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Mendicant
2017-06-18, 12:09 AM
So, as is the way of this place, there's a running battle about martials v. casters in D&D and D&D-adjacent fantasy RPGs. The trope at the heart of this conflict is the "linear fighter, quadratic wizard" problem, where the two classes do not have similar power curves and for much of their careers aren't playing the same game. Indeed, on a conceptual level they probably can't--a wizard just has a higher ceiling than a fighter, unless "fighter" eventually incorporates a lot of supernatural elements that a lot of people are bugged by.

I think the most elegant solution to this is clearly-defined tiering, something like a more developed version of 4e's heroic, paragon, and epic tiers. You start out as a scholar, a ranger, and a rogue. If your game goes past level ten you advance into a wizard, a witchblade, and a shadowdancer, and then if it goes past 20 you're an archmage, an undying guardian, and a trickster demigod. (Or whatever, you get the idea.) Not only does this make it easier to conceptually balance characters against eachother, it also gives clean breakpoints for people who just don't want their campaign or its setting to include playable demigods, a'la E6.

This idea has some legs, but it's still vague. Specifically, if we go back to that linear/quadratic dilemma, a three tier system doesn't actually describe the power curve characters undergo. You could draw arbitrary tier boundaries on a wizard's exponential progression and it wouldn't mean much. The same goes for the fighter. Therefore, I don't think character power should be a smooth, steady curve.

What I think would work best is more like a series of stair-stepped logistic curves.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4276/35373806245_15a728c743_z.jpg

Tier boundaries would cut through the exponential periods of growth, where the player can feel their character undergoing rapid advancement. Each tier would have an early stage in the first three levels where the core suite of abilities is acquired, then a 4 or 5-level stretch of linear advancement where new abilities aren't really coming online, followed finally by a 2 or 3-level stretch where advancement picks up again and some sweet new capstones are acquired.

The entry period is similar to frontloaded classes like the 3.P Paladin--most of what you really need for the archetype happens here, and the rest is just refinement or uses per day. The flatter middle portion gives the player a solid period where they get to play their heroic or paragon concept, addressing a similar problem E6 seeks to--too often, by the time your idea is fully realized, the game is either over or the idea is already obsolete. The capstone period gears you up for the next tier (if you're going there) and provides a satisfying mechanical arc for the previous tier.

Some implications of this structure off the top of my head:
1. Heroic concepts would need to mature real fast.
2. That linear period is gonna be a bunch of dreaded "dead levels" to one extent or another. If people are getting new stuff here it's of the Weapon Focus and Ranger spell casting variety.
3. Multiclassing would be much harder to implement, since things are very frontloaded.

Vitruviansquid
2017-06-18, 12:20 AM
You give each player in the game a niche. Everybody has a job that is more or less exclusive to their niche, so people don't overshadow each other all the time. This way linear fighter, quadratic wizard is not a problem unless your system is such a big failure that the niche of fightering or wizarding breaks completely at low or high levels.

Then, instead of having a weird game that exists in Heroic, Paragon, and Epic tiers, just make 3 different games. Why shoehorn the genres together when you know they will have incompatibles when you can just separate them and not deal with the incompatibilities?

Mendicant
2017-06-18, 12:38 AM
You give each player in the game a niche. Everybody has a job that is more or less exclusive to their niche, so people don't overshadow each other all the time. This way linear fighter, quadratic wizard is not a problem unless your system is such a big failure that the niche of fightering or wizarding breaks completely at low or high levels.

I don't think niche protection is enough to salvage huge power disparities. Niches are great in a team-based game, but if your niche is "guard the Cleric while he sleeps," your niche is probably lame and unsatisfying. For the purposes of this thread, I'd like to not actually relitigate fighters vs. wizards. There's a whole world of threads out there to do this in.


Then, instead of having a weird game that exists in Heroic, Paragon, and Epic tiers, just make 3 different games. Why shoehorn the genres together when you know they will have incompatibles when you can just separate them and not deal with the incompatibilities?

A: Lots of people quite clearly enjoy going from hired goblin exterminator to Orcus-puncher. The Forgotten Realms are a thing right now. I think this advancement curve is a more fun way to get there.
B: If your "three games" still have the same bones, they're not really different games. The resolution mechanics are still the same. Monster scaling stays pretty consistent. Advancement is still done via class and level. A half a dozen other underlying things still run the same way.

Vitruviansquid
2017-06-18, 12:55 AM
I don't think niche protection is enough to salvage huge power disparities. Niches are great in a team-based game, but if your niche is "guard the Cleric while he sleeps," your niche is probably lame and unsatisfying. For the purposes of this thread, I'd like to not actually relitigate fighters vs. wizards. There's a whole world of threads out there to do this in.



A: Lots of people quite clearly enjoy going from hired goblin exterminator to Orcus-puncher. The Forgotten Realms are a thing right now. I think this advancement curve is a more fun way to get there.
B: If your "three games" still have the same bones, they're not really different games. The resolution mechanics are still the same. Monster scaling stays pretty consistent. Advancement is still done via class and level. A half a dozen other underlying things still run the same way.

Obviously, don't let the niches be the niches from DnD 3.5 because they are terrible like "guard the Cleric while he sleeps" or "this class does the major lifting while the other class does the minor lifting for when the major lifter can't be bothered." 4e had good niches - Defenders and some Controllers assert board control, Leaders mitigate the bad luck of someone taking a big hit during any given round, Strikers and the other half of Controllers choose which enemies to eliminate first.

As for why to split the one game into 3 games, you already have 3 tiers because you want the game to play differently at each tier. If in fact you didn't want the game to play differently during the three tiers and argue that the game should retain the same bones and the same scaling... then the concept of tiers is pointless.

Mendicant
2017-06-18, 01:11 AM
Playing differently at different levels and being different games are not the same thing. If you're still rolling 1d20+bonus vs. DC, advancing with discrete classes and by level, dying when you lose x hit points, taking the same three types of actions in round-based combat, etc, you're still playing D&D or a D&D clone.

Gameplay can shift dramatically as particular sorts of abilities come online--for instance, reliable flight. That doesn't mean it's truly a new game though, any more than Super Mario is a new game when you get a fire flower.

Vitruviansquid
2017-06-18, 01:26 AM
See, here's what I don't get.

First you say:


I think the most elegant solution to this is clearly-defined tiering, something like a more developed version of 4e's heroic, paragon, and epic tiers. You start out as a scholar, a ranger, and a rogue. If your game goes past level ten you advance into a wizard, a witchblade, and a shadowdancer, and then if it goes past 20 you're an archmage, an undying guardian, and a trickster demigod. (Or whatever, you get the idea.) Not only does this make it easier to conceptually balance characters against eachother, it also gives clean breakpoints for people who just don't want their campaign or its setting to include playable demigods, a'la E6.

Which points out that the tiers should feel so different, you should have discrete, different classes in each tier, and that the tiers are necessary to help players get breakpoints to know what segment of the game they want to play or no. So at the point that a player experiences their character differently between tiers and at the point where players would want to throw away one tier or another altogether because it doesn't mesh with the game... you should just make 3 separate games.

But then when I said you could do this, you write:


B: If your "three games" still have the same bones, they're not really different games. The resolution mechanics are still the same. Monster scaling stays pretty consistent. Advancement is still done via class and level. A half a dozen other underlying things still run the same way.

Okay, so these 3 tiers are also supposed to be the same despite being different. Same bones. Got it.

So I told you then don't split the dang game into 3 games.

Now you type this:



Playing differently at different levels and being different games are not the same thing. If you're still rolling 1d20+bonus vs. DC, advancing with discrete classes and by level, dying when you lose x hit points, taking the same three types of actions in round-based combat, etc, you're still playing D&D or a D&D clone.

Gameplay can shift dramatically as particular sorts of abilities come online--for instance, reliable flight. That doesn't mean it's truly a new game though, any more than Super Mario is a new game when you get a fire flower.

When you say "Gameplay can shift dramatically as particular sorts of abilities come online"... I'm starting to think you might want to split your game into 3 once again. If the way the game is played is going to shift dramatically, I want a separate set of rules, background, and other paradigms to support that shift.

So what is it? You want the tiers to be fundamentally the same or be fundamentally different?

Koo Rehtorb
2017-06-18, 01:30 AM
Why does a level system need to include "zero to god" progression at all? The game would be a lot more coherent if the progression was, like, zero to Lancealot, at most.

Arbane
2017-06-18, 01:47 AM
Why does a level system need to include "zero to god" progression at all? The game would be a lot more coherent if the progression was, like, zero to Lancealot, at most.

"Because Gygax."

Yora
2017-06-18, 04:00 AM
That's really the thing, as I see it. The obvious solution that I am seeing is the linear wizard. There is no need for wizards to become all powerful shapers of reality. By being more modest about what magic can and can't do you can smooth out the power curves pretty well.

This appears to be one of the reason why the B/X edition has become so hugely popular in oldschool D&D circles. It's capped at 14th level and 6th level spells.

When I modified B/X for my own campaign, I capped spells at 5th level and removed many of the directly offensive spells, changing spellcasters into more of a utility-support class. Their focus is to help other characters do their jobs even better.

Morty
2017-06-18, 04:29 AM
Why does a level system need to include "zero to god" progression at all? The game would be a lot more coherent if the progression was, like, zero to Lancealot, at most.


"Because Gygax."

As a corollary to that: is there even a game where this progression exists that's not D&D, or a direct D&D derivative? It seems pretty unique to the franchise, and a source of many of its problems.

Jormengand
2017-06-18, 04:56 AM
As a corollary to that: is there even a game where this progression exists that's not D&D, or a direct D&D derivative? It seems pretty unique to the franchise, and a source of many of its problems.

In Dark Heresy, the psychic powers range from "I can move an existing fire up to one metre per round!" to "Oops I destroyed a battle tank in one shot, sorry guys."

I don't know a lot of TTRPGs in general, but a lot of CRPGs and roguelikes have a similar progression. A first-level necromancer in Diablo II can't even do necromancy without his starter gear. A 24th-level necromancer is carrying around a small army of nasty things, each one of which can cause the 1st-level necromancer to die in a single shot. A 99th-level necromancer is carrying around a large army of near-immortal nasty things, each of which can probably deal significant damage the 24th-level necromancer's army.

Similarly, in MOBAs like League of Legends, even minor level disparities can cause you to have a bad day, and major ones can cause that goddamn ultimate ability to kill every enemy champion simultaneously.

There are a lot of games where this exists which aren't even D&D, or RPGs at all.

Yora
2017-06-18, 05:02 AM
I've seen the argument being made that OD&D was designed as a 9-level-game with spells reaching maximum magical power at 6th level/5th level for wizards and clerics. At these levels you have the spells that one would consider ultimate magical power in fiction. Raising dead, talking to gods, teleportation, disintegration, and so on. 7th to 9th level spells came (shortly) later in a supplement. And trying to go beyond what was previously considered the ultimate extend would obviously get a bink wonky.

The idea of 9th level character becoming rulers also points towards the game originally being meant to change from a dungeon crawl adventure game to a fantasy tabletop wargame. Which made sense for people who were already primarily wargamers, but which never really carried over well to people who never played any wargames or cared much for them.

Cosi
2017-06-18, 06:05 AM
Yes, this is exactly how the game (D&D, or other Kitchen Sink Fantasy) should work. It resolves 100% of the problems with Fighters and Wizards, and it gives you coherent standards for what the game should like like at high levels so you don't give out planar binding to one character and +1 BAB to another.

The only objection to the system in the OP is that it is for some reason really important to you that every kind of character get to write "level 20" on their character sheet at some point (more important, even, than game balance), and frankly, that is a stupid demand.


You give each player in the game a niche. Everybody has a job that is more or less exclusive to their niche, so people don't overshadow each other all the time. This way linear fighter, quadratic wizard is not a problem unless your system is such a big failure that the niche of fightering or wizarding breaks completely at low or high levels.

That's crap. First of all, it means you can't put quadratic characters in linear niches, which means you're excluding concepts like "battle priest" for no reason. Second, it means you (likely) end up forcing parties to bring four specific niches to the table, which means some people will have to play characters they don't want.


Then, instead of having a weird game that exists in Heroic, Paragon, and Epic tiers, just make 3 different games. Why shoehorn the genres together when you know they will have incompatibles when you can just separate them and not deal with the incompatibilities?

Because while some stories do exist in a single tier (for example, Lord of the Rings and Lord of Light), some stories exist over several tiers (for example, Wheel of Time). Could you design a game just to do Lord of the Rings? Sure, and it would probably even be better than the suggested system at doing Lord of the Rings. But it couldn't do Wheel of Time, and some people want to do Wheel of Time.


