Oh, you want us to help you with something before you let us in? CHARM!"
There's a whole host of reasons not to do this, the main one being that if it doesn't work, whoever you cast it on may well consider it an attack and then suddenly it's a combat encounter. (Full disclosure: in campaigns I run, casting a Charm spell on someone pretty much counts as attacking them, at least for purposes of how the target and other people react. If you succeed, they don't know they've been charmed and will most likely rationalize abnormal decisions away. If they pass the save, they will know you tried to compromise their minds, and may react with violence or legal measures. My players know this.)

Most OOCAs are not simply auto-win buttons, at least not in most situations. They're ways to be better at things, or ways to resolve things without having to resort to GM fiat, or ways to represent things like special training or intelligence that the players don't have (you've never played anyone smarter than yourself?)

I also consider players looking at their character's sheets to see what their options are to be a positive, because it means they're playing their characters rather than themselves. If my buddy Bob Silvertongue is playing Thrud Murderaxe the violent barbarian, he shouldn't be using his own persuasive skills in-game because Thrud lacks those abilities. This applies in reverse, so that if Ed Stuttermouth want to play Adoril Sweetspeaker the smooth-talking bard, he doesn't have to rely on his own poor social skills because the numbers on his sheet say he's good at that. I play TTRPGs to be someone other than who I am IRL, and that includes being good at things I'm not good at IRL. It's no different from not needing to demonstrate skill at unarmed combat to play someone good at punching people in the game, or not requiring the guy playing the rogue to be able to pick locks IRL before he puts points in his "pick locks" skill.

Kelb_Panthera
2016-02-17, 12:18 AM
I disagree with your premise: that OOCA's are instant-win buttons. If that's what they seem to be to you then something's being handled poorly.

I'm most familiar with 3.X so I'll draw examples there.

Divination is a useful information gathering tool, but it's hardly infallible. First, it has a not insignificant chance of failing to yield information, starting around 23% or so. Second if the info is given, it's still cryptic and requires parsing. Finally, it can be directly foiled by other magic.

Diplomacy is poorly written but still well shy of an auto-win. Even someone who's willing to take risks to help you isn't willing to do something utterly suicidal just because you asked nicely and the ELH fanatic condition can be blocked outright since it carries the mind-affecting tag. Nevermind its language dependence in a world full of languages you may not speak and dangerous creatures that don't speak at all.

Transportation spells allow higher level parties to avoid wasting time on nonsense that's beath them. It's a different matter if the DM is leveling the world with the party but that is a much bigger probelm in my estimation.

OOCA's are only a problem in that way if the DM isn't familiar with how they work and how to deal with them.

As for looking to the sheet instead of at the situation, that ties back into my previous statements. In some systems there exist silver bullet options to specific situations but it's not hard to avoid putting foward those situations as the DM or failing to take those silver bullets from the player end, either from simply not having the resources to collect them all or having simply forgotten that situation could come up.

Ultimately, it's much more a reflection of the people at the table than the system itself when these kinds of "problems" arise, at least in my experience.

ImNotTrevor
2016-02-17, 01:09 AM
Would you care to give some examples to this man who's only played games where they are?

Apocalypse World has several.

Open your Brain allows a character to glean information from the Psychic Maelstrom, but this information is explicitly stated to not be particularly specific and comes in the form of visions, auditory hallucination, and other strange means. The levels of success determine the clarity of the message, not a binary Yes/No for information.

F*** THIS S*** (No really, thats the name of the move) allows the Gunlugger class to potentially escape from dangerous situations so long as they can name their escape route. (That part is crucial. You cant just escape from a solid metal cube with no door.) And then they have to roll, with a failure making their situation WORSE, A partial success meaning they get out at a cost, and a success meaning they just succeed because they're that badass.

Things Speak allows the Savvyhead class to examine an object and open their brain to the maelstrom relative to the object. The degree of success determines how many questions they can ask from a list, with questions like:
"Who made this?"
"How do I fix this?"
And the answers to those are up to the MC.
(And fixing things for a Savvyhead is often a somewhat involved process. It is the post-apocalypse, after all.)

None of these three are instant win, nor even binary in their results. (While there are three kinds of success, the resultant consequences can be incredibly varied.)

Pretty much all PbtA systems follow this general outline.

In Freemarket, which I've only heard about for now, combat is basically nonexistant. Humans in that setting are functionally immortal, so killing someone is, at worst, an inconvenience for them. The entire system is built on OOCA. Combat has pretty much no place in Freemarket.

Dogs in the Vineyard cares more about the WHY of your actions than the WHAT, and this applies to combat as well. So there's that method. This is seen also in systems like Burning Wheel, where the intent of the action is just as important as the action itself.

Play non-d20 systems. Play systems where Combat is a small portion of the rules. (Seriously, count how many pages in the PHB are dedicated to combat's ruleset compared to other rulesets. Do this for every system. Vampire does this, weirdly. For a game that sells itself as being about Personal Horror and Political Intrigue, it sure does spend an unusual amount of its length on Combat, compared to other rules.

Things not built with Combat as their core will tend to have less binary Out of Combat Actions because... those are what get fleshed out.

Vitruviansquid
2016-02-17, 01:14 AM
Would you care to give some examples to this man who's only played games where they are?

Examples? Why, just it's almost more efficient to point at just the DnD games and say those are the few un-examples.

But okay, let's take Pendragon.

All the players are playing Arthurian knights in that game, and there are a fair number of out-of-combat skills that you have to pay attention to, like flirting, reading, fay lore, intrigue, and so on. None of these manage to be the magical instawin buttons that DnD has, because even if your character happens to be superhumanly good at any of those, they all still fall under the realm of physical possibility. The GM can easily plan around that someone will be so good at flirting or so good at fay lore. There is nothing like teleport, flight, or teleportation AND flight or teleportation AND flight AND being able to open any door or chest with a single spell, and other DM-brain-breaking combos that DnD characters have access to.

TheOOB
2016-02-17, 01:40 AM
It depends on the system you're playing and it's goals. That said, if noncombat situations are important to your game, there needs to be rules for it. One of the great blights on RPGS is the idea that players roll encounters, but have to act out every social situation first person. Just as my warrior is likely a better swordsman than me, my bard is likely a better diplomat than me. In D&D, combat is the most important thing, and thus has the most rules, where as social scenes are mostly quiet moments between fights, so there is less rules to make them quicker and more simple. In a social focused game, things might be the reverse.

goto124
2016-02-17, 01:55 AM
Something something don't use DnD for (more focus on) non-combat?

ImNotTrevor
2016-02-17, 05:48 AM
Something something don't use DnD for (more focus on) non-combat?

Indeed. D&D is very true to its Wargame ancestry, so it accomplishes the rest of what it accomplishes by tacking things on to that framework until it creates something that squeaks along just well enough.

So yeah, in general I'm in favor of OOCA done well. Any ability/rule done well can be a delightful play experience. And any ability/rule done poorly can be really grating and awful. Be it combat or non-combat.

The problem is the bad design, not when the design kicks in along the narrative. (Of course, take this with a grain of salt since no game is perfect and all games feature bad or "just good enough" design elements.

Comet
2016-02-17, 05:59 AM
Of course having the proper tool is going to make a singular challenge that much easier. The challenge, then, is choosing which tools you want your character to have and accepting that everything else is going to be that much harder.

Just make challenges harder than a out-of-reach ledge or a stubborn bouncer at a door. If the players can control minds, throw more people at them so that they have to think about which minds they want to control. If they don't have to think about food when travelling over deserts, make them think about the heat.

Different games have different focuses. Modern D&D happens to be largely about magic and how it can solve your problems. The problems, then, need to be appropriately challenging as to make the use of magic necessary in the first place.

Berenger
2016-02-17, 07:30 AM
All examples of "OOCA" in the starting post are magical spells. They do nothing to illustrate the problem you apparently have with mundane skills, feats, etc.

Morty
2016-02-17, 08:27 AM
The only system where this is even a valid question is D&D in its various iterations. Nowhere else is a suggestion that mechanically distinct abilities should be reserved for combat even remotely reasonable to bring up. So, no. Out of combat abilities are not "insta-win buttons", nor do they have any sort of negative impact on the game.

DigoDragon
2016-02-17, 08:28 AM
The runestone item from the recent OotS page is a neat little trick that might get a use if the party like to charm spell their way into temples.

High-level dungeons where ancient pharaohs are buried with their treasures and the castles of powerful queens in a campaign where magic is a thing will likely have dimensional anchors and anti-magic zones built into traps and treasure rooms to prevent raiders from just teleporting through and looting. If high-level magic is common in the world, then so should be the counters to such spells.

Granted not everyone can afford the counter-measures, but if you're a wealthy bank and there is nothing preventing a spellcaster from dimension-dooring through your vault to loot your gold, you're kind of asking to get robbed. :smalltongue:

Eisenheim
2016-02-17, 09:02 AM
TL/DR: this question and premise only make sense for D&D.

So, as a lot of people have said, the idea of OoCA as instant wins is really only a complaint about D&D spells.

Games tend to be about what the rules are about, by volume. So D&D is mostly about combat and about spells, with a lot of equipment, and a little bit of skills.

I play fate, which is not especially about combat. It has that, but also other things, and individual games and characters can easily have different focuses in a way D&D characters really can't.

The thing makes this a weird question is that D&D characters are all, by broad standards, almost entirely combat focused. The vast majority of the sheet, and thus the mechanical abilities of the characters, are about combat. Spells have the largest space that also carries out of combat use, so they take the spotlight for out of combat challenges. That makes those challenges boring, because spells in D&D work or don't and generally don't even involve a check, but that's just a mechanical idiosyncrasy of D&D. There are tons of systems where spells don't dominate the same way, and where using them is as uncertain and challenging as using other skills to solve the problem.

OldTrees1
2016-02-17, 09:16 AM
I totally agree with you: if the ability grants you an additional tool around which to plan, I'm all for that. For example, a PC having a dog, which can scent stuff, keep guard, fetch things, possibly be used for diplomacy or even diversion, that's a tool to plan around which fosters creativity; a Dominate Person spell is not. Usually, granted abilities (by class, race, item, whatever) are of the latter category.

To your example in particular, I can see it being used creatively. It however completely kills the possibility of traps setting off to a bad roll to hurt anyone (since everyone's 60ft away). It's not a part of RPGs I care for, so I think Crafty Hands is an example of an OOCA done well, but some people might argue it completely solves an OOC situation.

I took some time to consider whether Crafty Hands was in some form an auto-win/never-lose. I think I noticed something. As the complexity or depth of the out of combat encounter increases, the less an ability like Crafty Hands, a Dog's scent, or even Dominate will acts as an auto-win/never-lose. While this is no excuse for poorly designed abilities, this does seem to indicate a best of both worlds solution is likely to exist for the more well behaved abilities.

So when the out of combat encounters are complex/deep enough to handle some OoCAs like a Dog, then I really really really like OoCAs that add new tools(Dog's scent) or improve old tools in a new way(Crafty Hands). However I guess that is merely an extension of my love of both feature and skill point based advancement.

neonchameleon
2016-02-17, 09:33 AM
Me and a few buddies have had this arguments about the merits of D&D 3.5, 4 and 5. One point that we can't seem to agree on is the existence of out-of-combat abilities (OOCA): spells like Divination, or transportation (Water breathing, Fly, Teleport), or Enchantment (from Charm to ESP, including Zone of truths), or abilities like Tracking, Bluffing or Diplomacy (the skill, not the action). I can see how they can look interesting: you feel good using them, it gives you a checklist of problems you don't have to think about how to solve anymore.

That being said, I hate them, for multiple reasons:

The curse of the mutant wizard class strikes again!

In oD&D the wizard gained one spell when they were created. That was it. All other spells the wizard knew had either been obtained as loot or had been traded for with other PCs (NPCs would not trade with PCs). Spells were big, they solved problems, and they were rare (the game also soft-capped at level 10). "This piece of loot we risked our lives to obtain solves X problem" is awesome. And for a first level wizard to have one spell they can cast once per delve and for it to solve a problem is a useful schtick (as long as your hirelings do the fighting - which they did). And all other spells were from wizard-specialist loot (fighter specialist loot was swords - which was why clerics couldn't wield swords. Need or greed?)

Between Unearthed Arcana in 1985 and the game being taken back to basics in 4e the wizard grew like a cancer.

First specialist wizards (UA and 2e) gained free spells in their specialist school. Which ... fair enough. You can try to solve one type of problem and gain a small handful of ways of doing so. It's a bigger schtick - but the loot got slightly rarer as game styles changed. The game still soft-capped at level 10 and instead of one free spell you got a few, and could cast a few extra of your school.

Then came 3.0 blowing away the restrictions. A first level 3.X wizard can cast three spells per day, and knows all cantrips plus about half a dozen first level spells. A third level wizard can cast seven spells a day and knows about ten spells. And due to item crafting and rarity can have bought a lot of low level scrolls. That's a huge array of different problems that even a low level wizard can simply solve due mostly to having written the word "Wizard" on top of their character sheet - and barely restricted by spell school. (And let's not get into 3.X messing up saving throws or the way create food and drink has dropped in level over the years).

Whereas the oD&D wizard had a starting schtick they could use once per dungeon crawl and some cool loot, the 3.X wizard has a massive grab bag of schticks and they only slightly eased back with 5e.

One Punch Man doesn't lack for challenges even if he can win any fight with one punch. When was the last time you punched someone? But one punch man doesn't have a ring binder full of other gimmicks - and neither did the wizard as designed. Or, if you want to look at it another way, watch Dr. Who, Children of Men. One of the characters basically has one skill - drive lorry. He manages to make it useful for everything from a jailbreak onwards, and that he succeeds at everything he does while driving a lorry (OK, it's not as explicit as that - he has no supernatural ability) in no way makes it easier to make lorries relevant. The PCs have to do that.


That being said, I also see the argument that 4E pushes you towards combat because it offers no non-combat abilities.

Really? Because the ability to make a brush pass and pick someone's pocket while keeping walking (using thievery as a minor action) isn't a non-combat ability? The ability to wire-fu 30+ft through the air at level 2 isn't a non-combat ability? Low powered telekinesis isn't a non-combat ability? The ability to hide in situations where almost no one else can isn't a non-combat ability? The ability to climb any wall isn't a non-combat ability? Those are all either basic class features of builds or level 2 utility powers - and none of them are from Dragon Magazine. And that's before we get into rituals and skill powers. (Or exploiting attack powers to burn things or even teleport).

Anyone who claims there are no non-combat abilities in 4e either hasn't read 4e or hasn't understood 4e at all. But it's back to the oD&D wizard "You have a few schticks you can use and it's up to you to make them relevant" rather than the book full of premade solutions.


What are your opinions on this?

That the Apocalypse World "Success with consequences" is the best way of handling things and that good non-combat abilities either open more questions (as AW does) or at the minimum provide relatively minor abilities (as 4e does especially in heroic tier) and it's up to you to work out how those abilities combine into a full plan.

Zombimode
2016-02-17, 09:52 AM
- they substitute a roll, or even worse, an auto-win, to what should be problem solving, role playing, or creative thinking ("How will we get out of here with only 50ft of rope, two longswords and magical glue? Oh nevermind, TELEPORT!", or "Oh, you want us to help you with something before you let us in? CHARM!");


I think this points needs addressing. There are two misconceptions contained in this notion:
1. OoCA, how you've defined them, are not fail-safe solutions, or even obvious solutions for otherwise interesting problems. A charm spell is not a substitute for actual socializing or even fast talking. It is an aggressive act that can fail and it WILL come to light at some point (barring extreme cases). A charm spell or ability is very powerful and has its uses. But those uses have preconditions and caveats. Of course, the players and even more so the GM have to actually understand how the different abilities work and be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of each of them. D&D 3.5 is not a game for the lazy or those who don't pay attention to detail.

2. OoCA do not substitute for problem solving and creative thinking. Or, more precisely, they do not within a context where they are accounted for. Lets take a similar example to those you have provided:
There is a chasm and the PCs need to cross it. This chasm can provide an interesting problem to solve as the PCs have to weigh their options and resources and maybe need to get creative a little bit.
Now, lets assume this party has access to flying or teleportation abilities or something else that would let the cross this chasm easily (and lets also assume the using those abilities will not constrain the resources of the party or are in other ways not beneficial). If this is the case, the chasm will no be an actual problem to solve. And that is OK. The chasm should not be presented as a main challenge. Instead there should be challenges that will require problem solving and creative use of the resources at hand with teleportation, charm/suggestion/domination and fly abilities as parts of the PCs toolbox (the same as the 50ft. rope, two longswords and the magical glue were parts of the PCs toolbox).
If abilities seem as instant solutions for the problems at hand, it is almost always the fault of the GM for not providing an appropriate challenge for the party. Again, D&D 3.5 is not a game for the lazy. Some GMs seem to be stuck in low-level thinking even if the have a high-level party. This is not a problem of the system or the existence of OoCA.

Red Fel
2016-02-17, 09:52 AM
All examples of "OOCA" in the starting post are magical spells. They do nothing to illustrate the problem you apparently have with mundane skills, feats, etc.

Well, the OP does mention Diplomacy, but for the most part, yeah, the OOCAs at issue are spells.

That doesn't say to me that OOCAs are a game-breaking problem. It says that spells are a game-breaking problem, which is something we all already knew. This is true in combat as well as out of combat. Want to grapple with me? Nope, Freedom of Movement. Shoot me? Nope, Wind Wall. Spot my ambush? Nondetection, Invisibility. Melee me? Flight.

Further, as others have stated, this is a problem that, while not unique to D&D, is certainly emblematic. D&D has always had a very serious caster/mundane imbalance problem. Casters have instant-win buttons in most contexts. The fact that some of those buttons work out of combat doesn't mean that out-of-combat actions are broken, it means that spells are broken.

Now, with respect to Diplomacy, part of the issue is how abused the skill is. Many people look at a Diplomacy skill check - and again, this is specific to D&D - as a form of skill-based mind control. "I Diplomanced him and now he has to do what I say." That's not quite right. Diplomacy, an action which takes a full minute, or frequently more, may increase an NPC's attitude towards you. Not towards the party, just you. Increased attitude doesn't make him your slave; it makes him more willing to help you. (The exception is the Epic use of the skill, but if you're allowing Epic rules, you've pretty much given up on game balance.) The fact that people misuse this skill doesn't mean that it's broken; it means that people misuse it. And again, this is a problem specific to D&D; many other RPGs don't use Diplomacy for that purpose.

Short version: Out-of-combat abilities, outside of D&D, are not generally game-breakingly broken. Non-magical out-of-combat abilities, in D&D, are not generally game-breakingly broken. Spells in D&D are generally broken.

Berenger
2016-02-17, 10:16 AM
That's what I meant. Yougi mentioned Diplomacy, Tracking etc., but the "I hate them for multiple reasons..." part didn't go into mundane abilities, only spells. So I don't see the rationale for the claim that those are insta-win buttons. And while I can see a point for badly applied Diplomacy ("The royal guard is under strict orders to not let anybody..." "I rolled a 37." "You somehow are allowed to see the king."), I can't imagine why, for example, Tracking would be an issue.

Zombimode
2016-02-17, 10:20 AM
Spells in D&D are generally broken.

Yeah, either we have a vastly different understanding of the meaning of "broken" or we have vastly different experiences with D&D (actually played D&D that is).

To me, something is broken if it is pretty much unusable or it's existence makes the game less enjoyable as a whole.
The vast majority of spells/powers in D&D do not qualify for any of those conditions. Especially not teleport or fly.

Ego Whip on the other hand is a spell/power that I would consider broken. Being a 2nd level power on the general psion/wilder list means a relevant availability and against everything it works against it is so good that using anything else would be stupid. There is also no rules abuse or questionable interpretation involved. It is both "too good" and "the best" as well as "works as intended". Of course you can defend against it, but most creature won't have such defenses. A world (and a game) where psionics are not a totally obscure thing will warp itself around ego whip. To me that means the existence of ego whip makes the game less enjoyable as a whole, and therefore broken.

Joe the Rat
2016-02-17, 10:24 AM
It's a difference of definition - this is the gamer "broken" - something that works too well, i.e. breaks the game.



There is always a tangle of rolls vs. thinking, and character ability vs player ability. Do you require players to be able to work through the problems of traps, or how to best deliver their appeals to figures of authority? Do you require them to have an actual understanding of melee combat, or proper fire protocols, or an understanding of magic? We dice the complexities and uncertainties of armed conflict. If you do anything besides armed conflict, it's not bad to have mechanics to cover these things. Depending on your tables, you may be using abilities as a stop-gap against player knowledge or ability (I know the MM, that guy actually can pick locks - but do the characters have that?), or to shore up the gaps in player ability (The well-traveled Bard should know more world lore than his inattentive player, the kid with social anxiety can tell us what he wants to get across, and let the dice handle the eloquence).

Abilities - of all stripes - are tools. Some are, by their nature, pass/fail. Can you see in the dark? Can you fly? Do you speak this language? Others are a matter of uncertainty - you can pick locks, but can you get this one, in this situation? Can you be quiet enough to not wake a guard? In a contested situation, can you prevail over your opposition? And you probably have a good sense of how well you can perform these things.

The question becomes one of what you do with them. You can dice something to happen (or push the "do it" button), but you need to decide when and how to dice it. Teleport now, and you may not be able to teleport later. Do you try to persuade the guard to see the king, or persuade someone who has the authority to let you in? Or instead Bluff/Deceive the guard into thinking you are supposed to be in there? Or skip the guard entirely and Teleport in, assuming you didn't use it to escape earlier? You have the ability to create a 40' wide zone of warped reality and Lovecraftian madness. Do you use it to destroy a section of wall to get into the giant's camp, or do find another way in, and save it to keep the pet wolves at bay?

Serafina
2016-02-17, 10:28 AM
In other words, my argument is that OOCA actually make everything that is not combat trivial, because they're, most of the time, insta-win buttons, or at least the absolute perfect tool, making any sort of thinking-outside-the-box unnecessary.Well, there's your problem:
You have a game with insta-win, perfect tools.
Yet you want a game that instead resolves such problems as challenging encounters.

Lot's of other games provide "out-of-combat" abilities that are not insta-win buttons, or perfect tools.
Lot's of games provide "out-of-combat" abilities that auto-solve specific challenges.
D&D spellcasting provides such solutions for almost all non-combat challenges.

Now ultimately, the question here is "what sort of challenges do I want my players/as a player to solve creatively, with limited, fallible tools?"
Depending on the answer, not every game system will provide for you. This is perfectly fine.

For Lara Croft, climbing a wall is a challenge requiring skill and ingenuity.
For Batman, climbing a wall will only require skill and ingenuity in specific situations. Mostly, he can just do it, except in certain dramatic situations without proper tools and with other disadvantages.
For Superman, climbing a wall will never be a challenge, unless you take away basically all his powers.
Those are all perfectly valid stories. All of them have perfectly interesting challenges that don't necessarily revolve around combat.

However, you can rightly point out that a increasing box of perfect tools will remove most non-combat challenges. You'd be correct of course.
Hence, looking at what sort of challenges you want to face and tailoring your game around them is pretty important.


Now, you might want to look into freeform or mechanics-light roleplay.
This very much provides what you asked for - you'll have to do most things with thinking and ingenuity, and there won't be much of a character sheet/rulebook to look at.


Other than that, you provided two very basic challenges.
- Climbing out of some sort of pit with only limited tools
- Entering a guarded room.
Really, those are extremely vague and there are tons of non-perfect solutions here that don't require the sort of fluid ingenuity you imagine.

The first is ironically enough easily solved with the tools provided already, so it's not actually much of a challenge. But more to the point, there are tons of games where characters typically have supernatural climbing/jumping skills, so they'd use those.

The second - well, that actually is a problem of a "perfect" solution, if one ignores the drawback of charm-spells (targets notice when they were charmed) and the issue of saving throws. Still, that's rather binary and boring in many ways. Most systems actually make you roleplay social interaction though, D&D is one of the very few I can think of that provides a mechanical solution that is also boring (Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate boiling down to a single roll, same for spells).
It does have a bunch of other solutions though. Sneak into the room, impersonate someone, send a trained animal to fetch the item you want from the room, bribe someone who is allowed into the room to get the information you want from it and so on.

You have not clearly expressed what sort of challenges you want, actually.
But the purpose of I-Win buttons is to remove the challenges you don't want from the game. If you want more challenges, look for games that don't have many such buttons.

CharonsHelper
2016-02-17, 12:18 PM
Frankly - I think that the worst part about D&D style OOC spells aren't that they exist, it's that they're so hard to defend against.

There should be mundane ways to defeat most of them for those who know what they're doing. Lead-lined rooms to protect against divinations are about the only example of this. But what if Fly didn't work within 10yrds of an open flame? If Teleportation only works in places open to the sky due to how it's based upon the stars?

In addition, spells to defend against things should be lower level than the spells themselves, but the opposite is generally true.

Quertus
2016-02-17, 12:55 PM
Most of this has already been said, but I'll reinforce a few ideas.

Having OoCAs is not a situation unique to D&D. But there are several distinct issues: difficult challenge vs I win button; IC vs OOC resources; and McGuffin vs character accomplishment. How each of these is handled changes what kind of stories your group can tell.

Very few people want to detail exactly what their character is eating each day, and then be penalized when they forgot to put enough B6 in their character's diet. I think it's safe to say that we pretty much all want "good food" to be an over simplified "I win" button for our characters' diets.

A GM who wanted to make the game focus on the characters scrounging for food, suffering realistic penalties for malnutrition, and having to make difficult choices about which foods to give which party members in order to maximize the party's combat abilities enough to survive the dungeon... would find not just create food and water, but even a large stockpile of healthy food, and possibly even a high enough survival skill, to be an instant win button that ruins the game they had planned.

Similarly, a GM who wants the characters to piece together a McGuyverism to escape a pit would find not just fly/teleport, but also the climb skill, or even enough people of enough height to stand on each other's backs, to trivialize the problem.

Historically, my response has been, "well, there's your problem: the GM wanted something. The GM should just present the world, and want the players to have fun." But that is, itself, an attempt at an "I win button" approach to a larger problem.

Communication is hard. Communication is expensive. Most people cannot successfully communicate what they want out of a game, what makes a game "fun". And most people aren't interested in spending the time it takes to try and fail over and over again to get these ideas across.

One thing to look at is the kind of "I win" buttons the players pick. This is a good indication of the types of things that they no longer want to spend time on. Yes, they may occasionally want their decisions to pick these tools to be validated, so you should occasionally give them an encounter where they get to show off their shiny button, but you shouldn't expect that to be the focus of the adventure.

Having these tools changes what kind of stories you can tell. With no tools available, you can tell the story of how the party finds the sick village, and goes and finds the McGuffin to save them. With (the right) tools, you can instead tell the story of how the party found the sick village, and used their medicine / magic / whatever to save them. Same setting, same challenge, different story. And that's ok.

Or, at least, it is, if the players enjoy that story. Some players may enjoy one, some the other, some both, and some neither. Know your players, know what kind of stories they enjoy.

IC vs OOC is a subject near and dear to my heart. 99.9% of the time, I'm all about proper role-playing, and not using OOC information. In that regard, having tools is a great boon to keeping characters In Character. However, I miss people using their own brain to solve puzzles in RPGs. The more IC tools you give them, the more they solve problems IC, the less inclined they become to solve problems by thinking about them. Or, at least, that's my experience.

If that's the kind of encounter you crave, I recommend dungeons focused on puzzles - 5 animal statues to place in order on a pedestal, with a poem explaining the animals' relationships to one another, riddles asked by sphynxs or friendly mages, etc. Most of the other examples I was going to give (stepping on trapped chessboard squares, a safe with clues to the combination, etc) are solved with skill checks these days. So... if you want the party to have to think, first think yourself: consider their tools, and give them "pure" puzzles that cannot be trivialized with those tools.

Fri
2016-02-17, 01:20 PM
The main reason why I play tabletop games, or basically, the thing that define tabletop game for me, or I could also say it as my favourite thing to have in tabletop games, are creative use of powers in-or-out of combat. Mind that not all system do this well (DnD certainly isn't the best system for this).

Basically, the reason I play tabletop games (my reason, even my friends have different reasons, like to tell cool stories, have tactical combats, etc), is to have things like this happening. You have wizard with fire spell. There's tough monster. You and your friends make an elaborate plan (using the fighter's superhuman strength and the thief's stealthiness) to lure the monster to a coal mine and use the fire spell to ignite a dust explosion. Things like that. Underline that the spell is not used to damage the monster Once again I must say that not all system is good for these kind of playstyle I like.

So yeah, out of combat use of powers are cool for me.

Cosi
2016-02-17, 01:34 PM
My opinion on this is that people who say that OoCAs are "I win" buttons or "game breaking" are mostly having a failure of adventure design, not noticing something wrong with the game. Now, some of those abilities actually are problems with the game. For example, planar binding does broken things. But 99% of the time that's mechanical imbalance (i.e. planar binding gets you minions stronger than you are), not conceptual failure (the one example I can think of conceptual balance failure is ice assassin's concept of making full power duplicates of you).

Consider the non-combat abilities a mid (i.e. 9th - 13th) level Wizard has. He can gather intelligence very effectively (scrying, contact other plane, divination), project force across long distances (teleport, greater teleport), and do a bunch of modestly effective logistical stuff (fabricate, major creation). You know who else has capabilities like that? The US government. And yet, there are things that challenge the US government. Global warming, terrorism, economic policy, enemies with effective deterrents (i.e. other nuclear powers), or things that counter their abilities (i.e. encryption trumps the NSA to some degree).


- they substitute a roll, or even worse, an auto-win, to what should be problem solving, role playing, or creative thinking

That's just out leveling a problem. You don't have to roll Open Lock to solve a very simple lock (DC 20, you have +13 from levels +4 or more from DEX and at least +2 from equipment) at level 10, why should you have to run an overland voyage at that level?


("How will we get out of here with only 50ft of rope, two longswords and magical glue? Oh nevermind, TELEPORT!", or "Oh, you want us to help you with something before you let us in? CHARM!");

If players would rather ignore the problems you make for them than solve them, that's a DMing problem, not an ability problem.


It is a cardinal sin of game design that DnDs which aren't 4e give you out of combat abilities but do not seek to balance them between characters. 4e mysteriously nods toward this balance but doesn't go all the way by giving each class the same number of trained skills.

A game where only Sorcerer/Wizard/Druid/Cleric get animate dead/reincarnate/teleport/fabricate is 1,000,000 times better than one where no one gets them. Yes, the ideal D&D has those abilities distributed in a balanced way, but having them at all is much better than having lesser abilities distributed more evenly.


Want to grapple with me? Nope, Freedom of Movement. Shoot me? Nope, Wind Wall. Spot my ambush? Nondetection, Invisibility. Melee me? Flight.

First, don't call out flight like that. Flight is an iconic fantasy ability, one that dragons get. If you're going to tell me that dragons are game breaking, I'm going to have to ask you what you think that term means.

Second, I don't understand what's so horrible about immunities. Is it somehow wrong that undead are immune to poison? Or that golems are immune to spells (that allow SR)? Is it just PCs getting immunities that's bad?


Now, with respect to Diplomacy, part of the issue is how abused the skill is.

The issue with Diplomacy is that nothing is defined. WTF does "Protect, back up, heal, aid" mean? Fight for you? Drop cure light wounds on you? Support you in congress/court/mutiny? It's not specified.


Spells in D&D are generally broken.

Red Fel, don't do this. Spells in D&D are not broken. Mundane abilities are broken. We know this because people with spells are level appropriate and people with mundane abilities are not.


Frankly - I think that the worst part about D&D style OOC spells aren't that they exist, it's that they're so hard to defend against.

They're not hard to defend against. They're hard to defend against as a mundane. And that's totally fine, because demanding to beat a high level caster as a mundane is like demanding to beat a modern nuclear superpower as a medieval knight. Medieval knights have a hard time killing Abrams tanks. Guys with anti-tank weapons don't.


But what if Fly didn't work within 10yrds of an open flame?

Then dragons become irredeemably terrible? Because they fly and breathe fire.


If Teleportation only works in places open to the sky due to how it's based upon the stars?

What if there were other counters to teleport? Like anticipate teleport. Or controlling information. Or problems that aren't solved by sword to the face. Or diffuse command structures. All of those allow people to use teleport, but make it not an "I win" button.

Volthawk
2016-02-17, 01:40 PM
Scaling your non-combat challenges to the party is just as important as scaling combat encounters is, if you want it to be a proper challenge. I mean, sure a wizard capable of teleportation can easily deal with a chasm, but given that they need to be mid-level or so for that generally, it's like expecting a mundane wolf to be a threat to a mid-level party.

Lacco
2016-02-17, 01:50 PM
Frankly - I think that the worst part about D&D style OOC spells aren't that they exist, it's that they're so hard to defend against.

There should be mundane ways to defeat most of them for those who know what they're doing. Lead-lined rooms to protect against divinations are about the only example of this. But what if Fly didn't work within 10yrds of an open flame? If Teleportation only works in places open to the sky due to how it's based upon the stars?

