Guardrails: avoiding unexpected breakage vs preventing exploits

[PhoenixPhyre]

Bouncing off a quote in a different thread (that I didn't want to sidetrack) on MM3:



But speaking more broadly, M&M has plenty of exploits like that. It's inevitable in a game with such deep customization; the fact that it's a superhero game with deep customization makes it all worse. Including a wide variety of enemies and attack types helps, but ultimately it's up to the players not to be d*cks. Which is...kind of true for all ttRPGs. Heck, all social activities.


The bolded section meshes really well with a realization I came to a while ago--good systems have guardrails and try to avoid broken stuff...but how they do so matters. It's better (IMO) to write in guardrails that reduce the chances of accidental breakage over trying to prevent motivated players from exploiting things. I mean, it's probably useful to think about how something can be abused intentionally and rewording the obvious ones, but that hits diminishing returns.

TTRPGs require a fundamental level of trust between the players (including a GM, if there is one). Those meta-agreements, the resolution to "not be d*cks" (whatever that means at that particular table), that's the main constraint on exploits. No amount of text on the page can materially affect someone determined to exploit the fine cracks; no perfect abstraction exists, and motivated reasoning means you can find loopholes wherever you want to. All that really matters is the willingness of other players to go along with your shenanigans. And shenanigans, when agreed to by the table, don't really cause too many problems.

On the other hand, I find it very important for systems to sand down some of the rough edges and work to make the experience clean for new players and groups. That doesn't mean simple systems only--complexity is ok (like all things, in moderation). But you shouldn't have to reach through shattered windows with broken glass still in the frame to manipulate the game state or build characters. It should be quite difficult (nothing can be impossible) to accidentally create a broken character in either sense of the word. Either one that falls well short of system expectations OR one that vastly exceeds the system's comfortable upper limits. Both of those might be possible, but should require active intent and system mastery.

Ideally, the system's "happy path" (most well-supported character types and power levels) should be the default, easiest path. Taking the "obvious, thematically evocative" options at each step for something the system supports should produce a competent (by system standards) character. Maybe not the most optimized (the floor is not the ceiling), but capable of meeting the system's minimum standards comfortably. This goes extra for DM-side stuff--if the DM has to make sure to juggle and design loot drops so that half of the party can keep up (the others not needing such things) or if the DM needs to carefully design challenges and tell new players about very non-obvious choices[1], that's a problem. Because those things won't happen with a new GM.

One way to do this is to be open and explicit about the "happy path". And then bake the necessary pure numbers straight into the build system. Whether that's classes or not is less relevant (although classes do make this kind of design easier since they channel the choices down predictable lines). It's the difference between base 4e D&D requiring a bunch of magic items (appropriate armor and appropriate magic weapons/implements) and at least one feat (Weapon or Implement Focus) just to meet baseline due to monster values scaling faster than base PC values and 4e or PF with Automatic Bonus Progression in place. One is failable, the other isn't.

TL;DR I prefer when systems focus their guard-rails on avoiding accidental breakage/cleaning up the sharp edges over trying to prevent exploits by locking everything down or focusing on "hard numeric balance".

[1] Is the 3e D&D Tough feat good for people who want to make tanky martial characters? Nope. Not at all. For that purpose, it's decidedly sub-optimal. But it's actually useful for wizards...despite nothing about it making that clear.

[Mechalich]

The thing about preventing accidental breakage is that is requires the developers of the system to both possess extremely high system mastery and to playtest the system extensively to understand where the mines are buried that can cause builds to explode through the intended system parameters. The more complex the system, the more difficult this becomes, since the math-hammering portion of the testing becomes more complicated and the number of elements necessary to juggle when working through the options increases exponentially due to the myriad interactions of different sub-systems. Somewhat ironically, a system's success works against it in this regard, since a more successful system mandates more content, which increases more options, which produces greater complexity, which produces new and unanticipated points of accidental failure.