That's really the thing, as I see it. The obvious solution that I am seeing is the linear wizard. There is no need for wizards to become all powerful shapers of reality. By being more modest about what magic can and can't do you can smooth out the power curves pretty well.

Yes there is. You don't want to play with superhuman mages? Fine. But that just means there's no need for Wizards to become all powerful shapers of reality in your games. Maybe I don't want to play with mundane Fighters. Should the game not support those?

Yora
2017-06-18, 06:20 AM
A game should support its own concept.

Games that well support high power characters and games that well support low power characters exist in great numbers. Making a game that supports both at the same time appears to be a difficult design challenge.

Cosi
2017-06-18, 06:33 AM
A game should support its own concept.

Yes, and D&D's concept (either "Kitchen Sink Fantasy" or "Zero to Hero" or both) clearly includes both high level and low level characters.


Games that well support high power characters and games that well support low power characters exist in great numbers. Making a game that supports both at the same time appears to be a difficult design challenge.

So is making a game with more than one character class. If we only did things that were easy, games would be much less interesting.

Zale
2017-06-18, 07:57 AM
As a concept, this reminds me of one of the mechanics of Burning Wheel. It's a dicepool based system; and, every skill and attribute has a "shade" that denotes how powerful it is. Black is the default shade, with grey being the territory of heroes and the like, while White is the turf of godlings and dragons.

The shade mostly shifts the default target number of the system, which tweaks the probability curve.

I like this because it avoids the "plus numbers bloat" that I feel like some d20 systems can get. The difference between your strength and a dragon's strength is less that you've got a 5 and they have a 15, and more that it is more capable of turning it's 5 from abstract potential power into an actuality than you.

I'm fond of the idea that at certain points in progression there's a paradigm shift in how the game works, or how your actions impact the world. Or that suddenly the scale and scope of things change; and, you go from someone who's actions impact battles to someone who can impact wars.

Morty
2017-06-18, 09:11 AM
In Dark Heresy, the psychic powers range from "I can move an existing fire up to one metre per round!" to "Oops I destroyed a battle tank in one shot, sorry guys."

I don't know a lot of TTRPGs in general, but a lot of CRPGs and roguelikes have a similar progression. A first-level necromancer in Diablo II can't even do necromancy without his starter gear. A 24th-level necromancer is carrying around a small army of nasty things, each one of which can cause the 1st-level necromancer to die in a single shot. A 99th-level necromancer is carrying around a large army of near-immortal nasty things, each of which can probably deal significant damage the 24th-level necromancer's army.

Similarly, in MOBAs like League of Legends, even minor level disparities can cause you to have a bad day, and major ones can cause that goddamn ultimate ability to kill every enemy champion simultaneously.

There are a lot of games where this exists which aren't even D&D, or RPGs at all.

Fair point on Dark Heresy. I've experienced its problems with psykers first-hand, and it generally doesn't scale well. But I don't think video games are a good example to bring into this discussion. They're a completely different sort of entertainment, even if they superficially resemble tabletop games.


I've seen the argument being made that OD&D was designed as a 9-level-game with spells reaching maximum magical power at 6th level/5th level for wizards and clerics. At these levels you have the spells that one would consider ultimate magical power in fiction. Raising dead, talking to gods, teleportation, disintegration, and so on. 7th to 9th level spells came (shortly) later in a supplement. And trying to go beyond what was previously considered the ultimate extend would obviously get a bink wonky.

The idea of 9th level character becoming rulers also points towards the game originally being meant to change from a dungeon crawl adventure game to a fantasy tabletop wargame. Which made sense for people who were already primarily wargamers, but which never really carried over well to people who never played any wargames or cared much for them.

I agree. It has become pretty apparent to me that levels above 9 were originally an afterthought. Then they stopped being an afterthought, but the franchise never got a decent idea of what they're actually supposed to work like.

Arbane
2017-06-18, 09:21 AM
I've seen the argument being made that OD&D was designed as a 9-level-game with spells reaching maximum magical power at 6th level/5th level for wizards and clerics. At these levels you have the spells that one would consider ultimate magical power in fiction. Raising dead, talking to gods, teleportation, disintegration, and so on. 7th to 9th level spells came (shortly) later in a supplement. And trying to go beyond what was previously considered the ultimate extend would obviously get a bink wonky.

The idea of 9th level character becoming rulers also points towards the game originally being meant to change from a dungeon crawl adventure game to a fantasy tabletop wargame. Which made sense for people who were already primarily wargamers, but which never really carried over well to people who never played any wargames or cared much for them.

Yeah, as one blogger I follow pointed out, in AD&D the 5th-level and lower spells are for dungeon explorers, the 6th+ level spells are for dungeon administrators.


As a corollary to that: is there even a game where this progression exists that's not D&D, or a direct D&D derivative? It seems pretty unique to the franchise, and a source of many of its problems.

I can think of a few that are at least similar that aren't D&D-alikes: Most White Wolf (or Onyx Path, etc) games have a power stat that's a pretty good measurement of character ability: Essence in Exalted, Blood Potency in Vampire, Quantum in Aberrant, etc. Savage Worlds has 'rank', which gatekeeps how powerful the Edges you can take are. Legends of the Wulin also has Ranks, and they set some fairly important mechanical capabilities of the character.

But yes, these days Class & Level systems are mostly a D&D/d20-ism.


Because while some stories do exist in a single tier (for example, Lord of the Rings and Lord of Light), some stories exist over several tiers (for example, Wheel of Time). Could you design a game just to do Lord of the Rings? Sure, and it would probably even be better than the suggested system at doing Lord of the Rings. But it couldn't do Wheel of Time, and some people want to do Wheel of Time.

As was pointed out in the other thread, having Superman and Green Arrow on the same team generally needs really good writing to avoid seeming contrived or making GA useless. And RPGs are not writing.



Yes there is. You don't want to play with superhuman mages? Fine. But that just means there's no need for Wizards to become all powerful shapers of reality in your games. Maybe I don't want to play with mundane Fighters. Should the game not support those?

I'm not sure it does. (Insert joke about how bad high-level D&D Fighters are here.)

Anonymouswizard
2017-06-18, 09:37 AM
I'm off the opinion that we shouldn't be trying to force everything into one game. If you want to play a have to doesn't change majorly pick up 'linear Warriors and Wizards', of you want one that does pick up 'quadratic Warriors and Wizards'.

Scale mechanics are also good, and has been pointed out are easier with five pills. If my warrior needs a 5+ for a success but the dragon needs a 3+ for success then if we're both rolling the same number of dice the dragon will tend to get twice the successes I do. It increases reliability without increasing the ceiling. Conversely, in D&D the only ways to die something is more powerful out skilled is with bigger numbers, or advantage in 5e.

What if, instead of having the different sets of classes or chargers, the was one set and you simply switched scale. So a heroic scale wizard needs 4 successes from his 5 magic dice to cast teleport, which will likely fail, while a paragon tier mage is more likely to roll the for success, but at level 6 still didn't have a chance of rolling the 7 successes needed to cast Doom from the sky. The same can apply for warriors, with special moves and abilities becoming cheaper or easier.

Morty
2017-06-18, 09:43 AM
I can think of a few that are at least similar that aren't D&D-alikes: Most White Wolf (or Onyx Path, etc) games have a power stat that's a pretty good measurement of character ability: Essence in Exalted, Blood Potency in Vampire, Quantum in Aberrant, etc. Savage Worlds has 'rank', which gatekeeps how powerful the Edges you can take are. Legends of the Wulin also has Ranks, and they set some fairly important mechanical capabilities of the character.

But yes, these days Class & Level systems are mostly a D&D/d20-ism.


Storyteller systems have power progression, but it's nowhere near D&D's. A mortal compares similarly to an Exalted as a low-level D&D character to a high-level one. But a mortal won't become an Exalted just by going on progressively harder adventures. Likewise for a mortal in WoD or CoD. What sets D&D from other systems is that there's a straight line from a schmuck that makes a starting Dark Heresy character look competent, and a virtual demigod.

Max_Killjoy
2017-06-18, 10:30 AM
Why does a level system need to include "zero to god" progression at all? The game would be a lot more coherent if the progression was, like, zero to Lancealot, at most.

Or competent to Lancelot.

Leave "zero" for NPCs who are actual zeroes in combat, adventuring, etc.

And there are enough games out there already that try to emulate a superficial misunderstanding of the Hero's Journey as prescriptive (rather than descriptive).

Arbane
2017-06-18, 10:54 AM
Storyteller systems have power progression, but it's nowhere near D&D's. A mortal compares similarly to an Exalted as a low-level D&D character to a high-level one. But a mortal won't become an Exalted just by going on progressively harder adventures.

Well, they MIGHT, if an appropriate Exaltation is handy. :smallbiggrin: But I take your point.



Likewise for a mortal in WoD or CoD. What sets D&D from other systems is that there's a straight line from a schmuck that makes a starting Dark Heresy character look competent, and a virtual demigod.

True.


Or competent to Lancelot.

Leave "zero" for NPCs who are actual zeroes in combat, adventuring, etc.

And there are enough games out there already that try to emulate a superficial misunderstanding of the Hero's Journey as prescriptive (rather than descriptive).

Basic competence at starting level would be nice...

Mechalich
2017-06-18, 11:01 AM
Because while some stories do exist in a single tier (for example, Lord of the Rings and Lord of Light), some stories exist over several tiers (for example, Wheel of Time). Could you design a game just to do Lord of the Rings? Sure, and it would probably even be better than the suggested system at doing Lord of the Rings. But it couldn't do Wheel of Time, and some people want to do Wheel of Time.


The thing about Wheel of Time, and similar 'stop the darkness!' epics, which includes numerous shounen anime settings, is that they are not stable over the long term. Wheel of Time is a very well thought out example of what happens when you suddenly start introducing Paragon Tier (and by the end of the series Epic Tier) characters to a world that was not designed to accommodate them. It throws everything into chaos. Wheel of Time actually handles this comparatively well - since all of the Paragon characters are either newly emerged talents (ex. Nynaeve) or ancient entities drawn from the previous cycle of the world (ex. The Foresaken) - and Jordan chose to implement a massive continent wide mobilization in order to drastically inflate the army numbers to help manage the sudden influx in power by having epic quantities of cannon fodder (there is the question of exactly what all the Trollocs that show up at the end were doing for centuries and why they didn't just invade earlier, but this can be finessed).

Settings that are intended to be cross-tier over long time periods, ie. generations, are troubling. This includes the Forgotten Realms, Exalted, Naruto, and many others, because they mandate large numbers of Paragon Tier characters standing around staring at the wall while the protagonists advance through the heroic tier, which inevitably means the worldbuilding is keyed to heroic tier characters and doesn't support the paragon tier adventures it eventually needs to generate. Exalted is a good example of this. In order to provide threats to the Paragon/Epic Solars, Creation was flooded with beings who completely overpower the Heroic Tier dragon-blooded even though the Dragon-Blooded have supposedly been ruling the world for centuries, and that meant they had to back the dragon-blooded with epic tier Sidereals and as a result starting characters - even solars - were made completely irrelevant.

So if you're going to do heroic-paragon-epic crossovers with a party it has to be managed accordingly. D&D actually has a mechanism for this - the multiverse. As you advance to the paragon tier you either go to the planes or the planes come to you, but this has to be enforced, otherwise you get the Forgotten Realms. Which has everything bad about cross-tier characters going on at once.

Anonymouswizard
2017-06-18, 11:31 AM
Or competent to Lancelot.

Leave "zero" for NPCs who are actual zeroes in combat, adventuring, etc.

And there are enough games out there already that try to emulate a superficial misunderstanding of the Hero's Journey as prescriptive (rather than descriptive).

Actually, starting at zero should be an option, whether this is by having a level zero or by encouraging staying with a couple of levels (or larger points totals).

If I wanted to run an ordinary people game of Rocket Age if simply reduce the number of Character Points PCs get. The standard is 42, but I can easily give less. Let's say I want most players to be average humans with a few skills. Humans cost one point, all attributes at the human average of three costs eighteen points, and so if I give then 30 points they can still have a couple of skills and some traits. In GURPS I can have people build 50 point characters, and so on and so forth. Zero should at the very least be an option, if not the default.

Well, not always, ab Exalted should be just better than a human but I should be able to stay at the equivalent of zero for the Exalted.

One of my favourite D&D 'clones' is Godbound, which knows that all is characters get their magic stuff from godly power, and begin with stone level of godly power. But I can still play a demigod scholar rather than a demigod warrior, and I don't begin as a demigod badass at level 1 (I do however begin as better than a mortal).

Heck, I love the idea of divine or extraplanar adventures so much my latest game is going to assume characters are planeswalkers at the start. While they might begin with little magic and skill (depending on staying level and scale) they'll have the ability to serve and open portals to over planes of existence from level zero.