In addition, spells to defend against things should be lower level than the spells themselves, but the opposite is generally true.

I saw an idea (in Czech language) somewhere on the internet few years ago which provided simple rituals, that could defend you from certain spells.

These were based on folk lore. E.g. if you get a hex/curse, you should turn around 3x and then toss a handful of salt over your left shoulder (this is an actual piece of folklore). This worked for hexes/curses until LVL 3 or so (you also had to pass Willpower roll or something).

For defence against scrying you had to use a blessed chalk and draw some words & lines around the protected space.

If you wanted to temporarily protect against teleportation, you had to put nails (lead? iron?) into all four corners of the room/form a square, put a candle in the middle and crush some dried leaves. It worked until the candle was put off or you ran out of leaves.

Basically, the rituals provided possibility for everyone - even mundanes - to protect themselves from some magic. However, no idea how this could work in D&D (it was different game system).

Beleriphon
2016-02-17, 06:28 PM
I saw an idea (in Czech language) somewhere on the internet few years ago which provided simple rituals, that could defend you from certain spells.

These were based on folk lore. E.g. if you get a hex/curse, you should turn around 3x and then toss a handful of salt over your left shoulder (this is an actual piece of folklore). This worked for hexes/curses until LVL 3 or so (you also had to pass Willpower roll or something).

For defence against scrying you had to use a blessed chalk and draw some words & lines around the protected space.

If you wanted to temporarily protect against teleportation, you had to put nails (lead? iron?) into all four corners of the room/form a square, put a candle in the middle and crush some dried leaves. It worked until the candle was put off or you ran out of leaves.

Basically, the rituals provided possibility for everyone - even mundanes - to protect themselves from some magic. However, no idea how this could work in D&D (it was different game system).

Its not a bad idea, in fact I think 4e it would have worked great with the way rituals worked in the game. Anybody could cast a ritual from an appropriate scroll, it just took time and cash. That's a really good way to handle those sorts of things.

Cosi
2016-02-17, 07:24 PM
Scaling your non-combat challenges to the party is just as important as scaling combat encounters is, if you want it to be a proper challenge. I mean, sure a wizard capable of teleportation can easily deal with a chasm, but given that they need to be mid-level or so for that generally, it's like expecting a mundane wolf to be a threat to a mid-level party.

This.

If PCs at level 10 are not supposed to be challenged by level 1 combat challenges, they should not be challenged by level 1 non-combat challenges.


Its not a bad idea, in fact I think 4e it would have worked great with the way rituals worked in the game. Anybody could cast a ritual from an appropriate scroll, it just took time and cash. That's a really good way to handle those sorts of things.

The 4e sort of works, but there are a couple of big problems.

First, rituals should probably not be just anything goes. A Necromancer shouldn't just run around in combat with finger of death and enervation, then turn around and have the same non-combat abilities as the Monk or Summoner. Whether you do that with restrictions (i.e. animate dead is Necromancer-only) or incentives (i.e. Necromancers control CL * 8 HD of undead) or both is up in the air, but I think it should be done.

Second, the implementation of rituals in 4e was poor. The actual effects are frequently unimpressive, but paying gold for anything other than combat power was a super bad plan in a system where you are expected to pay all your gold to have level appropriate combat power. You can solve that by either removing GP costs for rituals, revising WBL, or (again) both. Personally, it seems very natural to go back to 1e/2e items and remove the magic item christmas tree so that players can spend all their gold on random stuff (be that stuff armies of skeletons, diamond castles, or kingdoms).

Cluedrew
2016-02-17, 07:43 PM
For, defiantly for. For all the reasons given. I would rather have combat taken out of the game that every other aspect of life removed.


Red Fel, don't do this. Spells in D&D are not broken. Mundane abilities are broken. We know this because people with spells are level appropriate and people with mundane abilities are not.

They're not hard to defend against. They're hard to defend against as a mundane. And that's totally fine, because demanding to beat a high level caster as a mundane is like demanding to beat a modern nuclear superpower as a medieval knight. Medieval knights have a hard time killing Abrams tanks. Guys with anti-tank weapons don't.OK... so if... well I suppose using spell casters as the target power level and measure from there that would make casters balanced and mundane abilities stupidly under-powered. But if the actually medieval knights are supposed to measure up to "a modern nuclear superpower" there is a problem.

Personally I think the right spot (for high levels) is right in the middle) but that is just me.


Then dragons become irredeemably terrible? Because they fly and breathe fire.Random Aside; First: I don't think dragons fly by means of the flight spell, although there may be some other magic involved. Second all it would mean is that dragons can either fly or use their breath weapon, but not both.

icefractal
2016-02-17, 07:48 PM
- they substitute a roll, or even worse, an auto-win, to what should be problem solving, role playing, or creative thinking ("How will we get out of here with only 50ft of rope, two longswords and magical glue? Oh nevermind, TELEPORT!",So - OOCA are bad because they can obsolete other OOCA? That's what the rope, swords, and glue are, after all - problem solving tools, the same as teleport. If "here" was a 40' cliff, then the rope makes it trivial - imagine how much more creative the solution would have been without that 'win-button' rope. :smallwink: If the tools the PCs have includes "teleport", then "get out of a room" should not be considered a significant challenge - the same way that "get past some poison ivy" is not a significant challenge for PCs that have boots and long pants (but it would be for naked PCs).

There is admittedly the related viewpoint that tools are ok, but the tools the PCs have shouldn't change much from 1st to max level. I disagree with that considerably - what's the point of even having levels, if nothing changes as a result? But it is a viewpoint I've seen.


or "Oh, you want us to help you with something before you let us in? CHARM!");And here, I feel compelled to point out that "doing what an NPC says to get past them" is not really any more or less creative than "trying to mind-control an NPC to get past them". And it brings to mind the rather undesirable plot driven door (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=945), although that may just be cosmetic similarity.

Cosi
2016-02-17, 08:10 PM
But if the actually medieval knights are supposed to measure up to "a modern nuclear superpower" there is a problem.

It is inevitable that they will eventually have to, at the limit of infinite advancement. Spellcasters in Dominions can summon dead gods, destroy armies, or turn off the sun. It is obvious that some amount of advancement should allow D&D casters to do that, and it is equally obvious that non-casters must be able to contribute to adventurers at that level. What is not obvious is that the core rules should necessarily support that. You could make the case that Core should go up to some lower level (perhaps that of Lord of Light or The Codex Alera), and those levels should exist in the Epic Level Handbook.


Personally I think the right spot (for high levels) is right in the middle) but that is just me.

And that's fine. It should be possible to have the adventures of Corwin, Hercules, Kylar, and Aang in one game, the adventures of Gandalf (LotR Gandalf, so no angel powers), Jorg, Jon Snow, and Conan in another game, and the adventures of Set, Anomander Rake, a Pretender God, and Urza in another game. It's just a matter of moving the level scale up and down.


Random Aside; First: I don't think dragons fly by means of the flight spell, although there may be some other magic involved.

True. I was assuming it applies to all magical flight, and dragons (assuming something like IRL physics) need magic to fly.


Second all it would mean is that dragons can either fly or use their breath weapon, but not both.

Also true. But I don't really think that's in line with how people expect dragons to work, or that it is particularly more balanced than simply allowing people to fly easily enough to fight dragons.

AMFV
2016-02-17, 08:18 PM
I don't think having an "I Win" button is really all that, after all players tend to succeed more often than they fail. I think having only "I Win" buttons that aren't interesting is the problem. Or giving more of them to one player. If each player gets one auto-win a session (or every few) there's nothing wrong with that. I think that how one succeeds is the more important part.

Or having to budget those I win buttons.

goto124
2016-02-17, 09:25 PM
Scaling your non-combat challenges to the party is just as important as scaling combat encounters is, if you want it to be a proper challenge. I mean, sure a wizard capable of teleportation can easily deal with a chasm, but given that they need to be mid-level or so for that generally, it's like expecting a mundane wolf to be a threat to a mid-level party.

DnD DMs, do any of you have problems designing a campaign with interesting problems because of the "I Win" spells available? Can't use a chasm, can't put them in a pit, can't use locked doors, can't block them with tall walls, etc.

Is there a guide for designing DnD campaigns according to level? Somewhere?

CharonsHelper
2016-02-17, 09:32 PM
Red Fel, don't do this. Spells in D&D are not broken. Mundane abilities are broken. We know this because people with spells are level appropriate and people with mundane abilities are not.

Actually - it's not at all difficult for a group of well built mundane characters to deal with level appropriate encounters. A well built group with spell-casters can take on challenges several CR above their level without breaking a sweat.

CharonsHelper
2016-02-17, 09:39 PM
Also true. But I don't really think that's in line with how people expect dragons to work, or that it is particularly more balanced than simply allowing people to fly easily enough to fight dragons.

I hadn't really decided either way. They were just a few random ideas off the top of my head as examples for how mundane solutions could be set up to defeat magical powers.

I was thinking about how it'd be interesting to be able to knock a wizard out of the sky with something like a flaming arrow, he casts feather fall, and then the warriors swarm towards where he landed before he can raise other defenses. *shrug*

Fable Wright
2016-02-17, 10:08 PM
I cannot emphasize strongly enough how much I advocate out of combat abilities. If you do not give them to me, I will not play your game. The most fun in a game, for me, is seeing how my character's presence changed the world after the end. Without out of combat abilities, what I can leave behind is scant and far-between. But even discarding my preferences, let's look at how out of combat abilities can be applied in a game, shall we?

I'm a druid in a city tracking down a kidnapping victim in a large city. I'd like to cast Locate Creature, but I can't. Either I haven't seen the victim, or he's not in 1000 ft, or this is a town like Venice with running water everywhere. But I've got a scrap of the victim's clothing, so I shapeshift into a bloodhound to tracks the scent. I find the place the scent disappears, and I cast Speak With Animals to interrogate nearby rats to find out where they went. They say people with sacks were here, and headed off to the pieces of large driftwood. I figure out they mean the docks, our aerial stealth recon gets some cloud cover and goes in for a look, sees large burlap sacks around the size of large children. We do a midnight raid of the ship, rescue the captive, good time all around.

This was the use of a large series of out of combat abilities and options that were discussed and/or used together to solve an open-ended problem creatively. We could alternatively have started asking pointed questions and getting cryptic leads to investigate a cult, and then find out where the captives were taken, using things like diplomacy and maybe a bit of backroom enchantment spells to get where we needed to go. Regardless, this was a fun moment that was player-driven and required creativity, primarily utilizing out of combat abilities to the enjoyment of all.

Out of combat abilities are great for working towards open-ended problems. Let's say you're trying to infiltrate a bank for a heist scenario; you got to case the place, which you can do a bit of with magic, but you also need to scout, get to know the people, get an in, know where the things are going to be placed, learn about the interiors of lead-lined areas, and then you have to plan the actual heist. Sure. You can Knock one door, or learn the basic interior and the life of a daily guard with scrying, but you have to work the whole problem from many different angles in a limited time frame to get the job done.

The problem is that you want to design a specific problem with a single solution (climb out of the pit using these tools), rather than have an open-ended problem with many solutions that out of combat abilities enable but don't prevent. Because, done right, even instant-win solutions don't solve the big picture.


The US government. And yet, there are things that challenge the US government. Global warming, terrorism, economic policy, enemies with effective deterrents (i.e. other nuclear powers), or things that counter their abilities (i.e. encryption trumps the NSA to some degree).

While I generally agree with your point, this is a poor example. People generally don't want to have to deal with real-world issues in their games, much less try and puzzle out problems and solutions that the US government would not want to face. It's generally not a pretty picture.


Red Fel, don't do this. Spells in D&D are not broken. Mundane abilities are broken. We know this because people with spells are level appropriate and people with mundane abilities are not.

...
No, people with spells can take on things far above their level, fighters struggle fighting things at their level. Both are broken. The most balanced classes are the ones who don't use spells or use entirely mundane strategies, like Binders and Totemists and Swordsages. Just because one might be broken doesn't mean the other isn't.

goto124
2016-02-17, 10:15 PM
The problem is that you want to design a specific problem with a single solution (climb out of the pit using these tools), rather than have an open-ended problem with many solutions that out of combat abilities enable but don't prevent. Because, done right, even instant-win solutions don't solve the big picture.

Basically, tabletop campaigns have to much less linear or railroady than computer games?

Fable Wright
2016-02-17, 10:18 PM
Basically, tabletop campaigns have to much less linear or railroady than computer games?

Indeed. Why, it's almost as if that's the selling point that keeps people playing with pen and paper and imagination instead of all these shiny new graphics and far more visceral combat. Who would have thought?

Cosi
2016-02-17, 10:27 PM
Actually - it's not at all difficult for a group of well built mundane characters to deal with level appropriate encounters. A well built group with spell-casters can take on challenges several CR above their level without breaking a sweat.

So they're balanced? A character of level X is CR X and should go 50/50 against a field of CR X creatures. A group of them should be able to beat creatures of CR = Level +2 or 3.


While I generally agree with your point, this is a poor example. People generally don't want to have to deal with real-world issues in their games, much less try and puzzle out problems and solutions that the US government would not want to face. It's generally not a pretty picture.

Obviously you're not going to deal with those exact issues. But you can still deal with issues like them. Take global warming. It's a problem, but it's not one you can solve with force projection. You could have something like that in D&D with the signs from 3.5's Elder Evils. If all the dead everywhere are rising as zombies, that's not something you can solve with teleport.


...
No, people with spells can take on things far above their level, fighters struggle fighting things at their level. Both are broken. The most balanced classes are the ones who don't use spells or use entirely mundane strategies, like Binders and Totemists and Swordsages. Just because one might be broken doesn't mean the other isn't.

This is not true, with the exception of a very few broken spells (planar binding, polymorph).

CharonsHelper
2016-02-17, 11:03 PM
So they're balanced? A character of level X is CR X and should go 50/50 against a field of CR X creatures. A group of them should be able to beat creatures of CR = Level +2 or 3.

Assuming that the CR in question doesn't have significant spellcasting and/or spell-like abilities (which are the basis for the balance complaints) then yes, most well-built mundanes are about 50/50 with their CR. Now - in 3.5 this does not include single class characters, as a well built 3.5 character inherently includes significant multi-classing & prestige classes. In Pathfinder it would though.

Therefore a well built mundane should be the baseline which spellcasters are brought down to rather than giving mundanes more juice/abilities. (I'd prefer giving inherent weaknesses to spellcasters rather than eliminate their raw juice though. Longer spellcasting times etc.)

Fable Wright
2016-02-17, 11:12 PM
Obviously you're not going to deal with those exact issues. But you can still deal with issues like them. Take global warming. It's a problem, but it's not one you can solve with force projection. You could have something like that in D&D with the signs from 3.5's Elder Evils. If all the dead everywhere are rising as zombies, that's not something you can solve with teleport.

...We have different expectations in games if you're expecting to solve Elder Evils over the course of a couple sessions and maybe deal with Global warming in your free time. I recommend using examples that a mid-to-low level party could do over the course of a session to instead of campaign-long arcs, if you weren't already, so as best to convey DM tools that the OP could throw into their game instead of pits and chasms.


This is not true, with the exception of a very few broken spells (planar binding, polymorph).

Ice Assassin, Enervate with Arcane Thesis, Locate City, Celerity, Shapechange, Divine Power, Alter Self, Gate, Shivering Touch, all the Polymorph variants, Ray of Stupidity, Maw of Chaos, (Greater) Consumptive Field, Stunning Ray, Glitterdust, Summon Monster line, Save or Dies, Solid Fog, Undermaster, Reverse Gravity, Shrink Item (with... pretty much any creative use including Telekinesis), books of Explosive Runes, Forcecage, Time Stop, Wings of Cover, Arcane Spellsurge, Wings of Flurry, Rope Trick, Greater Creation, Astral Projection, Contingency, Freedom of Movement, Maze, Planar Ally, Summon Mirror Mephit, Simulacrum, Wall of Iron + Economy, Power Word Pain, Web, Disjunction, Genesis, Embrace/Shun the Dark Chaos, Energy Transformation Field, Guidance of the Avatar, Wraithstrike for when a wizard goes EK, Streamers... and that's not even getting into the stuff that's just extremely good, or all the stuff I missed.

Cosi
2016-02-18, 12:29 AM
Assuming that the CR in question doesn't have significant spellcasting and/or spell-like abilities (which are the basis for the balance complaints)

Bite me. Every single core CR 15 enemy (Marut, Mummy Lord, like six kinds of dragon) has casting. High level critters cast, and I am deeply unimpressed by the claim that you can keep up with high level creatures if you exclude the ones that exist.


...We have different expectations in games if you're expecting to solve Elder Evils over the course of a couple sessions and maybe deal with Global warming in your free time.

High level D&D characters are superheroes. Superheroes fight stuff like that over the course of single arcs. In their original run, the Authority fought a mad genius cloning superheroes to conquer the world, extra-dimensional alien invaders, and god/cthulhu. Over the course of twelve comics. D&D characters, particularly high level ones, can solve very large problems quite quickly.

You posted a lot of spells, but they are mostly not broken (summon monster, seriously?) and there are some bizarre things missing (is planar binding supposed to not be broken?). Also, WTF do you think a balanced Wizard is? No debuffs, blasting only, final destination?


Ice Assassin,

Yes, broken. As I already said.


Enervate with Arcane Thesis,

No, not broken. What's the plan here, throw down four feats on Empowered (+1 net) Maximized (+2 net) Split (+1 net) enervate in an 8th level slot? That's an average of ten negative levels, which is good but not game breaking. A Marut is straight immune to that, and a pair of Beholders still hit you with a big pile of eye rays.


Locate City,

Unless I'm seriously behind on tech, the version of this that works inflicts one negative level on targets in an area that is very large. Useful logistically/politically, and a great way to start a Wightpocalypse, but not a great combat option.


Celerity,

Probably broken, but is a pretty costly nova when you first get it (three top level spell slots is not a small cost, and is not particularly more likely to win an encounter than EBT or EBT + another spell next round).


Shapechange,

Broken if you start stacking [Ex] abilities (i.e. Zodar's immunity to non-bludgeoning damage and Ocean Giant's immunity to bludgeoning damage), pilfering good [Su] abilities (i.e. Zodar's wish, Balor Mining), or rules lawyering your way into casting. Not particularly broken as a buff spell, with a few exceptions.


Divine Power,

Not broken.


Alter Self,

Getting casting out of it is broken, and it is better than buffs of its level (bull's strength et al), but not all that bad compared to, say, simulacrum.


Gate,

Candle is broken, calling creatures is broken (beyond wish shenanigans), Free Vacation: No Save is broken, travel is actually too high level.


Shivering Touch,

Yes, it kills dragons super well (well, unoptimized dragons). Not really "broken" against most monsters though, and it's power is basically 100% monster ability scores not scaling.


all the Polymorph variants,

Did you mean shapechange and alter self? Because you already posted those. But yes, dumpster diving through the MMs is broken. This is especially broken because the workload to figure out what it does it stupid large.


Ray of Stupidity,

It kills animals very well, using a low level spell slot. Impressive, but past 5th a crossbow kills most animals because you fly and they do not.


Maw of Chaos,

Not broken.


(Greater) Consumptive Field,

Lets you get CL and STR to numbers that are very large. CL cheese is mostly broken in conjunction with other spells (holy word et al, IIRC wings of flurry is uncapped), STR cheese is good. Also, only broken with DMM: Persist.


Stunning Ray,

It's a kill spell with a reasonably large set of immunities (stunning or eletricity). Not broken.


Glitterdust,

Not broken. 99% of the time, casting a spell in combat to do things in combat will not be broken. It's just a fundamentally fair plan.


Summon Monster line,

These spells suck. Not broken.


Save or Dies,

Seriously? Name some spells dude.


Solid Fog,

It's a lockdown spell that by cannot kill people. Not broken.


Undermaster,

As a 9th level spell, you can cast a number of decent lower level spells at will for five rounds. Not broken.


Reverse Gravity,

It locks down people who can't fly and don't have ranged attacks. At 13th level. This is the set of people beaten by fly.


Shrink Item (with... pretty much any creative use including Telekinesis),

Seems good. Overpowered for its level even. I wouldn't say broken though.


books of Explosive Runes,

Yes, stacking explosive runes is broken. Just casting it isn't really though.


Forcecage,

What is it with you and non-lethal lockdown spells? This is 7th level and doesn't even hold most CR 13 monsters for long.


Time Stop,

time stop + buffs is decent, but not broken. time stop + cloudkill + dimensional lock + forcecage wins an encounter, but for four spell slots (including a 9th, an 8th, and a 7th) you deserve to win. I guess maybe Delay Spell spell spam is good? Not broken.


Wings of Cover,

If you want to keep relying on color spray until the Wizard has stinking cloud, go ahead.


Arcane Spellsurge,

I haven't seen a good use for this outside of Invisible Spell Sorcerers. Even then you basically require Persist to be good.


Wings of Flurry,

One turn lockdown in a decent AoE. Generally about as good as evard's black tentacles, which is not broken.


Rope Trick,

Oh no, monsters can't stab the PCs in their sleep. Not broken.


Greater Creation,

Not a spell. Perhaps you were thinking of major creation? That's not really broken barring dropping the casting time or using it to make relatively exotic matter (i.e. anti-matter, quarks).


Astral Projection,

Broken.


Contingency,

At the level where you get it, it's a free 3rd level spell. It never gets higher than a free 6th. Not broken. Craft Contingency is though.


Freedom of Movement,

WTF is wrong with freedom of movement?


Maze,

It locks down one target in such a way as to prevent you from killing it. Good for splitting encounters, would be good for avoiding them if it didn't come three spell levels after teleport and one after greater teleport. Not broken.


Planar Ally,

Yes, minionmancy is broken.


Summon Mirror Mephit,

I mean, I guess it is technically better than most 2nd level summoning spells? You can't actually do the simulacrum trick you want to though, as summons can't use abilities that would cost XP. Not broken.


Simulacrum,

Broken.


Wall of Iron + Economy,

Let's talk for a bit about the economy, and spells that interact with it. Yes, some of those spells allow you to collect a whole lot of gold, which can then be used to buy items that make you much more powerful. But you know what? So can working a job. Or you could just steal the items.


Power Word Pain,

This spell is weird. At 1st level, it kills anything you tag with it. But it only does that eventually. The thing isn't even impeded right now. It's useless for PCs (because the chance whatever you hit expires before the other monsters die is ... not high), but super deadly against PCs (because it still kills them even if they "win").


Web,

Did you forget cloud of bewilderment exists? Also, what about the 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th level AoE spells in core? Not broken.


Disjunction,

It's called Game Disjunction because it takes forever to adjudicate and is generally worse than other options. Not broken (though it probably needs to be rehabbed).


Genesis,

The time traits version/interpretation is broken, but the version where you just make a space full of stuff is decidedly not.


Embrace/Shun the Dark Chaos,

Stupid, not particularly broken.


Energy Transformation Field,

You perform some fairly complex shenanigans to get infinite spells. Broken.


Guidance of the Avatar,

+20 to a skill check is good, but only better than knock or whatever in that it can be used on any skill. I supposed it breaks diplomacy super hard, but diplomacy was already broken.


Wraithstrike for when a wizard goes EK,

I am deeply unimpressed by 1 round wraithstrike. Persisted wraithstrike is good, but only really impressive as a power attack engine (melee types seldom have trouble hitting).


Streamers

I guess that's supposed to be some sort of lockdown option? There's a serious question to be asked about how one might destroy them (they have AC, but not hitpoints), but I don't see it as particularly impressive. Wizard BAB has a chance to miss touch AC of mid level stuff, and most things can afford to tank 25 damage.

Milo v3
2016-02-18, 12:53 AM
If a tabletop game doesn't have Out-of-Combat abilities I will not play it.


DnD DMs, do any of you have problems designing a campaign with interesting problems because of the "I Win" spells available? Can't use a chasm, can't put them in a pit, can't use locked doors, can't block them with tall walls, etc
I haven't had trouble so far, taking things to the planes at very high levels helps since you can use weird planar traits to alter how problems are solved.

icefractal
2016-02-18, 02:08 AM
I cannot emphasize strongly enough how much I advocate out of combat abilities. If you do not give them to me, I will not play your game. The most fun in a game, for me, is seeing how my character's presence changed the world after the end.Well put. Without abilities beyond combat, levels feel kind of pointless. I mean, fighting a high CR monster doesn't even necessarily feel different than a low CR one. And sometimes the difference is kind of arbitrary - without knowing the CR, would you even assume a squid-headed guy is much bigger deal than a flaming dwarf in a kilt? Maybe in a very sandbox game, simple combat ability makes a qualitative difference, but much less so in an adventure path.

But "this city's bridge was destroyed, so I made the mountain grow a new one"? That's exciting. "We could never cross the Melted Lands - until now. Now we can fly over them"? That's a qualitative difference. "I have my own pocket dimension" is more interesting than "I can kill things faster now".

YMMV, sure. Things could certainly be balanced better. But when I hear about cutting things down to Fighter-level as a solution, it's like saying "We'll solve the dinner being over-salted by throwing it away and serving unflavored protein mix instead. Same nutritional content!" :smalltongue:

Fable Wright
2016-02-18, 02:10 AM
High level D&D characters are superheroes. Superheroes fight stuff like that over the course of single arcs. In their original run, the Authority fought a mad genius cloning superheroes to conquer the world, extra-dimensional alien invaders, and god/cthulhu. Over the course of twelve comics. D&D characters, particularly high level ones, can solve very large problems quite quickly.

Perhaps, to continue your analogy, give sample situations that could be solved in the course of an issue? That's what the OP is looking for here.


You posted a lot of spells, but they are mostly not broken (summon monster, seriously?) and there are some bizarre things missing (is planar binding supposed to not be broken?). Also, WTF do you think a balanced Wizard is? No debuffs, blasting only, final destination?

Broken as "does not work as intended, trivially obviates other character concepts, provides power drastically disproportionate to their spell level, or trivializes otherwise overwhelming encounters."

Summon Monster was listed due to a) the ability to entirely replace a melee character (for which I should have included Animate Dead and its 9th level variant), and b) the versatility is provides per spell slot. Planar binding was not listed because you'd already done so. Polymorph line was listed as PAO, Draconic Polymorph, etc. are separate from the Polymorph spell itself, which was listed b. Save or Dies as a category are listed because they are spells that fundamentally make the game less interesting to play. Are you immune? [Yes/no] -> Do the random number gods hate me today? [Yes/no] -> Encounter over or PC dead/spell wasted to no effect. Either way, feels cheap and disappointing. Freedom of movement is listed for similar reasons; is your monster trick grappling? If yes, no encounter today. Rope trick was listed as one of the key enablers of the 15 minute adventuring day. Undermaster is listed because Move Earth as a standard action leads to no-save suffocation via planet. Mirror Mephit's Simulacrum does not cost it XP as it is an SLA; the summon will use it for you freely, as summons will only refuse to cast spells for you that cost them XP. Arcane Thesis Enervate usually stops at the 6th level slot of average 8 negative levels per standard action, or add a +0 metamagic to get it down to a level 5 slot or so.

Regardless. What I think constitutes a fair Wizard is a mortal mage who has power, but limits that force them to use their power cleverly. Perhaps his limit is as simple as 5e's Concentration; he can only do one powerful thing at a given moment, and has a limited repertoire to call on in a given day. Perhaps it's time; he requires a minute to cast his spells, and potent buffs wear off with things like the chime of an hourly bell. Perhaps it's something less common, like that each buff conjures a prominent focus on an ally that is susceptible to enemy action, or having to slip a hex bag on hostile targets before debuffing them. I am fine with a wizard debuffing, blasting, summoning, and warding! But I don't want them to be able to do all of these, at once, with no drawbacks or limitations.

TL;DR: I want to be able to come to the table with a member of any class and be glad that the wizard is there, but more importantly, I want the wizard to be equally able to say the same. Break reality in your clever way, as long as you really need my [meatshield/healer/thief] along for the ride.


I haven't had trouble so far, taking things to the planes at very high levels helps since you can use weird planar traits to alter how problems are solved.

This is a great one; places like the Demonweb Pits can lead to interesting terrain, problems, and a restriction on magical means of obviating them. Good call!

Lacco
2016-02-18, 02:48 AM
If a tabletop game doesn't have Out-of-Combat abilities I will not play it.

I haven't had trouble so far, taking things to the planes at very high levels helps since you can use weird planar traits to alter how problems are solved.[/QUOTE]

The first part is true also for me.

Even if the game is about gladiatorial arena and the fights in it, I will want to put on some show and talk to the people there. I will want to intimidate the large guy so he fights more cautiously against me, or ridicule the small one so he full-on attacks, leaving himself vulnerable.

If I want to do it as a mage, I will create an illusion of a hat with "Dunce" on it on the small guy's head... or cast a spell to give me stone skin and thorns, and ask the big guy to hit me, so he knows that he can't charge me and think he'll win.

And if the game is only about "we go to dungeon, we kill things, we leave, level up, go to dungeon"...naaah, not for me - I would get bored and you wouldn't like my ideas. But have fun!

The second part considers D&D GMs, so I'm out :smallsmile:

neonchameleon
2016-02-18, 06:37 AM
My opinion on this is that people who say that OoCAs are "I win" buttons or "game breaking" are mostly having a failure of adventure design, not noticing something wrong with the game. Now, some of those abilities actually are problems with the game. For example, planar binding does broken things. But 99% of the time that's mechanical imbalance (i.e. planar binding gets you minions stronger than you are), not conceptual failure (the one example I can think of conceptual balance failure is ice assassin's concept of making full power duplicates of you).

Consider the non-combat abilities a mid (i.e. 9th - 13th) level Wizard has.

And this redefinition of what a mid level wizard is is an extreme problem with the design of 3.X D&D. As Gygax designed D&D 10th level was the soft cap. A high level wizard was about level 8 or 9 and they more or less retired or took part in the equivalent of raiding at level 10 and above - with the highest level PC in Greyhawk being Sir Robilar at level 13.

D&D was not designed to be played at 13th level, was not playtested at 13th level, and was not balanced at or for 13th level. Indeed the reason most of those high level spells are in the game is simple. To give the BBEG the spells to be a major threat (indeed 3.0 was only playtested up to level 6 and they didn't realise they'd screwed up the saving throws).

Also look at the abilities of the 3.X fighter at levels 9-13. He's a dude that can swing a sword extremely well - little different from the level 1 fighter who was a dude who could swing a sword pretty well. In any TSR edition of D&D in order to keep up they gave the fighter a free small army at level 9 or 10.


That's just out leveling a problem. You don't have to roll Open Lock to solve a very simple lock (DC 20, you have +13 from levels +4 or more from DEX and at least +2 from equipment) at level 10, why should you have to run an overland voyage at that level?

Because not all overland voyages are simple?


A game where only Sorcerer/Wizard/Druid/Cleric get animate dead/reincarnate/teleport/fabricate is 1,000,000 times better than one where no one gets them. Yes, the ideal D&D has those abilities distributed in a balanced way, but having them at all is much better than having lesser abilities distributed more evenly.

Bull****.

A game where no one gets them has a chance of knowing what it is and following through on that promise. A game where a small selection of classes get them and other classes do not get extraordinary abilities to compensate doesn't know what it is and is going to give people negative play experiences.

And a game where everyone gets that sort of ability or compensations can also be a good game. The fighter doesn't even have to be paranormal - they should just be able to kill the wizard in the blink of an eye if they get line of sight. (The wizard having plenty of ways of preventing that of course).


First, don't call out flight like that. Flight is an iconic fantasy ability, one that dragons get. If you're going to tell me that dragons are game breaking, I'm going to have to ask you what you think that term means.

That there's a difference between players and GMs. Part of the point of dragons is that they are meant to be able to deal with ordinary obstacles - making them major challenges because of this. For a PC to be a dragon in a normal party would require re-writing a lot of assumptions of the game.

Imagine Lord of the Rings with one of the PCs being the Witch King or even Sauron. (Gandalf of course needed to be both extremely limited and written out of the plot most of the time).

But flight is also gamebending because it is written as a solution rather than as the opening to a whole new set of problems. If the flight rules contained rules for crosswinds, for momentum (and slamming into that mountainside), and whole new sets of predators that mostly targetted fliers it would be an extension to part of the game.


Red Fel, don't do this. Spells in D&D are not broken. Mundane abilities are broken. We know this because people with spells are level appropriate and people with mundane abilities are not.

What's broken is the idea that fighters are mundane characters - and this is something only intended in 3.0. If you read TSR era D&D an 8th level fighter was quite explicitly a "Superhero". You can drop a fighter from orbit and they will walk away. An oD&D fighter at 8th level is like Sampson, able to kill an army with the jawbone of an ass - or like Beowolf, able to hold his breath for an hour or more underwater, or like Cuchulain, able to cut the top off a mountain.