Traditionally, this has been difficult to achieve. TTRPG developers are generally not mathematically-minded persons and have been extremely hesitant to conduct the kind of statistical probability analysis necessary to properly test the mathematical models underpinning various RPG systems. Playtesting is worse, since it's extremely expensive to conduct and even when done may not reveal problems if the developer team plays the game differently than the majority of the player-base ultimately does (this was, traditionally, a huge problem with basically all White-Wolf publications).


Taking the "obvious, thematically evocative" options at each step for something the system supports should produce a competent (by system standards) character.

One difficulty is that the obvious and thematically evocative options in specific source material may include non-competent characters. With regard to superhero genre, this is a major problem, since that genre hides the fundamentally squishy nature of certain builds behind a series of dodges that while acceptable in single-author fiction don't work in a collaborative tabletop game. A proper superhero game probably needs to forbid Batman, since without his plot armor he gets shot and killed sometime before the third mission is finished, but it's really hard to enforce a 'no Batman' design code in a superhero scenario.

[PhoenixPhyre]

It's actually easier than that if you don't try to prevent accidents entirely, just make them harder and make the system more resilient to their presence. This generally means having a broader, flatter power curve for characters, as well as reducing the supported range of character traits.

A tightly wound, complex system is more fragile and rigid than one with seams and expansion joints. One that tries to codify everything and is designed to be played "RAW first" is more fragile than one that teaches players and DMs where the happy path lies and what the system expects, while giving DMs lots of leeway to adapt.

Class based systems can be (but aren't necessary) easier to guard in this way than classless ones, simply because there are fewer interacting parts and more is decided in advance. And they can declare exactly what is supported and what is not. You can rule out the accidentally incompetent characters to a substantial degree if every class is competent at a baseline level by default. That has other effects, so it's not a panacea. And many designers fail to do make use of this. Some (ie 3e D&D) glory in creating trap options.

Generally, if you try to make a game generic (within a genre), you have to rely more on human judgement because you can't rule out broken combinations globally without unacceptably reducing the range of characters. But then again, I prefer games that don't try to be build a bear, everything to everyone types. Choose your supported character types and support them well. And be explicit about what is supported and not supported. Anyone playing outside that takes that risk on their own, but does so knowingly (and thus not accidentally).

[Reversefigure4]

I'm all for side-bars that openly lay out 'this ability is potentially abusable, and here's how you'd do it'. It flags it openly to the GM so they see it coming, it flags it to the players so they don't feel the need to prove their cleverness by building it.It makes it nice and clear when someone is violating the 'don't be a ****' rules, particularly if it flags that Ability A is fine, and Ability B is fine, but they shouldn't be combined.

Equally, I'm all for example characters or sidebars that say "a competent character should be able to do X". No system in the world will hold up against a player trying to deliberately make an incompetent character (one level in each class usually produces something functionally useless), but if we can see what a character should look like and have good guidance on building it, we should be able to tell why that doesn't work.

[Satinavian]

Balancing is a good thing. Some abilities are just too good and warp the game around them whenever they are in play. Others are so weak that no one ever takes them, making them a waste of space (or worse, someone actually takes them because they are not good at rules).

But i think a system is fine, if the parts get balanced, trying to fight synergies and redundancies is a never ending struggle and ends in convoluted mess with so many restrictions that you hardly can build a character you want. And it takes so much work better applied elsewhere. I think, synergies should only be considered for balancing for the thematically obvious combinations at best because those tend to pop up when players follow an inspiration, not when thy try to get power through rule mastery.

I am generally also very much in favor of diminishing return and/or caps. Both tend to limit the effectiveness of min-maxing naturally without going through all the combinations. It doesn't matter how you get a stat so high, the payoff is just not that big anyway.

I dislike classes. Sure, they are easier to balance, but only because they restrict viable characters to a very limited set of archetypes. That is to much of a price to pay imho, especially when it is still far from easy to balance class systems.