NichG
2017-06-18, 11:45 AM
I do a lot of intentionally tier-crossing campaigns. Generally, it looks something like:

- Each tier is associated with a concrete, in-universe thing that explains why there is such a big difference between tiers. It's not just the characters' natural growth, but rather the characters gaining access to something that they did not have any form of access to before. These things are usually tied with opening up new game mechanics, new sub-systems, or even entirely new forms of advancement that are orthogonal to whatever the initial process was.

- Crossing tiers tends to occur in one of two patterns. Pattern one is that the PCs do something to enter into (or are dragged into) the realms or affairs of beings that have access to the thing associated with that higher tier, so the PCs first face the new power as something opposing them, and by overcoming it gain opportunities to access it for themselves. The other pattern is that as the PCs push on the limits of their tier, they gain glimpses of the potential for a higher tier and when they proactively seek that, they end up creating a path for things of that tier to come and become involved in their affairs.

In the first case for example, you could have mortal and mundane PCs in the modern era following traces of the supernatural, discovering that supernatural beings are preying upon their kind in the shadows, confront and defeat a supernatural being, and then be awoken to supernatural powers themselves. In the second case for example, you could have PCs who have their power from controlling simple elemental forces, with a high-end ability of their tier suggesting that elements could be combined... which is all well and good until someone discovers the combination for Time and then zany time-travel shenanigans ensue between the PCs and factions from the distant future who want to shape history starting from just after the onset of time-travel (since if they intervened before, they could remove their own ability to intervene).

- In general, crossing tiers is an attempted exercise in careful irrelevancy. There are things which were important that become unimportant or trivial, and things which could not be interacted with which become commonplace. The trick is for there to be a way for things that the PCs care about to remain relevant, but to get consistently transplanted in some form in the new tier. This is the hardest thing, and I have a pretty high miss rate on this.

VoxRationis
2017-06-18, 11:58 AM
Why does a level system need to include "zero to god" progression at all? The game would be a lot more coherent if the progression was, like, zero to Lancealot, at most.

I almost want to sig this.

Vitruviansquid
2017-06-18, 11:58 AM
That's crap. First of all, it means you can't put quadratic characters in linear niches, which means you're excluding concepts like "battle priest" for no reason. Second, it means you (likely) end up forcing parties to bring four specific niches to the table, which means some people will have to play characters they don't want.


How come quadratic characters need to exist alongside linear characters in your game? How come a "battle priest" has to be a quadratic character? Why not just make the "battle priest" concept a linear concept? Is this a DnD 3.5 assumption thing I don't know about? Don't you realize that in a system with both linear and quadratic characters, people are already forced to play characters they don't want if they want to be powerful? Don't you realize that in a system with both linear and quadratic characters, you already have niches, only the niches are really awful? A game with both linear and quadratic means the linear guy gets to feel like he does things in the earlier level while coddling the useless quadratic player, and then the quadratic player gets to do things in the later levels and coddle the useless linear player.


Because while some stories do exist in a single tier (for example, Lord of the Rings and Lord of Light), some stories exist over several tiers (for example, Wheel of Time). Could you design a game just to do Lord of the Rings? Sure, and it would probably even be better than the suggested system at doing Lord of the Rings. But it couldn't do Wheel of Time, and some people want to do Wheel of Time.


*Can* you run Wheel of Time in one game? Yes. Sure you can, it'll just be a bloated game that is difficult to work with and that players will feel like haven't "really started" at points or "got stupid" at points. So to take Wheel of Time. At the beginning scale of the game, you're going to need rules to support the adventure element of a small party doing stuff together. In many systems, this might be something like an encumbrance system, a system for having food, water, rest, and a system for fighting trollocs in a small-scale tactical skirmish. Then you hop to endgame and now these systems don't need to exist any more when everybody's leading an army or a division of an army. Why have encumbrance when you have a baggage train and attendants to carry all your stuff? Why have a system for having food, water, and rest, when you can just get it from said baggage train? Why have a system for fighting trollocs in a small-scale tactical skirmish when you are mostly concerned about commanding an army, and if a trolloc approaches you you just instantly magic it to death? So your endgame actually needs totally different systems to come online - perhaps a mass battle system, perhaps a system to determine your army's morale and fighting condition and experience, and now you're going to need a magic system on a totally different scale. You might as well segregate these concepts into different games because they don't play well together.


Yes, and D&D's concept (either "Kitchen Sink Fantasy" or "Zero to Hero" or both) clearly includes both high level and low level characters.



So is making a game with more than one character class. If we only did things that were easy, games would be much less interesting.

D&D 3.5 doesn't even support fighters or rogues!

Mendicant
2017-06-18, 12:58 PM
So what is it? You want the tiers to be fundamentally the same or be fundamentally different?

Nothing in your post shows me where "same bones, evolving and shifting gameplay" is an inherent contradiction. Would you be happier if I called it three related games operating in the same system? Or three genres?

Mechalich
2017-06-18, 01:33 PM
*Can* you run Wheel of Time in one game? Yes. Sure you can, it'll just be a bloated game that is difficult to work with and that players will feel like haven't "really started" at points or "got stupid" at points. So to take Wheel of Time. At the beginning scale of the game, you're going to need rules to support the adventure element of a small party doing stuff together. In many systems, this might be something like an encumbrance system, a system for having food, water, rest, and a system for fighting trollocs in a small-scale tactical skirmish. Then you hop to endgame and now these systems don't need to exist any more when everybody's leading an army or a division of an army. Why have encumbrance when you have a baggage train and attendants to carry all your stuff? Why have a system for having food, water, and rest, when you can just get it from said baggage train? Why have a system for fighting trollocs in a small-scale tactical skirmish when you are mostly concerned about commanding an army, and if a trolloc approaches you you just instantly magic it to death? So your endgame actually needs totally different systems to come online - perhaps a mass battle system, perhaps a system to determine your army's morale and fighting condition and experience, and now you're going to need a magic system on a totally different scale. You might as well segregate these concepts into different games because they don't play well together.


This is a good point. Essentially, it limits scaling a game across power tiers to specific scenarios where characters will be doing largely the same things even as the power level grows immensely.

So, if your game is a dungeon crawler, your heroic characters are crawling through bog-standard dungeons, your paragon characters are flying through hovering fortresses or extraplanar keeps, and your epic characters are charting a course through specifically planned private reality demiplanes. This sort of experience is best tied to massive sprawling settings like Planescape or Stargate where the GM can put up arbitrary barriers to where the party can go and then gradually relax those barriers over time. This is inevitably somewhat 'gamey' but that's perfectly okay for games.

There are clearly going to be some kinds of experiences that don't functionally scale this way; intrigue and political games won't, among others.

Cluedrew
2017-06-18, 03:13 PM
Although there are issues with systems that cover this level of power disparity, if that is what you want I think this would be a good way to do it.

That being said, I would also add an option to gain static levels. Very slight bonuses, probably even less than the mid-tier level ups, that can be used when the maximum level of power for the setting is reached. I would also make the sharp gain at the end of a tier more gentle, much less than the one at the beginning. So high, low, medium increases as you go along.

There a couple of reasons for this, the main one is to maintain (or even regain) some level of control about the tier of a setting. You will probably still need a particular settings for the games that do cover the entire track. The gentle curve near the end also is for consistency, that the character doesn't change right near the end, instead it is a lead-up to the rapid growth later.

Of course multi-classing, or any rules that mess with the linear progression down the (non-linear) power track would be problematic. My suggestion would be to make each track flexible enough to absorb some aspects of other tracks.

Cosi
2017-06-18, 03:47 PM
I'm off the opinion that we shouldn't be trying to force everything into one game. If you want to play a have to doesn't change majorly pick up 'linear Warriors and Wizards', of you want one that does pick up 'quadratic Warriors and Wizards'.

As I've said before, D&D is already committed to "everything in one game". There are close to half a dozen kinds of core fish person. IIRC, that's more races of fish person than core Shadowrun has races. D&D is already Kitchen Sink Fantasy.


The thing about Wheel of Time, and similar 'stop the darkness!' epics, which includes numerous shounen anime settings, is that they are not stable over the long term.

I mean, so aren't most settings. Most fantasy stories have or introduce something that should destabilize the setting massively, but doesn't. For example, pretty much every version of necromancy should cause something between the Industrial Revolution and the Singularity, but none of them seem to. I just don't buy this argument that having powerful characters is inherently destabilizing, rather than most settings just not being stable.


Settings that are intended to be cross-tier over long time periods, ie. generations, are troubling. This includes the Forgotten Realms, Exalted, Naruto, and many others, because they mandate large numbers of Paragon Tier characters standing around staring at the wall while the protagonists advance through the heroic tier, which inevitably means the worldbuilding is keyed to heroic tier characters and doesn't support the paragon tier adventures it eventually needs to generate.


I think MTG and D&D have a good answer to this, actually. You have "soft" segregation of Heroic Tier and Paragon Tier characters. Once you hit Paragon Tier you leave for a Paragon setting like the City of Brass or to go pursue Paragon enemies like Nicol Bolas. It's precisely the degree to which Paragon characters destroy Heroic settings that makes segregating them easy. If you can produce everything at cheap enough rates to collapse the economy, why are you interacting with the economy to begin with?


How come quadratic characters need to exist alongside linear characters in your game?

I don't know, you're the one who suggested niche protection as a way of doing that. Personally, I think linear characters shouldn't exist.


Why have a system for fighting trollocs in a small-scale tactical skirmish when you are mostly concerned about commanding an army, and if a trolloc approaches you you just instantly magic it to death?

So the others are sort of reasonable questions, but this is dumb. You don't have a system for "fighting trollocs" any more than a web-browser has a system for "accessing GITP". You have a system for fighting enemies, and it plugs into whatever enemies are level appropriate.


So your endgame actually needs totally different systems to come online - perhaps a mass battle system, perhaps a system to determine your army's morale and fighting condition and experience, and now you're going to need a magic system on a totally different scale. You might as well segregate these concepts into different games because they don't play well together.

Even if all you want to do is LotR, you still need mass battles. Do people not remember Helm's Deep at all? As far as magic goes, I don't know that high level magic needs to be fundamentally different from low level magic. A well design magic system can scale its effects up to whatever the top of the game ends up being.

Vitruviansquid
2017-06-18, 04:07 PM
I don't know, you're the one who suggested niche protection as a way of doing that. Personally, I think linear characters shouldn't exist.

But you were the one who suggested there should be linear and quadratic characters in the same niche because, for some reason I still can't figure out, this game must have "battle priests" and then "battle priests" must be quadratic. If linear and quadratic characters should both exist, it seems obvious that the linear character's niche should exist in a linear arena while the quadratic character's niche should exist in a quadratic arena. Let's say your linear niche is healing - then PCs' hp values should scale linearly. Let's say your quadratic niche is about dealing damage - then your NPCs health should scale quadratically. *Substitute in roles that make sense before you think about nit picking the examples I am using*.




So the others are sort of reasonable questions, but this is dumb. You don't have a system for "fighting trollocs" any more than a web-browser has a system for "accessing GITP". You have a system for fighting enemies, and it plugs into whatever enemies are level appropriate.

Why not just mentally substitute "trollocs" with "enemies" instead of nitpicking this?


Even if all you want to do is LotR, you still need mass battles. Do people not remember Helm's Deep at all? As far as magic goes, I don't know that high level magic needs to be fundamentally different from low level magic. A well design magic system can scale its effects up to whatever the top of the game ends up being.

What?

The possibility of there being a battle in the game means the system needs mass battle rules?

I don't know why you are switching the example all of a sudden to LOTR, but I'll bite. LOTR is narratively focused on a small band of guys trying to get from Rivendell to Mount Doom. Even when this small band of guys run across a full scale battle like Helm's Deep, it is concerned with the small band of guys over the entire battle. That's why Theoden is more of a side character than a main character. This is how the first few books of Wheel of Time works, where it's about Rand and his friends trying to go somewhere despite Trollocs. In both cases, if we were playing an RPG of this, we can just GM fiat what happens in the battles because the narrative isn't focused on the thousands of armydudes and armymonsters.

Later on, Rand becomes a general and the narrative scope widens to make us interested in a bunch of countries and armies when Rand comes to lead an army of Aiel and dude-wizards and such. Now you can't just GM fiat the battles, you are probably going to want to play them out. Just the same, Rand has become so powerful, you might as well GM fiat it if a trolloc or two jumps him in the night.



Between the nitpicking and the word twisting and the manufactured obtuseness, and the fact that this post reads like you're trying to frustrate me and then report me, I think you're not gonna be a poster I read for the rest of this thread.

Cosi
2017-06-18, 04:19 PM
But you were the one who suggested there should be linear and quadratic characters in the same niche because, for some reason I still can't figure out, this game must have "battle priests" and then "battle priests" must be quadratic. If linear and quadratic characters should both exist, it seems obvious that the linear character's niche should exist in a linear arena while the quadratic character's niche should exist in a quadratic arena.