And going right back to the days of Chainmail the hero (4th level fighter) and superhero (8th level fighter) had 4 and 8 hit points respectively whereas a giant had 12 and a troll 6 - but you had to take all the hero's or superhero's hit points in one turn - wounds on a hero didn't carry over from turn to turn. These were the original rules for mid-high level fighters (and 8th level was high) at Gygax's and Arneson's tables.

Fighters were never intended to be muggles. They were intended to be mythic and legendary demigods - but because what they could do wasn't specified and what wizards could do was the fighter was watered down over time even as the wizard was built up, given free spells, and had their restrictions taken away.

Oh, and when one of your classes is called "fighter" and has deliberately few extra out of combat things you need to not balance things round combat. For the fighter class to have any meaning at high level the fighter should, if they can see the wizard, be able to mug them trivially. Think the scene in The Avengers "They have an army." "We have a Hulk."

Oh, and primary casters are generally more than level appropriate in 3.X.

Edit: Possibly someone could show me examples of these mythical RPGs without out of combat abilities?

Cosi
2016-02-18, 09:15 AM
Perhaps, to continue your analogy, give sample situations that could be solved in the course of an issue? That's what the OP is looking for here.

The first issue of the Authority has them tracking their enemies, then having a huge setpiece fight in IIRC London. But honestly, you aren't going to (and shouldn't be expected to) map stories perfectly from other media. You should read other media and think about why challenges work in the context of the characters in their stories.


Summon Monster was listed due to a) the ability to entirely replace a melee character

Let's take a look at summon monster IX. I'm not going to bother checking which creature is biggest and baddest, but the fiendish colossal monstrous spider seems like a good pick. It's got one attack a +26 for 4d6+15 damage. A 17th level Fighter is going to walk in with 30 STR, a +5 weapon (let's say greatsword), and permanent enlarge person. That's +31 for 3d6+20, with iterative attacks. And he could totally be a Warblade or whatever.


(for which I should have included Animate Dead and its 9th level variant),

I'll give you that animate dead is broken. Minionmancy in general is.


and b) the versatility is provides per spell slot.

So? 99% of the time, a specific spell of whatever level is going to be better than a selection of SLAs from a monster of roughly CR = 1/2 character level.


Polymorph line was listed as PAO, Draconic Polymorph, etc. are separate from the Polymorph spell itself,

Broken. But draconic polymorph is literally just polymorph with extra stuff, so it's kind of dishonest to talk about that being broken.


Save or Dies as a category are listed because they are spells that fundamentally make the game less interesting to play. Are you immune? [Yes/no] -> Do the random number gods hate me today? [Yes/no] -> Encounter over or PC dead/spell wasted to no effect.

That's a matter of opinion. I'm personally in favor of save or dies over the padded sumo grinding of 4e.


Freedom of movement is listed for similar reasons; is your monster trick grappling? If yes, no encounter today.

Again, that's just an immunity. No one complains about charm person not working on undead or enervation not hitting constructs.


Rope trick was listed as one of the key enablers of the 15 minute adventuring day.

rope trick doesn't enable anything. If it weren't for rope trick, people would just pull back to wherever was actually safe. If you want to stop the 15 minute adventuring day, don't remove rope trick, remove daily use limits.


Undermaster is listed because Move Earth as a standard action leads to no-save suffocation via planet.

Because CR 17 monsters don't have teleport, and aren't incorporeal, undead, constructs, or otherwise immune.


Mirror Mephit's Simulacrum does not cost it XP as it is an SLA; the summon will use it for you freely, as summons will only refuse to cast spells for you that cost them XP.


A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have, and it refuses to cast any spells that would cost it XP, or to use any spell-like abilities that would cost XP if they were spells.

Seems fairly unambiguous. Just for a quick note:


XP Cost
100 XP per HD of the simulacrum to be created (minimum 1,000 XP).

So no, that trick doesn't work.


Arcane Thesis Enervate usually stops at the 6th level slot of average 8 negative levels per standard action, or add a +0 metamagic to get it down to a level 5 slot or so.

Still not broken. Closer, but if anything in that equation is broken it's Arcane Thesis.


Regardless. What I think constitutes a fair Wizard is a mortal mage who has power, but limits that force them to use their power cleverly.

You have yet to demonstrate that the 3e Wizard is not such a character. There are things he can't do, both in terms of power and versatility. He relies on someone else to wade into melee. Maybe a Fighter, maybe a Warblade, maybe a Cleric, maybe a Druid. Other characters have abilities he doesn't. The Druid's reincarnate or awaken, the Cleric's raise dead or plane shift, and so on.


TL;DR: I want to be able to come to the table with a member of any class and be glad that the wizard is there, but more importantly, I want the wizard to be equally able to say the same. Break reality in your clever way, as long as you really need my [meatshield/healer/thief] along for the ride.

You do, provided those characters aren't underpowered. A party of Rogue/Wizard/Cleric/Druid all contribute reasonably effectively both in and out of combat.


And this redefinition of what a mid level wizard is is an extreme problem with the design of 3.X D&D. As Gygax designed D&D 10th level was the soft cap. A high level wizard was about level 8 or 9 and they more or less retired or took part in the equivalent of raiding at level 10 and above - with the highest level PC in Greyhawk being Sir Robilar at level 13.

I don't care at all about how it used to work in AD&D. How it works in 3e is balanced out to a fairly high level, and in a far more usable system.


D&D was not designed to be played at 13th level, was not playtested at 13th level, and was not balanced at or for 13th level. Indeed the reason most of those high level spells are in the game is simple. To give the BBEG the spells to be a major threat (indeed 3.0 was only playtested up to level 6 and they didn't realise they'd screwed up the saving throws).

Clearly, polar ray is 8th level and scorching ray is 2nd level because a ray-based blasting spell that deals cold damage and scales in a single ray is for BBEGs, but a ray-based blasting spell that deals fire damage and scales by multiple rays is for PCs. The "it's just for villains" meme is stupid, and you should feel bad for repeating it. There's zero reason to tell PCs they can't scale up to whatever point you've written rules for.


Also look at the abilities of the 3.X fighter at levels 9-13. He's a dude that can swing a sword extremely well - little different from the level 1 fighter who was a dude who could swing a sword pretty well. In any TSR edition of D&D in order to keep up they gave the fighter a free small army at level 9 or 10.

Leadership does exist, but yes, Fighters should get high level abilities.


Because not all overland voyages are simple?

I (a random middle class person) do not have to take an overland voyage to get anywhere in particular. The idea that people who can wade into armies or summon demons should be asked to do so is insulting.


A game where no one gets them has a chance of knowing what it is and following through on that promise. A game where a small selection of classes get them and other classes do not get extraordinary abilities to compensate doesn't know what it is and is going to give people negative play experiences.

Not it's not. You just play the classes which are complete (i.e. Sorcerer, Wizard, Cleric). The game doesn't get worse because the Commoner class exists, there's no reason for it to get worse because other NPC classes (i.e. Fighter) exist.


And a game where everyone gets that sort of ability or compensations can also be a good game.

Yes. But the transitional stage (some people get non-combat abilities) is 1000% better than no one getting them.


The fighter doesn't even have to be paranormal - they should just be able to kill the wizard in the blink of an eye if they get line of sight. (The wizard having plenty of ways of preventing that of course).

First, whether the Fighter can kill the Wizard is essentially meaningless. Classes are balanced if they can both overcome obstacles reasonably effectively, and while some of those obstacles are classed NPCs, most of them are not.

Second, that doesn't solve the problem of the Fighter contributing to high level adventures. He could kill Wizards 100% of the time with no save, but he would still bring nothing to the table for beating challenges like "get to Hell" or "administrate a city" or whatever.


That there's a difference between players and GMs. Part of the point of dragons is that they are meant to be able to deal with ordinary obstacles - making them major challenges because of this. For a PC to be a dragon in a normal party would require re-writing a lot of assumptions of the game.

No it wouldn't. High level monsters have flight and/or ranged attacks, which is all that is conceptually required to deal with dragons.


Imagine Lord of the Rings with one of the PCs being the Witch King or even Sauron. (Gandalf of course needed to be both extremely limited and written out of the plot most of the time).

Sure. That story would no longer be LotR. It might instead be the Chronicles of Amber, where major characters have significant magical power as well as personal armies. Higher level characters are involved in higher level stories.

Segev
2016-02-18, 10:00 AM
Anecdotally, in my experience, effects like charm tend to require clever maneuvering to whammy the right person, or to isolate somebody and whammy them in private, because people who see you casting a spell just before their buddy starts being your best friend ever are going to be suspicious. It also requires working with your newfound friend to maneuver past his other allies.

Teleportation effects only ruin challenges that are well below the level of power expected for a party that can use them. By the time teleportation effects are usable, there should be challenges that all but require them to overcome. It shouldn't be, "well, I will casually use teleport to solve this." It should be, "Crap, to navigate this dungeon constructed of chambers with no obvious passage between them, we need to use teleport and dimension door judiciously so we don't get stuck!" or something like that. (That one's contrived, so as another example: "We need to go between 5 different dungeons many times to solve any of them.")

Flight and similar mobility effects, too, should transform "impossible" to "possible" in the fashion of a Zelda game: when you get the tool, you can finally get to and do the dungeon that requires its capability.

(Tangentially, I think Twilight Princess would have been so much better if they'd just made better use of some of their items. A spinner track up out of Lake Hylia, for example, would have made that item go from "niche" to "a great tool to have for the rest of the game.")

Fable Wright
2016-02-18, 10:53 AM
You have yet to demonstrate that the 3e Wizard is not such a character. There are things he can't do, both in terms of power and versatility. He relies on someone else to wade into melee. Maybe a Fighter, maybe a Warblade, maybe a Cleric, maybe a Druid. Other characters have abilities he doesn't. The Druid's reincarnate or awaken, the Cleric's raise dead or plane shift, and so on.

Sure. He relies on his spell slots to wade into melee. Summon Monster 3-7 are great for their level. Or some of those Animate Dead slots. And of course the Wizard can do all those things that the Clerics and Druids do; Limited Wish says he can Reincarnate and Awaken and raise the dead, and he can Plane Shift on his own just a bit later than the Cleric.


You do, provided those characters aren't underpowered. A party of Rogue/Wizard/Cleric/Druid all contribute reasonably effectively both in and out of combat.

Party of level 13 single-classed Wizard/Rogue/Healer/Fighter. Name one non-contrived situation where the Wizard cannot actually solve the problem without other party members.


I don't care at all about how it used to work in AD&D. How it works in 3e is balanced out to a fairly high level, and in a far more usable system.

But this thread does, as it's in the roleplaying games general forum rather than 3.5e specific, and I think you've just been crusading a case that melee is brokenly weak in 3.5e, which doesn't appear to line up with "3e is balanced to a fairly high level." :smallconfused:

Jay R
2016-02-18, 10:54 AM
That being said, I hate them, for multiple reasons:
- they substitute a roll, or even worse, an auto-win, to what should be problem solving, role playing, or creative thinking ("How will we get out of here with only 50ft of rope, two longswords and magical glue? Oh nevermind, TELEPORT!", or "Oh, you want us to help you with something before you let us in? CHARM!");

That's just bad, over-simplistic encounter design.

In a 2e game, my eleven thief / wizard was the only one with the relevant climbing skill, so he had to investigate the hole in the cliff by himself. That's not an insta-win; it's the entrance to a solo encounter.

Charm makes somebody trust you. It doesn't make him abandon his post or let you in a door you're not allowed in.

The two characters who could fly wound up meleeing with the illithids in the air. They still had to win.

Teleporting can put you in the middle of a worse situation, and occasionally should. You teleport back to the town you came form, and find it being overrun by orcs.

Even if you used the teleport to get to safety, you've now used it, and can't teleport away from the monsters who attack you next.

Divination doesn't keep you from having to face danger; it tells you where to find it. Once you know that the quest object is in the red dragon hoard, you now have to face a red dragon.


- they make players look at their sheets for solutions, rather than thinking and talking;

Done correctly, it makes people look at their sheets as part of the thinking and talking.


- it makes planning harder for the DM, balancing between making you feel good for having the abilities, yet having to find other ways to make it tense (you know how "you're lost in the desert without food" has no meaning if the group can magically make food and water appear out of thin air?).

Right. So "lost in the desert without food" is the wrong encounter for a party who can create food. That's the same thing as sending four kobolds after a party of tenth levels.


In other words, my argument is that OOCA actually make everything that is not combat trivial, because they're, most of the time, insta-win buttons, or at least the absolute perfect tool, making any sort of thinking-outside-the-box unnecessary.

An insta-win is just the point where the DM stopped DMing.

Cosi
2016-02-18, 11:08 AM
Summon Monster 3-7 are great for their level.

No, they aren't. Those spells suck. Well, they're okay as utility spells, but no they are not good combat spells.


Or some of those Animate Dead slots.

Yes, minionmancy is broken. Although the Wizard is the worst at specifically animate dead.


Limited Wish says he can Reincarnate and Awaken and raise the dead, and he can Plane Shift on his own just a bit later than the Cleric.

Yes, because limited wish is the same level as raise dead. Similarly, the fact that second level Wizards have +1 BAB means that first level Fighters +1 BAB is meaningless.


Party of level 13 single-classed Wizard/Rogue/Healer/Fighter. Name one non-contrived situation where the Wizard cannot actually solve the problem without other party members.

Half of that party are functionally Commoners. Healers and Fighters are NPCs, so I'm going to pretend you said Warblade and Cleric. And I'm going to have to ask you to prove that. 13th level Wizard, no minions or shapechanging magic, prove that he is in fact able to either beat level appropriate encounters too easily or resolve encounters without the help of a party.


But this thread does, as it's in the roleplaying games general forum rather than 3.5e specific, and I think you've just been crusading a case that melee is brokenly weak in 3.5e, which doesn't appear to line up with "3e is balanced to a fairly high level." :smallconfused:

Dominated options don't decrease balance. The Cleric, Wizard, Druid, Sorcerer, Rogue, Beguiler, and Dread Necromancer are all balanced against each other. And there are hundreds of builds using those classes. And there are various other builds that are balanced against them (Swift Hunter, Bardblade, etc). The Commoner doesn't make the Wizard not balanced, and neither does the Fighter.

Also, it's not "melee" that is weak. The Cleric is totally able to hit things with sticks in melee, and the Fighter is incapable of contributing with a bow. Fighters suck, not melee.

neonchameleon
2016-02-18, 11:13 AM
You do, provided those characters aren't underpowered. A party of Rogue/Wizard/Cleric/Druid all contribute reasonably effectively both in and out of combat.

Hmm... three tier 1 classes broken in numerous ways and one tier 4 class. One of these things is not like the other ones. One of these things does not belong...


I don't care at all about how it used to work in AD&D. How it works in 3e is balanced out to a fairly high level, and in a far more usable system.

If you believe that how it works in 3.X is in any way balanced out to a fairly high level I've a bridge to sell you. Yes you can Tippyverse the whole thing - but that's a post-hoc patch.


Clearly, polar ray is 8th level and scorching ray is 2nd level because a ray-based blasting spell that deals cold damage and scales in a single ray is for BBEGs, but a ray-based blasting spell that deals fire damage and scales by multiple rays is for PCs.


The "it's just for villains" meme is stupid, and you should feel bad for repeating it. There's zero reason to tell PCs they can't scale up to whatever point you've written rules for.

The "Because I'm a PC I should get access to EVERYTHING" approach that's the alternative is wrongheaded, bad game design, sucks the fun out of games, and you should look at yourself in a mirror and contemplate your poor life decisions if you hold to it. As just about every tabletop RPG up to and including the actual guidance in GURPS demonstrates there is no reason NPCs need to be created in the same way as PCs because the way NPCs interact with the game world is automatically different mechanically from the way PCs do.

The idea that there's "zero reason" is of course complete and utter rubbish as people drown in abilities.


I (a random middle class person) do not have to take an overland voyage to get anywhere in particular. The idea that people who can wade into armies or summon demons should be asked to do so is insulting.

As I said, not all overland voyages are the same. The idea that you should necessarily be able to get to the top of Everest without your overland voyage being challenging is silly. The idea that because they can teleport they can necessarily get into the Demonweb Pits at any point they like is silly.


Not it's not. You just play the classes which are complete (i.e. Sorcerer, Wizard, Cleric).

You mean the classes that work even further from what was intended than the fighter does? The ones most broken and most capable of ruining other people's fun because they believed the writers of the game?


The game doesn't get worse because the Commoner class exists, there's no reason for it to get worse because other NPC classes (i.e. Fighter) exist.

The commoner class is an explicit NPC class - and the game is worse because of the stupid necessary symmetry that the commoner class is a half-made patch for. Calling the fighter class an NPC class is not how the game was designed or intended to be played.

You are taking a direct flaw in the game, declaring it to be a feature, declaring that to be how the game was intended, and then declaring that that's the way everyone should do things.


Yes. But the transitional stage (some people get non-combat abilities) is 1000% better than no one getting them.

Even the fighter gets non-combat abilities in 3.X - they are called skills. I have never in my life read an RPG where no one gets non-combat abilities - and that includes oD&D. So you are arguing against a strawman.


That story would no longer be LotR. It might instead be the Chronicles of Amber, where major characters have significant magical power as well as personal armies. Higher level characters are involved in higher level stories.

In short it would be very different, wouldn't fit in LotR, and would completely make pointless eight of the nine members of the Fellowship.

If you want to play LotR you shouldn't be playing the Witch King of Angmar at any point. If you want to play some other game there's no reason it has to have the same rules.

Cosi
2016-02-18, 11:20 AM
Hmm... three tier 1 classes broken in numerous ways and one tier 4 class. One of these things is not like the other ones. One of these things does not belong...

Tiers are worthless. The Rogue has the damage to win level appropriate encounters, making it level appropriate.


The "Because I'm a PC I should get access to EVERYTHING" approach that's the alternative is wrongheaded, bad game design, sucks the fun out of games, and you should look at yourself in a mirror and contemplate your poor life decisions if you hold to it.

Yes, there are abilities it is not appropriate for PCs to have (for example, Create Spawn). But there are not power levels it is not appropriate for PCs to be.


You mean the classes that work even further from what was intended than the fighter does? The ones most broken and most capable of ruining other people's fun because they believed the writers of the game?

I mean the classes that perform in the way the designers defined as level appropriate (i.e. beating CR = Level encounters half the time).


In short it would be very different, wouldn't fit in LotR, and would completely make pointless eight of the nine members of the Fellowship.

Yes, if you tell a story with different characters it is a different story. Obviously. Why do I care?


If you want to play LotR you shouldn't be playing the Witch King of Angmar at any point. If you want to play some other game there's no reason it has to have the same rules.

Yes, and there's a solution to that in 3e: play at low levels.

Fable Wright
2016-02-18, 11:27 AM
Half of that party are functionally Commoners. Healers and Fighters are NPCs, so I'm going to pretend you said Warblade and Cleric.

Hello, you've stumbled onto the root of the problem. I didn't say Warblade or Cleric, I brought a meatshield and a healbot and wanted them to be useful. Now you're telling me that your power is such that there is literally no purpose for my characters existing, so have these two other characters instead.

That is why I feel that 3.5 wizards are not balanced. "As long as you use an optimized character pulling resources from at least three different sourcebooks from a set list of classes to follow these well-known archetypes, you will be good enough with a stick to tag along with my Wizard and hit things with it." Balance comes from both ends of the game; if the fighter is dead weight and the wizard literally solves global warming during their eight hour sleep, both are busted.

Cosi
2016-02-18, 11:32 AM
Hello, you've stumbled onto the root of the problem. I didn't say Warblade or Cleric, I brought a meatshield and a healbot and wanted them to be useful. Now you're telling me that your power is such that there is literally no purpose for my characters existing, so have these two other characters instead.

No, I'm saying that the power of monsters is such that those characters have no business existing. A Fighter can't stand up to CR 13 encounters at 13th level, completely irrespective of what Wizards are or are not doing. Seriously, run the 10th level SGT with a Fighter you would consider unoptimized and prove to me that he is in that case level appropriate. Then do the same thing with the Wizard (minus minions and polymorph) and prove that he's not level appropriate.

I don't care how you feel. I care what you can prove.

neonchameleon
2016-02-18, 11:55 AM
Tiers are worthless. The Rogue has the damage to win level appropriate encounters, making it level appropriate.

The fighter has damage. Apparently that's now level appropriate (and let's not get into the ridiculous construct rules and precision damage meaning that the rogue frequently doesn't)


Yes, there are abilities it is not appropriate for PCs to have (for example, Create Spawn). But there are not power levels it is not appropriate for PCs to be.

However in any given game there are power levels where it will not work.


I mean the classes that perform in the way the designers defined as level appropriate (i.e. beating CR = Level encounters half the time).

And now we're into both a redefinition and a recursive mess. A level 10 fighter and a level 10 wizard are officially the same CR.


Yes, if you tell a story with different characters it is a different story. Obviously. Why do I care?

Because one is not appropriate for what you are trying to do.


No, I'm saying that the power of monsters is such that those characters have no business existing. A Fighter can't stand up to CR 13 encounters at 13th level, completely irrespective of what Wizards are or are not doing. Seriously, run the 10th level SGT with a Fighter you would consider unoptimized and prove to me that he is in that case level appropriate. Then do the same thing with the Wizard (minus minions and polymorph) and prove that he's not level appropriate.

Part of the problem with your line of argument is that a list of sure wins, likely wins, and toss-ups/runs away (as the wizard, cleric, and druid have) is not appropriate in a team based game. They should be losing some that their friends can help out. It's the tier 3s that are balanced not the tier 1s.

Segev
2016-02-18, 12:04 PM
Guys, this isn't the thread for an argument over whether tiers exist or not. This is about whether out-of-combat abilities are a good, bad, or indifferent thing to have in a game.

Cosi
2016-02-18, 12:08 PM
However in any given game there are power levels where it will not work.

Sure. There's a reason levels exist.


Because one is not appropriate for what you are trying to do.

Okay, so don't try to run LotR with 10th level PCs. No one is forcing Gandalf to be level 15.


Part of the problem with your line of argument is that a list of sure wins, likely wins, and toss-ups/runs away (as the wizard, cleric, and druid have) is not appropriate in a team based game. They should be losing some that their friends can help out. It's the tier 3s that are balanced not the tier 1s.

No, a party is supposed to easily beat any encounter of CR = Level. The fact that a party can do that doesn't prove anything. Individual characters are supposed to beat encounters of CR = Level half the time. Wizards do, Fighters don't. Ergo, Wizards are balanced and Fighters are not.

And yes, we should really try to get this back on topic.

themaque
2016-02-18, 12:18 PM
I found it really frustrating that 4e didn't really have OOCA. It took a problem with much of D&D and made it even bigger.

So... people have developed magical means of teleporting but... only 30 feet? No one has said "Wow, I want to be able to ship my goods to Gondor in 30 seconds. "

Yeah the ability to light people on fire is cool but little practical things would be developed as well or at least in conjuncture. Prestidigitation is the best spell in existence just for how handy it is on a day to day basis. Unseen servant for cleaning my house. Mage Hand for letting my get the remote without getting my lazy but off the couch. Summoning a little cottage for the night so I don't have to sleep on the cold hard ground in the rain.

It just feels like a glaring error when you don't have anything like this in existence but 30 gajillion ways to say take Xd6 damage.

Fable Wright
2016-02-18, 12:23 PM
I don't care how you feel. I care what you can prove.

Then we have nothing to talk about. This is a roleplaying game. I don't schedule my free time around making sure that my numbers line up with everyone else's; that's my day job. I schedule my free time around hanging out with friends and having fun with them. I know that if my friends show up with a Duskblade, Swordsage, and Barbarian at level 6 (in an E6 campaign), we'll be able to square up against anything the DM throws at us with a fair bit of effort and a lot of teamwork. I know that if a fourth player comes along and plays an optimized wizard, we become accessories to tidy up problems after he's solved them. My character becomes a convenience rather than a necessity, to the point where the DM asked us if we just wanted to skip a few combats halfway rather than go through the motions of clean-up duty that was boring everyone. This is undesirable and a hallmark of poor design, and why I point to 3.5 Wizards as being poorly balanced. You can look at the numbers and say "yep, that's balanced" and yet everyone at the table but the wizard was sick of it. No, I don't care to prove numbers to people on the internet, I look to inform people looking for help how to avoid unfun scenarios, how to infuse life into their challenges/characters/world, how to get people sitting around a table to all have fun together, and to swap amusing stories about games on the internet.


Guys, this isn't the thread for an argument over whether tiers exist or not. This is about whether out-of-combat abilities are a good, bad, or indifferent thing to have in a game.

You are correct. Derailment of discussion towards the balance of third edition is just a side effect of Cosi showing up in a thread; I apologize for participating in that.

Cosi
2016-02-18, 12:36 PM
It just feels like a glaring error when you don't have anything like this in existence but 30 gajillion ways to say take Xd6 damage.

There's actually a super simple reason for that. Take a look at Fable's list of "broken spells". 99% of them are either spells with a major non-damage effect (web, glitterdust, save or dies in general) or spells with some kind of significant non-combat effect (animate dead, planar ally, simulacrum). There aren't abilities like that in 4e, and it's not an oversight. It's an attempt to get people to not complain about those abilities, not by fixing them or by making other classes competitive with them, but by removing them from the game. Because fixing them is hard and 4e designers are lazy. Or, to paraphrase presidential candidate Marco Rubio:

"We must dispel the fiction that Mike Mearls doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. He's undertaking a systemic effort to remove the complexity of D&D to make it easier to balance."


I schedule my free time around hanging out with friends and having fun with them. I know that if my friends show up with a Duskblade, Swordsage, and Barbarian at level 6 (in an E6 campaign), we'll be able to square up against anything the DM throws at us with a fair bit of effort and a lot of teamwork.

What you are describing are characters that are, by the rules of the game, underpowered. It isn't supposed to take "effort" and "teamwork" to beat level appropriate challenges. It's supposed to take 1/4 of your resources.


You are correct. Derailment of discussion towards the balance of third edition is just a side effect of Cosi showing up in a thread; I apologize for participating in that.

You remember how the person who started this thread posted about D&D 3e? You remember the person who quoted around fifty different 3e spells? You remember how neither of those people were me? You remember how one of them was you?

Seriously, go re-read my first post. The points I make include:

-You can challenge people with non-combat abilities, here are some real world examples of organizations with similar abilities being challenged
-People ignoring plots is a result of being high level or not interested in plots
-Having abilities exist but be unequally distributed is better than having them not exist
-Responding to someone else who had brought up 3e specific elements
-Talking about how mundanes are conceptually ineffective

There are examples that are 3e specific, but that post in no way represents a derailment towards 3e balance. That happened when you insisted on making a claim you could not defend. The times I talk about 3e in this thread are in response to other people. You derailed this thread, full stop.

Segev
2016-02-18, 12:46 PM
"We must dispel the fiction that Mike Mearls doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. He's undertaking a systemic effort to remove the complexity of D&D to make it easier to balance."

I strongly recommend not quoting politicians in active campaigns, as well. Or paraphrasing them. It is taking a great deal of willpower for me not to analyze just why this paraphrasing fails to capture what Rubio was discussing about the topic of the actual quote, and it's entirely irrelevant to this thread. (Not only that, but it's not even in an attempt to defend Rubio; it's just an inaccurate presentation of his sentiment and inaccuracy BUGS me.)

obryn
2016-02-18, 01:03 PM
I found it really frustrating that 4e didn't really have OOCA. It took a problem with much of D&D and made it even bigger.

So... people have developed magical means of teleporting but... only 30 feet? No one has said "Wow, I want to be able to ship my goods to Gondor in 30 seconds. "
Hm? That's what rituals and teleportation circles are for. It makes for a really neat implied setting.

Back on topic - it kinda seems like 4e did exactly what the OP was asking for, to me. You have out-of-combat utility powers and rituals. The former tends to enhance the skill system (which is D&D's out-of-combat task resolution) and the latter is available to anyone who chooses to invest in it. (Note that Wizards, Bards, Clerics, Psions, Artificers, and a few others get it as a freebie.)

(The specifics of the casting times and costs of rituals are another matter, but that's a specific and easily fixed issue rather than a deep systemic flaw. Simply using Inherent Bonuses pretty well fixes it.)

Lacco
2016-02-18, 01:14 PM
What you are describing are characters that are, by the rules of the game, underpowered. It isn't supposed to take "effort" and "teamwork" to beat level appropriate challenges. It's supposed to take 1/4 of your resources.

If this was meant as sarcasm, well done.

If not... then - where's the fun in that...???

OldTrees1
2016-02-18, 01:19 PM
If this was meant as sarcasm, well done.

If not... then - where's the fun in that...???

I think Cosi presumed your DM used EL = APL* encounters in your example (which should be as easy as he described). However I am guessing you were talking about closer to EL = APL+2* thru EL = APL+4*.

*Note: APL in E6 is harder to calculate.

Lacco
2016-02-18, 01:27 PM
I think Cosi presumed your DM used EL = APL* encounters in your example (which should be as easy as he described). However I am guessing you were talking about closer to EL = APL+2* thru EL = APL+4*.

*Note: APL in E6 is harder to calculate.

Sorry, I forgot this was mostly DnD thread :smallsmile:. Also, it was not a response meant for me - I just couldn't help but reply.

I will slowly back off from this thread and leave - don't mind me :roach::roach:

OldTrees1
2016-02-18, 01:40 PM
Sorry, I forgot this was mostly DnD thread :smallsmile:. Also, it was not a response meant for me - I just couldn't help but reply.

I will slowly back off from this thread and leave - don't mind me :roach::roach:

Nah, please stay. This thread needs to be much less D&D focused if it is actually to answer the OP's question.

Segev
2016-02-18, 01:56 PM
One thing I've noticed in BESM and other systems where the design is very open to player choice is that a lot of players will pick up a number of not-particularly-combat capabilities, and this does tend to throw some GMs for a loop. The more railroad-prone the GM, the more it throws them. Because the more you have a firm idea of how the narrative is to progress, and specifically how to get the PCs from set piece to set piece with certain things happening in certain ways, the more their having powers that normal people don't will throw you. For whatever reason, GMs who fall to this foible often do have multiple ways things can go...as a result of combat. But they seem to have a cut-scene mentality regarding non-combat. So when player characters use powers and abilities that they didn't count on to disrupt the scene's pre-written conclusion, it throws them.

I'm trying very hard not to attack anybody's GMing style here, so if I come off as doing so, my apologies. I have a particular GM I've played in 3 games under in mind. I don't think he frequents these boards. His games are fun, and I enjoy them, but he definitely has his plot pre-written, and openly refers to some session as "set pieces." He's usually ready for us to try "something" to disrupt things not going the way our characters would want, but often is thrown by just what our powers will let us DO, so his plans to thwart our disruptions are not adequate, and that usually disturbs him. Because he wasn't ready for, and doesn't want to allow, his set piece's conclusion to be foiled. To his credit, he tries to work with us most of the time, but it clearly upsets him when we pull out a power he hadn't counted on.


All of this is to say: the reason I think the OP is complaining about out-of-combat abilities is that he's used to designing encounters with relatively normal human abilities in mind. Sure, the combat aspect will allow them to throw around improbable to impossible effects, but when it's anything but combat, he expects, as he said, that pit you need to get over to be a challenge when you have two swords and some bubblegum.

He may design his combat encounters to handle a teleporting invisible assassin, but he didn't think of how those powers might be used in other encounters and design with those in mind. And it makes him see these powers as "ruining" the challenge.

It is imperative to keep your PCs' abilities in mind when running a game, even out of combat. Just as an author who forgets that his main character can whistle up a cloud from the moisture in the air and then ride it like a magic carpet will bet his readers yelling at the book, demanding to know why said character is dangling from a cliff over a raging river and worried that he'll fall.

Heck, in a book I'm re-reading right now, the first-person narrator has a temporary power to disintegrate matter with a gesture. It is only because of a well-written panic-state that I forgive the author for having said character not recall this when he's got an almost cartoon-style ball-and-chain shackled to his ankle and pulling him underwater. (As no lampshade is hung, I do not know if the author, himself, forgot about the power, or if he deliberately was using the panic state to excuse the character not thinking of it.)

Fable Wright
2016-02-18, 02:18 PM
Hm? That's what rituals and teleportation circles are for. It makes for a really neat implied setting.

Back on topic - it kinda seems like 4e did exactly what the OP was asking for, to me. You have out-of-combat utility powers and rituals. The former tends to enhance the skill system (which is D&D's out-of-combat task resolution) and the latter is available to anyone who chooses to invest in it. (Note that Wizards, Bards, Clerics, Psions, Artificers, and a few others get it as a freebie.)

(The specifics of the casting times and costs of rituals are another matter, but that's a specific and easily fixed issue rather than a deep systemic flaw. Simply using Inherent Bonuses pretty well fixes it.)

Hm. One of my problems with fourth edition was my inability to specialize in things like rituals, or invest resources in increasing my ability to change the environment. I will agree that the ritual system is a good baseline to work off of, but giving non-generic abilities you can invest renewable resources in would strengthen the system.