I'm all for side-bars that openly lay out 'this ability is potentially abusable, and here's how you'd do it'. It flags it openly to the GM so they see it coming, it flags it to the players so they don't feel the need to prove their cleverness by building it.It makes it nice and clear when someone is violating the 'don't be a ****' rules, particularly if it flags that Ability A is fine, and Ability B is fine, but they shouldn't be combined.
If the designers actually noticed a combination that is too bad, they could as well just ban it and they usually do.

I think those sidebars are more useful for abusable subsystems where the problematic combinations can be reached in various ways. Like "Our animal companion build rules allow a huge variety of results. However if you were to stack only templates of similar kind, your companion would exceed values of a normal character of your experience in a narrow niche. Please don't do that."

[KorvinStarmast]

This generally means having a broader, flatter power curve for characters, as well as reducing the supported range of character traits. BitD does this well enough. They also did a good job on the strong archetypes / class thing.

But then again, I prefer games that don't try to be build a bear, everything to everyone types. Choose your supported character types and support them well. And be explicit about what is supported and not supported. Anyone playing outside that takes that risk on their own, but does so knowingly (and thus not accidentally). Your last bit I fully concur on.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I dislike classes. Sure, they are easier to balance, but only because they restrict viable characters to a very limited set of archetypes. That is to much of a price to pay imho, especially when it is still far from easy to balance class systems.


I agree with the rest of the post (in broad strokes), but do want to say that for me, personally (and this is entirely opinion), I prefer when games limit themselves to a narrow set of archetypes, so having classes is a strong plus for me. But then I don't play in genres where that doesn't make much sense (like superheroes or a lot of modern stuff). I'm pretty firmly in the "fantasy adventuring" camp as far as genre preferences, and there having strong archetypes makes everything work much more smoothly and allows stories to focus on the adventuring part. And interactions with the world have nice, well-defined interfaces.

Basically, "mechanical character customization" isn't the highest good for me. Not at all. In fact, it's somewhere down middling or lower on the importance scale. TBQH, I've never really noticed that it makes much of a difference in the characters that result, which seem to be much more differentiated by different people playing them than anything mechanical. I've had a number of D&D fighters whose mechanical differences were small who all had very different impacts on the setting. I've had characters whose only unifying factor was "casts spells" (very different spell selection and other mechanics) who had basically no impact on the setting or play--they were just there. So as far as differentiating factors go, player >>>> characterization >>>>>>>>>>> mechanics IMO. As a result, I'm happy when games limit the archetypes sharply. And then individual campaigns limit them even further. I'd be happy to play in a "you must all have at least one level in fighter" game. Or a "no full casters" game. Etc.

[Satinavian]

Well, it is preference.

I don't like classes in fantasy games either. And if i think back to the last dozen or so characters i played in fantasy games, pretty much none of them would fit well with the classes most fantasy systems offer (In the core books that is. If you have 300+ different classes over dozens of supplements that is another story. Still not to my liking as it would be probably easier to just go classless)

As for limited campaigns, i prefer to just go with a theme instead of any mechanical class restrictions. Sure, you can go "One level of fighter for everyone". But you could also do "you are a military unit in conflict X" or "you are a group of young mage aristocrats of empire Y and their close associetes trying to impress their elders" and use classless systems.

[KorvinStarmast]

I don't like classes in fantasy games either. You are an experienced player.
For the new player ~ I have done quite a bit of DMing for teens and pre teens ~ a class unburdens the player a great deal in terms of removing a barrier to entry. A lot of work is pre done for them.

As the player gains more experience in the TTRPG form of play, I can see where some players find classes too limiting. Very much a matter of taste.