Why? The reason Fighters are Linear and Wizards are Quadratic is that Wizards get magic (which scales indefinitely) and Fighters don't (and therefore suck). Effectively, you're suggesting that niches should be reserved by power source, which is dumb. Paladins can do whatever swording Fighters do, and also be magic. If your game demands that Paladins don't exist, you need to rethink things.


Why not just mentally substitute "trollocs" with "enemies" instead of nitpicking this?

Because, as I pointed out, if you substitute "enemies", you are no longer correct. Like, Perrin's contribution to the final battle is killing the Slayer, which is an enemy. Or Vin throwing down against a bunch of Steel Inquisitors at the end of the original Mistborn trilogy.


The possibility of there being a battle in the game means the system needs mass battle rules?

Either that, or the DM wings it. There are two options for anything at all in the game -- "rules cover it" or "GM wings it".


In both cases, if we were playing an RPG of this, we can just GM fiat what happens in the battles because the narrative isn't focused on the thousands of armydudes and armymonsters.

I dunno, LotR devotes a lot of attention to big battles (as does the Hobbit, and Game of Thrones). Sure, you have things focused on "a small group's contribution to the battle", but that's how the Epic game you claim needs rule for it works to.


Between the nitpicking and the word twisting and the manufactured obtuseness, and the fact that this post reads like you're trying to frustrate me and then report me, I think you're not gonna be a poster I read for the rest of this thread.

You mean nitpicking like "low level enemies and all enemies are not equivalent groups" and "if you want the game to do mass battles it needs mass battle rules"? Because your post reads like you don't understand the points you tried to make.

Vitruviansquid
2017-06-18, 04:21 PM
Nothing in your post shows me where "same bones, evolving and shifting gameplay" is an inherent contradiction. Would you be happier if I called it three related games operating in the same system? Or three genres?

I guess my problem is that, in an abstract hypothetical game, you can present the phrase "same bones, evolving and shifting gameplay" and it sounds nice. But when you get to the concrete, it breaks apart. Let's just look at DnD's 3.5 and 4e.

In DnD 4e, I would say the "same bones" applies throughout. For Paragon, you get to add a Paragon class to your character, and some of your moves get a jump in damage. The scaling turns out to be mostly the same, only your game will break if you try to play with both upper heroic and lower paragon, or upper paragron and lower epic due to the moves getting a jump in damage. This is a case where you should keep everything the same game. But this concept doesn't really play nice with "evolving and shifting gameplay" because moves get flashier, but a lot of people would argue it's just bigger and bigger numbers.

In DnD 3.5, I would say "evolving and shifting gameplay" should be emphasized. Level 1 is all about dice luck, level 6 makes luck much less of a factor and makes skill and spell choices and such a bigger deal, then by the upper levels the things like hp and AC don't really matter all that much and it's all about immunities and alpha strikes and such. This is where "same bones" would probably not apply, because you're jettisoning numbers and definitions that used to be important as you get to the stages where they stop being relevant.

As you can see, it's far easier to have your cake and eat it, too, when you're only working in the abstract. Edit: The use of abstract where convenient without thinking about the concrete is why that other thread about martials and scaling reads like a dumpster fire and will, in the end, get nothing done. That is why I am so quick to criticize it here.

Anonymouswizard
2017-06-18, 04:34 PM
As I've said before, D&D is already committed to "everything in one game". There are close to half a dozen kinds of core fish person. IIRC, that's more races of fish person than core Shadowrun has races. D&D is already Kitchen Sink Fantasy.

Then D&D can be the quadratic game where everyone's quadratic, and everyone assists somewhere. Then we can have another game, say Soldiers & Scholars where magic is weak and linear, and a third have, Demigods & Demons where magic and marital abilities are strong and linear.

I know if mostly ruin a version of the S&S game with maybe some occasional Demigods & Demons, but that's because I like linear games. Should I be debited playing fantasy just because I don't want my what's calling down due from the sky?

BayardSPSR
2017-06-18, 04:54 PM
As I've said before, D&D is already committed to "everything in one game". There are close to half a dozen kinds of core fish person. IIRC, that's more races of fish person than core Shadowrun has races. D&D is already Kitchen Sink Fantasy.

It sounds less like you're defining D&D as "everything in one game"/"kitchen sink fantasy," and more like you're defining "everything in one game"/"kitchen sink fantasy" as D&D.

From my experience playing it, D&D is designed to deliver one specific kind of experience for certain characters, and one different specific experience for other characters in the same group. If a character with magic is always going to end up infinitely powerful, and a character without magic is always going to end up watching from the sidelines, does the number of different fish people the two could be actually make the game more versatile?


I know if mostly ruin a version of the S&S game with maybe some occasional Demigods & Demons, but that's because I like linear games. Should I be debited playing fantasy just because I don't want my what's calling down due from the sky?

Tangential piece of advice: don't name games or mechanics such that people around you end up having conversations about how great SS is.

Arbane
2017-06-18, 05:27 PM
4th edition D&D tried to make wizards linear. A large chunk of the fanbase HATED it. D&Ders want their Caster Supremacy, and get very mad when anyone tries to take it away.


Why? The reason Fighters are Linear and Wizards are Quadratic is that Wizards get magic (which scales indefinitely) and Fighters don't (and therefore suck).

.... in D&D.

Cluedrew
2017-06-18, 05:53 PM
Everyone, I would like to remind you that the is an ONGOING thread about casters and martials. If you want to talk about that go there (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?526170-Martials-in-D-amp-D-and-similar-games-a-rambling).


Personally, I think linear characters shouldn't exist.Do you think that the types of characters that tend to be linear are bad or do you actually have something against linear power-growth? I'm trying to get logarithmic characters working in my system, at least in terms of area of specialization. I can give more details if you want, but what you mean by... well the quoted statement.

Vitruviansquid
2017-06-18, 06:07 PM
4th edition D&D tried to make wizards linear. A large chunk of the fanbase HATED it. D&Ders want their Caster Supremacy, and get very mad when anyone tries to take it away.



.... in D&D.

I don't know that people directly want the abstract concept of "caster supremacy." I think it rather works like this for most people:

I'm a grognard.

I hate martials getting complex mechanics or doing cool things because that would be anime.
I hate the established spells from the out of control spell pool to go away, because we had them before, damnit, we should have them again.
I hate that wizards will no longer use Vancian spellcasting because that would not be traditional.
I hate that wizards won't represent Gandalf or Merlin while fighters represent Gimli because we had Gandalf and Merlin earlier and the fighters were Gimli earlier.
I hate that I can't do awesome optimization tricks dependent on spell synergies any longer, because that's why I played previous editions of D&D.
I hate that metamagic could disappear, because those are traditional too.

... but I'd like to see caster supremacy go away. It'd be good for balance and make life easier for DMs.


It kinda works like this...


I'm perfectly fine with having spaghetti for dinner.

But I hate pasta. No pasta in my spaghetti please.
Also, I don't like tomatoes, so make sure there's no tomatoes in the sauce. I don't want white sauce either.
I also don't want to eat this with a fork, not a fan of forks.
Also no ground meat, no meatballs, no sausage, no basil, no peppers, no onions, no oregano...

Anonymouswizard
2017-06-18, 06:30 PM
ITangential piece of advice: don't name games or mechanics such that people around you end up having conversations about how great SS is.

Of course, I just needed a babe at short notice.

VoxRationis
2017-06-18, 07:03 PM
I don't know that people directly want the abstract concept of "caster supremacy." I think it rather works like this for most people:

I'm a grognard.

...
I hate that I can't do awesome optimization tricks dependent on spell synergies any longer, because that's why I played previous editions of D&D.
I hate that metamagic could disappear, because those are traditional too.

... but I'd like to see caster supremacy go away. It'd be good for balance and make life easier for DMs.



I don't know what your definition of "grognard" is, but I generally don't consider it to denote the sort of person who is particularly fond of optimization tricks or metamagic. The "old school" types I know of tend to frown on that sort of thing.

NichG
2017-06-18, 09:44 PM
Linear generally has the problems of diminishing returns and the perception of sameness. In general, power-scaling systems have the issue that when the characters are getting more powerful their opposition must be getting more powerful too in order to maintain the relevancy of that power - however, at the same time, you need to convey the idea that characters are in fact getting more powerful. So there's a kind of failure mode of systems with scaling where players get the feeling that all that's happening is that the numbers are getting bigger, but ultimately their growth is meaningless. Achieving linear scaling often requires shutting down synergies and qualitative changes in how power is used (to prevent the opening up of new options leading to combos which would break that linear curve), so those systems tend to feel sort of like a treadmill where you get stronger but nothing changes (or worse, you feel that you become relatively weaker). Also, linear growth in an additive sense is logarithmic growth in a relative sense (e.g. when you're near level one, you're doubling your power every couple of levels, but when you're around level 10, it takes 10 more levels to double your power), and for some numerical things (durability for example) it can often be the relative measure that you experience rather than the absolute one.

On the other hand, if you have qualitative changes in how power is expressed over the career of a character, those generally don't feel just like the numbers are changing but everything else is the same. That's part of the appeal of e.g. D&D casters - you can look forward to getting Teleport in a way that you can't really look forward to you getting +10 to hit (and all your opponents getting +5 AC and *2 hitpoints to match).

VoxRationis
2017-06-18, 10:36 PM
Linear generally has the problems of diminishing returns and the perception of sameness. In general, power-scaling systems have the issue that when the characters are getting more powerful their opposition must be getting more powerful too in order to maintain the relevancy of that power - however, at the same time, you need to convey the idea that characters are in fact getting more powerful. So there's a kind of failure mode of systems with scaling where players get the feeling that all that's happening is that the numbers are getting bigger, but ultimately their growth is meaningless. Achieving linear scaling often requires shutting down synergies and qualitative changes in how power is used (to prevent the opening up of new options leading to combos which would break that linear curve), so those systems tend to feel sort of like a treadmill where you get stronger but nothing changes (or worse, you feel that you become relatively weaker). Also, linear growth in an additive sense is logarithmic growth in a relative sense (e.g. when you're near level one, you're doubling your power every couple of levels, but when you're around level 10, it takes 10 more levels to double your power), and for some numerical things (durability for example) it can often be the relative measure that you experience rather than the absolute one.

On the other hand, if you have qualitative changes in how power is expressed over the career of a character, those generally don't feel just like the numbers are changing but everything else is the same. That's part of the appeal of e.g. D&D casters - you can look forward to getting Teleport in a way that you can't really look forward to you getting +10 to hit (and all your opponents getting +5 AC and *2 hitpoints to match).

But if the linear scaling isn't too runaway, under the right circumstances, the same foes that mattered at level 1 can still be relevant later, allowing players to be clearly more powerful relative to their foes while still facing challenges. If the enemy that was a challenge 1-on-1 for you at first is coming at you in a group of 5 later, you'll still notice that each individual opponent has become a pushover. This can be mixed with genuinely tougher single opponents as well as single opponents who are weak but have some sort of advantage of circumstance.

Morty
2017-06-19, 03:57 AM
D&D has tried to have its cake and eat it too for a while now, and in a few different ways. I don't know if it started in 3e, but it definitely gained definition there. The first way is trying to pack different genres into one level progression. The game starts from an old-school comedy of errors, where death is one good or bad roll away, and characters are pretty inept - 4e skips this phase. Then it gets to competent but still fairly down-to-earth adventuring heroes. Then it shoots past that into the realm of magical superheroes and their less-magical sidekicks. And then it ends up in an absurdist high-powered realm that's pretty exclusive to D&D.

This isn't a bad thing in itself, but putting it all on the same level progression means the former inevitably becomes the latter, if the game runs long enough. And the only way to advance and learn new things is to get a new level, which puts you one step closer to making most of the game world irrelevant. A 3e-era non-magical character is pretty pathetic compared to magic-users and monsters of the comparable level, but to the vast majority of people in the world, they're absolutely superhuman. Or superelven, superdwarven... you get the idea. The progression of HP, BAB and saves is relentless.

I think this is why E6 gained a lot of traction, as an idea at least. Probably less so in actual play. Still, it "pauses" the progression on the cusp of graduating from "low-key heroes" into "magical superheroes", but it still lets you gain feats, thus preserving some advancement. Thus letting you gain new abilities and improve your character, without gaining world-altering spells, or simply bloating your offensive and defensive numbers.