It is imperative to keep your PCs' abilities in mind when running a game, even out of combat. Just as an author who forgets that his main character can whistle up a cloud from the moisture in the air and then ride it like a magic carpet will bet his readers yelling at the book, demanding to know why said character is dangling from a cliff over a raging river and worried that he'll fall.

This is indeed something that is both very important and very hard to do in a system like 3.X, where the magic item list of a low to mid level character has half a dozen to a dozen separate magic items expanding their capacity. In a system like BECM, AD&D, or 5e, with limited magic item availability, the DM can be very aware of the out of combat utility that characters have; baseline human capacity, the world-affecting spells that are limited in number and scope, and the magic items that the DM has specifically handed out. Nothing else. This might be a complaint about the ability of players to blindside DMs with capabilities, which occurs when the players have blinding numbers of options and win buttons that they oft acquire without DM input.


What you are describing are characters that are, by the rules of the game, underpowered. It isn't supposed to take "effort" and "teamwork" to beat level appropriate challenges. It's supposed to take 1/4 of your resources.

An appropriate encounter (not 'level appropriate') for our group was at level 6, for example, an Adult White dragon, a group of 12 CR 3 characters in a building coordinating a defense, and at one point a dracolich of unknown variety. At level 3, we infiltrated a full castle and took out its inhabitants with a combination of stealth and diplomacy, including several higher-level casters and a Hellfire Warlock. I don't think we qualified as 'underpowered.'


You remember how the person who started this thread posted about D&D 3e? You remember the person who quoted around fifty different 3e spells? You remember how neither of those people were me? You remember how one of them was you?

A derailment comes in two parts: A contentious opinion, and someone calling out that opinion. You posited that there were "a very few broken spells" in 3.5, and that martials were broken, not wizards. These opinions are highly contentious. I participated in the derailment by calling out these opinions with counterexamples to which I limited my defense of so as not to derail the thread further, feeling as though the point had been made to an external observer.

Mentioning you was merely noting a correlation between your posts and the fact that derailments usually follow soon after.

Douche
2016-02-18, 02:19 PM
One thing I've noticed in BESM and other systems where the design is very open to player choice is that a lot of players will pick up a number of not-particularly-combat capabilities, and this does tend to throw some GMs for a loop. The more railroad-prone the GM, the more it throws them. Because the more you have a firm idea of how the narrative is to progress, and specifically how to get the PCs from set piece to set piece with certain things happening in certain ways, the more their having powers that normal people don't will throw you. For whatever reason, GMs who fall to this foible often do have multiple ways things can go...as a result of combat. But they seem to have a cut-scene mentality regarding non-combat. So when player characters use powers and abilities that they didn't count on to disrupt the scene's pre-written conclusion, it throws them.

One of the times I played this game called Arcanum, I decided to be a master gambler. Almost every skill in that game has a huge impact on how you can progress the story.... Except gambling.

I thought I could roleplay a desperado gambler, solving all my problems over a hand of blackjack or rollin' bones.... But it turns out that the only story related use for gambling is that you can get a captain to gamble his ship to you. So, hey, free ship at least.

obryn
2016-02-18, 02:42 PM
Hm. One of my problems with fourth edition was my inability to specialize in things like rituals, or invest resources in increasing my ability to change the environment. I will agree that the ritual system is a good baseline to work off of, but giving non-generic abilities you can invest renewable resources in would strengthen the system.
Yeah, it's pretty clear to me that, just like a lot of the rest of 4e, rituals weren't at an advanced state of development upon the game's release. While the rest of the system (especially the math bits) got polished really nicely over the next few years, rituals were mostly left untouched. There are a few paragon paths and epic destinies that work with them, and a few interesting feats, but those were later additions to the game. They were nearly ignored altogether in the Essentials releases.

With that said, remember that the core conceit of the edition is that most characters should be able to contribute (to varying degrees) in most challenges, in order to avoid a blasted hellscape where "Fighter" is considered an NPC class and "god-wizard" is considered the system working as intended. So anything that removes skills from non-combat challenges altogether is kind of a non-starter.

Likewise, I wish there'd been a firmer wall between combat and non-combat Utility powers. Sadly, Utility Powers were used for both, and the end result is that most people just took the combat ones.

Segev
2016-02-18, 03:08 PM
This is indeed something that is both very important and very hard to do in a system like 3.X, where the magic item list of a low to mid level character has half a dozen to a dozen separate magic items expanding their capacity. In a system like BECM, AD&D, or 5e, with limited magic item availability, the DM can be very aware of the out of combat utility that characters have; baseline human capacity, the world-affecting spells that are limited in number and scope, and the magic items that the DM has specifically handed out. Nothing else. This might be a complaint about the ability of players to blindside DMs with capabilities, which occurs when the players have blinding numbers of options and win buttons that they oft acquire without DM input.

While that is technically true, you don't really have to know every single power. You just have to know what powers are available at the level you're talking about. Broad categories are sufficient. Whether they have a wand of dimension door or a spellcaster with teleport or (in some cases) a carpet of flying, what you need to remember is that, past a certain point, "pit between point A and point B" is not really an obstacle, and is at most a minor drain on resources.

Build your NPCs and encounters using level-appropriate foes, and use their abilities as intelligently as you can. It is likely that the abilities you use to make your NPC "invincible" will turn out to be more easily vinced than you imagined once the PCs bring their powers to bear. Roll with it. Note what they do. Adopt tactics that you think "anybody" of this power level would do. Defend against similar ones in the future. Design grand, epic, amazing things that are nigh impossible...and rely on your PCs FINDING a solution.

Zumbs
2016-02-18, 04:11 PM
- they substitute a roll, or even worse, an auto-win, to what should be problem solving, role playing, or creative thinking ("How will we get out of here with only 50ft of rope, two longswords and magical glue? Oh nevermind, TELEPORT!", or "Oh, you want us to help you with something before you let us in? CHARM!");
May I suggest looking at this question from another perspective:

Combat abilities substitute a roll with what could be problem solving, role playing or creative thinking. Instead of just saying "I attack the enemy with my sword", you could get an epic fight where each player would in detail describe their feigns, thrusts, and slashes to counteract the attacks and defenses of their enemies.

Non-combat skills can have a lot of interesting uses, but given that the mechanics are often sorely underdeveloped, it requires more from the GM and the players. For instance, the players might want to persuade a guard to let them enter a party where they are not invited. The players try to tell a lie to get in. Does the guard believe them and let them in? Will the guard let them in, grow suspicious and look into it? A dice roll of the appropriate skill could determine that.

Spells can sometimes be a problem, especially spells of the type Detect Evil as they all to often will allow the players to sidestep the whole investigation part of an adventure. The reliance on such spells can be discouraged by using suspicious evil types who are just regular unlikable people or by letting the crook be a "The End Justifies the Means" good guy villain. You can also study the spells that usually give problems with a focus on the fine print - are they really as powerful as your group thinks? If they are crazy overpowered, you can remove them from play or re-balance them.

Also remember that NPCs have access to the same array of skills and spells, so you can use them against the players.

Segev
2016-02-18, 04:19 PM
Spells can sometimes be a problem, especially spells of the type Detect Evil as they all to often will allow the players to sidestep the whole investigation part of an adventure. The reliance on such spells can be discouraged by using suspicious evil types who are just regular unlikable people or by letting the crook be a "The End Justifies the Means" good guy villain. You can also study the spells that usually give problems with a focus on the fine print - are they really as powerful as your group thinks? If they are crazy overpowered, you can remove them from play or re-balance them.

It's worth noting that the various alignment-detection spells typically only work on people who have an alignment subtype, have a particular aura (as clerics tend to), or are very steeped in the alignment. JimBob the murderer who isn't out doing it as a serial hobby probably doesn't ping; murder is horrible and all, but he's not "atrocious paragon of eeheeheeheehevil" levels just from being an occasional murder-thug. It takes even more than that to start pinging.

Alternatively, if you do determine that that's enough, consider that there are a lot of people south of neutral (or north of it, or to the east or west of it) on the alignment axis. So "I use detect evil on my suspect" could result in a lot of false positives. And killing everybody for pinging almost certainly puts YOU a bit south of that line, yourself, since not every evil is death-worthy by good standards.

Cluedrew
2016-02-18, 04:57 PM
Sorry, I forgot this was mostly DnD thread :smallsmile:. Also, it was not a response meant for me - I just couldn't help but reply.

I will slowly back off from this thread and leave - don't mind me :roach::roach:
Nah, please stay. This thread needs to be much less D&D focused if it is actually to answer the OP's question.Yes! Join the fight against the Playgrounder's Fallacy!

I played a homebrew system recently where every character had 8 abilities by default (you could gain others by advancement). One was "attack", another "defend" and the other 6 were non-combat abilities. And it was way more interesting than a combat heavy D&D game.

Actually I think the fact that "is 3.5e balanced" is even question shows a major problem with the system. There is not enough to do out-of-combat so it all has to be about combat and how one fights. I enjoy combat, but there is more to life than swinging a sword around. I feel it is a failing of the system that all you can play is some variant of soldier. Yes I mean this of wizards too, if most of your spells deal damage you are a magic soldier.

So really I think the out of combat abilities are the important part. It is often the part that gets focused on in campaign journals, as an example.

icefractal
2016-02-18, 05:24 PM
Hm? That's what rituals and teleportation circles are for. It makes for a really neat implied setting.Rituals are perhaps the best example of 4E's overall 'thing' of "great concept, overly conservative execution". My face when reading them:
"Let's take all those strategic-level powers and divorce them from class. Everyone can have rituals!" :smallbiggrin:
"Gold makes more sense than spell slots as a resource for creating permanent effects." :smallbiggrin:
"Since rituals aren't part of your core effectiveness, they can be acquired asymmetrically (like pre-4E Wizard spells)." :smallbiggrin:
"And ... let's make most* of the rituals overpriced and weak." :smallconfused: :smalleek: :smallyuk:

They nerfed the hell out of OOCA, and there was no need to, because it was no longer a class balance issue. For example, Knock was crappy so the Rogue wouldn't feel bad ... but the Rogue could have Knock! If anything, they just needed to dislodge the spellcaster/ritual connection a bit more and make it very clear that yes, your Fighter can and should use rituals.

Now perhaps part of that was deliberate, catering to the "LotR at 1st level, LotR at 30th level, take that superhero **** out of here" crowd. In which case - meh, I'm not going to say they're having badwrongfun, but that's not the game for me.

* There were a few good ones, no argument there. I had a lot of fun with Unseen Servant, for instance.

themaque
2016-02-18, 05:32 PM
I do like how 5e does rituales.

Kelb_Panthera
2016-02-18, 05:56 PM
DnD DMs, do any of you have problems designing a campaign with interesting problems because of the "I Win" spells available? Can't use a chasm, can't put them in a pit, can't use locked doors, can't block them with tall walls, etc.

Not at all. It's just a matter of what constitutes a challenge changing as the abilities of the PC's grow in deth and breadth. Things that would have been impossible become realistic options and things that were difficult become trivialities.


Is there a guide for designing DnD campaigns according to level? Somewhere?

Unfortunately, no. At least not as far as I'm aware. As a generallity, challenges become less and less directly physical (barring combat) and increasingly abstract as level inceases. A few leagues of mountainous terrain or a desert pose a challenge to a level 5 party but not at level 15. Conversely, a 5th level party can't do much about an enclave of illithids manipulating a kingdom's politics from the shadows.

Cosi
2016-02-18, 06:14 PM
Nothing else. This might be a complaint about the ability of players to blindside DMs with capabilities, which occurs when the players have blinding numbers of options and win buttons that they oft acquire without DM input.

I think that's overstating the advantage players have, and ignoring the one the DM has (also, the Player versus DM model isn't one I support). Sure, the players can pull out solutions the DM doesn't know about, but the DM can pull out problems the players don't know about. Or just create complex situations and trust players to find the solution. The DM's goal isn't to stump the players, it's to tell a story with their help.


So anything that removes skills from non-combat challenges altogether is kind of a non-starter.

Maybe. Depends how skills work. I don't really see any loss in people with teleport and create food and water not caring very much about Survival, or people with charm person not caring very much about Diplomacy. That said, you could certainly move those spells into skills. So instead of being a spell you could learn as a Wizard/Sorcerer/Beguiler, charm person would be something you got for having a bunch of ranks in Diplomacy (or Bluff or Persuasion, whatever floats your boat). But as skills stand, I don't really have a problem with them fading as people level up.


Likewise, I wish there'd been a firmer wall between combat and non-combat Utility powers. Sadly, Utility Powers were used for both, and the end result is that most people just took the combat ones.

Absolutely. Trading off combat power for non-combat power is not something you should have the option to do. The point of a level system is to stop people from putting all their points towards bigger booms and instead require them to take some points in bigger defenses or Speak Language or whatever.


An appropriate encounter (not 'level appropriate') for our group was at level 6, for example, an Adult White dragon,

Alright, show me the money. I want to see the 6th level Wizard that trivialized a CR 10 encounter.


A derailment comes in two parts: A contentious opinion, and someone calling out that opinion.

You mean a contentious opinion like "spells are broken"? Because I recall responding to that, not saying it. There's no win for you here. If posting the opinion is the derail, Red Fel derailed the thread. If responding is the derail, you derailed it.


"Fighter" is considered an NPC class

Honestly, Fighter is just a terrible name for a PC class irrespective of balance concerns. There's no concept there. What does a Fighter do? Apparently, he fights. But everyone fights. Moreover, it's not at all clear what the Fighter does when there is not an enemy to fight, and the challenge must be solved with diplomacy, invention, or research. Soldier or Ranger or Barbarian are much better classes.


"god-wizard" is considered the system working as intended.

Y'all need to put up or shut up. If Wizards are so obviously super OP, it should be trivial to put together a Wizard that beats CR = Level encounters easily and consistently without form changing magic or minionmancy, which I will freely concede are broken as written in 3e.

That aside, I don't know what's particularly problematic about Wizards eventually becoming gods. LotR is fine and all, but there's no reason the system shouldn't support The Codex Alera or Malazan Book of the Fallen, both of which have Wizards (well, magic users) who are quite powerful.
Note: I'm aware this is in the context of 3e. That's the system OP asked in the context of, and this post is intended to expand on the idea that you can still have adventures when players get their high level out of combat abilities. Also, these aren't really system specific.

Let's talk some more about solving this problem without removing abilities, because I think that's both doable and better.

First, there are a variety of ways to limit how much can be done with information or logistical capabilities of spells. teleport is great, but it only brings you and one creature per three levels. Asking the party to bring along a group of researchers to wherever they happen to be going basically locks out teleport as an option (unless they're willing to set aside several days for travel). speak with dead solves murder mysteries, but not if the assassin was invisible (or simply behind the target). It also doesn't reveal why the killer attacked the victim, or who they were working for. Managing the set up for adventures goes a long way towards stopping people from skipping chunks of the plot.

Second, there are a variety of adventures that don't break when confronted with the sort of out of combat abilities OP is complaining about. Here are two examples:

The Bug Hunt
There are a bunch of zombies/demons/giant frogs over there and the king/mayor/headmaster needs you to kill them so that he can safely settle/exploit/explore the land they're wandering around in. teleport and scrying don't particularly break it because the goal isn't to kill any one creature, it's to make an area safe so surgical strikes aren't much more effective than a full sweep. Examples include Aliens, part of Schlock Mercenary's Broken Wind (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2013-02-24) arc, and most of the "kill X <creature type> quests in WoW". Possible Bug Hunt adventures might be:

Lost Mines
Some dwarves were digging to greedily and too deep in pursuit of gold, and hit an underground sea. This being D&D (or some similar game), it was naturally full of monsters. Now the tunnels are flooded and you need to kill a bunch of Aboleths (plus Skum or Chuul minions), predators out of Warren Fahy's Pandemonium, and undead.

Undiscovered Valley
The king recently acquired the title to a valley that's full of timber and fertile land for him to move farmers into. Unfortunately, it's also full of dinosaurs, man eating plants, giant animals, and all sorts of other things you find in fantasy wildernesses. Go kill them so that their natural resources can be exploited.

Artisan's Workshop
A local artificer has disappeared, leaving behind a tower full of constructs and traps, as well as valuable research. Go break in and clear it out so that the local crafter's guild can put what remains of his resources to good use.
Diplomacy
Sometimes, more than one person wants something. Or several people want incompatible things. At low levels that might be "rights to fish in that lake". At high levels that can be "the soul of the Prince Who Was A Thousand". While high level non-combat abilities can certainly help, it takes more than teleport to figure out how to divide a kingdom. Note that this need not preclude the use of force. War is just politics by other means, after all. Possible diplomatic adventures include:

The King Is Dead
The king got killed, and his heirs need someone to step in and handle the transfer of power to prevent civil war. Also, to find out who killed him, train their armies in case their is a war, and screw over the other heirs in various ways.

Resource Rights
The elemental planes (particularly Earth) are full of things which mortals want, but also have powerful natives who would prefer their environment not be disturbed. Working out a way to get gems, magical kelp, or something else without incurring the wrath of genies or elementals can be quite profitable.

World of Peacecraft
There are all sorts of groups in D&D who spend some time killing one another, and some time not doing that. For example, the various breeds of genie. Convincing them to not go to war (or to go to war) advances a variety of agendas.
Third, you can do some adventures which require those abilities to advance. Maybe each section dungeon contains enough information to teleport to the next section. Maybe the adventure is in one of the outer planes. Maybe the information needed to advance the plot can't be found without scrying. Even more mundane tasks change dramatically when players use magic creatively. Maybe the Wizard uses a travel spell and fabricate to set up defenses or siege in an unexpected location during war. Maybe the Cleric uses raise dead to bring back a key political figure. Maybe the Druid uses awakened animals as spies.*

Fourth, most rewarding (and most difficult) is to set up a world instead of a story. If you've scripted a story, and the players decide to ignore it and go explore the desert or the tundra, you're out of luck. Maybe you roll up a random encounter. But if you have a world with some detail, when the players decide one aspect of it is boring, they can instead go off and explore something else, where there are real, developed enemies to fight, puzzles to solve, and adventures to have.

*: I'm aware those are all casters. Frankly, I don't really care much. Also, "how do I deal with 'broken' out of combat abilities" only really comes up when people have significant out of combat abilities.

obryn
2016-02-18, 06:27 PM
Rituals are perhaps the best example of 4E's overall 'thing' of "great concept, overly conservative execution". My face when reading them:
"Let's take all those strategic-level powers and divorce them from class. Everyon
Oh as I said you'll find no argument here. Early 4e was obviously not quite sure what kind of game it was trying to be. The good news is that it got better. The bad news is that the DMG in particular has some really weird/bad stuff in it like those monster templates and monster creation that actually references ability scores. The design team had internal conflicts that ended up in a bunch of half measures.

CharonsHelper
2016-02-18, 06:58 PM
Oh as I said you'll find no argument here. Early 4e was obviously not quite sure what kind of game it was trying to be. The good news is that it got better. The bad news is that the DMG in particular has some really weird/bad stuff in it like those monster templates and monster creation that actually references ability scores. The design team had internal conflicts that ended up in a bunch of half measures.

I definitely got the feeling that parts of the base rules had been designed by marketers trying to check all the boxes.

That and the achieving balance through symmetry put me off the system.

obryn
2016-02-18, 10:54 PM
I definitely got the feeling that parts of the base rules had been designed by marketers trying to check all the boxes.
No, their marketing department I'm sure had little to do with the final product. Certainly less so than the invention of Redgar during 3.0 development. Rather, it was going through the specific biggest problems people had with 3.x and finding solutions.


Maybe. Depends how skills work. I don't really see any loss in people with teleport and create food and water not caring very much about Survival, or people with charm person not caring very much about Diplomacy. That said, you could certainly move those spells into skills. So instead of being a spell you could learn as a Wizard/Sorcerer/Beguiler, charm person would be something you got for having a bunch of ranks in Diplomacy (or Bluff or Persuasion, whatever floats your boat). But as skills stand, I don't really have a problem with them fading as people level up.
That's not even remotely what I want out of D&D. If you can't have a high-level fightman and a high-level castman in the party, and both are pulling their weight, then near as I can see, the game is busted.


Honestly, Fighter is just a terrible name for a PC class irrespective of balance concerns. There's no concept there. What does a Fighter do? Apparently, he fights. But everyone fights. Moreover, it's not at all clear what the Fighter does when there is not an enemy to fight, and the challenge must be solved with diplomacy, invention, or research. Soldier or Ranger or Barbarian are much better classes.
It's got a deep history in the game, though, going back to the various Basic sets. ("Fighting-Man" was too cumbersome.) The division down into soldier/ranger/barbarian kind of illustrates the problem though - your martial character gets to be one of those things, and he's that forever. A caster can be a transmuter one day, a necromancer the next, and hurl fireballs the day after. Or get some combination of all of the above.


That aside, I don't know what's particularly problematic about Wizards eventually becoming gods. LotR is fine and all, but there's no reason the system shouldn't support The Codex Alera or Malazan Book of the Fallen, both of which have Wizards (well, magic users) who are quite powerful.
D&D is a terrible system for the Malazan series. (Which is probably just one reason that Erikson and Esselmont switched to GURPS and eventually apparently systemless almost immediately after trying it out in AD&D.)

Note - I don't think there's anything wrong with a system that's all about god-wizards. That's not what D&D should be, though. (And it isn't - except in 3e.)

Darth Ultron
2016-02-19, 12:20 AM
Guys, this isn't the thread for an argument over whether tiers exist or not. This is about whether out-of-combat abilities are a good, bad, or indifferent thing to have in a game.

They are good, but the big flaw with games like D&D is that they have very little rules support for anything except combat.

Anything you do in a game like D&D out of combat has, maybe, three rules that cover it...and that is it. The other 99% of everything a DM has to just make up and wing it.

And D&D really does have too much focus on combat, and the few non combat things available do have the flavor and feel of ''ok, lets make a roll to get this boring stuff out of the way quick and have some combat''. Knowledge skills are a great example here(''DM I'm a lazy player just tell me stuff'') and social skills(''I rolled and talked to them or whatever and they let us pass, can we fight something now?")

And the Look at The Sheet Problem is a very big problem with many gamers nowadays. Once players just used their imaginations and personal skills and abilities. But now the player just sits there mindlessly and looks for the answer on the character sheet. A lot of this comes from video game brainwashing, and (bad) fiction. I've seen too many players that have the game play grind to a halt as they can't open a locked door, as none of the characters have an exact named skill or ability that says ''can open locked doors''. They are down right amazed they are ''allowed'' to bash the door down or even climb in the window, and would have never thought of it.

icefractal
2016-02-19, 12:22 AM
That's not even remotely what I want out of D&D. If you can't have a high-level fightman and a high-level castman in the party, and both are pulling their weight, then near as I can see, the game is busted.Why couldn't you have both of those? After the castman's divinations reveal the vampire plot to awaken the sun-eater, the fightman uses his rulership abilities to turn public opinion against the guilds that are vampire-controlled. Then he uses his tiger-warrior training method to create an elite force of vampire slayers in a few days, so the castman can open up portals and send them through in a simultaneous assault on the entire vampire leadership.

If "rulership abilities" and "tiger-warrior training method" don't sound like things a 3E Fighter 20 can do, that's because that class isn't a high-level fightman, it's a low-level fightman masquerading as one.

Milo v3
2016-02-19, 12:55 AM
And the Look at The Sheet Problem is a very big problem with many gamers nowadays. Once players just used their imaginations and personal skills and abilities. But now the player just sits there mindlessly and looks for the answer on the character sheet. A lot of this comes from video game brainwashing, and (bad) fiction. I've seen too many players that have the game play grind to a halt as they can't open a locked door, as none of the characters have an exact named skill or ability that says ''can open locked doors''. They are down right amazed they are ''allowed'' to bash the door down or even climb in the window, and would have never thought of it.
Wait, you've actually seen a person like that?

Cazero
2016-02-19, 02:01 AM
Honestly, Fighter is just a terrible name for a PC class irrespective of balance concerns. There's no concept there. What does a Fighter do? Apparently, he fights. But everyone fights. Moreover, it's not at all clear what the Fighter does when there is not an enemy to fight, and the challenge must be solved with diplomacy, invention, or research. Soldier or Ranger or Barbarian are much better classes.

Putting aside the part where Ranger and Barbarian are clearly not broad enough and the part where Soldier would have the exact same problems Figther has, a Fighter-like class is and will forever remain mandatory to any class-based fantasy game that pretends to be broad.

Demonstration.
Player : I wanna make a knight.
DM : Sure, the paladin class is perfect for you.
Player : No. He's a cynic, his motivations are shady, and paladins are weaklings who needs magic to overcome their suckering in the art of war.
DM : How about a swashbuckler?
Player : He's not an attention whore. Besides, the class is DEX based.
DM : Barbarian then?
Player : He is cold, calculated, and wears heavy armor. Some lunatic swinging a greataxe wildly while wearing nothing but a loincloth just won't do.
DM : Maybe rogue?
Player : Rogues suck in straight combat.
DM : Ranger?
Player : Where you listening when I said no to paladin? Ranger is worse.
DM : But that's all the martials we have !
Player : Well that suck. Couldn't they put a generic martial class in there? A weapon master of some sort, superior in pure fighting but kept in check with his lack of class-supported options outside of combat? The mutliclassing support would even allow people to branch out to a different martial if their character concept change over time.
DM : Well, there was a fighter class a couple edition before, but it sucked.
Player : They should have kept it in anyway. How am I supposed to play a cynic combat pragmatic knight without it?

goto124
2016-02-19, 02:14 AM
Wait, you've actually seen a person like that?

I am such a person.

In many video games, "locked door" means "you have to find a very specific way in, by following the rest of the plot". They're carrying their behavior over, since they don't know how else to treat a locked door.

Especially when, IRL, a locked door means "don't open it, it's not for you" or "you already have the key to your own home, sheesh".

Milo v3
2016-02-19, 02:21 AM
Putting aside the part where Ranger and Barbarian are clearly not broad enough and the part where Soldier would have the exact same problems Figther has, a Fighter-like class is and will forever remain mandatory to any class-based fantasy game that pretends to be broad.

Demonstration.
Player : I wanna make a knight.
DM : Sure, the paladin class is perfect for you.
Player : No. He's a cynic, his motivations are shady, and paladins are weaklings who needs magic to overcome their suckering in the art of war.
DM : How about a swashbuckler?
Player : He's not an attention whore. Besides, the class is DEX based.
DM : Barbarian then?
Player : He is cold, calculated, and wears heavy armor. Some lunatic swinging a greataxe wildly while wearing nothing but a loincloth just won't do.
DM : Maybe rogue?
Player : Rogues suck in straight combat.
DM : Ranger?
Player : Where you listening when I said no to paladin? Ranger is worse.
DM : But that's all the martials we have !
Player : Well that suck. Couldn't they put a generic martial class in there? A weapon master of some sort, superior in pure fighting but kept in check with his lack of class-supported options outside of combat? The mutliclassing support would even allow people to branch out to a different martial if their character concept change over time.
DM : Well, there was a fighter class a couple edition before, but it sucked.
Player : They should have kept it in anyway. How am I supposed to play a cynic combat pragmatic knight without it?

You could play a cavalier/warblade/warder/slayer....


I am such a person.

In many video games, "locked door" means "you have to find a very specific way in, by following the rest of the plot". They're carrying their behavior over, since they don't know how else to treat a locked door.

Especially when, IRL, a locked door means "don't open it, it's not for you" or "you already have the key to your own home, sheesh".
I'm sincerely surprised. I know how locked doors work in most videogames, but I've never seen a player who didn't consider alternate methods such as attacking the door or using an adamatine weapon to remove the lock or something.

Cazero
2016-02-19, 02:26 AM
You could play a cavalier/warblade/warder/slayer....
All of wich are fighter-like classes (as are ranger, paladin, barbarian, monk...), the only question remaining being if one has sufficiently low unwanted baggagee.

Lacco
2016-02-19, 02:29 AM
Wait, you've actually seen a person like that?

I have seen both this kind and the opposite.

The first was a WOW player - if he didn't have it written on a sheet that he can punch someone, he considered the ability to be non-existant.

The second are my players - sometimes they get stuck about how to approach something, thinking of a plan and then saying "ok, this won't work because my character doesn't have any skills for that"...and then I take their charsheet, run my finger down the skill list and stop at the first skill they can use. "Oh, I forgot about that!".


Nah, please stay. This thread needs to be much less D&D focused if it is actually to answer the OP's question.

Ok, I will. And for the record, I had to look up the original question (kinda got lost in the argumentation here).


In other words, my argument is that OOCA actually make everything that is not combat trivial, because they're, most of the time, insta-win buttons, or at least the absolute perfect tool, making any sort of thinking-outside-the-box unnecessary.

That being said, I also see the argument that 4E pushes you towards combat because it offers no non-combat abilities. I mean, you can still use your Scorching Ray attack to burn a rope holding an item 50ft up (or at least, you should be able to), but because it's presented as an attack, people don't think about it?

What are your opinions on this?

My reply would be: OOCA make SOME encounters trivial (e.g. if you can avoid a combat by having a ranger in a party, or you can create food & water to help the party survive without food), however, not all of them. They just scale to the level - and while a pit can be daunting to level 1 characters, level 10 characters laugh as the mage flies over, the fighter jumps over, the thief climbs in and out and finds a hidden stache of things at bottom and the cleric... no idea what the cleric would do. Never played one. Prays to the gods to close the pit? :smallsmile:

But if you scale it, the pit is now several kilometers wide, nearly unscalable, with few dragons flying over it and orcish warcamp at the bottom... and on the opposite side there is a small castle with anti-teleport wards.

Dunno about 4E, but if it doesn't include non-combat abilities, it may run you towards the "combat simulator with RPG-elements". However, the term RPG consists of "role-playing" and "game". So you can still roleplay, albeit a in a little-more-focused way (to combat).


Yes! Join the fight against the Playgrounder's Fallacy!

I played a homebrew system recently where every character had 8 abilities by default (you could gain others by advancement). One was "attack", another "defend" and the other 6 were non-combat abilities. And it was way more interesting than a combat heavy D&D game.

Actually I think the fact that "is 3.5e balanced" is even question shows a major problem with the system. There is not enough to do out-of-combat so it all has to be about combat and how one fights. I enjoy combat, but there is more to life than swinging a sword around. I feel it is a failing of the system that all you can play is some variant of soldier. Yes I mean this of wizards too, if most of your spells deal damage you are a magic soldier.

So really I think the out of combat abilities are the important part. It is often the part that gets focused on in campaign journals, as an example.

Ah, the Playgrounder's Fallacy is unfortunately out of game, since the poster directly talked about the D&D.

However, I agree - one thing I love about systems I play is that we have lots of non-combat abilities/skills. We had two guys with "boating" as skill (technically a viking and clan warrior), a blacksmith, girl who always lugged around 10-12 books with her and a bard (without bardic magic). And when I presented them with an underground lake (with a pretty little squid-like monster that slept in the depths) and a boat with hole in it (there were three possible paths, this was the worst of them), they jumped in and made it to the other side before the squid could shake off the sleep. They had fun and felt awesome - and that was the most important thing.

And usually, these parts where they used their non-combat skills/abilities really were the most roleplay-heavy, as opposed to combat.

Milo v3
2016-02-19, 02:47 AM
All of wich are fighter-like classes (as are ranger, paladin, barbarian, monk...), the only question remaining being if one has sufficiently low unwanted baggagee.

I said those classes because they are all ones that fit the persons description without any conflicts like ranger/paladin/barbarian/monk did.

Cazero
2016-02-19, 03:27 AM
I said those classes because they are all ones that fit the persons description without any conflicts like ranger/paladin/barbarian/monk did.

And I was talking about an hypothetical 6e where the fighter class was cut out. Your classes I know almost nothing of might all be better implementations of the fighter concept than the fighter class is, but the point remain that if they were to show up in that hypothetical 6e one of them would be called fighter unless it had a strong unwanted non-generic baggage. Wich is why we need to keep a fighter somewhere.

Cosi
2016-02-19, 07:36 AM
That's not even remotely what I want out of D&D. If you can't have a high-level fightman and a high-level castman in the party, and both are pulling their weight, then near as I can see, the game is busted.

I don't understand how this is even a little bit relevant to my point. If skills (which are class-agnostic) grant high level non-combat powers, that does exactly nothing to impact how much a caster and a non-caster can contribute to the party.


The division down into soldier/ranger/barbarian kind of illustrates the problem though - your martial character gets to be one of those things, and he's that forever. A caster can be a transmuter one day, a necromancer the next, and hurl fireballs the day after. Or get some combination of all of the above.

I never said that you shouldn't do that with casting classes. You probably should. But honestly, even if you don't it doesn't really matter. Unless you have unique information about the day's encounters, picking abilities doesn't do all that much. You still select generally useful abilities, then those abilities are specifically useful depending on what encounters you have.