As but one recent example:
We are playing a space/horror game called Mothership that has pretty well built classes / archetypes.
It was a hell of a lot easier for me, a new player to this game, to have a few choices (less than 12) of "kit" to use to try the game out and play it than it would have been for me to create, from scratch, the Teamster I am currently playing. I don't have to know the game inside and out at the Chargen stage. That's beneficial.

[Atranen]

Well, it is preference.

I don't like classes in fantasy games either. And if i think back to the last dozen or so characters i played in fantasy games, pretty much none of them would fit well with the classes most fantasy systems offer (In the core books that is. If you have 300+ different classes over dozens of supplements that is another story. Still not to my liking as it would be probably easier to just go classless)

As for limited campaigns, i prefer to just go with a theme instead of any mechanical class restrictions. Sure, you can go "One level of fighter for everyone". But you could also do "you are a military unit in conflict X" or "you are a group of young mage aristocrats of empire Y and their close associetes trying to impress their elders" and use classless systems.

Which classless systems do you like the most for fantasy?

[Satinavian]

Which classless systems do you like the most for fantasy?
That is easy : Splittermond

Unfortunately not available in English.

I also played a lot of TDE in the past but depending on the edition it is not completely classless, more like a hybrid. Also it is not nearly as good. I also remember fondly some campaigns in SIFRP but that is otherwise restricted in scope.

[Atranen]

That is easy : Splittermond

Unfortunately not available in English.

I also played a lot of TDE in the past but depending on the edition it is not completely classless, more like a hybrid. Also it is not nearly as good. I also remember fondly some campaigns in SIFRP but that is otherwise restricted in scope.

Ah too bad! I would love to try it out.

[gatorized]

The idea that it must be impossible to write a system without including blatant game-breaking exploits is a result of only having experience with systems made by incompetent people, mainly D&D and related D20 systems.


You are an experienced player.
For the new player ~ I have done quite a bit of DMing for teens and pre teens ~ a class unburdens the player a great deal in terms of removing a barrier to entry. A lot of work is pre done for them.

As the player gains more experience in the TTRPG form of play, I can see where some players find classes too limiting. Very much a matter of taste.

As but one recent example:
We are playing a space/horror game called Mothership that has pretty well built classes / archetypes.
It was a hell of a lot easier for me, a new player to this game, to have a few choices (less than 12) of "kit" to use to try the game out and play it than it would have been for me to create, from scratch, the Teamster I am currently playing. I don't have to know the game inside and out at the Chargen stage. That's beneficial.

What classes actually do is give players a bunch of abilities they're not aware of / don't understand / have no interest in using / don't fit their character concept. When you pick each and every power your character has - and you don't need fifty powers to be effective - you're far more able to make meaningful decisions about what your character will do.

[BRC]

What classes actually do is give players a bunch of abilities they're not aware of / don't understand / have no interest in using / don't fit their character concept. When you pick each and every power your character has - and you don't need fifty powers to be effective - you're far more able to make meaningful decisions about what your character will do.

okay, this is system dependent, but

What classes do for new players is give them a solid starting point for building their character.


If a new player comes to a class based system and says "I want to build a Sword Guy!", you hand them the Swordguy class, and it's got 4-10 abilities around Swords.

Your new player now must merely learn 4-10 abilities in order to engage with the game, and they have their sword guy.

This is inherently limiting, but also more accessible. The GM only need to understand the system well enough to identify the Swordguy class and explain the abilities. The player only needs to learn the handful of abilities they actually have, and if the game is decently designed, picking a class guarantees a certain level of capability and cohesion with your powerset. The player shouldn't have to worry that they've "Failed" character creation in a class-based system.


By comparison, a build-a-bear system might have 50 abilities for Sword users. Even if the player only gets to pick six of them, their first exposure to the game is "Comprehend these 50 abilities and pick six of them." That's a lot of decisions the player may not have proper context for. It's more versatile sure, but also less accessible, an inherent part of character creation becomes the "Game" of Character Optimization, simply to end up with a reasonable character.