The other way in which it tries to have its cake and eat it is, of course, the way magic eclipses everything else past a certain point. A lot of it comes from design mistakes, but I'm fairly certain it's also deliberate. The "Badass wizard solving problems/pwning fools while everyone else gawks" power fantasy is a major part of the D&D experience. Ed Greenwood managed to write a whole setting around his badass wizards. So magical superiority is baked into the system assumptions, but the system pretends it isn't. Magic rules and people without it are relegated to the sidekick role, but the text persistently claims the party dynamics remain the same as they were when they were still level 5 and fighting ghasts in a crypt.

It's not impossible to fit different genres in the same game. Plenty of them do that. But you can't put them on the same levelling curve, act like it's still fundamentally the same experience, and expect it to work. Especially since the third edition forayed into level ranges the older editions only vaguely defined, but didn't really bother to adjust its rules to them. 5e could have taken a look at E6 and figured out how to alter level progression to work with different expectations better... but it didn't, because it wasn't interested in new and unfamiliar ideas.

Mendicant
2017-06-19, 08:00 AM
That being said, I would also add an option to gain static levels. Very slight bonuses, probably even less than the mid-tier level ups, that can be used when the maximum level of power for the setting is reached.

Yeah, a native E6 advancement option is a good idea.


I would also make the sharp gain at the end of a tier more gentle, much less than the one at the beginning. So high, low, medium increases as you go along.

There a couple of reasons for this, the main one is to maintain (or even regain) some level of control about the tier of a setting. You will probably still need a particular settings for the games that do cover the entire track. The gentle curve near the end also is for consistency, that the character doesn't change right near the end, instead it is a lead-up to the rapid growth later.

So I went back and forth on this, but I think a sharp uptick at the end is better. Otherwise, you have an E6-style progression that starts too early. A sharp change towards the end allows games that never leave that tier to have a satisfying endgame capstone, where you can really feel a strong difference between characters at the very top and the rest of their tier.


Of course multi-classing, or any rules that mess with the linear progression down the (non-linear) power track would be problematic. My suggestion would be to make each track flexible enough to absorb some aspects of other tracks.

I'm thinking there could be a few ways to deal with this. For instance, have a 4E-style gestalt option for every tier, including the first. Your "heroic seed" or whatever would not be changeable, but your class could be done a-la carte. A lot of class features would migrate to the gestalt piece, while the class would provide the chassis and scaling class features like caster level or sneak attack.

Cluedrew
2017-06-19, 08:19 AM
On Capstone: Something at the end definitely, my point was just that it would not quite be the rush at the beginning. Now that might not be enough, but intuitively if feels right to me. You would probably have to actually try it to be sure.

On Multi-Classing: 4e called it Duel-Classing or something similar right? That is also an option, the one issue is that everything is "pre-halved" (at least how 4e did it, you just got two mini classes and could match particular features) which costs you some granularity. Of course classes are generally diversity over granularity anyways so that might be fine.

CharonsHelper
2017-06-19, 08:59 AM
This includes the Forgotten Realms, Exalted, Naruto, and many others, because they mandate large numbers of Paragon Tier characters standing around staring at the wall while the protagonists advance through the heroic tier, which inevitably means the worldbuilding is keyed to heroic tier characters and doesn't support the paragon tier adventures it eventually needs to generate.

Actually - Naruto did this pretty well except for the really late stuff. They had Orochimaru doing crazy (borderline Epic) stuff when the main characters were just kids being fought by good guys of similar power levels, and early Kakashi was around doing most of the Paragon Tier stuff while the MCs were still heroic tier. Later the pervy hermit filled the same role on the borderline Epic level.

Naruto and friends were around a lot of fights which would have splattered them without the more potent characters around.

Again - late in the series (I stopped watching years ago) it got kinda nutty, but at least in the Naruto rather than later Shippuden, I liked how they DID make it make sense that the MCs had room to grow with the world making halfway decent sense. (at least on that front - the technology level was really unclear)

Cosi
2017-06-19, 09:40 AM
Then D&D can be the quadratic game where everyone's quadratic, and everyone assists somewhere. Then we can have another game, say Soldiers & Scholars where magic is weak and linear, and a third have, Demigods & Demons where magic and marital abilities are strong and linear.

Do you think that the types of characters that tend to be linear are bad or do you actually have something against linear power-growth? I'm trying to get logarithmic characters working in my system, at least in terms of area of specialization. I can give more details if you want, but what you mean by... well the quoted statement.

So obviously "Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards" is a meme, and therefore does not represent a cogent, sophisticated, or comprehensive analysis of the game. The reality is complicated, with people gaining different kinds of bonuses at different rates and people getting multiple attacks and monsters gaining both more CON per CR and more HD per CR and spells varying in relative effect from color spray to stinking cloud to wail of the banshee. As such, I think saying "linear characters" doesn't make a whole lot of sense as an independent thing. It's kind of like asking if your new TCG should support Red Deck Wins.

Overall, I tend to view the speed of power progression as a pretty minor concern as long as it's consistent and reasonably fast. You just need to figure out the weakest character you want to support and the strongest character you want to support, then divide the difference by the number of levels you want to have. Then you're just figuring out how to get from A to B with step size C. And you can do that in a way that is "like how Fighters progress" (mostly incremental bonuses to things you've always done) or "like how Wizards progress" (some incremental bonuses, but also effects that transform your playstyle). But the actual math (or, things that can meaningfully be "linear" or "quadratic") is probably going to be influenced more by concerns about making the combat (or skill, or kingdom) engine output the results you want at an acceptable level of complexity than any overall vision of power progression.


It sounds less like you're defining D&D as "everything in one game"/"kitchen sink fantasy," and more like you're defining "everything in one game"/"kitchen sink fantasy" as D&D.

Take a look at the Monster Manual. You've got your five kinds of fish people, you've got all kinds of european folkloric monsters (vampires, demons, werewolves), and you've got some eastern stuff like Rakshasa. Or the PHB with its Wuxia Monks. The notion that modern D&D is supposed to be "narrowly focused dungeon crawler" is just not consistent with the abilities the game gives you (except in 4e, but that game sucks).


From my experience playing it, D&D is designed to deliver one specific kind of experience for certain characters, and one different specific experience for other characters in the same group.

Yes, the game fails to deliver properly on some of its goals. Okay, let's make the game better at those goals.


On Multi-Classing: 4e called it Duel-Classing or something similar right? That is also an option, the one issue is that everything is "pre-halved" (at least how 4e did it, you just got two mini classes and could match particular features) which costs you some granularity. Of course classes are generally diversity over granularity anyways so that might be fine.

So 4e had some complicated multi-classing system that I don't really care about because obviously the thing you do if everyone is on the same resource management system is give people some free picks in addition to their class abilities.

The real question is how you solve multi-classing while also supporting multiple resource management systems. And that is genuinely really hard. 3e never really found a solution that was particularly balanced. The baseline "just mix levels together" ended up mostly producing characters that sucked, and the quick-fix of writing Theurge PrCs was mostly also bad (if used as intended) or crazy (if you cheesed in early and/or advanced something like Ur Priest). I think the best fix might be to just give people subclasses.

Mendicant
2017-06-19, 12:19 PM
So there's a kind of failure mode of systems with scaling where players get the feeling that all that's happening is that the numbers are getting bigger, but ultimately their growth is meaningless. Achieving linear scaling often requires shutting down synergies and qualitative changes in how power is used (to prevent the opening up of new options leading to combos which would break that linear curve), so those systems tend to feel sort of like a treadmill where you get stronger but nothing changes (or worse, you feel that you become relatively weaker). Also, linear growth in an additive sense is logarithmic growth in a relative sense (e.g. when you're near level one, you're doubling your power every couple of levels, but when you're around level 10, it takes 10 more levels to double your power), and for some numerical things (durability for example) it can often be the relative measure that you experience rather than the absolute one.

On the other hand, if you have qualitative changes in how power is expressed over the career of a character, those generally don't feel just like the numbers are changing but everything else is the same.


Overall, I tend to view the speed of power progression as a pretty minor concern as long as it's consistent and reasonably fast. You just need to figure out the weakest character you want to support and the strongest character you want to support, then divide the difference by the number of levels you want to have. Then you're just figuring out how to get from A to B with step size C. And you can do that in a way that is "like how Fighters progress" (mostly incremental bonuses to things you've always done) or "like how Wizards progress" (some incremental bonuses, but also effects that transform your playstyle). But the actual math (or, things that can meaningfully be "linear" or "quadratic") is probably going to be influenced more by concerns about making the combat (or skill, or kingdom) engine output the results you want at an acceptable level of complexity than any overall vision of power progression.


The reason I'd prefer something that looks like an S-curve, or in this case a series of S-curves, is not so much a matter of speed as of pacing. Essentially, I think the best sort of power progression would alternate periods of "wizard progression" with periods of "fighter progression." How quickly you'd alternate would be something to work out, but the basic idea would be that each tier would be divided roughly into periods of growth and periods of evolution. In my experience, a lot of players are turned off by Vancian full casters, and characters with a really rapid accumulation of abilities more generally, because they can't keep up with their option bloat. Quadratic or exponential growth might be a metaphor than a strict mathematical description of what's happening, but it does communicate the vertigo pretty well. A period of incremental bonuses to things you already do gives you a per-tier experience of Build Character, Play Character, Change Character.

This could also change the way the power treadmill is perceived. If challenges charted a straight line (or smooth curve, whatever) then relative character power would actually oscillate like a sine wave. That period of linear growth would coincide with "level-appropriate" challenges becoming more difficult. The need for change would be felt right before it kicked in.



On Multi-Classing: 4e called it Duel-Classing or something similar right? That is also an option, the one issue is that everything is "pre-halved" (at least how 4e did it, you just got two mini classes and could match particular features) which costs you some granularity. Of course classes are generally diversity over granularity anyways so that might be fine.


So 4e had some complicated multi-classing system that I don't really care about because obviously the thing you do if everyone is on the same resource management system is give people some free picks in addition to their class abilities.

The real question is how you solve multi-classing while also supporting multiple resource management systems. And that is genuinely really hard. 3e never really found a solution that was particularly balanced. The baseline "just mix levels together" ended up mostly producing characters that sucked, and the quick-fix of writing Theurge PrCs was mostly also bad (if used as intended) or crazy (if you cheesed in early and/or advanced something like Ur Priest). I think the best fix might be to just give people subclasses.

4e had two multiclassing systems. The first was a series of multiclass and then power-swap feats, and the second was "hybrid classes." The former let you take a better than average feat and then get treated like two classes for purposes of paragon paths, feat selection, etc. After that the power-swap feats were just garbage for the most part. The latter was a bunch of kludgy extra work for not much return. Subclasses would be better.

Talakeal
2017-06-19, 02:20 PM
I don't know that people directly want the abstract concept of "caster supremacy." I think it rather works like this for most people:

I'm a grognard.

I hate martials getting complex mechanics or doing cool things because that would be anime.
I hate the established spells from the out of control spell pool to go away, because we had them before, damnit, we should have them again.
I hate that wizards will no longer use Vancian spellcasting because that would not be traditional.
I hate that wizards won't represent Gandalf or Merlin while fighters represent Gimli because we had Gandalf and Merlin earlier and the fighters were Gimli earlier.
I hate that I can't do awesome optimization tricks dependent on spell synergies any longer, because that's why I played previous editions of D&D.
I hate that metamagic could disappear, because those are traditional too.

... but I'd like to see caster supremacy go away. It'd be good for balance and make life easier for DMs.


It kinda works like this...


I'm perfectly fine with having spaghetti for dinner.

But I hate pasta. No pasta in my spaghetti please.
Also, I don't like tomatoes, so make sure there's no tomatoes in the sauce. I don't want white sauce either.
I also don't want to eat this with a fork, not a fan of forks.
Also no ground meat, no meatballs, no sausage, no basil, no peppers, no onions, no oregano...

I actually think a simpler answer is pride.

People have a favorite class or favorite character.

Those who favor a spell-caster simply don't like the idea of a mere muggle being able to compete with their phenomenal godlike power.

Those who favor a fighter archetype want to feel like a badass and a hero, and don't like the idea that they don't really matter as someone who is of a higher "tier" (whether that is a caster in RAW 3.5 D&D or a magical super hero in the proposed system) can do everything they can do better.

Arbane
2017-06-19, 03:39 PM
I don't know that people directly want the abstract concept of "caster supremacy." I think it rather works like this for most people:

I'm a grognard.

I hate martials getting complex mechanics or doing cool things because that would be anime.
I hate the established spells from the out of control spell pool to go away, because we had them before, damnit, we should have them again.
I hate that wizards will no longer use Vancian spellcasting because that would not be traditional.
I hate that wizards won't represent Gandalf or Merlin while fighters represent Gimli because we had Gandalf and Merlin earlier and the fighters were Gimli earlier.
I hate that I can't do awesome optimization tricks dependent on spell synergies any longer, because that's why I played previous editions of D&D.
I hate that metamagic could disappear, because those are traditional too.