Note - I don't think there's anything wrong with a system that's all about god-wizards. That's not what D&D should be, though. (And it isn't - except in 3e.)

Did you miss the part where there is literally a 2e supplement about Wizards becoming psychic dragon gods? Also, the 4e fluff has all the power 3e does, it just doesn't have rules to back it up. And I'm going to have to hear a very convincing argument for why the game should drop something the most popular edition in its entire history did.


Putting aside the part where Ranger and Barbarian are clearly not broad enough and the part where Soldier would have the exact same problems Figther has, a Fighter-like class is and will forever remain mandatory to any class-based fantasy game that pretends to be broad.

Ranger and Barbarian are plenty broad. Ranger can do basically anything as long as he does it in a fashion that is "like Aragon". Barbarian can do basically anything as long as he does it in a fashion that is "like Conan".

And no, Soldier doesn't have the Fighter problem. Because he has a non-combat shtick: war. He could do all sorts of things related to war. Like move siege engines, or provide logistical support, or have transport powers. In 3e terms, you could easily imagine that being fabricate, create food and water, teleport, and whispering wind.


Player : Well that suck. Couldn't they put a generic martial class in there? A weapon master of some sort, superior in pure fighting but kept in check with his lack of class-supported options outside of combat? The mutliclassing support would even allow people to branch out to a different martial if their character concept change over time.

No, they could not do that. Regardless of what you believe about the viability of Fighter as a concept, you absolutely cannot have a class that is better than everyone else in combat but worse at everything else. That breaks combat and non-combat, and is totally unacceptable in a nominally cooperative game. It's bad when all the other players are overshadowed when the Fighter is fighting, and it's bad when all the other players overshadow the Fighter when they are not fighting. Also, if the game intends for multiple classes to contribute to different parts of the non-combat mini-game it's very likely that playing a class with no non-combat abilities prevents your party from dealing with poison or planar travel or stoning.

neonchameleon
2016-02-19, 07:40 AM
I found it really frustrating that 4e didn't really have OOCA. It took a problem with much of D&D and made it even bigger.

So... people have developed magical means of teleporting but... only 30 feet? No one has said "Wow, I want to be able to ship my goods to Gondor in 30 seconds. "

I found it really frustrating that people looked at 4e and made such claims despite teleportation circle being in the PHB. Sure it's very high level. But the overland shipping spell is there.


Yeah the ability to light people on fire is cool but little practical things would be developed as well or at least in conjuncture. Prestidigitation is the best spell in existence just for how handy it is on a day to day basis. Unseen servant for cleaning my house. Mage Hand for letting my get the remote without getting my lazy but off the couch. Summoning a little cottage for the night so I don't have to sleep on the cold hard ground in the rain.

Prestidigitatation and Mage Hand are core class features for the 4e wizard.


It just feels like a glaring error when you don't have anything like this in existence but 30 gajillion ways to say take Xd6 damage.

Indeed it does. It's a glaring error caused by not actually reading the rulebooks. Over half of what you are asking for is literally right there in the 4e PHB. (I think Leomund's Tiny Hut is as well).


Rituals are perhaps the best example of 4E's overall 'thing' of "great concept, overly conservative execution". My face when reading them:
"Let's take all those strategic-level powers and divorce them from class. Everyone can have rituals!" :smallbiggrin:
"Gold makes more sense than spell slots as a resource for creating permanent effects." :smallbiggrin:
"Since rituals aren't part of your core effectiveness, they can be acquired asymmetrically (like pre-4E Wizard spells)." :smallbiggrin:
"And ... let's make most* of the rituals overpriced and weak." :smallconfused: :smalleek: :smallyuk:

That's not how it worked out in practice. Rituals were overpriced at the lowest levels you could cast them but 4e had the exponential money issue. Casting rituals of your level is normally a bad plan for precisely the same reason it's a bad plan for a first level party in a 3.X game to pool all their money to buy a wand of cure light wounds at the cost of basic weapons and armour. Rituals five or ten levels below you can be paid for out of pocket change and because of that can have major impacts.

Frozen_Feet
2016-02-19, 07:58 AM
I think the thread title is a poor one. Whether out-of-combat abilities should exist isn't a question, rather how those things should be mechanized is.

I mostly run LotFP or similar rules-lite games without a general conflict resolution model. Many common adventuring problems are covered by "roll under on a d6", but those aren't instant solutions for most character - more like a fallback when a player can't think of anything else.

I don't see looking at one's sheet for solutions to be a big flaw in a player. If anything, the sheet exists to remind players of some things which are possible. The key is to get more single-minded players to understand some solutions are found in descriptions of the GM and healthy dose of common sense.

Games with a strong core mechanic are a bit different. For example, in d20 any effort can be boiled down to "roll d20 plus modifiers, compare to target number". The key here is who calls the rolls. Traditionally, the player describes what their character is attempting, and the GM tells them which ability and skill they should roll for. This means you have to think what you're doing before you roll. I occasionally see this flipped, so that the player proclaims "I roll X" and the GM has to tell the player what the character is doing. I can see how the latter would contribute to the feeling of mechanical abilities trivializing challenges, because there the GM is doing all the thinking for the players.

The solution is for a GM to ask for more detail before allowing a roll.

Magic and overpowered abilities are a different issue. F.ex. Teleport is a game-changer regardless of how it is modeled. If you have those in a game, you have to account for them in scenario building. A game's worth is not determined by presence of such abilities. Sure, d20 allows for more different games because it models many of them, but it also precludes a lot of games when they are put in play simultaneously. Many genres benefit from flat-out banning majority of d20 magic.

neonchameleon
2016-02-19, 08:02 AM
Also, the 4e fluff has all the power 3e does, it just doesn't have rules to back it up.

It's got a startling amount of power for epic level characters. It only looks weak because 3.X wizards can make Exalted characters look like chumps.


And I'm going to have to hear a very convincing argument for why the game should drop something the most popular edition in its entire history did.

The most popular edition in the game's history was not 3.0 or 3.5. If you want to make arguments to popularity then we need to talk about the old red box D&D and what was done in 1983. That version of D&D was emphatically not about God-wizards. So given that they shatter the play balance and render certain classes pointless, and the intended playstyle of D&D pointless I'm going to need arguments why we should have the Weird Wizard Show Gygax warned against.


No, they could not do that. Regardless of what you believe about the viability of Fighter as a concept, you absolutely cannot have a class that is better than everyone else in combat but worse at everything else. That breaks combat and non-combat, and is totally unacceptable in a nominally cooperative game. It's bad when all the other players are overshadowed when the Fighter is fighting, and it's bad when all the other players overshadow the Fighter when they are not fighting. Also, if the game intends for multiple classes to contribute to different parts of the non-combat mini-game it's very likely that playing a class with no non-combat abilities prevents your party from dealing with poison or planar travel or stoning.

And now turn round and apply your entire rant against the 3.X wizard. The class that is absolutely better than everyone else at non-combat because they can do anything so long as it is magical. And for a nominally cooperative game it is, by your own description, totally unacceptable.

Instead we're going to go back to the actually most popular edition of D&D - and the one that didn't have a premade market and popularity for it. We're going to go back to the wizard who only gets spells when they find them as loot. That has a few tricks that were strong, most of them put in by the DM, and were generally weak when things don't fit their tricks.

Frozen_Feet
2016-02-19, 08:12 AM
As a point of trivia, LotFP is a B/X clone more or less, and in it:

1) Fighters are only ones with increasing attack bonus.
2) Specialists are the only ones with increasing skills.
3) Casters, despite still having fairly broad spell lists, manage to get better at casting without trivializing the above classes

So I challenge this goofy notion that you can't have a character type be unquestionably the best on its own turf, with other characters still being able to contribute.

goto124
2016-02-19, 08:17 AM
So how exactly, do casters manage to get better at casting without trivializing the above classes?

Cosi
2016-02-19, 08:17 AM
The most popular edition in the game's history was not 3.0 or 3.5. If you want to make arguments to popularity then we need to talk about the old red box D&D and what was done in 1983.

I've seen nothing to indicate that.


And now turn round and apply your entire rant against the 3.X wizard. The class that is absolutely better than everyone else at non-combat because they can do anything so long as it is magical. And for a nominally cooperative game it is, by your own description, totally unacceptable.

Except it's not! It can't raise the dead (it can, but at that level the Cleric can do stuff it does). It has different suites of non-combat and combat powers from other casters, and those suites are balanced.

I don't now why people's brains shut down when they try to talk about 3e Wizards, but it is really freakin' annoying.

Frozen_Feet
2016-02-19, 08:46 AM
So how exactly, do casters manage to get better at casting without trivializing the above classes?

Because their spells do things OTHER than fighting or improving skills, by and large. When they do, they still don't make the caster as good in them.

neonchameleon
2016-02-19, 09:48 AM
I've seen nothing to indicate that.

Which says more about your knowledge of the range and history of D&D than it does anything else. The estimate for the Mentzer red box from Tim Kask is 3 million copies over three years - while the estimate for the number of people who have ever played D&D is around 20 million.

And why on earth do you think that the various spellcaster suites of powers are balanced out of combat? The only thing saying so is your bare unsupported assertion - and the worth of that is demonstrated by the fact that you think a rogue and a wizard are balanced.

obryn
2016-02-19, 09:59 AM
I've seen nothing to indicate that.

Fortunately, we live at a time where there are several excellent histories of the hobby available. My personal favorite is Shannon Applecline's Designers and Dragons, but there's also Playing at the World if you'd prefer. There's no reason to remain ignorant about our hobby's grand 45-year history. :smallsmile:

D&D was immensely successful and popular in the early 80's and it has been trying to recapture that spark for the past 35 years. I mean, it was in E.T. and everyone watching the movie knew what it was. It was sold in toy stores and shopping malls. There was a fun Saturday morning cartoon. There were D&D shrinky-dinks. Intellivision games. And the various Basic sets sold in the millions.

It even had its own series of conspiracy theories and controversies - check the Satanic Panic thread, for example, or look up Mazes & Monsters.

So if your argument is that we should stick with popularity ... well, that sounds great because B/X is overall a better-designed system than 3.x. :smallbiggrin:


I don't understand how this is even a little bit relevant to my point. If skills (which are class-agnostic) grant high level non-combat powers, that does exactly nothing to impact how much a caster and a non-caster can contribute to the party.
It is though? Remember your comment about a party of PCs and NPCs because it included a Fighter?


I never said that you shouldn't do that with casting classes. You probably should. But honestly, even if you don't it doesn't really matter. Unless you have unique information about the day's encounters, picking abilities doesn't do all that much. You still select generally useful abilities, then those abilities are specifically useful depending on what encounters you have.
Of course it matters. Versatility is powerful.


Did you miss the part where there is literally a 2e supplement about Wizards becoming psychic dragon gods? Also, the 4e fluff has all the power 3e does, it just doesn't have rules to back it up. And I'm going to have to hear a very convincing argument for why the game should drop something the most popular edition in its entire history did.
(1) I'm quite familiar with Dragon Kings, yep; Dark Sun was my go-to setting in the mid-90's. You're missing a few big points, though, starting with how the entire setting was high-powered across the board. Also how said Wizard needed to dual-class as 20 (Preserver/Defiler)/20 Psionicist. And how a high-level Fighter had saving throws to shake off nearly everything. And let's not forget some rather comprehensive rules in which said Fighter got a gigantic army.
(2) As neonchameleon covered, you're wrong that 3.x was the most popular edition in its entire history. But even if this wasn't the case, you have a lot of steps you need to make between "3.x was popular" and "therefore god-wizards are the best."


Ranger and Barbarian are plenty broad. Ranger can do basically anything as long as he does it in a fashion that is "like Aragon". Barbarian can do basically anything as long as he does it in a fashion that is "like Conan".
Without meaning too big a derail, you can't make Conan as a D&D Barbarian. The Barbarian class was more based on Conan knock-offs who missed the whole point of Conan. This isn't endemic to 3.x; it goes all the way back to Unearthed Arcana.

Cazero
2016-02-19, 10:24 AM
Ranger and Barbarian are plenty broad. Ranger can do basically anything as long as he does it in a fashion that is "like Aragon". Barbarian can do basically anything as long as he does it in a fashion that is "like Conan". What if I want to make a martial character that isn't like either of those? Like Gimli or Sarevok? Clearly those two classes aren't broad enough for every martial concept. Good thing we have plenty of others. (ninja'ed on Conan identity crisis)


And no, Soldier doesn't have the Fighter problem. Because he has a non-combat shtick: war. He could do all sorts of things related to war. Like move siege engines, or provide logistical support, or have transport powers. In 3e terms, you could easily imagine that being fabricate, create food and water, teleport, and whispering wind.1) War is combat related by definition.
2) The fighter can cover that without problem. If you start making one class per concept you will soon have hundreds of them, more than half being trap options, and it still won't be enough.
3) Why the hell did you put spells on a non-gish martial class?
4) Assuming you are right. What if I want to make an incredible martial nonmagic combatant who doesn't do any of that? Your soldier class now has unwanted baggage like the ranger, barbarian, paladin, monk...


No, they could not do that. Regardless of what you believe about the viability of Fighter as a concept, you absolutely cannot have a class that is better than everyone else in combat but worse at everything else. That breaks combat and non-combat, and is totally unacceptable in a nominally cooperative game. It's bad when all the other players are overshadowed when the Fighter is fighting, and it's bad when all the other players overshadow the Fighter when they are not fighting. Also, if the game intends for multiple classes to contribute to different parts of the non-combat mini-game it's very likely that playing a class with no non-combat abilities prevents your party from dealing with poison or planar travel or stoning.
I think you grossly misunderstood me. When I say "the best at fighting", I don't mean that they outclass everyone else forever as soon as you enter a fight. I mean that they are superior at the part of combat where you actually fight with your weapon instead of sending magic missiles or hiding for an ambush. Like what the fighter supposedly does. Sounds like this is what that class identity is supposed to be !

And the 5e fighter is exactly that : the best at using the Attack action, always, forever. Other classes burn limited ressources (smite, ki, rage), take risks (reckless attack), create a situation at their advantage (sneak attack) or outright cheat the laws of physics (spellcasters) to outclass the fighter every now and then, but his staying power allows him to keep up and eventualy outshine everyone when the adventuring day gets long enough. 5e fighters are not considered overpowered in any way and still have open out of combat options with the skill proficiencies and background everyone gets.

neonchameleon
2016-02-19, 10:31 AM
Without meaning too big a derail, you can't make Conan as a D&D Barbarian. The Barbarian class was more based on Conan knock-offs who missed the whole point of Conan. This isn't endemic to 3.x; it goes all the way back to Unearthed Arcana.

Continuing the derail, Frank Frazetta's Conan pictures predate D&D - and the Arnie Conan film with Renato Cesaro's iconic artwork in the promotional advertising was three years before Unearthed Arcana. I think we can say legitimately that the Unearthed Arcana Barbarian was based on the film more than the book. Also that book Conan is a whole lot smarter and more cunning than either film or artwork Conan.

Segev
2016-02-19, 11:03 AM
They are good, but the big flaw with games like D&D is that they have very little rules support for anything except combat. That is a flaw, I agree. (I'm surprised to read you writing it, though, as you've previously - it seemed to me - been in favor of far more free-form systems which assume anything non-combat is handled by players saying what they try and the GM deciding success/failure based on his judgment of their RP. My apologies if I've misunderstood you.)


And the Look at The Sheet Problem is a very big problem with many gamers nowadays. Once players just used their imaginations and personal skills and abilities. But now the player just sits there mindlessly and looks for the answer on the character sheet. A lot of this comes from video game brainwashing, and (bad) fiction. I've seen too many players that have the game play grind to a halt as they can't open a locked door, as none of the characters have an exact named skill or ability that says ''can open locked doors''. They are down right amazed they are ''allowed'' to bash the door down or even climb in the window, and would have never thought of it.I have seen people afflicted with this, but a far more common "problem" (and I use this term loosely) that I've seen GMs experience is that the GM expected that locked door, that stone wall, or that pit cutting the tunnel in twain to be an insurmountable obstacle until the PCs solved his fiendishly clever puzzle, sought out the NPC with the answer, or defeated the monster three rooms to the left to get the macguffin keys...and then the players don't even look for those other solutions and just bash straight through the obstacle with basic brute force (or fly or teleport past it).

All of these are problems of expectations. Some players are conditioned that anything not on their "action list" is not okay, and anything not on their "target list" is invincible (e.g. wooden doors, despite the barbarian having a huge adamantine axe). Some players assume the opposite: if it doesn't say they can't, they think they can at least try it. It's varied.


Wait, you've actually seen a person like that?


I am such a person.

In many video games, "locked door" means "you have to find a very specific way in, by following the rest of the plot". They're carrying their behavior over, since they don't know how else to treat a locked door.

Especially when, IRL, a locked door means "don't open it, it's not for you" or "you already have the key to your own home, sheesh".I'll say this: in most RPGs, part of the allure tends to be that you're playing somebody for whom those rules do not apply. You either are not beholden to those social mores, or you're in a role that gives you the right or responsibility. And one of the attractions of TTRPGs is that you can try so many more things because the game isn't locked into whatever the designers may have coded in as an option. Locked door? Go ahead and try to bash it down; it probably has hit points the GM can assign it (or whatever your system uses). Wall? You can try to climb it (if you don't have flight capability or the like). The removal of arbitrary obstacles is one of the lures of the game style, for many players.

AMFV
2016-02-19, 11:08 AM
I am such a person.

In many video games, "locked door" means "you have to find a very specific way in, by following the rest of the plot". They're carrying their behavior over, since they don't know how else to treat a locked door.

Especially when, IRL, a locked door means "don't open it, it's not for you" or "you already have the key to your own home, sheesh".

Or you have the guy with the shotgun blow the handle and you kick that sucker right in. Different options exist in different scenarios.

Cosi
2016-02-19, 01:06 PM
@Darth Ultron/value of enumerating non-combat abilities: I think it is necessary and good for both players and DMs to know what tools exist to resolve situations, and I think the best way to do that is clear rules. For example, rules that say "it takes X time to break Y object with Z STR score and Q weapon" are bad, but having rules for how to damage objects is good. The rules should provide clear descriptions of what players do, and set up expectations that those descriptions can be used to advance the story.


Which says more about your knowledge of the range and history of D&D than it does anything else. The estimate for the Mentzer red box from Tim Kask is 3 million copies over three years - while the estimate for the number of people who have ever played D&D is around 20 million.

Let's step back from "what some people think sales numbers maybe were" (because I can pull up 3e numbers that look that good or better), and look at how companies behave:

1. When WotC makes booster-ish claims about how well editions are doing, they are in comparison to 3e. Not some older edition. And no, this isn't because they can beat 3e and not <older edition>. Because the claims they make are things like "5e is on track to beat 3e", a statement so devoid of factual content as to be true for any game.
2. The most successful TTRPG company on the market (well, maybe 2nd after WotC, but they have beaten them at various points) is releasing a 3e retro-clone. Not some older edition. And that's not because no one is retro-cloning <older edition> or because players are content to play <older edition>, because people are retro-cloning older editions and people can still play 3e.

That looks pretty compelling to me. Now, that doesn't necessarily prove that 3e was more popular than <older edition>. It points in that direction, but it's not definitive. But it does prove that 3e is a stronger benchmark of success than older editions.


And why on earth do you think that the various spellcaster suites of powers are balanced out of combat? The only thing saying so is your bare unsupported assertion - and the worth of that is demonstrated by the fact that you think a rogue and a wizard are balanced.

You pointed to the tiers. Those say Wizard/Cleric/Druid are balanced. If you walk that back, you need to walk back your Rogue claims too.

Also, you might try actually proving the Rogue can't pass the Same Game Test instead of ad hominem. But you do you.


So if your argument is that we should stick with popularity ... well, that sounds great because B/X is overall a better-designed system than 3.x. :smallbiggrin:

Yes, because racial level limits, Gygaxian DMing, and independent XP charts for classes are good design. Wait, all of those are terrible. There are good things in AD&D, like random magic items. But they should be ported into 3e, which has a more functional core system.


Of course it matters. Versatility is powerful.

Yes, but only if you have advance information about encounters. If when you pick spells is an information set across classes, it doesn't matter what specific times you pick spells (or whatever). There are some cases where spell knowledge is valuable, but most of those (i.e. downtime spells) should be class features or class agnostic.


What if I want to make a martial character that isn't like either of those? Like Gimli or Sarevok? Clearly those two classes aren't broad enough for every martial concept. Good thing we have plenty of others. (ninja'ed on Conan identity crisis)

Sure. That's why you might have a Paladin, or a Swashbuckler, or a Rogue. But no matter what classes you include in core, some concepts won't be covered. Otherwise, there wouldn't have ever been non-core classes. You just try to get the best coverage of concepts that people want to play, and you want to support. And I submit that most people have a concept more complex than "fights" for their sword based character.


1) War is combat related by definition.

War involves combat. But it also involves a bunch of stuff that isn't combat. Like logistics and intelligence work. OTOH, fighting is pretty narrow.


3) Why the hell did you put spells on a non-gish martial class?

As examples of abilities you'd give such a character. You don't have to literally give them spellcasting.


4) Assuming you are right. What if I want to make an incredible martial nonmagic combatant who doesn't do any of that? Your soldier class now has unwanted baggage like the ranger, barbarian, paladin, monk...

What if you cut Soldier for Fighter and I want to create a character who fits the proposed Soldier class?


I think you grossly misunderstood me. When I say "the best at fighting", I don't mean that they outclass everyone else forever as soon as you enter a fight. I mean that they are superior at the part of combat where you actually fight with your weapon instead of sending magic missiles or hiding for an ambush. Like what the fighter supposedly does. Sounds like this is what that class identity is supposed to be !

How does that justify not giving them non-combat abilities? If they are as good as other classes in a fight, but less good outside one, they are a dominated (trap) option and should not be printed.

Raimun
2016-02-19, 01:25 PM
They are fun. Don't tell me you've never wanted to fly, teleport or breathe under water?

Besides, most of the time they are still limited resources, which could be used in combat... or even in other situations outside of combat.

AMFV
2016-02-19, 01:50 PM
To get back to the core of the matter. OOC abilities are only a problem when you have to choose between them and combat abilities (and only then if there are people who can have it both ways). The problem isn't that the wizard is amazing Out Of Combat, but rather that he can be amazing in both situations. The solution would be to either give all folks out of combat abilities (my favorite solution) or to give people that the out of combat characters no abilities that are terribly useful in combat (meaning that both folks will have a time to shine)

Segev
2016-02-19, 02:13 PM
Yes, because racial level limits, Gygaxian DMing, and independent XP charts for classes are good design. Wait, all of those are terrible. There are good things in AD&D, like random magic items. But they should be ported into 3e, which has a more functional core system.Actually, I would contend that one of the problems with 3e and all successor editions and (retro-)clones is the elimination of the differing XP charts for different classes.

It is in part responsible for the "tier" issues. Not solely responsible, but in part. I think a significant amount of repair-work could be done by re-introducing it.

There are two ways you can try to establish "equality" of power in a level-based system: in 3e and later editions, they did so based on level. Level WAS your strength, and in theory, it is the same for all Level X characters and CR X encounters. (Well, the CR X encounter is supposed to use up 25% of a level X party's renewable resources, but you know what I mean.)

2e and earlier, and the retro-clones of the same, instead said that equal experience points were equal power. Now, in 3e and later, that's also true, but only coincidentally. In 2e and earlier, it was the premise. Not all classes are created equal, and some get more power per level than others. Those that do take more XP to level up. The linear fighter/quadratic wizard phenomenon was more manageable because the fighter's line had so much steeper an ascent than the early parabola of the wizard, and that was in no small part because of the wizard's much slower leveling process.

There are, of course, design problems with having different classes require different amounts of XP to gain levels, when combined with (particularly) the multiclassing mechanics of 3e and later editions, but those are not insurmountable. They require more design discussion than I am going to give it here, though.

My point, though, is that different XP charts for different classes are not necessarily a bad thing.




To get back to the core of the matter. OOC abilities are only a problem when you have to choose between them and combat abilities (and only then if there are people who can have it both ways). The problem isn't that the wizard is amazing Out Of Combat, but rather that he can be amazing in both situations. The solution would be to either give all folks out of combat abilities (my favorite solution) or to give people that the out of combat characters no abilities that are terribly useful in combat (meaning that both folks will have a time to shine)

I don't entirely agree. I see where you're coming from, but this is only true if combat is the most important aspect of the game. If combat encounters are roughly equal in importance and frequency to other individual kinds of encounters (social, puzzle, whatever), then it is perfectly fine to have trade-offs between "utility" for those other kinds of encounters and "combat powers." You're choosing when you're most competent.

But yes, in the D&D-centric design paradigm where 80% of everything you do is in some way related to combat, trading off combat strength for utility has sharply diminishing returns. And that is not good.

AMFV
2016-02-19, 02:19 PM
I don't entirely agree. I see where you're coming from, but this is only true if combat is the most important aspect of the game. If combat encounters are roughly equal in importance and frequency to other individual kinds of encounters (social, puzzle, whatever), then it is perfectly fine to have trade-offs between "utility" for those other kinds of encounters and "combat powers." You're choosing when you're most competent.

But yes, in the D&D-centric design paradigm where 80% of everything you do is in some way related to combat, trading off combat strength for utility has sharply diminishing returns. And that is not good.

I actually agree entirely that was the point I was trying to make near the end of the rambling. If you have a game that's 50% haggling and 50% murdering hobos, then it's worthwhile to have a few haggling folks and a few murdering folks. But there's an issue when you have one guy who's moderately okay at haggling, and one guy who can do both. So either the trade-off needs to be even, or there needs to be a sharp delineation. I prefer the sharp delineation, but both are perfectly workable options.

So I think we're actually in agreement, I was just more rambly in the earlier post than I intended to be.

Cazero
2016-02-19, 02:23 PM
Sure. That's why you might have a Paladin, or a Swashbuckler, or a Rogue. But no matter what classes you include in core, some concepts won't be covered. Otherwise, there wouldn't have ever been non-core classes. You just try to get the best coverage of concepts that people want to play, and you want to support.
And the Fighter is so broad that removing him would create giant gaping holes that can't be properly closed no matter how hard you try.
Paladins? Fighter/Cleric. Ranger? Fighter/Druid. Warlock? Some fluff on a Sorcerer/Wizard.
But Fighter? Assuming all DEX based needs are covered with Swashbuckler and Rogue, trying to cover the STR part with another class is equivalent to making that other class a Fighter by another name. Hello Warblade.


And I submit that most people have a concept more complex than "fights" for their sword based character.
Cool for them. I'm quite sure the Fighter class is broad enough for everything that doesn't match something else and that whatever shortcomings remaining can be covered more appropriately with a homebrew feat or two. Why reinvent the wheel with a new class that would be mostly the same?


What if you cut Soldier for Fighter and I want to create a character who fits the proposed Soldier class?
Simple. Make a Fighter. Give him appropriate feats and skills. Homebrew as needed if feats don't exist. Done.
Restricting those to a specific class prevents character concepts that would require both those and a different class for mechanical reasons (Paladins sound like they would worry about strategy to get more soldiers back home after the war, Wizards seem to have the genius intellect required...)


How does that justify not giving them non-combat abilities? If they are as good as other classes in a fight, but less good outside one, they are a dominated (trap) option and should not be printed.
It doesn't justify giving them nothing, it justifies giving them nothing specific. Fighters are broad by design. Give them a single class feature that's not generic enough and people like me will complain about it.
However, if you give them the ability to get customisable specialised talents, they can have non-combat abilities without forcing the entire class into a niche. Sounds like something bonus feats could do. Or skills.

Alex12
2016-02-19, 02:57 PM
And the Look at The Sheet Problem is a very big problem with many gamers nowadays. Once players just used their imaginations and personal skills and abilities. But now the player just sits there mindlessly and looks for the answer on the character sheet. A lot of this comes from video game brainwashing, and (bad) fiction. I've seen too many players that have the game play grind to a halt as they can't open a locked door, as none of the characters have an exact named skill or ability that says ''can open locked doors''. They are down right amazed they are ''allowed'' to bash the door down or even climb in the window, and would have never thought of it.

Maybe in your experience, but not in mine.
I consider the contents of your sheet to be at least as important as the skills and abilities of the player. To use the example of a locked door, I've never met anyone who, upon encountering a locked door, would give up because they don't have a key or a door-unlocking skill. Everyone I've ever gamed with was more of the sort of person to go "okay, let's see if there's another entrance, or a key hidden anywhere around here, or if we're in a hurry, we can smash the door down." The problem-solving in my experience comes from looking at the sheet, asking questions about the situation, and figuring out which abilities and gear you have are potentially applicable. That, to me, is a feature, while you seem to consider it a bug.

obryn
2016-02-19, 03:02 PM
Let's step back from "what some people think sales numbers maybe were" (because I can pull up 3e numbers that look that good or better), and look at how companies behave:

1. When WotC makes booster-ish claims about how well editions are doing, they are in comparison to 3e. Not some older edition. And no, this isn't because they can beat 3e and not <older edition>. Because the claims they make are things like "5e is on track to beat 3e", a statement so devoid of factual content as to be true for any game.
2. The most successful TTRPG company on the market (well, maybe 2nd after WotC, but they have beaten them at various points) is releasing a 3e retro-clone. Not some older edition. And that's not because no one is retro-cloning <older edition> or because players are content to play <older edition>, because people are retro-cloning older editions and people can still play 3e.

That looks pretty compelling to me. Now, that doesn't necessarily prove that 3e was more popular than <older edition>. It points in that direction, but it's not definitive. But it does prove that 3e is a stronger benchmark of success than older editions.
I really think you need to bone up on your D&D history, man, instead of pretending this is some kind of tea-leaf-reading thought experiment. This fact is not actually in any doubt or dispute. The reason WotC never compares any of their releases to the Basic set is that all of those comparisons will look really, really bad.


Yes, because racial level limits, Gygaxian DMing, and independent XP charts for classes are good design. Wait, all of those are terrible. There are good things in AD&D, like random magic items. But they should be ported into 3e, which has a more functional core system.
For starters, I'm talking about the system as a whole. But for starters...

(1) Racial level limits are way different in AD&D and BX/BECMI. I will certainly not argue for them being the best thing ever - in fact, I think they're rather poorly done, which is why BECMI and RC expanded them with Attack Ranks.
(2) Individual XP charts for classes is actually pretty rad because it opens up a design space where a more powerful character has slower advancement. I'd argue that the converse - a static XP chart like in 3.x - obfuscates the fact that 1 level of Wizard is not equal to 1 level of Fighter.
(3) Gygaxian DMing? First you need to be more specific, and second that's not a feature of the edition. And third, I think again you're confusing AD&D and the Basic line. I like AD&D well enough, but it's not what we're talking about here.

But moving further along, I'll add in XP-for-GP as one of the best mechanics in RPG history. B/X is a focused game. It tries to be one thing, and it does a great job at it.

icefractal
2016-02-19, 03:20 PM
4) Assuming you are right. What if I want to make an incredible martial nonmagic combatant who doesn't do any of that? Your soldier class now has unwanted baggage like the ranger, barbarian, paladin, monk...What if you want a class that's only good at fighting and nothing else? Well, what if I want a class that's only good at cartography and nothing else? Neither of those are really suitable for a PC, unless you want to be deliberately more limited than everyone else, in which case playing at a lower level or ignoring some of your abilities seems more sensible than devoting an entire class to that niche scenario.

You know why "guy who can fight" doesn't work as a class? Because combats in D&D take a relatively large amount of real time. Which means that every character "can fight" (few people want to sit in the background for 75% of the real-world time), and they can do other things. So your swordsman needs to both fight and do other things. Serious, strategic-level "other things" like what spells can accomplish. And a class whose only theme is "fights stuff" doesn't provide anywhere to attach those capabilities.

Cosi
2016-02-19, 03:31 PM
It is in part responsible for the "tier" issues. Not solely responsible, but in part. I think a significant amount of repair-work could be done by re-introducing it.

That's not true. Regardless of how broken you think 3e is, there are almost certainly at least two classes you think are balanced. Maybe Wizard and Cleric, maybe Warmage and Healer, maybe Binder and Incarnate. That indicates quite strongly to me that it is possible to balance classes by level, and I think that having level mean the same thing everywhere is good. When someone says "3rd level Wizard" I don't want to have to convert that to however much XP, then convert that pile of XP to however many Fighter levels. Since it is not impossible to balance classes by level, I see no benefit to not doing so.


And the Fighter is so broad that removing him would create giant gaping holes that can't be properly closed no matter how hard you try.
Paladins? Fighter/Cleric. Ranger? Fighter/Druid. Warlock? Some fluff on a Sorcerer/Wizard.

Fighter isn't broad, it's narrow. The Fighter fights. That's it. Every other class has a tool they use to accomplish tasks. The Fighter has a task he accomplishes.