And even build-a-bear systems are often less versatile than they advertise themselves. "I want to play a magic archer!" "Sure, this is a non-class based system, build whatever you want!" only for the Magic abilities and the Archery abilities to require totally different stat setups, and have the system assuming everybody made a focused, synergistic build. Your "magic archer" ends up a mediocre archer with mediocre magic.

A Class-based system is inheriently limiting, but it contains the promise (True or false) that there is a list of things you can pick from that will result in a decent character.

A game with true power customization, like HERO, can be either better or worse depending on your GM. Rather than picking from a list, the player is given the nebulous concept of "Whatever" and has to work through a complex system of power customization. If you've got a GM who really knows the system, they can work with the player to build an appropriate power list. If your GM is also new to the system, then building something as simple as "Good at Swords" can be a frustrating headache, and everything above about pitfalls is even more prevalent.

[PhoenixPhyre]

okay, this is system dependent, but

What classes do for new players is give them a solid starting point for building their character.


If a new player comes to a class based system and says "I want to build a Sword Guy!", you hand them the Swordguy class, and it's got 4-10 abilities around Swords.

Your new player now must merely learn 4-10 abilities in order to engage with the game, and they have their sword guy.

This is inherently limiting, but also more accessible. The GM only need to understand the system well enough to identify the Swordguy class and explain the abilities. The player only needs to learn the handful of abilities they actually have, and if the game is decently designed, picking a class guarantees a certain level of capability and cohesion with your powerset. The player shouldn't have to worry that they've "Failed" character creation in a class-based system.


By comparison, a build-a-bear system might have 50 abilities for Sword users. Even if the player only gets to pick six of them, their first exposure to the game is "Comprehend these 50 abilities and pick six of them."

A game with true power customization, like HERO, can be either better or worse depending on your GM. Rather than picking from a list, the player is given the nebulous concept of "Whatever" and has to work through a complex system of power customization. If you've got a GM who really knows the system, they can work with the player to build an appropriate power list. If your GM is also new to the system, then building something as simple as "Good at Swords" can be a frustrating headache.

And even more so, build-a-bear requires you to come into character creation with a fully-formed idea of what your character WILL BE. Especially if it (as most do) has different costs at character creation compared to advancement. Then you need to basically have your entire power set set in stone, because buying anything new and relevant later becomes prohibitively difficult. The level of commitment you need up front is huge, and you have to do all the work yourself. And if you don't have a strong character concept, you'll either flounder or you'll end up making a fairly useless character. And either way, you're stuck.

Basically, a build-a-bear system starts with "I want a character with X power set" and then translates that into a mechanical construct. Benefit--you can play exactly what you want (most of the time). Downside--you have to know exactly what you want ahead of time. And characters don't end up nearly as organic.

Whereas with a class system, you can start out at the broadest archetypes and grow into the character. I've had lots of players who picked their class entirely based on a cool mini. "This one's got a big axe, gimme that one." Short discussion of fighter vs barbarian and they went barbarian. System mastery required? basically 0. And things work just fine. No need to scour through bunches of books and do all the math--it's defined for you. And you're guaranteed to get something that fits the adventures and gameplay and setting aesthetic if the DM has done even a half-way job of curating a much smaller list of options, compared to filtering through hundreds, if not thousands of granular options, most of whom are vague or ill-defined thematically.

--------

But that's all secondary IMO. The key point of the OP is that bold sentence. No one should be able to "fail" at character creation, at least not accidentally. You can choose to create an incompetent character--no system can stop you. But that should require active working against the system--the system should lead you to something acceptable (from the system's perspective). That's possible in both a class-based and classless system. The methods are different, and class-based can be easier to safeguard. But it's still something designers have to explicitly and intentionally do--3e D&D, for instance, utterly 100% failed at even trying to do this. You can lose D&D at character creation without knowing you've done so for several levels. And the game in fact glories in presenting outright traps as viable options. That is bad design IMO.