... but I'd like to see caster supremacy go away. It'd be good for balance and make life easier for DMs.


It kinda works like this...


I'm perfectly fine with having spaghetti for dinner.

But I hate pasta. No pasta in my spaghetti please.
Also, I don't like tomatoes, so make sure there's no tomatoes in the sauce. I don't want white sauce either.
I also don't want to eat this with a fork, not a fan of forks.
Also no ground meat, no meatballs, no sausage, no basil, no peppers, no onions, no oregano...

Yeah, sounds about right. It's an unfixable problem because what people want is inherently contradictory.

CharonsHelper
2017-06-19, 03:57 PM
I don't know that people directly want the abstract concept of "caster supremacy." I think it rather works like this for most people:

I'm a grognard.

I hate martials getting complex mechanics or doing cool things because that would be anime.
I hate the established spells from the out of control spell pool to go away, because we had them before, damnit, we should have them again.
I hate that wizards will no longer use Vancian spellcasting because that would not be traditional.
I hate that wizards won't represent Gandalf or Merlin while fighters represent Gimli because we had Gandalf and Merlin earlier and the fighters were Gimli earlier.
I hate that I can't do awesome optimization tricks dependent on spell synergies any longer, because that's why I played previous editions of D&D.
I hate that metamagic could disappear, because those are traditional too.

... but I'd like to see caster supremacy go away. It'd be good for balance and make life easier for DMs.


It kinda works like this...


I'm perfectly fine with having spaghetti for dinner.

But I hate pasta. No pasta in my spaghetti please.
Also, I don't like tomatoes, so make sure there's no tomatoes in the sauce. I don't want white sauce either.
I also don't want to eat this with a fork, not a fan of forks.
Also no ground meat, no meatballs, no sausage, no basil, no peppers, no onions, no oregano...

You should just come at it from the other direction.

People keep insisting that class balance has to mean either

1. Getting rid of all of the most potent spells.

or

2. Buffing martials to do crazy anime moves.


A better path would be to give spell-casting all sorts of inherent weaknesses, such as the most potent spells taking far longer to cast, therefore retaining their raw power while needing martials to keep them from dying horribly.

A good model for this is the manga Berserk. Sure - the little witch can do some CRAZY POWERFUL stuff, but she can only do rather simple stuff quickly. Even Guts with the Berserk armor probably isn't as powerful as she is when she really lets loose. (and he needs her help to keep from going crazy when using the armor) But her spell-casting leaves her totally defenseless while she's casting, and she therefore needs the rest of the group to keep her from being stabbed while she's doing it. In addition, she could be shanked from stealth since she hasn't trained her combat reflexes if someone caught her off-guard.

In 3.x terms, the most potent spells would take multiple rounds to cast, though as you leveled what used to take multiple rounds might eventually only take one round. This would make it so that much of their spell-casting would be utility and buffing out of combat, and in-combat they would have to choose between a few decent spells or casting a big spell, but in the latter case it'd be obvious and the martials would be forced to play defense until it went off.

Mendicant
2017-06-19, 04:14 PM
You should just come at it from the other direction.

People keep insisting that class balance has to mean either

1. Getting rid of all of the most potent spells.

or

2. Buffing martials to do crazy anime moves.

or

3. Segregating power levels more explicitly, keeping the ability to play a very diverse range of concepts within the same system.

Vitruviansquid
2017-06-19, 04:21 PM
@Talakeal - I think that takes a fairly dim view of those players, but ehhhhhh some of the posts I read on this forum makes sense with that.

@Arbane - Bingo

@ CharonsHelper - I would like to see you propose this fix in an independent thread and look at the reactions.

Cluedrew
2017-06-19, 05:05 PM
So obviously "Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards" is a meme, and therefore does not represent a cogent, sophisticated, or comprehensive analysis of the game.But what did you mean by saying linear characters shouldn't exist in this context? Did that mean anything or was that just some weird phrasing that came out of that part of the conversation?


The real question is how you solve multi-classing while also supporting multiple resource management systems. And that is genuinely really hard. 3e never really found a solution that was particularly balanced.Let alone balanced, I think some work has to be done to make those sorts of characters feel like a single character and not two separate partial characters. There is so much interaction within many of the subsystems but very little between them.


3. Segregating power levels more explicitly, keeping the ability to play a very diverse range of concepts within the same system.I think that is a different issue. It doesn't solve and disparity between classes, although it could create better guide lines about how powerful each class should be at a given stage. That would help. But I think caster/martial is a different issue.

Cosi
2017-06-19, 05:11 PM
But what did you mean by saying linear characters shouldn't exist in this context? Did that mean anything or was that just some weird phrasing that came out of that part of the conversation?

Mostly option B. I meant that the kinds of characters that are "linear" in 3e are bad. Fighters are boring, and shouldn't exist.

Max_Killjoy
2017-06-19, 05:25 PM
My own instinct there is that levels and classes, particularly of the "D&D style", are the root cause of the issue, and that other ways of constructing, balancing, and advancing characters are better at avoiding these disparities.

However, it's also clear that some players really like classes and levels, so saying "don't do those things" isn't going to help them find a solution they like.

So, to offer something that IS constructive... I think trying to have a single implementation of a single system support conflicting power progressions is probably A Kitchen Sink Too Far, and that you're better off with at least two divergent implementations, one that offers linear progression across all classes, one that offers "quadratic" progression across all classes, and others that just admit that only certain sorts/classes of characters are really viable for the long haul.

Cluedrew
2017-06-19, 05:38 PM
Personally, I think few of the things D&D is are actually the main problem. The big problems come from the areas where D&D still hasn't decide if it is or it isn't.

I have so many questions about the logic that governs magic in D&D land. (Not that I expect many answers there.) It often tries to be a generic fantasy setting, but the more you look at it, the more it really isn't. How strong should a level 5 character be? A level 10 character? A level 20 character? There aren't really answers to these questions.

Or if there are, the people writing the rulebooks seem to have forgotten them.

Mendicant
2017-06-19, 07:01 PM
I think the breakpoint that happens at 6th in 3e and its derivatives should happen at 10th. It's a nice round number and it also provides a good amount of room for development and play. The "Conan" zone is over too quickly in 3e, since by the time you actually get the chassis and skill bonuses to play that character you're already at the edge of that character's ability to compete with spellcasters, if they haven't blown past you already.

Conversely, I disagree that a character like that needs a full 20 levels of granularity. You'd just be getting too little per level to justify the division.

CharonsHelper
2017-06-19, 08:33 PM
@ CharonsHelper - I would like to see you propose this fix in an independent thread and look at the reactions.

Meh - it's not a patch that I could design for 3.x/Pathfinder or any other D&D system. A fantasy RPG (new D&D or otherwise) would have to be built with it in mind from the ground up, possibly with a sub-system in place to make casting for several rounds more interesting than saying "yep - I'm still casting". (Though the easy way to do that would be to make familiars be able to do smaller/faster stuff and have the wizard character play them too - but that would remove some of their reliance upon the martials.)

Knaight
2017-06-19, 11:50 PM
Why? The reason Fighters are Linear and Wizards are Quadratic is that Wizards get magic (which scales indefinitely) and Fighters don't (and therefore suck). Effectively, you're suggesting that niches should be reserved by power source, which is dumb. Paladins can do whatever swording Fighters do, and also be magic. If your game demands that Paladins don't exist, you need to rethink things.

This only works if you assume that magic has to work that way. It doesn't; the concepts hold together just fine without leveling increasing two efficacy variables that get multiplied together (in this case the power of individual spells and the number of spells).

Jormengand
2017-06-20, 01:47 AM
This only works if you assume that magic has to work that way. It doesn't; the concepts hold together just fine without leveling increasing two efficacy variables that get multiplied together (in this case the power of individual spells and the number of spells).

While this is certainly true, I'd like to think that it's far more interesting to have a scaling effect of lower-level abilities while also granting access to better abilities. There's incidentally no real reason why fighting shouldn't be able to be "Quadratic" either.

HidesHisEyes
2017-06-20, 10:06 AM
That's really the thing, as I see it. The obvious solution that I am seeing is the linear wizard. There is no need for wizards to become all powerful shapers of reality. By being more modest about what magic can and can't do you can smooth out the power curves pretty well.

This appears to be one of the reason why the B/X edition has become so hugely popular in oldschool D&D circles. It's capped at 14th level and 6th level spells.

When I modified B/X for my own campaign, I capped spells at 5th level and removed many of the directly offensive spells, changing spellcasters into more of a utility-support class. Their focus is to help other characters do their jobs even better.

Definitely agree here. If I were writing a D&D-like RPG I would handle this with a certain approach to setting lore concerning magic: it was only ever truly understood by the ancients, who could shape reality to their will. Magical war, apocalypse, what-have you: thousands of years later certain gifted individuals seek out and study the remaining scraps of arcane lore, and can do impressive things but aren't demigods.

I think if you want wizards to be demigods in the fiction then they have to be demigods in the gameplay, and that will inevitably lead to fighters and rogues feeling outmatched to one degree or another.

Edit for how I see it actually working: spells are arranged into gated trees so you're forced to either specialise in one role (direct damage, healing and buffing, utility and exploration, control etc.) or collect less powerful spells and be a magical jack of all trades. Something like that.

CharonsHelper
2017-06-20, 10:10 AM
I think if you want wizards to be demigods in the fiction then they have to be demigods in the gameplay, and that will inevitably lead to fighters and rogues feeling outmatched to one degree or another.

Or just have the crazy powerful spells take longer than 6 seconds to cast, making them reliant upon the fighter/rogues to not die horribly while casting?

PhoenixPhyre
2017-06-20, 10:22 AM
Or just have the crazy powerful spells take longer than 6 seconds to cast, making them reliant upon the fighter/rogues to not die horribly while casting?

That's been tried, but sitting around twiddling your thumbs for multiple rounds doesn't seem fun to most players. Also, isn't there a law? Grod's law I believe? You can't balance an ability by making it annoying to use?

Mendicant
2017-06-20, 10:28 AM
If you had an engaging enough minigame to play while casting a multi-round spell you could maybe get away with that. Otherwise it just doesn't seem like good game design for a PC.

VoxRationis
2017-06-20, 10:49 AM
That's been tried, but sitting around twiddling your thumbs for multiple rounds doesn't seem fun to most players. Also, isn't there a law? Grod's law I believe? You can't balance an ability by making it annoying to use?

I feel like that "law" gets thrown around far too broadly, partly because the term "annoying" is vague. In this case in particular, having a multiple-round delay in the middle of combat is more than just "annoying." That delay could potentially cause your side to crumple in the face of severe resistance, and the temptation to drop the spell and do something less dramatic but quicker could be significant.

Not to mention that wizards as-is often spend some time thumb-twiddling because they didn't prepare the right spells for this combat, or ran out of spells, or are seeking to preserve their spells for an anticipated fight.

Jormengand
2017-06-20, 11:17 AM
That's been tried, but sitting around twiddling your thumbs for multiple rounds doesn't seem fun to most players. Also, isn't there a law? Grod's law I believe? You can't balance an ability by making it annoying to use?

Grod (or someone else explaining it, but IIRC Grod) explains in an example that annoying isn't the same as time-consuming. Spell slots aren't "Annoying" either. "Annoying" in the circumstances means restricting the type of circumstances under which it can be used; in general any limitation that isn't a number-of-uses-per-time or time-to-use restriction. Contrast Sneak Attack (annoying as it requires you to set up a certain situation) and Death Attack (time-consuming as you have to do nothing a while).

Anonymouswizard
2017-06-20, 11:31 AM
Or just have the crazy powerful spells take longer than 6 seconds to cast, making them reliant upon the fighter/rogues to not die horribly while casting?

I feel this works better for separating noncombat spells from combat one. It doesn't matter if create water is two levels lower and can create 1000 gallons, hydrowhip doesn't take half an hour to cast while orcs are being down on you. Now create water is still awesome of you want 1000 gallons of water, and is better than hydrowhip in those cases, but it's not going to be a major part of combat strategies.

Symbol of Encroaching Doom might be awesome, but it takes three hours to set up (on the plus side it lasts for one day/week per caster level or until set off), it's a trap not battle magic.

Battle magic becomes the week magic here, but it's still useful, and in wars single mages still massively affect the outcome (like say reducing the need to transport supplies, or flooding the enemy's camp, or creating roads to make travel easier, or...)


That's been tried, but sitting around twiddling your thumbs for multiple rounds doesn't seem fun to most players. Also, isn't there a law? Grod's law I believe? You can't balance an ability by making it annoying to use?

True, which is one of the reasons I hate the idea I occasionally see if 'each player must make up their own magic words for the spell, because roleplay' (if I ever have to do it I'm just translating the spell names into Mandarin). Oh look, I've learnt a new spell, now I've got to spend 15 minutes coming up with magic words, checking they're not used by my existing site, and telling the GM what they are, then noting them down so I'll remember them.