When the Paladin discovers that the evil baron's tax collector is oppressing the people, he can show him the light of goodness in his soul and convince him to mend his evil ways. He can also stab him to death. When the Rogue discovers that the evil baron's tax collector is oppressing the people, he can steal their gold back and humiliate him. He can also stab him to death. When the Wizard discovers that the evil baron's tax collector is oppressing the people, he can use his magic to provide them with enough to get by. He can also magic him to death.

What does the Fighter do there as an alternative to killing? Threaten killing?


But Fighter? Assuming all DEX based needs are covered with Swashbuckler and Rogue, trying to cover the STR part with another class is equivalent to making that other class a Fighter by another name. Hello Warblade.

So do that? Beyond any concerns of conceptual holes, Fighter is just a bad concept. It has no answer to problems that are in any form other than "something to fight". The Swashbuckler can do anything as long as he does it in a way that is kinda like what Captain Jack Sparrow would do in that situation. He can negotiate (probably with some ability to trick people into taking obviously bad deals), investigate (presumably by gathering rumors), or lead (because he is Captain Jack Sparrow). That's all in the conceptual umbrella of "Swashbuckler". What solutions to those problems does "guy who fights" have?


I really think you need to bone up on your D&D history, man, instead of pretending this is some kind of tea-leaf-reading thought experiment. This fact is not actually in any doubt or dispute. The reason WotC never compares any of their releases to the Basic set is that all of those comparisons will look really, really bad.

"Someone's priors disagree with my priors? Better reassert my priors because they are obviously correct!"

Mockery aside, I don't think the argument that WotC compares to 3e because they can beat 3e holds any water. After all, if they wanted to compare to something weak, they could compare to 4e, which sold worse than 3e independent of any questions about earlier editions. And even if they are for some reason comparing to the best thing they can beat, their claims aren't numeric! The specific 3e v 5e boosterism is "5e is on track to beat 3e". Not "beating it now", not even "beating sales at similar time". Just "on track". They could make the same claim about Red Box, and it would be exactly as true. And they don't. Because the people with the inside knowledge of relative sales believe 3e is a better yardstick for success.


For starters, I'm talking about the system as a whole. But for starters...

Then post some examples of good design from the system. You can't ever win an argument by saying "well that terrible thing isn't all that bad". You need claims about why your thing is good. So far you've got this:


But moving further along, I'll add in XP-for-GP as one of the best mechanics in RPG history.

There are some problems with that:

1. I don't see the point of XP in a level system. Fiat leveling is much simpler.
2. That's literally the easiest possible thing to port into another system.
3. Measuring XP rewards by GP found rather than encounter difficulty seems bad.


(2) Individual XP charts for classes is actually pretty rad because it opens up a design space where a more powerful character has slower advancement. I'd argue that the converse - a static XP chart like in 3.x - obfuscates the fact that 1 level of Wizard is not equal to 1 level of Fighter.

Why is it better to make character power comparisons more complicated than to power up underperformed characters?

JAL_1138
2016-02-19, 03:32 PM
Maybe in your experience, but not in mine.
I consider the contents of your sheet to be at least as important as the skills and abilities of the player. To use the example of a locked door, I've never met anyone who, upon encountering a locked door, would give up because they don't have a key or a door-unlocking skill. Everyone I've ever gamed with was more of the sort of person to go "okay, let's see if there's another entrance, or a key hidden anywhere around here, or if we're in a hurry, we can smash the door down." The problem-solving in my experience comes from looking at the sheet, asking questions about the situation, and figuring out which abilities and gear you have are potentially applicable. That, to me, is a feature, while you seem to consider it a bug.

Agreed.

Did I bring my portable ram? Or my vial of acid to try to dissolve the inner workings of the lock? Did I bring an iron prybar? Did I bring some iron spikes or wedges and a hammer to try and break the lock, hinges, or doorframe with? Did I bring my hatchet, axe, mace, or some other suitable weapon I own to break through the door with (or substitute for a hammer, if I brought my spikes but no hammer), or did I just bring my longsword and my darts? What's my Open Doors target number based on my Strength score if I try to just bust it open unaided? That's all on the sheet.

These are all things a Fighter in AD&D (2e) can try, a class with no Thief skills like Open Locks whatsoever, nor ability to cast Knock.

In 5e, with no door-opening skill like 2e's Open Doors, there's Investigation, which could reveal some secret trick to opening the door if there is one, along with Strength checks, and most of the items from the AD&D example as well.

Segev
2016-02-19, 03:38 PM
That's not true. Regardless of how broken you think 3e is, there are almost certainly at least two classes you think are balanced. Maybe Wizard and Cleric, maybe Warmage and Healer, maybe Binder and Incarnate. That indicates quite strongly to me that it is possible to balance classes by level, and I think that having level mean the same thing everywhere is good. When someone says "3rd level Wizard" I don't want to have to convert that to however much XP, then convert that pile of XP to however many Fighter levels. Since it is not impossible to balance classes by level, I see no benefit to not doing so.

That isn't the position I was taking.

It is possible to balance things by level, but difficult. It is easier to balance things by XP amount, because you can have jumps in power that are not perfectly matched across the board with each level; you just delay the larger jump in power a bit.

It could also be done by making levels finer-grained, with a lot of "dead" levels and smaller boosts to certain things like hp, which would let you space out the boosts at various points in the XP progression while keeping all levels across the board on the same XP chart.

I just think it's easier to deal with XP being different for different classes' levels. (It also makes XP more meaningful as an intermediary; as-is, there's little reason to use it. Just assign level-ups every 3-5 encounters. I have a couple DMs who do just that, in fact.)

Cosi
2016-02-19, 03:44 PM
It is possible to balance things by level, but difficult. It is easier to balance things by XP amount, because you can have jumps in power that are not perfectly matched across the board with each level; you just delay the larger jump in power a bit.

I don't think that's easier. The design work is the same. You design two (or more) ability progressions, and then you divide those progressions into chunks which are balanced. If everything is supposed to be an equal number of chunks long, that makes balancing easier. FFS, look at 4e! You really think they made any of their design calls to make things harder?

Frozen_Feet
2016-02-19, 03:53 PM
Let me be a boring person and point out why WotC use 3e as a yardstick and not earlier editions: earlier editions were not WotC products. Hence, they don't have accurate statistics on those.

Anyways, I agree that Basic/Expert was the most succesfull version of D&D, at least internationally. I base this notion on the fact that BECMI and many of its supplements got translated to Finnish and you've been able to borrow them from most well-stocked libraries for over two decades. The same isn't true of any print d20 product. The SRD eventually got a translation, but by then 4e was old news and 5e on its way.

Jormengand
2016-02-19, 03:55 PM
As far as look-at-the-sheet, I find that's actually a lot more a problem in than out of combat. People in combat seem to have the funny idea that they can't topple a bookshelf on someone or pick an oil lamp off the table and chuck it because there's nothing on their sheet that says they can, but the moment they get out of combat they kinda assume that they can climb up things and only check their ranks in climb to see if that's really a good idea after they've made the decision that they'll climb if they're good enough at it.

Segev
2016-02-19, 04:00 PM
I don't think that's easier. The design work is the same. You design two (or more) ability progressions, and then you divide those progressions into chunks which are balanced. If everything is supposed to be an equal number of chunks long, that makes balancing easier. FFS, look at 4e! You really think they made any of their design calls to make things harder?

4e did it by making everything the same Tier 3 mechanical subunit: Martial Adepts. Like I said, it's POSSIBLE.

I disagree that it's inherently easier to make everything have the same number of levels and break into the same number of chunks. Sometimes, it's easier to break things into conceptual chunks for that particular class. These may not mesh well with the power level of the same-numbered chunk of another.

Part of the problem, for instance, of spellcasters is that they get new spell levels every 2 levels, and these are more significant jumps in power than most non-casters get in similar numbers of levels, despite conceptually breaking down the chunks neatly in a vacuum for only the class in question at the moment.

A 3e Fighter with a far faster progression that just kept gaining BAB, HD, and bonus feats would probably actually have the number of feat options he needs to really take advantage of what's out there, and make a good show at keeping up with the casters. (Again, I won't say it is a pure fix, but it'd help.)

Cazero
2016-02-19, 04:02 PM
When the Paladin discovers that the evil baron's tax collector is oppressing the people, he can show him the light of goodness in his soul and convince him to mend his evil ways. He can also stab him to death. When the Rogue discovers that the evil baron's tax collector is oppressing the people, he can steal their gold back and humiliate him. He can also stab him to death. When the Wizard discovers that the evil baron's tax collector is oppressing the people, he can use his magic to provide them with enough to get by. He can also magic him to death.

What does the Fighter do there as an alternative to killing? Threaten killing?
What does the Barbarian? Jump very high? Hunt an antelope? Use a mean that isn't a stupid stereotype? Hint : it's the one that makes sense.

Characters are defined by a lot more things than their classes (see the differences between Miko, Hinjo and O'Chul) and you don't need class features to do things. A fighter can show people the light of goodness in their hearts. Or steal money to give it back to the poor. Maybe magic is out of his reach, but he can still use social skills and hiding instead of charm and illusions spells. It really depends of wich fighter is confronted to the situation because different fighters have different personalities and skillsets, just like different paladins have different personalities and skillsets, and different rogues have different personalities and skillsets, and different wizards...

CharonsHelper
2016-02-19, 04:07 PM
I don't think that's easier. The design work is the same. You design two (or more) ability progressions, and then you divide those progressions into chunks which are balanced. If everything is supposed to be an equal number of chunks long, that makes balancing easier. FFS, look at 4e! You really think they made any of their design calls to make things harder?

I will say - in many ways it makes classes with soft asymmetry such as Fighters, Rangers, & Paladins easier to balance. In AD&D they were practically the same thing (Fighters got to weapon specialize a bit more) except the Ranger & Paladin got spellcasting and other little extras, and they leveled slower as the balance mechanism.

Frozen_Feet
2016-02-19, 04:10 PM
In a system like d20, barbarian, swashbuckler, knight, samurai, dwaren defender (etc.) are feat chains for a fighter.

Cosi
2016-02-19, 04:11 PM
Let me be a boring person and point out why WotC use 3e as a yardstick and not earlier editions: earlier editions were not WotC products. Hence, they don't have accurate statistics on those.

This is not the argument you should make. If the people who bought TSR, and presumably got all their financial and sales records don't have a good enough picture of sales numbers to make accurate comparisons to them, why should we believe the estimates of people on the Internet?


As far as look-at-the-sheet, I find that's actually a lot more a problem in than out of combat. People in combat seem to have the funny idea that they can't topple a bookshelf on someone or pick an oil lamp off the table and chuck it because there's nothing on their sheet that says they can,

I think there's actually a pretty simple explanation for that (in 3e). People ignore the environment because it is either to difficult to manipulate (at low levels) or less rewarding than their actual abilities (at high levels). If the game postulated more fights near pits of acid, falls of lava, streams of poison, or unstable ceilings, people would be a lot more likely to behave "creatively" in combat.

Incidentally, I have no idea why 4e didn't go totally nuts with terrain. All the "push 1 squares" they were throwing around would be massively more interesting if there were walls of magical swords, or bottomless pits, or rushing rivers, or rickety bridges, or magical circles of healing to shove people into, around, or through.


I disagree that it's inherently easier to make everything have the same number of levels and break into the same number of chunks. Sometimes, it's easier to break things into conceptual chunks for that particular class. These may not mesh well with the power level of the same-numbered chunk of another.

Do you have some example of that? What's a class you think works better in smaller (or larger) chunks than 3e's levels?


Part of the problem, for instance, of spellcasters is that they get new spell levels every 2 levels, and these are more significant jumps in power than most non-casters get in similar numbers of levels, despite conceptually breaking down the chunks neatly in a vacuum for only the class in question at the moment.

Isn't the solution to that to make more things have a progression of spells (or vestiges or maneuvers)? It also solves the problem of some classes having one page of abilities for their class, and others having fifty.


What does the Barbarian? Jump very high? Hunt an antelope? Use a mean that isn't a stupid stereotype? Hint : it's the one that makes sense.

The Barbarian is thematically wild and savage. Maybe he teaches the people to live off the land and ignore the baron. Maybe he calls a Great Hunt which makes a whole bunch of food animals show up.


(see the differences between Miko, Hinjo and O'Chul)

Games behave differently from single author fiction. Miko does "stuff" because The Giant wants her to. A D&D Paladin does stuff because the combination of abilities he has and rules of the game allows him to.


A fighter can show people the light of goodness in their hearts. Or steal money to give it back to the poor. Maybe magic is out of his reach, but he can still use social skills and hiding instead of charm and illusions spells.

Sure, the Fighter has skills. But other classes have skills too. If the Fighter is using his skills to shore up the areas he falls behind the Wizard while the Wizard uses them to gain new abilities, that's not a winning strategy.

Cazero
2016-02-19, 04:22 PM
Games behave differently from single author fiction. Miko does "stuff" because The Giant wants her to. A D&D Paladin does stuff because the combination of abilities he has and rules of the game allows him to.
Okay. I think I'm done here. Even the Icewind Dale videogame give paladins more freedom that you think they have.

For those who don't know : it's an heavily dungeon-crawl focused adaptation of AD&D. Jarringly railroady. They still put some efforts in dialogs. Example : You have to kill the Myrkul priest, but you can have a pleasant conversation and postpone fighting him for a long time first.

Cosi
2016-02-19, 04:25 PM
Okay. I think I'm done here. Even the Icewind Dale videogame give paladins more freedom that you think they have.

I am deeply confused as to how a character in a game could have freedom to do things the rules of that game do not allow.

Milo v3
2016-02-19, 04:35 PM
Do you have some example of that? What's a class you think works better in smaller (or larger) chunks than 3e's levels?
In 3e Fighter & Rogue may as well only have five or ten levels since it doesn't do anything new beyond fifth level. So, something like d20 modern where you split classes into smaller sets of levels for classes like that would probably work rather well.

Frozen_Feet
2016-02-19, 04:39 PM
@Cosi: you'd be surprised how much can get lost in a company transfer. TSR was not known for good book-keeping.

Your "people on the internet" rhetoric is hilarious. There are accurate figures on early-edition sales you can get in print, but by and large they were not done by TSR or WotC employees. It doesn't need a genius to figure out why WotC might use stats it gathered from its own product line versus research it did not do and did not pay for.

Milo v3
2016-02-19, 04:49 PM
Games behave differently from single author fiction. Miko does "stuff" because The Giant wants her to. A D&D Paladin does stuff because the combination of abilities he has and rules of the game allows him to.
Miko does stuff because she's Paladin + Monk + Flavour that isn't tied to class.... Are you suggesting having a profession in D&D is some sort of thing you can only do with authorial fiat? Are you suggesting that having a personality in D&D is some sort of thing you can only do with authorial fiat?

Segev
2016-02-19, 04:51 PM
Do you have some example of that? What's a class you think works better in smaller (or larger) chunks than 3e's levels?No offense, but you have a strange tendency to read arguments I'm not making. Which irks me, because it means I am not being as clear as I think I am, despite taking great care to be precise.

Take any class that would be better balanced with more expensive levels, XP-wise. I'll use Wizard, here. If you go with the "same XP cost per level, but broken into more levels" angle, then the wizard would have 4-8 "extra" levels between each of the levels he currently has (if the Fighter stayed at the same progression). These "extra" levels would spread the acquisition of new spell slots of existing levels between them. The spellbook would only get 1 new spell every 2-3 levels, rather than 2 per level. If one were feeling generous, the wizard might get a few more bonus feats scattered about, but only if one were feeling generous.

Alternatively, just keep those chunks in the bite sizes that they are, but make the wizard need 4-8x more XP per level.


Isn't the solution to that to make more things have a progression of spells (or vestiges or maneuvers)? It also solves the problem of some classes having one page of abilities for their class, and others having fifty.That's how 4e did it. They made everything a martial adept.

I loathed it; it didn't feel like D&D, and it lost all the glorious subsystems that made all the different superclasses of classes feel unique and different to play. But it was balanced.

Cazero
2016-02-19, 04:52 PM
I am deeply confused as to how a character in a game could have freedom to do things the rules of that game do not allow.

The rules don't restrict character personalities based on class. Neither do they restrict behavior. They only provide mechanics that happens to be sort of based on fluff. Plusses to stuff. And in the case of D&D, 90% of those plusses are for combat. So saying the game rules restrict character behavior when out of combat isn't quite right.

The specific example of the paladin tells you that somehing about the class makes specific behavior and personalities very likely to follow specific pre-codified consequence. Ditto for the warlock. You might make a case for the Cleric and the Druid. And not a single other class have anything like that because it wouldn't be thematicaly appropriate.
A paladin remain free to be a narcissist. Or a huge jerk who keep complaining about people who just aren't virtuous. Or a stereotypical paragon of nobility and virtue. Player choice. None cause instant fall. Every single other class have even more freedom of character since nothing in their behavior can suddenly cut off their goodies.
And those different personalities will (and should) have more impact on character decisions than a class feature that vaguely hint at a skill being the usual thing a class does when murdering isn't your first choice. Because classes are mechanics that happen to reflect fluff sometimes and not straightjackets.

But nooo, Fighter has no stereotype so he isn't allowed to try anything, while Barbarian HAS to find proud savage answers to every problems, and Rogue HAS to use trickery and guile even after overpowering the opposition became trivial, and Wizard HAS to use magic even if he has strict principles on not wasting his talents for the arcane for matters that don't require it.
That's what you're arguing. I claim it's stupid. Of course classes can try stuff that aren't stereotype. Ergo, the Fighter not having a stereotype is not an issue. Never was. Will never be.

The Fighter not having a stereotype then turns into a major strength since it allows to modelise a broad variety of martial concepts that don't fit in other classes. Wether or not 3.X provided a mechanicaly satisfying/competitive/balanced/whatever implementation of the Fighter is a different problem altogether and is not relevant to that argument.

obryn
2016-02-19, 04:59 PM
"Someone's priors disagree with my priors? Better reassert my priors because they are obviously correct!"
No... It's my priors vs. you making stuff up based on what you feel should be right.


Then post some examples of good design from the system. You can't ever win an argument by saying "well that terrible thing isn't all that bad". You need claims about why your thing is good. So far you've got this:

There are some problems with that:

1. I don't see the point of XP in a level system. Fiat leveling is much simpler.
2. That's literally the easiest possible thing to port into another system.
3. Measuring XP rewards by GP found rather than encounter difficulty seems bad.
You're approaching XP-for-GP from an entirely wrong paradigm. While fiat leveling is, indeed, simpler - and it's what I use when running 4e - it breaks the reward structure of earlier editions. Rewards in the BECMI line and AD&D 1e were primarily magic items and levels. There's not a set amount you should be leveling, because the dungeon is just there.

When you use XP-for-GP, you get a few big benefits - first, players care about GP. When there's no magic-mart turning GP into a secondary XP track, this actually a big deal. Second, it promotes approaches beyond killing the monsters; you can get their money any way you want it. Third, it tells you quite clearly what the game is about.

As for other examples, we're kinda going far afield aren't we? I'm happy to play along - but do you want a different thread for this? I'm happy to extol the virtues of the Basic line at length but it has little to do with out-of-combat abilities. :smallbiggrin:


Why is it better to make character power comparisons more complicated than to power up underperformed characters?
Either one; each has advantages. My main point is that 3.x didn't do a good job of it either way.

One example in Basic is Dwarf vs. Fighter. They're extremely similar, but the Dwarf gets substantially better saving throws and a few special abilities in return for slower advancement.

Cosi
2016-02-19, 05:10 PM
In 3e Fighter & Rogue may as well only have five or ten levels since it doesn't do anything new beyond fifth level. So, something like d20 modern where you split classes into smaller sets of levels for classes like that would probably work rather well.

I don't think this is particularly responsive to my question. If the Fighter or Rogue should only last five or ten or seven levels, then it should just last that many levels.


Are you suggesting having a profession in D&D is some sort of thing you can only do with authorial fiat? Are you suggesting that having a personality in D&D is some sort of thing you can only do with authorial fiat?

No, I'm suggesting that single author fiction if fundamentally different from cooperative fiction. In a book, no dice are rolled (there are some exceptions for novelizations of games, but generally), and actions succeed for fail on the whim of the author. That means that some character concepts are viable in single author fiction but not multi-author fiction. For example, the plucky underdog who succeeds on million-to-one odds. In single author fiction, the odds of whatever happening in the story happening are 100%. The author decided that the hero would succeed, so he did - despite whatever nominal odds. Conversely, if the odds of you succeeding in D&D (where odds are actual odds) are million-to-one, you actually fail 999999 times before you succeed.


Alternatively, just keep those chunks in the bite sizes that they are, but make the wizard need 4-8x more XP per level.

I don't think that really solves the problem. It probably pushes the problem away from happening in any actual game, but fundamentally no amount of "hitting things really hard with a sword" is as good as even non-abusive uses of 9th level spells.


I loathed it; it didn't feel like D&D, and it lost all the glorious subsystems that made all the different superclasses of classes feel unique and different to play. But it was balanced.

That's a resource management issue. I'm not suggesting that everyone get spells, I'm suggesting that everyone have some kind of powers. Maybe it's the Binder's ability to prepare different sets of powers, or the Warblade's encounter-ish powers and recharge mechanic, or a rage meter where your abilities get better as you deal more damage, or a system like UA's Recharge Magic.


So saying the game rules restrict character behavior when out of combat isn't quite right.

The rules restrict character actions. For example, if you don't have teleport, you can't teleport out of the dungeon. They don't have any impact on which option characters take based on the ones available, just determine which are available.


But nooo, Fighter has no stereotype so he isn't allowed to try anything, while Barbarian HAS to find proud savage answers to every problems, and Rogue HAS to use trickery and guile even after overpowering the opposition became trivial, and Wizard HAS to use magic even if he has strict principles on not wasting his talents for the arcane for matters that don't require it.

The Fighter doesn't have anywhere to hang abilities. How do you decide what to give the Fighter? Anything he wants? How is that not the problem people are complaining about in this very thread with regards to 3e Wizards?

Now, if you want to make the case that class should be a combat shtick and non-combat shtick should be separate, that's fine. That's a workable model. But if any class has non-combat abilities, every class needs to have some.

Segev
2016-02-19, 05:14 PM
I don't think that really solves the problem. It probably pushes the problem away from happening in any actual game, but fundamentally no amount of "hitting things really hard with a sword" is as good as even non-abusive uses of 9th level spells. In earlier editions, fighters actually had two things that wizards did not:

1) They had keeps and lands and titles, which made them have the political power to in theory combat a wizard's "lone tower in the wilderness" power, and
2) They were the best at using some of the best magic items in the game. This was ham-fistedly achieved by making them the only ones allowed to use magic swords over a certain bonus, and those were the best items. But still. (Seriously, a lot of the really weird power collections on high-end magic swords were specifically because it was meant for fighter-exclusivity.)


That's a resource management issue. I'm not suggesting that everyone get spells, I'm suggesting that everyone have some kind of powers. Maybe it's the Binder's ability to prepare different sets of powers, or the Warblade's encounter-ish powers and recharge mechanic, or a rage meter where your abilities get better as you deal more damage, or a system like UA's Recharge Magic.I agree: everybody should have unique toys that let them break the game the same amount at the same XP level. In fact, though I haven't touched it and it was only about 45% finished a few months ago, I have been working on something for weapon-users. I hope to work up motivation to get back to it sometime soon.

That's not to toot my own horn so much as to say, "I agree so much I've tried to come up with something."

Cosi
2016-02-19, 05:24 PM
1) They had keeps and lands and titles, which made them have the political power to in theory combat a wizard's "lone tower in the wilderness" power,

I actually like this a lot (it's one of the cooler things about early editions), but there are problems. For one thing, there are magic archetypes which have political power (Jaffar, literally every Sorcerer King) and martial archetypes which don't (admittedly, most of those can simply be modeled as being lower level). I also think balance by excluding people from some minigames because of class isn't good design. You can make the case for some of restrictions (for example, I think it's fine if Necromancers get necromancy powers rather than conjuration powers), but I don't think you should carve out things like "managing a kingdom" as belonging to one class or another.


2) They were the best at using some of the best magic items in the game. This was ham-fistedly achieved by making them the only ones allowed to use magic swords over a certain bonus, and those were the best items. But still. (Seriously, a lot of the really weird power collections on high-end magic swords were specifically because it was meant for fighter-exclusivity.)

This I am less sold on. Magic item restrictions certainly work from a mechanical standpoint, but the flavor seems very weak to me. Why does Excalibur only work for the guy who needs Excalibur to be good? How do you guarantee a "Fighter item" always shows up? Those are solvable, but I think that they turn the Fighter into an Artificer, which I think is a bigger change than just turning them into a Warblade.


That's not to toot my own horn so much as to say, "I agree so much I've tried to come up with something."

Yep. It's a good solution, but it takes work. IMHO, a fix (rather than a new edition) should either power up existing classes or just shove everyone onto spellcasting (my preferred solution).

But that is definitely a different topic.

Segev
2016-02-19, 05:28 PM
I didn't say those two things were perfect solutions. Just that they were contributory.

themaque
2016-02-19, 05:31 PM
-snip because i'm obviously an idiot-

Well, don't I look like a dumbarse. It's been ages since I've read the book so obviously I've misremembered a lot. And yes, I read the book and even ran as GM for a good long while, Just walked away disappointed. I knew some things where lackings or underdone I have obviously morphed my memory incorrectly.

Thanks for correcting me. I'll re-validate my complaints before posting them.

(But since I have little desire to go back I will probably just shut up about 4e except the most general regards.)

CharonsHelper
2016-02-19, 05:44 PM
I loathed it; it didn't feel like D&D, and it lost all the glorious subsystems that made all the different superclasses of classes feel unique and different to play. But it was balanced.

I'm with you. One of the best things about D&D is the pretty hard asymmetry making for interesting teams. 4e achieved better balance through symmetry. (which is the easiest way and most boring way to balance for co-op)

I will say - Pathfinder has achieved pretty decent balance so long as you stop at level 8-10ish (it fixed many of the 3.x issues either initially or with supplements). After that the legacy spells from back when 10+ was epic start to screw with the caster/martial balance too much.

Cosi
2016-02-19, 05:49 PM
I will say - Pathfinder has achieved pretty decent balance so long as you stop at level 8-10ish (it fixed many of the 3.x issues either initially or with supplements). After that the legacy spells from back when 10+ was epic start to screw with the caster/martial balance too much.

How is that different from the way 3e looked when PF took off? If your party is Wizard/Warblade/Rogue/Cleric, that holds together pretty well up to 8th or 10th. The Warblade (and to a lesser extend the Rogue) are a little weak outside combat, but I don't see much PF did to resolve that.

I see a lot more content from PF, but I don't see it as being better than 3e content. There are weak classes in 3e (Fighter, Healer), but there are weak classes in PF too (Rogue, Monk).

themaque
2016-02-19, 05:55 PM
Are we still talking Our of Combat Abillities or have we morphed into

"3e is the best! "
"Nu huh! No School like the Old School"

Because I know that thread is already in existence here..

AMFV
2016-02-19, 06:01 PM
Are we still talking Our of Combat Abillities or have we morphed into

"3e is the best! "
"Nu huh! No School like the Old School"

Because I know that thread is already in existence here..

I tried to get it back on track and got promptly steamrolled so don't look at me.

Cosi
2016-02-19, 06:08 PM
I'm totally willing to have that conversation.

Let's talk about how you can use player's non-combat abilities to advance the story. What can you do that doesn't care if players get teleport? What can you do that gets easier to do with scrying?

Let's talk about how to set up an environment (both in and out of combat) that encourages player creativity rather than folding to it.

Let's talk about how to use magic (both in general and specifically in 3e which OP mentions) to make the world more interesting, rather than ignore boring parts of it.

Let's talk about addressing the imbalance between casters and non-casters. Not about which edition dealt with it best, but figure out what solutions you can do in a game to reduce it. Should martial PrCs be better? Should magic items be better? Should something else happen?

Can we have those conversations? Those seem like cool conversations.

Cazero
2016-02-19, 06:09 PM
The Fighter doesn't have anywhere to hang abilities. How do you decide what to give the Fighter? Anything he wants?Anything he wants, within a quantifiable and supposedly balanced measure (aka the skill points budget). Why not? A Barbarian can be litterate. A Wizard can actually be a pretty decent athlete. A Paladin can be an acrobat. A Fighter could be just about anything if you stopped trying to hang to a stereotype.
It's not a failure of the class if you don't have the imagination required to make up a reason for a specific fighter to have lots of ranks in Knowledge (Architecture and enginering). And the reason might not even matter anyway. What's important is that the Fighter has access to that kind (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0808.html) of stuff (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0895.html).

CharonsHelper
2016-02-19, 06:09 PM
but there are weak classes in PF too (Rogue, Monk).

Those have since been fixed. (Unchained)

That's what's better - it has patched most of the gaps in 3.x such as having such obviously weaker classes in the same roles.


Anyway - sorry for bringing it back to an edition thing. I meant to just be commenting on symmetry vs asymmetry.

Cosi
2016-02-19, 06:15 PM
Anything he wants, within a quantifiable and supposedly balanced measure (aka the skill points budget). Why not? A Barbarian can be litterate. A Wizard can actually be a pretty decent athlete. A Paladin can be an acrobat. A Fighter could be just about anything if you stopped trying to hang to a stereotype.

You are missing the point. Consider the following premises:

Classes are balanced in combat.

Some classes have non-combat class abilities.

All of those classes can select non-class abilities.

Therefore, the Wizard has everything the Fighter does and literally anything else (class combat abilities + class non-combat abilities + non-class abilities vs class combat abilities + non-class abilities).

How is the Fighter not a dominated option?


Those have since been fixed. (Unchained)

Rogue was balanced in 3e. PF nerfed all the things they used to compete. Subsequently re-balancing it doesn't seem like a success to me.

I also think Swordsage (particularly the Unarmed variant) is a Monk fix at least as good as Unchained.

Segev
2016-02-19, 06:29 PM
Let's talk about how you can use player's non-combat abilities to advance the story. What can you do that doesn't care if players get teleport?Have world-spanning tales that require the coordination of far-separated city-states or other sites. That adventure you ran at levels 3-7 to gather materials from 4 different, wildly separated, hard-to-reach locations? You need the thing they made again, but it's only a small part of a larger quest, so it's great that you can just teleport to go get them now that you're level 12.


What can you do that gets easier to do with scrying?Introduce villains, and even give those "aside" scenes that are so common in movies and the like, showing what the villains are up to. Lay false trails, or give foreshadowing. With villains with sufficient awareness, let them know the PCs are looking. Give the PCs' a chill when the PCs realize the villain just turned to look at them through the scrying sensor. Give the PCs information that you couldn't, otherwise, because they'd have no way of knowing it. Remove the need for spies to tell them second-hand information.


Let's talk about how to set up an environment (both in and out of combat) that encourages player creativity rather than folding to it.Mostly, it's about rich description and setting things up to the advantage of the enemies. Then let the players do whatever they want in response. Environment is controlled by the home-field advantage, effectively. If it isn't, then...well, this is a really really broad topic and I'm probably not the best to come up with the core premises. But it could be interesting to see what others have to say. :smallsmile:


Let's talk about how to use magic (both in general and specifically in 3e which OP mentions) to make the world more interesting, rather than ignore boring parts of it.The key is to have interesting places.

Let's be honest: we're going to skip the boring parts in the narrative gloss, anyway. When the PCs can do the same thing we do by using "fast travel" options of saying "And then they got to their destination" by simply BEING at their destination, the trick becomes giving them reason to be in the "interesting" places.

It's a common tactic to lure PCs to an adventure site by putting it between where they are and where they're motivated to go. This ceases to be viable when they can skip the "flyover country." So, instead, use information they get from scrying or other effects to let them know the area of interest is there; now they'll LOOK for it.

Another way to encourage exploration is to have them looking for something they don't know the location of. Again, scrying and the like can help, but it won't necessarily find exactly where. They'll have to do the legwork just to find the place.

Cazero
2016-02-19, 06:33 PM
You are missing the point. Consider the following premises:

Classes are balanced in combat.

Some classes have non-combat class abilities.

All of those classes can select non-class abilities.

Therefore, the Wizard has everything the Fighter does and literally anything else (class combat abilities + class non-combat abilities + non-class abilities vs class combat abilities + non-class abilities).

How is the Fighter not a dominated option?

The Fighter can select more non-class abilities. Or is better at non-class abilities. Or can cherry pick some class non-combat abilities from other martials classes. Or a customisable mix of all of the above. Tons of possibilities.

Cosi
2016-02-19, 06:50 PM
Have world-spanning tales that require the coordination of far-separated city-states or other sites. That adventure you ran at levels 3-7 to gather materials from 4 different, wildly separated, hard-to-reach locations? You need the thing they made again, but it's only a small part of a larger quest, so it's great that you can just teleport to go get them now that you're level 12.

Very much agree. A good example of this is Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness. The overall plot is fairly complex, but there's one chapter where the heroes go off on three separate quests to retrieve artifacts they need to advance the plot. It's the sort of thing that could very easily be the plot of an entire novel (LotR, thought that's about destroying an artifact), but it's handled very quickly because the characters have the power to do it that way.

You can also imagine something like the storage caverns in Mistborn: The Hero of Ages. In the story, Vin et al have to fight their way to them because they don't have teleport style abilities, but that sort of thing could easily be done as a dungeon. Each has a bunch of encounters, and the final boss room includes enough information to teleport to the next one.

It's modern fantasy, but Shadow Ops: Control Point deals pretty well with a character with teleportation (also plane shift after a fashion). Stross's Merchant Princes series deals with a somewhat similar power set (the characters can travel between modern earth and a medieval parallel world, using this for smuggling or fast travel).


Introduce villains, and even give those "aside" scenes that are so common in movies and the like, showing what the villains are up to. Lay false trails, or give foreshadowing. With villains with sufficient awareness, let them know the PCs are looking. Give the PCs' a chill when the PCs realize the villain just turned to look at them through the scrying sensor. Give the PCs information that you couldn't, otherwise, because they'd have no way of knowing it. Remove the need for spies to tell them second-hand information.

All good. scrying can also make leaving hints towards the next plot much easier for DMs. No longer need there be a convenient map or something, just knowing that your enemies exist now gives you the ability to find them.


Environment is controlled by the home-field advantage, effectively.

I was actually thinking more in terms of using the environment to encourage player creativity. Far too few fights happen in surreal cloudscapes, active volcanoes, or other places where you can use the environment to your advantage.


It's a common tactic to lure PCs to an adventure site by putting it between where they are and where they're motivated to go. This ceases to be viable when they can skip the "flyover country." So, instead, use information they get from scrying or other effects to let them know the area of interest is there; now they'll LOOK for it.

This is very true, and it's something near and dear to my heart. scrying, teleport, plane shift, and the like are very important for allowing the players to pursue opportunities that interest them. That's not just good for the players, it's good for the characters. It lets your Wizard actively seek out immortality, your Paladin hunt down evil, and your Barbarian to look for a kingdom to rule, rather than waiting for those things to fall into their laps.


The Fighter can select more non-class abilities. Or is better at non-class abilities. Or can cherry pick some class non-combat abilities from other martials classes. Or a customisable mix of all of the above. Tons of possibilities.

It sounds like you just want the Fighter to choose from a wider range of options. Why is that desirable if everyone else has a comparatively narrow set of options? Conversely, if everyone is choosing from a wide set of options, why bother with classes?

neonchameleon
2016-02-19, 10:11 PM
1. When WotC makes booster-ish claims about how well editions are doing, they are in comparison to 3e. Not some older edition. And no, this isn't because they can beat 3e and not <older edition>. Because the claims they make are things like "5e is on track to beat 3e", a statement so devoid of factual content as to be true for any game.

Ducking AD&D and BECMI. They are only saying it's on track to beat 3e - they are explicitly not saying it's on track to be the most successful edition of D&D ever as they almost certainly would if it was the case. Are you trying to present evidence showing that you aren't right?


You pointed to the tiers. Those say Wizard/Cleric/Druid are balanced. If you walk that back, you need to walk back your Rogue claims too.

And I'll add the tier system to things you've shown you don't understand. Being in the same tier doesn't mean that two classes are balanced. It just means that the matchup doesn't resemble the Washington Generals against the Harlem Globetrotters. To use a UK football analogy, Sunderland are in the same league as Manchester United - but I don't know that even Sunderland fans think that they are as strong a team or have had anything like the money put into them that Man U have.

Also I specifically put in the caveat out of combat. Out of combat is where the wizard's absurd flexibility shines over the other two classes - and where advantages like higher hit points and high fortitude saves are a whole lot less useful.


It's been ages since I've read the book so obviously I've misremembered a lot.

Honestly, the people who wrote the actual physical three big core books of 4e did an absolutely frightful job. The game designers did a decent-ish job (it needed an extra year of playtesting when it was released because they started over one year into the two year design cycle having ended up in a dead end, where all the best ideas went into the Book of Nine Swords). But tech writing is its own discipline and from that perspective the 4e PHB was an epic failure, making Gygaxian prose seem penetrable.


Let's talk about how to set up an environment (both in and out of combat) that encourages player creativity rather than folding to it.

The obvious thing to do is to not have your player abilities being automatic solutions - and give the obvious ones drawbacks. Mage Hand or any other low level telekinesis power is great at encouraging player creativity because it gives an option that doesn't directly fit many places but can be used to help tangentally fairly frequently. On the other hand 3.X Rope Trick is terrible for encouraging player creativity because it solves the problem entirely (in 2e it was 10 minutes/level meaning that it provided options for hiding without directly solving a major problem).

Give people round pegs to fit in round holes and creativity isn't needed. It's only needed when you don't have perfect solutions to hand.

The next obvious thing is to cut down the moving mechanical parts. A starting Fate Core character will have ten skills, five Aspects and about three Stunts - in previous versions of Fate it was IIRC fifteen skills and ten aspects, and that was just too many. In Apocalypse World it's five stats and about three stunts to start with. In both cases you can remember just about everything on your character sheet.

Then you make the characters broadly competent so they can step outside their confidence zone without turning into utter liabilities.


Let's talk about how to use magic (both in general and specifically in 3e which OP mentions) to make the world more interesting, rather than ignore boring parts of it.

Make it quirky and not necessarily directly geared for adventurers.


Let's talk about addressing the imbalance between casters and non-casters. Not about which edition dealt with it best, but figure out what solutions you can do in a game to reduce it. Should martial PrCs be better? Should magic items be better? Should something else happen?

Give magic drawbacks. No one cares that magic in Call of Cthulhu is pretty powerful when PCs use it. It's going to blast your sanity when you cast a spell - so you need to be head first in the latrine before using it seems like a good idea, and the downsides are permanent. You don;t need to go that far - but every time a WFRP 2e or 3e mage casts a spell they risk summoning a demon to devour their soul (minor risk - other things are more likely but magic goes badly wrong even when cast successfully).

If you're allowing magic, let the non-casters be mythical. Look to Arthurian legend for inspiration. Or the Song of Roland. Or Outlaws of the Water Margin. Or Beowulf. Or Cuchulain. Or Gilgamesh. Or the Ramayana. I don't care. Not all magic is spellcasting and few settings have a spellcaster/muggle divide and protagonists that are both casters and non-casters.

Give magic rules. It can't for example cross a line (or circle) of salt. Instant defence that can then be disrupted.

This has all been done in other games.

Cazero
2016-02-20, 02:33 AM
It sounds like you just want the Fighter to choose from a wider range of options. Why is that desirable if everyone else has a comparatively narrow set of options? Conversely, if everyone is choosing from a wide set of options, why bother with classes?
In 3.X, those options are called feats and skills. The Fighter is supposedly balanced because he gets to pick more feats. It doesn't work because feats suck (or are taxes instead of powerups), but that's a mechanical balance issue and not a conceptual balance issue. Ruling a domain with servants and stuff is better modeled as a feat with requirements than as a class feature for the exact reasons you mentioned about Jaffar. (It would still suck IMO, but for different reasons)
You still bother with classes because legacy, but also because stuff like spellcasting, sneak attack, rage, smite, etc are too complicated to balance with cherry picking. So you make them off limits and build balanced classes around them. But D&D as a point-buy system? I would play that.

Cosi
2016-02-20, 08:23 AM
Ducking AD&D and BECMI. They are only saying it's on track to beat 3e - they are explicitly not saying it's on track to be the most successful edition of D&D ever as they almost certainly would if it was the case. Are you trying to present evidence showing that you aren't right?

Stop being obtuse. They aren't making numeric or factual claims. They haven't said it is "beating 3e". They haven't said it has "sold more units than 3e did at this point after release". They said it is "on track to beat 3e". Which they could have said about any edition! Because they did not use numbers! If your claim that BECMI was in fact the best selling edition was true, they could make the same claim about it and it would be exactly as true!


Being in the same tier doesn't mean that two classes are balanced.

If "can expect to play in the same party and not overshadow each other" doesn't mean "balanced", what balanced possibly mean? Stop being stubborn to "prove" that Wizards are too good.


Also I specifically put in the caveat out of combat. Out of combat is where the wizard's absurd flexibility shines over the other two classes - and where advantages like higher hit points and high fortitude saves are a whole lot less useful.

That's not how it works at all. The Cleric and the Druid have more versatility! They know their entire lists, but the Wizard only knows the spells in his spellbook.


On the other hand 3.X Rope Trick is terrible for encouraging player creativity because it solves the problem entirely

rope trick solves the problem of getting to rest without the DM attacking you. This should not be a problem.


In 3.X, those options are called feats and skills. The Fighter is supposedly balanced because he gets to pick more feats. It doesn't work because feats suck (or are taxes instead of powerups), but that's a mechanical balance issue and not a conceptual balance issue.

You still haven't explained the benefit of making the Fighter more customizable. Is the Wizard also going to be more customizable because people have magical concepts not covered by Summoner or Necromancer?

Cazero
2016-02-20, 08:48 AM
You still haven't explained the benefit of making the Fighter more customizable. Is the Wizard also going to be more customizable because people have magical concepts not covered by Summoner or Necromancer?
Covering the inherent character concept holes of a class based system.
Fighter is generic martial. Rogue is generic trickster. Wizard is generic arcane caster. Cleric is generic divine caster. (The Fighter/Rogue and Wizard/Cleric separations might not be mandatory.) Every single other class in the game made up cool mechanics associated with a niche case and could conceivably be remade using one of the 4 basics and feats.

ImNotTrevor
2016-02-20, 10:16 AM
If "can expect to play in the same party and not overshadow each other" doesn't mean "balanced", what balanced possibly mean? Stop being stubborn to "prove" that Wizards are too good.


Let's play "How do the classes solve this problem?"

1. Crossing a large chasm (jumping not viable.)
Fighter: Is stuck.
Rogue: Might be able to rig up some kind of rope thing and acrobatics his way across, but he might die in the attempt.
Wizard: lol, fly across. OR lol, teleport. OR lol, dimension door.

2. Picking a Lock
Fighter: Kick it hard enough. (Chance to fail.)
Rogue: Try to pick it (chance to fail.)
Wizard: lol, Knock. OR lol, disintegrate. OR lol, sonic damage (take your pick.) One of those is an instant- success for a good number of locks.

3. Killing stuff
Fighter: Hit it with (weapon)
Rogue: sneak up and hit it with (weapon)
Wizard: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH GET REKT SCRUBS! AHAHAHAHAHAHA FIREBALL, POLYMORPH YOU INTO A FROG, SUMMON METRIC ASSTONS OF MONSTERS, TELEPORT YOU 3 MILES STRAIGHT UP, SEND YOU TO ACTUAL HELL, DISINTEGRATE, FLY ABOVE YOU AND DROP A FEATHER TOKEN: BOAT, CHUCK A LITERAL METEOR AT YOU, FORCE YOU TO KILL YOUR FRIENDS, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA I'M SO #*#^#/×&ING BALANCED AHAHAHAHAHA!!

Also you missed the point on one of the previous points. By "Just because two classes are in the same tier doesn't mean they are balanced" actually means something like this:
Just because Wizards and Clerics and Druids have lots and lots of toys doesnt mean they have the best amount of toys and everyone else needs more toys. In fact, since they are in the minority for having lots of toys, (there are fewer teir 1 classes than any other tier except tier 0 with the StP Erudite) it is likely more accurate to say that since the average amount of toys is lower than what they have, they probably have too many toys, rather than everyone else having too few. Look at it this way:

Its lunchtime down at the school. Everyone is given cookies. Every kid gets 3 cookies, except for William, Clarice, and Dave. They get 5 cookies each.
Now, is it more likely that every kid except those three got too few cookies, or that those three kids got too many?

Lets look again:
Everyone shows up to the big fight. Everyone is handed a knife except for these three guys who are given machine guns. Making the fight fair will probably involve replacing those machine guns with knives, not replacing all the knives with machine guns.

Having a game that is majority populated by classes less powerful than the WizClerDru Trinity probably means that the trinity is the problem, not everyone else.

That's why we point to them as the problem, and not the other way around. Also, it would be easier to nerf them than it would be to buff literally everyone else. So it's a more practical way to solve the problem, as well.

Edit: of course, if one's preferred playstyle is to have everyone be godlike levels of powerful, then....yeah, everyone else is unbalanced to your preference. But you should probably be playing Exalted or some other similarly high powered system.

Cluedrew
2016-02-20, 10:16 AM
Ah, the Playgrounder's Fallacy is unfortunately out of game, since the poster directly talked about the D&D.

However, I agree - one thing I love about systems I play is that we have lots of non-combat abilities/skills. We had two guys with "boating" as skill (technically a viking and clan warrior), a blacksmith, girl who always lugged around 10-12 books with her and a bard (without bardic magic). And when I presented them with an underground lake (with a pretty little squid-like monster that slept in the depths) and a boat with hole in it (there were three possible paths, this was the worst of them), they jumped in and made it to the other side before the squid could shake off the sleep. They had fun and felt awesome - and that was the most important thing.

And usually, these parts where they used their non-combat skills/abilities really were the most roleplay-heavy, as opposed to combat.Yeah, here I was invoking the Playgrounder's Fallacy to say 'let us think about some other games and how they handle the situation'. We could make arguments back and forth about how various editions of D&D handle this (and people have) but I think we are missing a lot of ideas if we leave out other systems.


I'm totally willing to have that conversation.

Let's talk about how you can use player's non-combat abilities to advance the story. What can you do that doesn't care if players get teleport? What can you do that gets easier to do with scrying?Political stories jump to mind. Other then moving along the campaign trail faster there is not much good teleport will do. On the other hand knowing what the other parties are doing can be a huge advantage. They made a big speech and because we knew what they were going to say we can release our counter argument minutes later instead of days later.


Let's talk about how to set up an environment (both in and out of combat) that encourages player creativity rather than folding to it.D&D has this problem (in my mind) because it is a game of numbers not a game of situations. You are supposed to get your numbers high enough to defeat the numbers presented to you. But if you change the situation, the game just folds. Other games actually do this as well, but the expectation is you beat the situation, not the numbers, they have more tools in place to make that interesting.


Let's talk about how to use magic (both in general and specifically in 3e which OP mentions) to make the world more interesting, rather than ignore boring parts of it.Other than using magic more organically in world building... what exactly do you mean by this one?


Let's talk about addressing the imbalance between casters and non-casters. Not about which edition dealt with it best, but figure out what solutions you can do in a game to reduce it. Should martial PrCs be better? Should magic items be better? Should something else happen?The best way to do this would be to remove the different sub-systems, but that has other problems. I say stop building the two groups by different standards. I'm not sure how to word the standard used for martials, but it is tied to the war-game days and "realistic" for a very conservative definition of real. I think I can attack faster than a level 20 fighter, not as accurately mind you but faster. On the other hand casters seem to be built on a philosophy of "wouldn't it be cool", if they created there own worlds, could see across the world, control minds and summon & command beings from other worlds? Yes it would be. It would also be cool if marshals could attack faster than the eye could see, could shrug off fireballs without a singed hair, freeze enemies by exerting their battle aura and run straight up walls.


Can we have those conversations? Those seem like cool conversations.Yes we can.

Darth Ultron
2016-02-20, 10:37 AM
@Darth Ultron/value of enumerating non-combat abilities: I think it is necessary and good for both players and DMs to know what tools exist to resolve situations, and I think the best way to do that is clear rules. For example, rules that say "it takes X time to break Y object with Z STR score and Q weapon" are bad, but having rules for how to damage objects is good. The rules should provide clear descriptions of what players do, and set up expectations that those descriptions can be used to advance the story.

The problem is that making some combat rule is fairly simple and straightforward, but making rules for a reality simulation of everything possible is real life is not. And where it gets really bad is where games make a pathetic attempt to have something like ''social interaction rules'' and only write like a page or two. It would be like have a page of combat rules that just said ''um, roll the 1d20, if it is higher then the ac, you hit''. You will note that combat is a bit more complex then that, and often takes a whole chapter. And even if you wanted to add the ''social interaction rules'', you would need to rewrite the monster manual to add a ''social stat block'' to each entry.


I'm totally willing to have that conversation.

Let's talk about how you can use player's non-combat abilities to advance the story. What can you do that doesn't care if players get teleport? What can you do that gets easier to do with scrying?

Let's talk about how to set up an environment (both in and out of combat) that encourages player creativity rather than folding to it.

Let's talk about how to use magic (both in general and specifically in 3e which OP mentions) to make the world more interesting, rather than ignore boring parts of it.

I've found ultra-high level of magic to be the perfect way to do all of the above.

Sadly most games like D&D are stuck in the Dark Ages. The D&D game world is just like Dark Ages Europe with a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of magic. Magic is rare in the default game world per the rules. But there are not rule restrictions on players using magic. So you get players with tons of magic vs a mundane world.

But all you need to do is up the magic in the game world.

Take teleport for example. The default game world is wide open and a PC can teleport all most anywhere. But, in a high magic world, around 75% of places will be protected from teleportation. So suddenly the PC can't just teleport anywhere.




Let's talk about addressing the imbalance between casters and non-casters. Not about which edition dealt with it best, but figure out what solutions you can do in a game to reduce it. Should martial PrCs be better? Should magic items be better? Should something else happen?

The high magic really puts this balance back. It makes magic and spells like teleport useful tools, but they are no longer ''win buttons''.

ace rooster
2016-02-20, 11:01 AM
My take on the situation is that OOC abilities are good, but it has to be all or nothing. 3.5 has many spells that are useful OOC, but very weak mechanics for OOC situations. Mages have far greater abilities OOC simply because they have abilities that are useful OOC. For example, there are no mechanics for the impact of a great warrior on an army, or a great aristocrat on a court.

Cosi
2016-02-20, 11:21 AM
Covering the inherent character concept holes of a class based system.
Fighter is generic martial. Rogue is generic trickster. Wizard is generic arcane caster. Cleric is generic divine caster. (The Fighter/Rogue and Wizard/Cleric separations might not be mandatory.) Every single other class in the game made up cool mechanics associated with a niche case and could conceivably be remade using one of the 4 basics and feats.

Then why have extra classes at all? If you are supposed to build Paladin as Cleric/Fighter + feats, why not spend the space the Paladin class takes up on more feats?


Its lunchtime down at the school. Everyone is given cookies. Every kid gets 3 cookies, except for William, Clarice, and Dave. They get 5 cookies each.
Now, is it more likely that every kid except those three got too few cookies, or that those three kids got too many?

Well, we have an objective measure of how good classes are supposed to be. They're supposed to go 50/50 against CR = Level encounters. Why don't you go run some tests before ranting about what the correct balance point is?


Other than using magic more organically in world building... what exactly do you mean by this one?

I suppose the idea was that you would think about how to do that. The problem OP is having isn't just about not knowing the solution, it's about not implementing the solution. Saying "use magic in the world" is an important step, but so is figuring out how to do that. Some examples:

1. Stuff, both in D&D and in fantasy in general, tends to last a really long time. When someone makes a magic sword, or ring, or trap it simply continues to function until destroyed. It doesn't wear down, and there generally aren't improvements in the process (see: ancient artifacts superior to modern technology). That suggests that production grows in a way that is very different than the real world. There are more books, newspapers, and comics than there were 500 years ago. In the real world, that's because the process of printing has been improving over that period. There aren't just more printing presses today, there are better ones. Conversely, in fantasy, production would have gone up because people kept producing printing presses and those presses kept printing things.
2. Similarly, people in fantasy tend to live a long time. Elves can live hundreds of years, dragons thousands. That has potentially interesting implications for the world. Consider the Fall of Rome. In the real world, Rome fell (simplified, I know) because people came in and sacked it and the knowledge of how to build aqueducts was lost. In fantasy, that might happen because Romulus (the 2,000 year old dragon who founded Rome) died, and he was the only one who knew how to make or operate aqueducts.
3. The entire idea of magic as something personal has implications for the development of society. A significant component of the industrial revolution was the transition from human capital to technological capital. In a world where the most productive members of society are Wizards who are massively more productive than steam engines (or similar technology), even a relatively "high tech" magical society is going to be structured quite differently from real world societies.

One thing that I would discourage in using magic to develop a setting is the Eberron solution, where all the cool magi-tech is just historic tech with crystals. Fundamentally, if you're going to have a society that uses "magic" instead of "tech" to power its gadgets those gadgets should be different from the ones we use.


The problem is that making some combat rule is fairly simple and straightforward, but making rules for a reality simulation of everything possible is real life is not.

Sure. But "just make stuff up" doesn't follow from that at all.


Take teleport for example. The default game world is wide open and a PC can teleport all most anywhere. But, in a high magic world, around 75% of places will be protected from teleportation. So suddenly the PC can't just teleport anywhere.

I disagree with this very strongly. If the function of a "high magic world" is to prevent people from using high level magic, it becomes a low magic world with some useless fluff. Set up the rules and story so that players don't want to use teleport to ignore the plot. Arbitrarily blocking their attempts to do so is just petty.

Psyren
2016-02-20, 12:01 PM
Have world-spanning tales that require the coordination of far-separated city-states or other sites. That adventure you ran at levels 3-7 to gather materials from 4 different, wildly separated, hard-to-reach locations? You need the thing they made again, but it's only a small part of a larger quest, so it's great that you can just teleport to go get them now that you're level 12.

Introduce villains, and even give those "aside" scenes that are so common in movies and the like, showing what the villains are up to. Lay false trails, or give foreshadowing. With villains with sufficient awareness, let them know the PCs are looking. Give the PCs' a chill when the PCs realize the villain just turned to look at them through the scrying sensor. Give the PCs information that you couldn't, otherwise, because they'd have no way of knowing it. Remove the need for spies to tell them second-hand information.

Mostly, it's about rich description and setting things up to the advantage of the enemies. Then let the players do whatever they want in response. Environment is controlled by the home-field advantage, effectively. If it isn't, then...well, this is a really really broad topic and I'm probably not the best to come up with the core premises. But it could be interesting to see what others have to say. :smallsmile:

The key is to have interesting places.

Let's be honest: we're going to skip the boring parts in the narrative gloss, anyway. When the PCs can do the same thing we do by using "fast travel" options of saying "And then they got to their destination" by simply BEING at their destination, the trick becomes giving them reason to be in the "interesting" places.

It's a common tactic to lure PCs to an adventure site by putting it between where they are and where they're motivated to go. This ceases to be viable when they can skip the "flyover country." So, instead, use information they get from scrying or other effects to let them know the area of interest is there; now they'll LOOK for it.

Another way to encourage exploration is to have them looking for something they don't know the location of. Again, scrying and the like can help, but it won't necessarily find exactly where. They'll have to do the legwork just to find the place.

Good stuff here.


The obvious thing to do is to not have your player abilities being automatic solutions - and give the obvious ones drawbacks. Mage Hand or any other low level telekinesis power is great at encouraging player creativity because it gives an option that doesn't directly fit many places but can be used to help tangentally fairly frequently. On the other hand 3.X Rope Trick is terrible for encouraging player creativity because it solves the problem entirely (in 2e it was 10 minutes/level meaning that it provided options for hiding without directly solving a major problem).

Give people round pegs to fit in round holes and creativity isn't needed. It's only needed when you don't have perfect solutions to hand.

This is the key. If magic isn't the hands-down best solution every single time, then the fact that it's A solution isn't nearly as big a problem. Yeah, you can turn ethereal/shadow and walk through the dungeon walls, but what you find there (or what finds you) may be worse than the traps and locked doors. Yeah, you can scry on the big bad, but doing so may reveal your presence to him early and/or cause him to learn something about you too. Yeah, you can rope trick mid-dungeon to regain your resources, but the plot won't necessarily stand still while you're sleeping up there.

In all of those situations, the PCs have a choice. The magic solution may still be the best option given the alternatives, but it isn't the automatically so; the GM has more levers they can pull to make it not be.


Give magic drawbacks. No one cares that magic in Call of Cthulhu is pretty powerful when PCs use it. It's going to blast your sanity when you cast a spell - so you need to be head first in the latrine before using it seems like a good idea, and the downsides are permanent. You don;t need to go that far - but every time a WFRP 2e or 3e mage casts a spell they risk summoning a demon to devour their soul (minor risk - other things are more likely but magic goes badly wrong even when cast successfully).

If you're allowing magic, let the non-casters be mythical. Look to Arthurian legend for inspiration. Or the Song of Roland. Or Outlaws of the Water Margin. Or Beowulf. Or Cuchulain. Or Gilgamesh. Or the Ramayana. I don't care. Not all magic is spellcasting and few settings have a spellcaster/muggle divide and protagonists that are both casters and non-casters.

Give magic rules. It can't for example cross a line (or circle) of salt. Instant defence that can then be disrupted.

This has all been done in other games.

I think drawbacks like these, e.g. magic driving the user insane, have their place. D&D generally isn't it, outside of maybe a gritty horror setting, but it's a route one can take, sure.

Segev
2016-02-20, 02:18 PM
Take teleport for example. The default game world is wide open and a PC can teleport all most anywhere. But, in a high magic world, around 75% of places will be protected from teleportation. So suddenly the PC can't just teleport anywhere.

While a viable thing to do for certain instances - essentially, any time the PCs would resort to it, the NPCs capable of doing so likely do, too - this gets vastly over-used as a crutch by GMs who want to enforce the lower-level travel and obstacle paradigms on higher-level characters. As such, I think it is something to mention only in passing, as a last resort if you can't do it any other way. "Your powers don't work because plot requires they don't" makes the game less fun, because it stops being a game of your character and becomes a game of "guess what the DM will let you do."

Darth Ultron
2016-02-20, 03:07 PM
I disagree with this very strongly. If the function of a "high magic world" is to prevent people from using high level magic, it becomes a low magic world with some useless fluff. Set up the rules and story so that players don't want to use teleport to ignore the plot. Arbitrarily blocking their attempts to do so is just petty.

So by ''set up the rules'' your talking about just banning teleport and other things you don't like? Or going the ''ritual'' route so that teleport can't be used on a whim or tactically?.

And by story, is this just were a whimpy DM begs the players to ''don't ruin my game bro?"



While a viable thing to do for certain instances - essentially, any time the PCs would resort to it, the NPCs capable of doing so likely do, too - this gets vastly over-used as a crutch by GMs who want to enforce the lower-level travel and obstacle paradigms on higher-level characters. As such, I think it is something to mention only in passing, as a last resort if you can't do it any other way. "Your powers don't work because plot requires they don't" makes the game less fun, because it stops being a game of your character and becomes a game of "guess what the DM will let you do."

It's a lot more like ''the world makes sense''.

Default D&D assumes that magic and monsters and fantasy have been around for a thousand years or so...and everyone has utterly ignored this fact and still lives and acts like they were in Dark Ages Europe. My world has people, starting a thousand years ago, looking and seeing and understanding and preparing for the fact that the world has magic and monsters and fantasy.

So it's not because of ''plot'', it's more ''most important places will be protected from teleport...in one way or another''. And it's like anything else: some places are well defended, some are only half way protected, some have outdated methods, some have huge security holes, some have huge security leaks, and so on. The point is a jerk player can't just spit all over the table and say ''I teleports over there and killsz them all give me XP!''.

Cosi
2016-02-20, 03:17 PM
So by ''set up the rules'' your talking about just banning teleport and other things you don't like? Or going the ''ritual'' route so that teleport can't be used on a whim or tactically?.

You could do any number of things.

You could run adventures where you are supposed to go over there and kill all the monsters, a task for which teleport is not particularly effective.

You could resolve the teleport ambush/attack by giving people substantial home ground advantage. Imagine if there weren't short duration buffs, and people got big bonuses for fighting "at home". Players wouldn't use teleport to gank their enemies. Instead, they'd go sabotage their enemies defenses. You know, an adventure.

You can give enemies deterrents of various forms. Nothing physically stops the US from nuking Russia or China, but those countries don't nuke each other.

I'm sure wiser men than I can think of more solutions.


And by story, is this just were a whimpy DM begs the players to ''don't ruin my game bro?"

If giving characters the ability to solve their problems ruins the story, write a better story.


The point is a jerk player can't just spit all over the table and say ''I teleports over there and killsz them all give me XP!''.

But you haven't solved that problem. You removed the ability, not the incentive. People will still fly over there and kill things for XP. Or walk over there and kill things for XP. If the players would rather kill things than engage with your proposed plot, either your plot stinks (more kindly, does not match the preferences of the other players) or the game gives them an incentive to do something else.

Darth Ultron
2016-02-20, 03:36 PM
But you haven't solved that problem. You removed the ability, not the incentive. People will still fly over there and kill things for XP. Or walk over there and kill things for XP. If the players would rather kill things than engage with your proposed plot, either your plot stinks (more kindly, does not match the preferences of the other players) or the game gives them an incentive to do something else.

I'm not sure removed the ability is accurate, as the ability still exists and can be used...just it might not work out 100% the way the person using it wants it too.

You seem to talk a lot about in game reasons to not use abilities, but only only vague agreement ones? Like all the wizards in the world sign an arms limitation treaty that says ''I will not teleport around like a dumb jerk optimizer''? But your against any in game actions like the an teleportation enforcement group or magical defenses?

So your solution is to, somehow willingly, just not have the player use any ability that might have a negative game effect?

Cosi
2016-02-20, 07:38 PM
Like all the wizards in the world sign an arms limitation treaty that says ''I will not teleport around like a dumb jerk optimizer''?

You remember the Cold War? Big affair, two world-spanning empires with nuclear arsenals capable of wiping life from the face of the planet? Ring any bells? Remember how despite the existence of literal orders of magnitudes more nukes than were needed to kill everyone, no one got nuked?

It turns out that just having the ability to do something doesn't cause you to do it. If you set up people's incentives such that they do not want to use teleport to do ... whatever constitutes being a "jerk optimizer", they won't do that. Conversely, if you simply remove (or limit) teleport, people will figure out how to do whatever "jerk optimizer" behavior you don't want them to do as best as they are able.


So your solution is to, somehow willingly, just not have the player use any ability that might have a negative game effect?

The solution (not "my" solution) is two-fold:

1. Don't give players abilities you don't want them to have. If you don't like what teleport does to the game, don't put teleport in the game.
2. Set up incentives so that the players want to do the things your game is about. If you want to have a high concept game of political intrigue, make the rewards from political intrigue something players care about.

Darth Ultron
2016-02-20, 08:27 PM
You remember the Cold War? Big affair, two world-spanning empires with nuclear arsenals capable of wiping life from the face of the planet? Ring any bells? Remember how despite the existence of literal orders of magnitudes more nukes than were needed to kill everyone, no one got nuked?

It turns out that just having the ability to do something doesn't cause you to do it. If you set up people's incentives such that they do not want to use teleport to do ... whatever constitutes being a "jerk optimizer", they won't do that. Conversely, if you simply remove (or limit) teleport, people will figure out how to do whatever "jerk optimizer" behavior you don't want them to do as best as they are able.

Ok, but can you explain how to do this in the game?




The solution (not "my" solution) is two-fold:

1. Don't give players abilities you don't want them to have. If you don't like what teleport does to the game, don't put teleport in the game.
2. Set up incentives so that the players want to do the things your game is about. If you want to have a high concept game of political intrigue, make the rewards from political intrigue something players care about.

So ''your'' solutions are ban things and add houserules? ok...

Cosi
2016-02-20, 08:32 PM
Ok, but can you explain how to do this in the game?

hide life is a reasonable example of something that makes teleport ganking people a lot less good. If you can't kill Orcus until you raid the tomb where he keeps his spleen, you can't just use teleport to kill him.

Also, I don't know what you mean by "jerk optimizer", so I can't tell you how to stop people from being "jerk optimizers".


So ''your'' solutions are ban things and add houserules? ok...

If the rules of the game do not do what you want, what possible solution could exist that does not involve changing the rules?

Darth Ultron
2016-02-20, 08:40 PM
hide life is a reasonable example of something that makes teleport ganking people a lot less good. If you can't kill Orcus until you raid the tomb where he keeps his spleen, you can't just use teleport to kill him.

So your saying use a higher level of magic in the game....exactly like I said?



If the rules of the game do not do what you want, what possible solution could exist that does not involve changing the rules?

Well there is:

1)Ask the players to not be jerks
2)Bribe the players to not be jerks
3)Beg the players to not be jerks

For just three examples that don't change the rules.

Cosi
2016-02-20, 08:47 PM
So your saying use a higher level of magic in the game....exactly like I said?

No, pretty much the opposite of what you said. You want to tell players they can't use their abilities to break the game, I want to set things up so that players won't use their abilities to break the game.


1)Ask the players to not be jerks
2)Bribe the players to not be jerks
3)Beg the players to not be jerks

For just three examples that don't change the rules.

But those don't solve the problem, they just ignore it. That's fine as far as it goes, but I don't see why you care what abilities people have if you're simply going to ignore whatever problems come up.