And yes, I've occasionally seen it in games. In Dark Heresy each psychic power used has a one in ten chance of causing psychic phenomena (relatively harmless most of the time), which has a one in for chance of causing Perils of the warp, which has a decent chance of either killing the party outright. This is per die, you'll begin with one but have three when you unlock the good powers, and you'll need those three to activate them. Oh, and IIRC phenomena activates individually for each die. At least when Rogue Trader was released it's system allowed you to sacrifice power for not potentially dooming the party (or do the opposite). The risk versus reward how much to risk was an alluring process that allowed down the game for everyone.

Might was well balance powerful spells by asking the player to compose new original limericks whenever have to cast one.

EDIT: also retiring certain have situations for use is just plain annoying, when it gets beyond components. I can except 'you can't cast ball of flaming death when you don't have your ruby rod' much more than 'you can only cast ball of flaming death during a full moon while the target has a dove's carcass pointed to their shoulder'.

CharonsHelper
2017-06-20, 11:32 AM
That's been tried, but sitting around twiddling your thumbs for multiple rounds doesn't seem fun to most players. Also, isn't there a law? Grod's law I believe? You can't balance an ability by making it annoying to use?


If you had an engaging enough minigame to play while casting a multi-round spell you could maybe get away with that. Otherwise it just doesn't seem like good game design for a PC.

Oh - definitely. You wouldn't want to slap the multi-round casting on top of 3.x/Pathfinder or another system designed without it. It would need to be integrated from the ground up.

It would need a minigame or allow you still fight with weapons, albeit with sub-par combat skills.

Potentially have the familiar be more significant and also under control of the same player who would still do things while the wizard is casting. etc.

Of course - they would have the option to avoid the problem by casting their weaker/faster spells in combat and only use the big ones out of combat where the slow casting speed doesn't matter. (And I didn't mean that they should take hours to cast - but maybe 2-4 rounds.)

FreddyNoNose
2017-06-20, 05:52 PM
"Because Gygax."
But they retired characters too.

Watch this for a few minutes: https://youtu.be/RwKztsXquoM?t=44m12s

Max_Killjoy
2017-06-21, 11:09 AM
Then D&D can be the quadratic game where everyone's quadratic, and everyone assists somewhere. Then we can have another game, say Soldiers & Scholars where magic is weak and linear, and a third have, Demigods & Demons where magic and marital abilities are strong and linear.

I know if mostly ruin a version of the S&S game with maybe some occasional Demigods & Demons, but that's because I like linear games. Should I be debited playing fantasy just because I don't want my what's calling down due from the sky?


Exactly -- pick a power level and progression curve, and then apply it to every type of character across the board.

Mendicant
2017-06-21, 02:03 PM
Exactly -- pick a power level and progression curve, and then apply it to every type of character across the board.

Even in the example you just agreed with, the desire was expressed for "Demigods and Demons" to be able to communicate with "Scholars and Soldiers."

That might be possible with two different games, depending on what semantic hair you consider it vital to split. It is not possible with two different systems. A tiered system allows all of these disparate games/tiers/genres to exist with the same architecture, and there is no compelling reason to assume you couldn't pick 1 & 2 or just 3 or whatever else seems appropriate. "Just make different games" is the approach WoD took. Of course, people wanted to run mages alongside vampires, but the system architecture made it a mess to do so.

Level-capped D&D already exists, as do games of D&D that start above 1st level. The d20 system, viewed across its entire spectrum, is actually very amenable to all kinds of genre emulation across various bands of its level space, and it is also eminently hackable because its core resolution mechanic is so simple.

What does not work is the inbuilt assumption that all classes and concepts must run along the same continuum for their entirety. Expanding the level space and alternating power growth more thoughtfully solves that problem without tossing the baby with the bathwater.

Max_Killjoy
2017-06-21, 02:27 PM
Even in the example you just agreed with, the desire was expressed for "Demigods and Demons" to be able to communicate with "Scholars and Soldiers."


Where?

I thought the poster was saying they like mainly game X, but sometimes want to play some game Y -- not play a mix of X and Y.

Mendicant
2017-06-21, 02:53 PM
I might have misread it. In any event, demanding that high level and low level play be siloed in different games is still unnecessary and arbitrary.

Max_Killjoy
2017-06-21, 03:01 PM
I might have misread it. In any event, demanding that high level and low level play be siloed in different games is still unnecessary and arbitrary.


The comments related to power and progression/advancement, not specifically to level. It's not about keeping low-level and high-level play apart from one another, it's about keeping different progression curves out of the same game*.

The "silo" options are two of several "be honest with yourself and your gamers" variants, where different character types start out at a similar potency compared to each other and relative to their setting/world, and then progress along the same curve so that they're all linear, all exponential, all quadratic, or whatever. It's not silos with different levels, it's silos where each contains identical-as-possible starting power, progression, and "ending" power across all character types.


* Unless you deliberately combine them and everyone is up-front and open-eyed about some types of characters being more viable than others as the game progresses.

Arbane
2017-06-21, 03:26 PM
That's been tried, but sitting around twiddling your thumbs for multiple rounds doesn't seem fun to most players. Also, isn't there a law? Grod's law I believe? You can't balance an ability by making it annoying to use?

IIRC, the steampunk pseudohistory game Castle Falkenstein had multi-round spells. The way it worked was that the magician had to gather up X amount of mana of the right sort to cast a spell, and you did that by drawing cards (the game used playing cards instead of dice). If they weren't of the right suit, they'd cause side-effects if you didn't get rid of them. So casting a spell was a minigame while everyone else was busy fencing or whatever.


But they retired characters too.

Watch this for a few minutes: https://youtu.be/RwKztsXquoM?t=44m12s


True. Unfortunately, the early editions of D&D weren't very good at explaining how it was 'supposed' to be played.

Frozen_Feet
2017-06-21, 03:35 PM
@Mendicant:

What you want when you say you want a game where the bones remain the same even though the game changes, is combinational emergence.

The easiest example to study is a zero-player game, Conway's Life, and its variants. From a simple set of rules, you get increasingly complex patterns as the number of building blocks increases.

There are several problems with this in the context of what you want, though. The primary thing being that emergence is unpredictable. It is unlikely you will get a stable progression of the exact sort you want out of any ruleset which supports emergence. Tiny initial differences between characters are likely to lead to massive and unexpected differences in their middle and end states.

The secondary thing is computational intensiveness. When trying to calculate everything from "first principles", so to speak, it quickly becomes infeasible for humans to deal with large amounts of elements on the tabletop. This is already visible even in normal play when using d20 rulesets: as characters gain levels and abilities, the time required to resolve their actions grows. It becomes glaringly apparent if you try to use same rules for mass combat. Speed of play, more than anything, is why many systems move resolution from the rules to the GM or have cut-off points where you move from a small-scale, detailed rules to large-scale, abstract rules.

Of all RPGs I own, only one, Noitahovi, scales smoothly from zero to hero to cosmic while retaining same basic mechanics and remaining computationally feasible on tabletop. But it succeeds mostly by virtue of being so abstract it barely models anything. The conflict resolution of that game doesn't tell you what happens in the game, it tells you which player gets to tell what happens in the gane.

Anonymouswizard
2017-06-21, 05:02 PM
Where?

I thought the poster was saying they like mainly game X, but sometimes want to play some game Y -- not play a mix of X and Y.

This was the intent. It was intended in the same way 'I'd normally pick Traveller but sometimes I'll run Rocket Age' would be.

FreddyNoNose
2017-06-22, 11:34 PM
IIRC, the steampunk pseudohistory game Castle Falkenstein had multi-round spells. The way it worked was that the magician had to gather up X amount of mana of the right sort to cast a spell, and you did that by drawing cards (the game used playing cards instead of dice). If they weren't of the right suit, they'd cause side-effects if you didn't get rid of them. So casting a spell was a minigame while everyone else was busy fencing or whatever.




True. Unfortunately, the early editions of D&D weren't very good at explaining how it was 'supposed' to be played.

Perhaps the problem is people need to have someone explain it to them....

Zale
2017-06-23, 07:35 AM
If you had an engaging enough minigame to play while casting a multi-round spell you could maybe get away with that. Otherwise it just doesn't seem like good game design for a PC.

As I recall, one of the older editions of D&D (1e AD&D?) did have a flavor of multi-turn spells. As I understand, each round was divided into 10 or so "segments" or "ticks" and you would act based on your initiative and the speed of your weapon (or other action).

If you were doing something fast, it happened on the first segment, while very slow actions might take until the sixth or seventh segment.

Spells added their level to the segment you acted on, so even if you could end the entire fight in a single spell, you may have to wait until everyone else acted in order to do so. I feel like you had to declare you were casting at the start of the turn, though, so you could lose your spell if you were casting something that wouldn't go until segment 8 and someone punched you on segment 5.

Lemmy
2017-06-23, 12:14 PM
Why does a level system need to include "zero to god" progression at all? Because it's fun. Because it's possible. Because people like that concept. And those who don't... Nothing is forcing them to play all the way from 1 to 20+. E6 is a great game, but it shouldn't be the only way to play D&D.

Max_Killjoy
2017-06-23, 12:33 PM
Because it's fun.


I never found the "zero" stage fun, and the "godling" stage is only fun with a very particular setup and carefully crafted opposition and challenges.

Seriously, I don't question that people have fun playing "zeros", to each their own... but I'll never understand it.

VoxRationis
2017-06-23, 12:41 PM
As I recall, one of the older editions of D&D (1e AD&D?) did have a flavor of multi-turn spells. As I understand, each round was divided into 10 or so "segments" or "ticks" and you would act based on your initiative and the speed of your weapon (or other action).

If you were doing something fast, it happened on the first segment, while very slow actions might take until the sixth or seventh segment.

Spells added their level to the segment you acted on, so even if you could end the entire fight in a single spell, you may have to wait until everyone else acted in order to do so. I feel like you had to declare you were casting at the start of the turn, though, so you could lose your spell if you were casting something that wouldn't go until segment 8 and someone punched you on segment 5.

2nd edition AD&D had something to that effect, definitely (though nothing about "segments"—it was all expressed in terms of initiative count). And that was before Concentration checks were a thing, so a kobold doing 1-2 damage with a thrown rock could shut down a powerful wizard.

FreddyNoNose
2017-06-23, 01:28 PM
Because it's fun. Because it's possible. Because people like that concept. And those who don't... Nothing is forcing them to play all the way from 1 to 20+. E6 is a great game, but it shouldn't be the only way to play D&D.

Plus the whole escapism thing. We have the real world, this is something outside of that constraint.

FreddyNoNose
2017-06-23, 01:29 PM
I never found the "zero" stage fun, and the "godling" stage is only fun with a very particular setup and carefully crafted opposition and challenges.

Seriously, I don't question that people have fun playing "zeros", to each their own... but I'll never understand it.

Well, are you playing the game or playing the rules of the game?

Frozen_Feet
2017-06-23, 01:42 PM
Why does a level system need to include "zero to god" progression at all?

The honest answer is "it doesn't". But it could, hence the question "how to do this well?".

FreddyNoNose
2017-06-23, 01:57 PM
The honest answer is "it doesn't". But it could, hence the question "how to do this well?".

What is wrong with good enough?

What is wrong with trying something and failing?

Frozen_Feet
2017-06-23, 02:03 PM
"Nothing" to the former.

"Depends on motive of the effort and consequence of failure" to the latter.

What on Earth triggered those questions in response to my post?

Morty
2017-06-23, 02:44 PM
Because it's fun. Because it's possible. Because people like that concept. And those who don't... Nothing is forcing them to play all the way from 1 to 20+. E6 is a great game, but it shouldn't be the only way to play D&D.

That's kind of a weird way to put it, considering that E6 isn't so much a "way" to play D&D as it is a homebrew patch.

BayardSPSR
2017-06-23, 04:15 PM
Because it's fun. Because it's possible. Because people like that concept. And those who don't... Nothing is forcing them to play all the way from 1 to 20+. E6 is a great game, but it shouldn't be the only way to play D&D.

The thing is, if there was a new edition of D&D released (let's call it... 6e) that happened to be "E6, and only E6," it still wouldn't be the only way to play D&D. 3.5 and 4e still exist. Older editions still exist, and OSR and 3.P are things. The whole idea that there's a "one way to D&D," or that only one version of D&D can meaningfully exist at a time, is a canard.

Anonymouswizard
2017-06-23, 04:53 PM
I never found the "zero" stage fun, and the "godling" stage is only fun with a very particular setup and carefully crafted opposition and challenges.

Seriously, I don't question that people have fun playing "zeros", to each their own... but I'll never understand it.