JoeJ
2016-02-20, 08:47 PM
I disagree with this very strongly. If the function of a "high magic world" is to prevent people from using high level magic, it becomes a low magic world with some useless fluff. Set up the rules and story so that players don't want to use teleport to ignore the plot. Arbitrarily blocking their attempts to do so is just petty.

I agree, abilities that PCs are allowed to have in the first place should not be arbitrarily blocked.

That said, however, in a game like D&D (any version), a party able to teleport should be among a very small and powerful elite. They are the world's superheroes and/or villains. As such, they are not unknown to others in that group! An intelligent BBEG at that level should be able to predict who will most likely try to stop them, and have a pretty good idea of that group's abilities and common tactics. They will be prepared. The PCs can teleport anywhere in the world they want to, but if they suddenly appear in the middle of the BBEG's throne room, it is likely to go very badly for them unless they are extremely clever or extremely lucky. Maybe instead it's better to teleport to some hidden location nearby and change their appearance so they can sneak in. Or create a diversion before teleporting in. Or maybe teleporting in is the diversion and the real attack is somewhere else.

Another way to deal with teleporting parties is to make teleport the price of admission. Maybe there's no practical way for the party to get where they need to go except by teleporting. Or perhaps they have to visit X different locations within a short time, where X is based on the number of teleport spells they have available. That way, instead of frustrating players by negating a character ability, you've affirmed the player's choice, since that ability is critical to success.

neonchameleon
2016-02-21, 12:19 AM
Stop being obtuse. They aren't making numeric or factual claims. They haven't said it is "beating 3e". They haven't said it has "sold more units than 3e did at this point after release". They said it is "on track to beat 3e". Which they could have said about any edition! Because they did not use numbers! If your claim that BECMI was in fact the best selling edition was true, they could make the same claim about it and it would be exactly as true!

If I wanted this much political spin I'd be watching the politics. You have presented no evidence than 3.0 or 3.5 or even the two combined were more popular than BECMI and even using your own evidence shows that WotC do not say that 5e is on course to be the most popular edition of D&D ever - which they would boast if it even looked vaguely likely. Being more popular than 3.X is a much lower bar.


If "can expect to play in the same party and not overshadow each other" doesn't mean "balanced", what balanced possibly mean? Stop being stubborn to "prove" that Wizards are too good.

Being in the same tier is necessary but not sufficient for balance.

To illustrate we're going to invent a class called the Sorceror2. The Sorceror2 is a Sorceror with a d8 hit dice, three high saves, 4+Int Modifier skills/level, medium BAB, and twice as many spell slots per level as the sorceror has. Is that balanced against the sorceror? Of course not. It is strictly better than the sorceror - but it does not have the versatility to make it a tier 1 class (it's only marginally more versatile than the classic sorceror).

Therefore the Sorceror2 and the Sorceror are the same tier but not balanced against each other. Therefore to be able to say two classes are balanced you need to show more than merely that they are the same tier. Merely being able to assert they are the same tier is not sufficient.


rope trick solves the problem of getting to rest without the DM attacking you. This should not be a problem.

Why not?

Kelb_Panthera
2016-02-21, 01:32 AM
Rope trick isn't that big a deal.

Invisible, stataionary objects can be detected on a DC 40 spot check, give or take a few points for size and the spell does nothing to conceal the signs of the party's presence for which a good tracker will be looking. Finding the entrance to the rope-trick space and building a fire under it to fill the space with smoke tends to really screw with the players' sense of safety in there.

My players stopped relying on rope trick as their sole means of guarding camp pretty quick when they realized it was fallible and I wasn't going to let them pretend it wasn't.

I'm not saying to just pretend every enemy had a skilled tracker all along just because rope trick annoys you but it's just not the iron fortress many players seem to think it is.

Talakeal
2016-02-21, 02:00 AM
They are good, but the big flaw with games like D&D is that they have very little rules support for anything except combat.

Anything you do in a game like D&D out of combat has, maybe, three rules that cover it...and that is it. The other 99% of everything a DM has to just make up and wing it.

And D&D really does have too much focus on combat, and the few non combat things available do have the flavor and feel of ''ok, lets make a roll to get this boring stuff out of the way quick and have some combat''. Knowledge skills are a great example here(''DM I'm a lazy player just tell me stuff'') and social skills(''I rolled and talked to them or whatever and they let us pass, can we fight something now?")

And the Look at The Sheet Problem is a very big problem with many gamers nowadays. Once players just used their imaginations and personal skills and abilities. But now the player just sits there mindlessly and looks for the answer on the character sheet. A lot of this comes from video game brainwashing, and (bad) fiction. I've seen too many players that have the game play grind to a halt as they can't open a locked door, as none of the characters have an exact named skill or ability that says ''can open locked doors''. They are down right amazed they are ''allowed'' to bash the door down or even climb in the window, and would have never thought of it.

You know, I hate to say it, but I think I actually agree with Darth Ultron for once.

My players typically try the most direct solution to a problem, and if it doesn't work they get frustrated and just shutdown, refusing to think outside the box or even try different listed abilities.

The combination of refusal to think outside the box and giving up when they don't succeed on their first try is very annoying.

Segev
2016-02-21, 02:53 AM
You know, I hate to say it, but I think I actually agree with Darth Ultron for once.

My players typically try the most direct solution to a problem, and if it doesn't work they get frustrated and just shutdown, refusing to think outside the box or even try different listed abilities.

The combination of refusal to think outside the box and giving up when they don't succeed on their first try is very annoying.

Not trying to come off harshly, here, so I apologize if I do, but...

From the thread on your campaign, it didn't sound like they gave up after only one try. It sounded like they tried a lot of things that didn't work, and got discouraged because they couldn't think of anything that would. It may help to look at what they tried to do, and, instead of simply explaining "that won't work, because..." try to instead say, "the things you will need to accomplish, overcome, or change to make that work include..."

So, for instance, if the lord of the castle won't take the threat seriously, don't just say "he can't be convinced," explain what his reasoning is (or that they would need to know it, and could try to find it out) and then suggest what they would have to convince him of in order to change his mind. Again, not just giving them "free" information they shouldn't have, but help them frame the obstacles as things they can attempt to overcome. If they don't know what the source of an obstacle is and need to in order to solve it, point them towards ways of discovering that obstacle's cause and then towards figuring out ways to overcome it.

And don't just tell them, "That won't work." If they have a lot of things they want to try, none of which would be enough on their own, remember to bring them all back up when helping them brainstorm, and think in terms of what can be tried in conjunction. Basically, make the "impossible" ideas they have not "you can't succeed," but rather a series of smaller, possibly surmountable obstacles.

Cosi
2016-02-21, 06:42 AM
Being in the same tier is necessary but not sufficient for balance.

To illustrate we're going to invent a class called the Sorceror2. The Sorceror2 is a Sorceror with a d8 hit dice, three high saves, 4+Int Modifier skills/level, medium BAB, and twice as many spell slots per level as the sorceror has. Is that balanced against the sorceror? Of course not. It is strictly better than the sorceror - but it does not have the versatility to make it a tier 1 class (it's only marginally more versatile than the classic sorceror).

Therefore the Sorceror2 and the Sorceror are the same tier but not balanced against each other. Therefore to be able to say two classes are balanced you need to show more than merely that they are the same tier. Merely being able to assert they are the same tier is not sufficient.

That's not how it would work, actually. Y'see, JaronK drops classes if there are other, strictly better, classes at a given tier. See Rogue v Factotum. So the existence of the Sorcerer2 makes the Sorcerer T3.

Also, if you don't think the tiers themselves make balance predictions, why are you using them? You should use things that do make balance predictions. Like the SGT, which puts Wizard, Sorcerer, and Beguiler at roughly the same balance point.


Why not?

Because the problem people complain about (5 minute adventuring day) is made worse by DMs ganking players when they rest.

Arbane
2016-02-21, 12:58 PM
Because the problem people complain about (5 minute adventuring day) is made worse by DMs ganking players when they rest.

Yes. The way to avoid getting attacked while resting after a 5-minute workday is to make it a THREE-minute workday and keep a few spells in reserve. :smallyuk:

JoeJ
2016-02-21, 02:12 PM
Yes. The way to avoid getting attacked while resting after a 5-minute workday is to make it a THREE-minute workday and keep a few spells in reserve. :smallyuk:

That's fine, but my games don't have a button to put the rest of the universe on Pause. It usually only takes one experience of coming down from Rope Trick to find the dungeon empty and the BBEG gone (along with the treasure) to put an end to 5 minute days.

Talakeal
2016-02-21, 04:06 PM
Not trying to come off harshly, here, so I apologize if I do, but...

From the thread on your campaign, it didn't sound like they gave up after only one try. It sounded like they tried a lot of things that didn't work, and got discouraged because they couldn't think of anything that would. It may help to look at what they tried to do, and, instead of simply explaining "that won't work, because..." try to instead say, "the things you will need to accomplish, overcome, or change to make that work include..."

So, for instance, if the lord of the castle won't take the threat seriously, don't just say "he can't be convinced," explain what his reasoning is (or that they would need to know it, and could try to find it out) and then suggest what they would have to convince him of in order to change his mind. Again, not just giving them "free" information they shouldn't have, but help them frame the obstacles as things they can attempt to overcome. If they don't know what the source of an obstacle is and need to in order to solve it, point them towards ways of discovering that obstacle's cause and then towards figuring out ways to overcome it.

And don't just tell them, "That won't work." If they have a lot of things they want to try, none of which would be enough on their own, remember to bring them all back up when helping them brainstorm, and think in terms of what can be tried in conjunction. Basically, make the "impossible" ideas they have not "you can't succeed," but rather a series of smaller, possibly surmountable obstacles.

I wasn't really talking about that session. Honestly, I didn't even realize that was going on until the next day when one of the players told me that "After they wasted so much time working on a plan that was doomed for failure they simple stopped caring about the game and didn't bother trying to come up with another approach."

It is a recurring problem I have in my group. The party either gets discouraged when their first approach doesn't work or they simply over-analyze a situation and paralyze themselves with doubt, heck sometimes they do this over things that weren't a problem in the first. To continue a door analogy, they convince themselves that they have no means to bypass a lock before checking to see if the door is even locked in the first place.

One time I had an entire campaign ruined because the players were confronting the BBEG just as she was about to finish a ritual that would destroy the world. One player asked her nicely not to, failed the (admittedly high DC) diplomacy check, and then the players shrugged their shoulders and decided to just wait for the end. After the campaign they asked me what I expected them to do, and I said almost anything, but most probably simply attacking her.

Segev
2016-02-21, 04:09 PM
I'm afraid I can't give useful advice; sorry. I don't know your players well enough to get into their heads, and we only have your own view on things as a window into what's going on. Since you don't know what's paralyzing them nor how to work around it, we don't either. I wish I could offer more help.

I don't suppose you could suggest to them that they start a thread on these forums to crowdsource ideas the next time you have a problem like this? Give them a week to come up with a few solutions to try, and talk with us about it. Aside from the fact that we'll probably have ideas for them, it will also let them give us some insight into their expectations, their experiences, and just learn their mindset, which will help us better communicate with both you and your players and maybe figure out what the hang-ups are.

Darth Ultron
2016-02-21, 10:32 PM
My players typically try the most direct solution to a problem, and if it doesn't work they get frustrated and just shutdown, refusing to think outside the box or even try different listed abilities.

The combination of refusal to think outside the box and giving up when they don't succeed on their first try is very annoying.

I encounter this play style a lot. Way too many players make a single, half-attempt to do something, and then just shutdown when it does not work. Worse are the players that need everything hand held for them all metagaming OOC. I'm just not a fan of that play style, where the DM says things like ''well special snowflake players your great and good idea of pouring water on the fire did not put it out, but I'm sure you will think of something else like tossing dirt on it(wink, wink, nudge, nudge).''

Though the truth is you'd need a whole other role playing game to cover out of combat abilities.

neonchameleon
2016-02-22, 07:38 AM
Also, if you don't think the tiers themselves make balance predictions, why are you using them? You should use things that do make balance predictions. Like the SGT, which puts Wizard, Sorcerer, and Beguiler at roughly the same balance point.

Because you either didn't read my comment or didn't take the point.

The tiers themselves do make balance predictions. To use another real world sports analogy, tier 1 is professional athletes who are also drug cheats. Tier 5 is little league. (And yes, the difference is that extreme at 13th level)

To say that two classes are tier 3 is about the same as saying we have two college teams. Are there squash matches between college teams in any sport? Yes there are.

And you only have such a variety of tiers in 3.X because the designers screwed up very badly. The fighter was intended to be balanced against the wizard.


Because the problem people complain about (5 minute adventuring day) is made worse by DMs ganking players when they rest.

Solving the 5 minute adventuring day by giving people automatic access to resting is like solving the problems of Monopoly by putting money on Free Parking - it sounds like a good idea but in practice makes the problem worse, and the game both longer and no more interesting. If you want to solve the 5 minute adventuring day you do it by taking away the PCs rests and once more going back to the roots of D&D.

In oD&D yes there were times given for recovery - but the fundamental rule was that you rested and recovered spells in downtime. You took part in expeditions to dungeons - but you needed to keep your speed up as there was a wandering monster check every ten minutes of in-game time (meaning an attempt to try resting in the dungeon would be 48 wandering monster checks; no sensible party would risk that).

Yes, an oD&D wizard could shoot their entire load in one five minute orgy of destruction. But if they did so they'd be useless for the rest of the adventure and they knew it. Doing so regularly meant that the pointy hat your wizard wore was one marked with the letter D rather than one with stars on it.

But the nature of the game changed (with Dragonlance being a big turning point). You can justify a wandering monster check every ten minutes in an artificial dungeon environment; it gets silly in most other situations. Which meant that because Gygax had been silly enough to write defined times for resting and then the D&D rules were being used for something they weren't designed for the expectation was that wizards would go into most fights fully loaded with spells - after all you only need a good night's sleep to recover your spells. The 3.X designers didn't realise this when they streamlined the D&D rules. (Not entirely their fault - the 2e designers hadn't either).

But the way to solve the five minute adventuring day isn't to let wizards rest whenever they want or even nightly; that only rewards them for bad behaviour. It's to get them to play using the playstyle they were intended for - a miserly one. If a PC either doesn't know when they will next be able to recover their spells or knows there will be a serious cost for doing so then each spell becomes valuable. And any wizard who plays expecting a five minute adventuring day is a very silly one and learns not to.

goto124
2016-02-22, 08:29 AM
Usual advice for 5-min adventuring day is to place time-restricted goals. Say, kill the lich in 3 days or the world explodes. Simplistic example to illustrate the point.

Segev
2016-02-22, 08:44 AM
I encounter this play style a lot. Way too many players make a single, half-attempt to do something, and then just shutdown when it does not work. Worse are the players that need everything hand held for them all metagaming OOC. I'm just not a fan of that play style, where the DM says things like ''well special snowflake players your great and good idea of pouring water on the fire did not put it out, but I'm sure you will think of something else like tossing dirt on it(wink, wink, nudge, nudge).''

Though the truth is you'd need a whole other role playing game to cover out of combat abilities.

Why is it that you feel the need to dress up anything that isn't your preferred style as something hideously idiotic?

I mean, I could phrase my counterpoint thusly: "Not everybody enjoys games where the GM laughs at his players' stupidity for not correctly guessing that the way to put out the fire is to chant the ancient rite of 'O Great GM Save Us' that he mentioned in passing two days before character creation started," but that wouldn't exactly be conducive to a discussion of play styles.

obryn
2016-02-22, 10:13 AM
Usual advice for 5-min adventuring day is to place time-restricted goals. Say, kill the lich in 3 days or the world explodes. Simplistic example to illustrate the point.
That's one way. It's definitely not the only way, and IMO certainly not the best way, especially in an extended campaign.

themaque
2016-02-22, 10:19 AM
That's one way. It's definitely not the only way, and IMO certainly not the best way, especially in an extended campaign.

That was one example of an overarching mindset I think. One that the players might not always realize can happen; that the world doesn't stop just because they do.

Every time you rest that gives your BBEG time to rest or plan as well. Take a week off to craft? Goblins get a week to get entrenched into their new home.

Vague examples of an overarching mindset I think was his point. And I like this play style, especially in an extended campaign. But as is always said, not everything is for everyone.

Psyren
2016-02-22, 11:50 AM
You know, I hate to say it, but I think I actually agree with Darth Ultron for once.

My players typically try the most direct solution to a problem, and if it doesn't work they get frustrated and just shutdown, refusing to think outside the box or even try different listed abilities.

The combination of refusal to think outside the box and giving up when they don't succeed on their first try is very annoying.

There are two possibilities here:

1) Your players don't really like puzzle-solving, in which case your attempts to insert it in the game are going to fall flat no matter what. Cut it back or remove it entirely.

2) Your players do like puzzle solving, but for whatever reason can't seem to solve yours. This could be on them - maybe for instance they aren't paying attention when you're dropping clues or whatnot - but I find the more likely problem is that the puzzle design needs improvement. (Hell, even if it's their own refusal to pay attention causing the problem, improved design can solve it.) The key is to have multiple solutions to puzzles, and provide hints/affordances without handholding.

Remember - your ultimate and paramount goal is to facilitate fun, and if the current puzzles aren't fun, you are the one with the most power to change that.

Segev
2016-02-22, 12:03 PM
There are two possibilities here:

1) Your players don't really like puzzle-solving, in which case your attempts to insert it in the game are going to fall flat no matter what. Cut it back or remove it entirely.

2) Your players do like puzzle solving, but for whatever reason can't seem to solve yours. This could be on them - maybe for instance they aren't paying attention when you're dropping clues or whatnot - but I find the more likely problem is that the puzzle design needs improvement. (Hell, even if it's their own refusal to pay attention causing the problem, improved design can solve it.) The key is to have multiple solutions to puzzles, and provide hints/affordances without handholding.

Remember - your ultimate and paramount goal is to facilitate fun, and if the current puzzles aren't fun, you are the one with the most power to change that.

This isn't about puzzles, but about having problems to which the players apparently have trouble finding workable solutions. The exact reason for this is a discussion that has already had an entire thread devoted to it.

ImNotTrevor
2016-02-22, 12:58 PM
This isn't about puzzles, but about having problems to which the players apparently have trouble finding workable solutions. The exact reason for this is a discussion that has already had an entire thread devoted to it.

There isn't really a practical difference between "How do we solve this puzzle?" And "How do we prove that the Duke is secretly a werewolf?" Both are puzzles, just different kinds of puzzles. Both are problem-solving exercises. One is a bit more involved, but both are "puzzles." Perhaps its a bit pedantic, but it's one of those "technically not wrong" sorts of things.

Also, in situations like these I can take from the Apocalypse World GM rules. Especially "Warn of the consequences, ask if they're sure." Just tell them the risks of the most direct action and ask if they are 100% sure they want to continue. It doesn't have to be incredibly specific, but something like
"You can do a direct assault on the Duke's castle, but he has like 200 soldiers in his barracks. Are you sure?"

You can also throw out suggestions for potential solutions. Always throw out multiple that have the potential to work. This obviously only works when there is more than one solution to a problem.

Jay R
2016-02-22, 03:07 PM
Usual advice for 5-min adventuring day is to place time-restricted goals. Say, kill the lich in 3 days or the world explodes. Simplistic example to illustrate the point.

I prefer a solution that is less arbitrary. For instance, there's another party trying to retrieve the McGuffin for another wizard. If you protect yourself from advancing for over 23 hours every day, you won't get there first.

icefractal
2016-02-22, 06:14 PM
I prefer a solution that is less arbitrary. For instance, there's another party trying to retrieve the McGuffin for another wizard. If you protect yourself from advancing for over 23 hours every day, you won't get there first.Which, speaking of less arbitrary, does require determining it based off concrete steps if you want it not to be fiat.

By which I mean - Good:
These are the steps needed to reach the McGuffin.
Here are the hazards in the way.
This is how many days the rival party will take to reach it.

Bad:
If the party does at least three fights a day, they get there first.
Two fights a day, they get there the same time.
One fight a day, they're too late.

And being based off actual time means that there are factors other than effort that make a big difference. Find an alternate travel method that takes a week less time? You got there a week ahead of the other party then, they're not going to "rubber band" their way right behind you.

Not saying you were advocating the latter or anything! Just bringing it up, because I've seen it show up in more than one adventure.

Darth Ultron
2016-02-23, 12:19 AM
Why is it that you feel the need to dress up anything that isn't your preferred style as something hideously idiotic?


My style is just "act like an intelligent being" and "use common sense".

Milo v3
2016-02-23, 12:31 AM
My style is just "act like an intelligent being" and "use common sense".
Saying that implies that people who don't match your preferences aren't acting like intelligent beings and don't use common sense. That is a very hostile stance to take.

Pyrous
2016-02-23, 11:35 AM
My style is just "act like an intelligent being" and "use common sense".

Ah, ye olde act-as-the-GM-thinks-you-should style. Why do you even need players for that?

Segev
2016-02-23, 11:48 AM
My style is just "act like an intelligent being" and "use common sense".


Saying that implies that people who don't match your preferences aren't acting like intelligent beings and don't use common sense. That is a very hostile stance to take.


Ah, ye olde act-as-the-GM-thinks-you-should style. Why do you even need players for that?

I admit to being puzzled by Darth Ultron's claim. Is he stating that he is a perfect simulator of all human activity and decisions, as well as of all physics, fictional and factual, in all possible settings?

CharonsHelper
2016-02-23, 12:06 PM
I admit to being puzzled by Darth Ultron's claim. Is he stating that he is a perfect simulator of all human activity and decisions, as well as of all physics, fictional and factual, in all possible settings?

Yeah - that's a totally ridiculous sentiment... because that position is already taken by me! *nods convincingly*

Segev
2016-02-23, 12:13 PM
Yeah - that's a totally ridiculous sentiment... because that position is already taken by me! *nods convincingly*

Maybe you and he are two of the three magi, for redundancy?

tomandtish
2016-02-23, 12:26 PM
I saw an idea (in Czech language) somewhere on the internet few years ago which provided simple rituals, that could defend you from certain spells.

These were based on folk lore. E.g. if you get a hex/curse, you should turn around 3x and then toss a handful of salt over your left shoulder (this is an actual piece of folklore). This worked for hexes/curses until LVL 3 or so (you also had to pass Willpower roll or something).

For defence against scrying you had to use a blessed chalk and draw some words & lines around the protected space.

If you wanted to temporarily protect against teleportation, you had to put nails (lead? iron?) into all four corners of the room/form a square, put a candle in the middle and crush some dried leaves. It worked until the candle was put off or you ran out of leaves.

Basically, the rituals provided possibility for everyone - even mundanes - to protect themselves from some magic. However, no idea how this could work in D&D (it was different game system).

In a D20 Modern game I ran, Supernatural (the early seasons) became required watching for this very reason.

CharonsHelper
2016-02-23, 12:41 PM
Maybe you and he are two of the three magi, for redundancy?

Part of the department of redundancy department?

neonchameleon
2016-02-23, 01:15 PM
My style is just "act like an intelligent being" and "use common sense".

So tell me, how convincing a simulation of an intelligent being do you make when acting like one? And your idea of common sense is common to who exactly?

Cluedrew
2016-02-23, 04:24 PM
My style is just "act like an intelligent being" and "use common sense".Besides some other issues people have raised with this it doesn't even describe the a play style.

It says nothing of GM/player power balance, game focus (combat, social, exploration, etc.), power level, level of improvisation and so on. All of these things are traditionally grouped as parts of play style, but none of them can be derived from intelligence or common sense. Not to mention related issues like the system used, group size, session length & campaign length. The first and last of that group be very significant, don't have tones of experience with large variations in the others.

So are you saying "any play-style that fits these criteria is valid"? Because I would agree with that as a general rule. There are a few extreme cases that fall outside of that rule.

Psyren
2016-02-24, 12:52 PM
This isn't about puzzles, but about having problems to which the players apparently have trouble finding workable solutions. The exact reason for this is a discussion that has already had an entire thread devoted to it.

As ImNotTrevor correctly indicated, this is semantic - just replace "puzzle" with "problem-solving exercise" or "mystery" if you prefer that terminology, but it doesn't change my point. If your players are wholly against such a campaign element/style, then you may have modifications to make. If they like it (or at least don't mind) then the question becomes how to make it more palatable. But in both cases, the power lies with the GM to make things better.

Cluedrew
2016-02-24, 05:54 PM
I think a puzzle is different from a mystery and both are subsets of problem-solving exercises. But that may just be my personal definitions. In all games you have to have the right combination of stuff that everyone around the table has enough of what they want and little enough of what they don't want that everyone can enjoy the game. If you can't do that well, I guess the game was not meant to be.

I have some friends who are also into role-playing who I almost never play with because they play a type of game that I don't enjoy. So I don't play with them and they can enjoy their game.

Footnote On Semantics: I get what you are trying to say, but that is not actually what semantic is supposed to mean. A semantic difference is a difference in the meaning of words. I have no idea why it gets used to mean the opposite sometimes. The meaning of words may evolve but I think it is bad if the same word can mean to opposite things in the same context.

Darth Ultron
2016-02-24, 07:43 PM
Besides some other issues people have raised with this it doesn't even describe the a play style.


I think this describes the basics of a playstlye. For example a lot of bad players play D&D like ''kill everything that moves''. And, sure, that is a valid ''play style'' for immature brain dead people. A common ''intelligent'' one is where the players are super parinoid that the DM is out to get them so they metagame up to 11 and try to ''beat the DM'', and not play the game at all.

JNAProductions
2016-02-24, 07:44 PM
I think this describes the basics of a playstlye. For example a lot of bad players play D&D like ''kill everything that moves''. And, sure, that is a valid ''play style'' for immature brain dead people. A common ''intelligent'' one is where the players are super parinoid that the DM is out to get them so they metagame up to 11 and try to ''beat the DM'', and not play the game at all.

So what you're saying is that, for the people that like to just play it as escapists, kill the evil people fantasy, are immature and brain dead?

That's, uh... That's rather rude.

goto124
2016-02-24, 07:46 PM
Footnote On Semantics:

Semantics :smalltongue:


just replace "puzzle" with "problem-solving exercise" or "mystery" if you prefer that terminology, but it doesn't change my point. If your players are wholly against such a campaign element/style, then you may have modifications to make. If they like it (or at least don't mind) then the question becomes how to make it more palatable. But in both cases, the power lies with the GM to make things better.

Come to think of it, OOCAs change puzzles in a fundamental way. If searching a room is a puzzle where the players state where their characters are searching ("under the bed, inside the cardboard, behind the painting"), Search checks skip that puzzle.

If trying to reach to a diplomatic agreement with the queen is a puzzle where players act out how exactly their characters present their arguments, Diplomancy checks can reduce that puzzle to the players stating what their arguments are, without actually acting out how their characters present to the queen.

So OOCA does depend on what sort of puzzles the players want. What do the players want to go through in detail, go through in less detail, or skip through entirely.

Jay R
2016-02-24, 07:54 PM
Saying that implies that people who don't match your preferences aren't acting like intelligent beings and don't use common sense. That is a very hostile stance to take.

Fortunately, he did not take that particular "hostile stance". You can only twist his words into implying your conclusion by adding the assumption that there is only one way intelligent people with common sense would ever act, and he made no such absurd claim.


I admit to being puzzled by Darth Ultron's claim. Is he stating that he is a perfect simulator of all human activity and decisions, as well as of all physics, fictional and factual, in all possible settings?

No, he is not stating that, as is proven by the fact that he did not state that.

If you want to know what he is stating, then block-copy his exact words and put them in quotes. Anything else is a clumsy and obvious falsehood.

As somebody recently asked, "Why is it that you feel the need to dress up anything that isn't your preferred style as something hideously idiotic?"

Segev
2016-02-24, 09:24 PM
Fortunately, he did not take that particular "hostile stance". You can only twist his words into implying your conclusion by adding the assumption that there is only one way intelligent people with common sense would ever act, and he made no such absurd claim.



No, he is not stating that, as is proven by the fact that he did not state that.

If you want to know what he is stating, then block-copy his exact words and put them in quotes. Anything else is a clumsy and obvious falsehood.

As somebody recently asked, "Why is it that you feel the need to dress up anything that isn't your preferred style as something hideously idiotic?"

Meh, you're right, I shouldn't be responding in this fashion. I will drop it.

Jay R
2016-02-24, 10:32 PM
I will drop it.

Oh, well done. Bravo!

Milo v3
2016-02-24, 10:43 PM
Fortunately, he did not take that particular "hostile stance". You can only twist his words into implying your conclusion by adding the assumption that there is only one way intelligent people with common sense would ever act, and he made no such absurd claim.
I did not twist his words. I was merely stating the implication and hoping that such an implication was incorrect, as it would be a hostile stance.

ImNotTrevor
2016-02-25, 05:20 AM
Fortunately, he did not take that particular "hostile stance". You can only twist his words into implying your conclusion by adding the assumption that there is only one way intelligent people with common sense would ever act, and he made no such absurd claim.

No, he is not stating that, as is proven by the fact that he did not state that.

If you want to know what he is stating, then block-copy his exact words and put them in quotes. Anything else is a clumsy and obvious falsehood.

As somebody recently asked, "Why is it that you feel the need to dress up anything that isn't your preferred style as something hideously idiotic?"

In the meantime, he said something even MORE outlandish and obviously provoking.

I'm interested to see how this is construed as non-insulting:


I think this describes the basics of a playstlye. For example a lot of bad players play D&D like ''kill everything that moves''. And, sure, that is a valid ''play style'' for immature brain dead people. A common ''intelligent'' one is where the players are super parinoid that the DM is out to get them so they metagame up to 11 and try to ''beat the DM'', and not play the game at all.

Ah yes, the entirely reasonable stance of "people who have X kind of fun are immature and brain dead."

Bruh.

BRUH.

Bruuuuuuuuuh.

Wut r u doin

Cluedrew
2016-02-25, 07:55 AM
For example a lot of bad players play D&D like ''kill everything that moves''.Every D&D game I have ever been in has had a heavy emphasis on killing things. It is kind of a natural extention of the fact most of your character sheet is dedicated to how your character kills things. And do it intelligently.


Semantics :smalltongue:Clever, that's clever. One point for those keeping track at home.

Lacco
2016-02-25, 09:05 AM
Yeah, here I was invoking the Playgrounder's Fallacy to say 'let us think about some other games and how they handle the situation'. We could make arguments back and forth about how various editions of D&D handle this (and people have) but I think we are missing a lot of ideas if we leave out other systems.

Wow... this thread moved a lot since I last went in... :smallconfused:

And yes, I think that if D&D GMs/players borrowed ideas from other games, it would help. Reach out, try other stuff...


Every D&D game I have ever been in has had a heavy emphasis on killing things. It is kind of a natural extention of the fact most of your character sheet is dedicated to how your character kills things. And do it intelligently.

...but if you reach out and try other stuff, try playing it as other stuff, not D&D in different settings (and rule systems).

I mean, there are enough people who would play "Monopoly" the same way if it had rules for combat. Ok, maybe monopoly isn't the best possible example...
Agricola? :smallsmile:

I think that the emphasis is a question of players and GMs. However, yes, if you build a system, that is based on dungeon crawling, kicking in doors and then expect the players will roleplay tea parties, the expectations are a bit off.

Frozen_Feet
2016-02-25, 09:19 AM
A semantic difference is a difference in the meaning of words. I have no idea why it gets used to mean the opposite sometimes.

It's not used to mean the opposite - it's used to convey the idea that difference is only semantic, and there is no difference in the actual thing or it makes no difference for the argument at hand.

tomandtish
2016-02-25, 05:08 PM
It's not used to mean the opposite - it's used to convey the idea that difference is only semantic, and there is no difference in the actual thing or it makes no difference for the argument at hand.

Exactly.

"It's not red. It's crimson" is a semantic argument in most situations.

Quertus
2016-02-25, 07:37 PM
That's not how it would work, actually. Y'see, JaronK drops classes if there are other, strictly better, classes at a given tier. See Rogue v Factotum. So the existence of the Sorcerer2 makes the Sorcerer T3.

Um...

Player: can I play a sorcerer?
DM: no, I'm running a tier 3 game.
Player: <scribble, scribble> here, look at this sorcerer2 homebrew.
DM: that's clearly not tier 3. In fact, it's better than the sorcerer in every way.
Player: better in every way? So it knocks the sorcerer down a tier?
DM: yes.
Player: so, can I play the sorcerer now?
DM:.... Yes.

Cluedrew
2016-02-25, 10:50 PM
It's not used to mean the opposite - it's used to convey the idea that difference is only semantic, and there is no difference in the actual thing or it makes no difference for the argument at hand.
Exactly.

"It's not red. It's crimson" is a semantic argument in most situations.Well maybe I didn't understand what was actually was meant. I have seen it used to mean "that is a choice of wording and has no effect on the meaning".

Also, we have few pictures, music or bits of body language to work with on a forum like this. How else are we to convey meaning at all besides semantics?

And yes crimson is one of the reds so something that is crimson is also red.