I'm completely agreeing here. Okay, I actually do occasionally enjoy playing the 'zero' stage, but I still want to advance to 'hero'. If personally rather hang around hero for quite a while, pick up a bunch of contracts, some more skills, a decent but not overly powerful or broad collection of spells/items, a favour or two, maybe even stakes in a company or organisation. But even if I have access to magic I want it to stay at the hero level for a long while.

Because honestly, if I wanted to play a godling (which can be fun) I want to start as one. Mutants and Masterminds terms you that most normal humans are probably level 2-4, maybe as high as 6, and then suggests you begin at level 8 or highest, it makes for a fun game in a way that 'you begin as a level one story with basic abilities' doesn't. A PL10M&M is already a demigod in a way an experienced Victoriana character isn't.


Well, are you playing the game or playing the rules of the game?

I'm not. I'm just saying that in my view zero to godling is less engaging than hero to hero.


That's kind of a weird way to put it, considering that E6 isn't so much a "way" to play D&D as it is a homebrew patch.

I remember seeing a homebrew that made a bunch classes specifically for E6, each stuff levels long and aiming to represent an archetype. They felt much more satisfying than the basic D&D classes, but that just highlighted how much E6 isn't 'normal' 3.5.

If I had to run D&D 3.5 again, which I don't, it would be E6, but that's because I like the scaling, not because I think it's the only one viable. I just wish 3.X had been able to pick a scale and suck with it (and I personally think 5e has a lesser variety of the problem, although WotC had admitted you're not really supposed to play past level 12 as designed, they focused on where they heard most groups play).

Morty
2017-06-23, 06:41 PM
They've actually said that? That's remarkably honest of them. But also entirely unsurprising. Actually making high levels work would require changes to the system 5e wasn't willing to make. Focusing on what the system is... well not good at, but what people expect from it, is perfectly valid. Tacking on 8-10 extra levels just for show, less so.

And I remember the E6-dedicated classes as well. Like I said, the relative popularity of E6 (as an idea, if not in actual play) is very telling.

Mendicant
2017-06-23, 10:40 PM
Tiny initial differences between characters are likely to lead to massive and unexpected differences in their middle and end states.

There is no reason this is or should be true for what I'm talking about. In a game where capabilities are doled out by level, initial differences can have meaningful consequences down the road, but their relative importance steadily decreases. If you get the ability to kill with fear at level 9, and the ability to teleport and plane shift at level 15, your first level 1d6 fire blast might still have some relevance somehow, but it has steadily decreased and it isn't producing multiplicative complexity.

For that matter, just because there are cutoffs when new rules are introduced to abstract and manage issues of scale doesn't mean the bones of the game have now changed. I personally use a set of rules for mass battles in 3.P that abstracts groups of soldiers into mobs and units that behave very much like single monsters. There are differences, but the bones are still the same.

Frozen_Feet
2017-06-24, 08:00 AM
From a mathematical viewpoint, your statement is false. If you have to add new rules to abstract away information, you are changing the bones of the game. Your swarm of orcs no longer behaves equally compared to if you actually modeled those orcs as individuals.

Similarly, your response to my point about combinational emergence is off base. "1d6 fire damage", "killing with fear" and "teleport" are not equivalent basic elements of a game nor have you provided any set of basic elements from which all of these can emerge. So of course they do not possess the traits which I describe.

Let me be clear: no version of D&D is a good example of what I am talking about, because all versions of D&D cause shifts in play by abritrarily introducing more and different rules. Just because you keep rolling d20 against target numbers isn't a counterargument, because those other rules do not stem or even always rely on d20 rolls.

BayardSPSR
2017-06-24, 07:15 PM
Let me be clear: no version of D&D is a good example of what I am talking about, because all versions of D&D cause shifts in play by abritrarily introducing more and different rules. Just because you keep rolling d20 against target numbers isn't a counterargument, because those other rules do not stem or even always rely on d20 rolls.

It amuses me endlessly how every version of D&D I've seen is built around a core mechanic that the most practical options in the game ignore completely.

Mendicant
2017-06-24, 07:21 PM
I think you're using an arbitrarily narrow definition of "same bones". If you die at 0 hp, resolve tests by rolling 1d20 v. target number, move in an order determined by initiative, have tasks adjudicated by skill bonuses, acquire power by level, only take one class per level, and on and on, the bones remain the same. Now if at 10th level the resolution mechanic suddenly became die pool v. TN and your skill points were jettisoned and you stopped advancing by level and instead bought all of your abilities a'la carte, the system's bones would have changed.

People are claiming this has to be much more complex than it actually does. Spread d20 advancement over 30 levels. Have a subclass that remains constant for each of the three tiers. Refrain from parceling out abilities that provide both lateral and vertical growth in the linear period of each tier--you hit Gimli at 3rd level, and then just become a better version of Gimli for 4 levels after that, before expanding the concept again during the capstone phase of advancement.

VoxRationis
2017-06-24, 07:29 PM
It amuses me endlessly how every version of D&D I've seen is built around a core mechanic that the most practical options in the game ignore completely.

Are you talking about spells, or do you prefer 3d6?

BayardSPSR
2017-06-24, 07:41 PM
Are you talking about spells, or do you prefer 3d6?

I'm mostly talking about spells, yeah.

That said, I feel kind of similarly about everything D&D has that isn't a skill check. I mean, you've got this wonderful universal action resolution mechanic that every character has access to (skills). Then you add attack rolls, which are like skills but aren't for some reason. Then saves, which are like skills but aren't. Then initiative. Couldn't all of these things have just run off of the skill system, instead of creating four different ways to roll a d20 and add numbers to it?

Of course, I'm not actually expecting this to change; I realize attacks, saves, and initiative are more foundational to D&D's traditions than skills themselves are. I still find the half-measures towards a single resolution mechanic funny from a design perspective, though.

NichG
2017-06-24, 09:52 PM
I'm mostly talking about spells, yeah.

That said, I feel kind of similarly about everything D&D has that isn't a skill check. I mean, you've got this wonderful universal action resolution mechanic that every character has access to (skills). Then you add attack rolls, which are like skills but aren't for some reason. Then saves, which are like skills but aren't. Then initiative. Couldn't all of these things have just run off of the skill system, instead of creating four different ways to roll a d20 and add numbers to it?

Of course, I'm not actually expecting this to change; I realize attacks, saves, and initiative are more foundational to D&D's traditions than skills themselves are. I still find the half-measures towards a single resolution mechanic funny from a design perspective, though.

Having a single universal resolution mechanic tends to drastically decrease the richness of a game unless you pull off stuff like Frozen_Feet is alluding to and manage to tap into emergence as a source of complexity. Ultimately, there just isn't much you can get out of 'noise + static number, check if > static threshold'.

Anonymouswizard
2017-06-25, 06:16 AM
People are claiming this has to be much more complex than it actually does. Spread d20 advancement over 30 levels. Have a subclass that remains constant for each of the three tiers. Refrain from parceling out abilities that provide both lateral and vertical growth in the linear period of each tier--you hit Gimli at 3rd level, and then just become a better version of Gimli for 4 levels after that, before expanding the concept again during the capstone phase of advancement.

a.k.a. 4e with non linear periods at the beginning/end of each tier?

While 4e certainly could have smoothed the transition a bit more I don't really see how this differs from it's Paragon Paths in more than where the start point is.


I'm mostly talking about spells, yeah.

That said, I feel kind of similarly about everything D&D has that isn't a skill check. I mean, you've got this wonderful universal action resolution mechanic that every character has access to (skills). Then you add attack rolls, which are like skills but aren't for some reason. Then saves, which are like skills but aren't. Then initiative. Couldn't all of these things have just run off of the skill system, instead of creating four different ways to roll a d20 and add numbers to it?

Of course, I'm not actually expecting this to change; I realize attacks, saves, and initiative are more foundational to D&D's traditions than skills themselves are. I still find the half-measures towards a single resolution mechanic funny from a design perspective, though.

Well 4e changed everything to (level/2)+stat mod+bonuses, including skills, and just got a +5 bonus, and in 5e everything either doesn't scale or does off of your proficiency bonus. 5e is a single resolution mechanic, I just think it's a bad one.

Mendicant
2017-06-25, 10:46 AM
a.k.a. 4e with non linear periods at the beginning/end of each tier?

While 4e certainly could have smoothed the transition a bit more I don't really see how this differs from it's Paragon Paths in more than where the start point is.


This idea is explicitly based off the 4e tiers, yes. However, 4e's progression was *too* smooth, and class design was too samey both across classes and across levels. 3.x is more robust as a system and would provide more of the core rules and overall power scale.

Imagine getting power along the lines of 1st and 2nd level spells at 1st-3rd, along with some other key class features, then most of your advancement from 4th-7th level comes in the form of scaling bonuses to things you already do: sneak attack dice, caster level, bardic music bonuses, maybe some metamagic. At 8th-10th you break open the equivalent of 3rd and 4th level magic.

You'd need to organize casting a bit differently--maybe you get 5e-style cantrips and a few new "least spells/invocations" at 1st, 2nd and 3rd level, and then at 8th you get "lesser spells" and at tenth you get your first "greater spell".

Anonymouswizard
2017-06-25, 11:46 AM
This idea is explicitly based off the 4e tiers, yes. However, 4e's progression was *too* smooth, and class design was too samey both across classes and across levels. 3.x is more robust as a system and would provide more of the core rules and overall power scale.

Imagine getting power along the lines of 1st and 2nd level spells at 1st-3rd, along with some other key class features, then most of your advancement from 4th-7th level comes in the form of scaling bonuses to things you already do: sneak attack dice, caster level, bardic music bonuses, maybe some metamagic. At 8th-10th you break open the equivalent of 3rd and 4th level magic.

You'd need to organize casting a bit differently--maybe you get 5e-style cantrips and a few new "least spells/invocations" at 1st, 2nd and 3rd level, and then at 8th you get "lesser spells" and at tenth you get your first "greater spell".

Honestly, I'd just be running Victoriana instead. Magic didn't get to insane power without plot (and you just know I'll have a powerful ritual or three appear in the campaign), and players also get to play around with technology. If I'm running a game focused on 1st-3rd level spells for that long I likely don't want higher magic (personal preference).

I thought 4e only really succeed in being what it should haven been in the Paragon tier. Paragon Paths were awesome in a way most Epic Destinies weren't, and chargers in the heroic tier were generally boring. Although I've become very interested in Essentials as an alternative version of 4e.

BayardSPSR
2017-06-25, 03:28 PM
Having a single universal resolution mechanic tends to drastically decrease the richness of a game unless you pull off stuff like Frozen_Feet is alluding to and manage to tap into emergence as a source of complexity. Ultimately, there just isn't much you can get out of 'noise + static number, check if > static threshold'.

That's more of a problem with the particular mechanic than the idea of a single resolution mechanic in general, though.

georgie_leech
2017-06-25, 04:28 PM
That's more of a problem with the particular mechanic than the idea of a single resolution mechanic in general, though.

For instance, Thea the Awakening uses the same mechanic for all challenges, but it gets a lot of mileage out of it and is plenty engaging.

NichG
2017-06-25, 07:42 PM
That's more of a problem with the particular mechanic than the idea of a single resolution mechanic in general, though.

Well as I said, if you can get some emergence going a single mechanic can be very deep. But focusing on the 'resolution' part of that pays attention to the wrong part.

If anything, if you want emergent complexity you almost need an 'un-resolution' mechanic - something that asks two questions for every one answer it gives. That's how complexity builds rather than shrinks.

Cluedrew
2017-06-26, 09:18 PM
I sort of understand what you mean, but at the same if it is always increasing complexity how do you finish the scene?

NichG
2017-06-27, 04:43 AM
I sort of understand what you mean, but at the same if it is always increasing complexity how do you finish the scene?

Either with catastrophic collapse of the source of tension (as in D&D combat, or a MtG match) or the scene ends with loose threads that will eventually be reintroduced in later scenes (more like Nobilis).

Max_Killjoy
2017-06-27, 08:36 AM
Either with catastrophic collapse of the source of tension (as in D&D combat, or a MtG match) or the scene ends with loose threads that will eventually be reintroduced in later scenes (more like Nobilis).

So... it's tracking something other than the situational events at hand?

NichG
2017-06-27, 09:24 AM
So... it's tracking something other than the situational events at hand?

Richness and complexity come from extended interactions, so if your only mechanic is something which compartmentalizes things and removes them from play then it's not very good for creating those interactions. If you have a mechanic where you can succeed or fail at climbing a wall during your turn and then it's done either way, that leaves fewer hooks to tie interactions to than if you had a mechanic where for example you could end up paying different resource costs to climb that wall, or where climbing the wall made that area permanently more/less passable, or where climbing the wall created a temporary opportunity for enemies to take action for a period of time during the climb, or...