[BRC]

In defense of Build-a-Bear systems, sometimes pitfalls can be avoided with simple guidelines.


For example, in Deadlands classic ( A game I adore for a variety of reasons), you have a build-a-bear character system befitting the overdressed 90s RPG that it is. One part of that is that the "Character Points" you use to buy skills during character creation are distinct from the "Bounty Points" you use to Improve a character. Notably, you can buy any skill up to 5 by spending an equal number of character points, but using bounty means improving a skill one step at a time.

So buying "Shootin' 5" at character creation is just "Spend 5 character points", but going from 0 to 5 shootin' afterwards means spending a total of 15 bounty points over at least 5 sessions.


This means that if you want your character to be really good at shootin' and riding horses, but only okay at, say, playing Harmonica, the thing to do is spend your character points as efficiently as possible, buying up your core skills with those, and then use bounty points later on to fill in the things you only want one or two ranks in.


So a simple guide like "Avoid spending character points on skills with less than 3 ranks, also make sure you have a good Guts skill" goes a long way towards avoiding those pitfalls.

[PhoenixPhyre]

In defense of Build-a-Bear systems, sometimes pitfalls can be avoided with simple guidelines.


And to be very clear, I'm totally fine with that kind of explicit guideline, put somewhere obvious. Hidden away in a sidebar...not so useful. In fact, that's the kind of guidance I want in most places. Tell me what the system expects, and if there's something non-obvious as a result of how the math ends up working that could result in accidentally-broken characters, flag it with obvious markers.

When I say "guardrails", I don't generally mean mechanically-self-enforcing hard barriers. Because those generally result in brittle systems that can't be modded effectively, which I don't like. And still fail to resist motivated individuals. Because nothing can keep people from breaking a system if they try hard enough. Like the common locks on most front doors, they're designed to keep accidents from happening and keep honest people honest. Not provide a hard guarantee of safety.

[Telok]

I've always found example characters and quick-build templates useful in classed, build-a-bear, and hybrid systems.

Often class systems assume that because they're a class system you can't screw up the build, but then they fail to make their actual inspirations workable and don't bother telling you this. Wanna play a D'Artagnan like character? Surprise! You need to use the thief class instead of the warrior class, learn lock picking, and have to stab people in the back to be relevant in combat.

On the other hand a couple base templates and a "pick 2 from each lists A, B, & C" quick build has made creating effective characters in Champions take under 10 minutes.

Useful examples and clear decent guidelines about how the game is intended to be run are really helpful. Stuff like "you can run the game rolling for everything, nearly nothing, or anywhere in between" with no further discussion of what those look like is a useless waste of space.

[Easy e]

If looks like much of this discussion is about class and Level vs Build-a-bear so of course I am going to go in a wildly different direction......

There is no system in the world a motivated person can not break..... someone, somewhere can and will find a way to break it.

Therefore, I don't bother to stop those folks. You can not stop them.

Here is what you may want to do instead:

1. Write to lean into your design goals and explicitly state your goals to lead to #2

2. Write it for your target audience who align with the design goals in the first place or they would get a different game

3. I lean heavily into the idea that Role-Playing Games are collaborative exercises engaged with for entertainment in which the players and GM are complicit in each others fun.

Therefore, breaking things doesn't matter as much because people have less reason to break anything. It would go against the explicit design goals, the target audience, and the core assumptions of collaboration in the games.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If looks like much of this discussion is about class and Level vs Build-a-bear so of course I am going to go in a wildly different direction......

There is no system in the world a motivated person can not break..... someone, somewhere can and will find a way to break it.

Therefore, I don't bother to stop those folks. You can not stop them.

Here is what you may want to do instead:

1. Write to lean into your design goals and explicitly state your goals to lead to #2

2. Write it for your target audience who align with the design goals in the first place or they would get a different game

3. I lean heavily into the idea that Role-Playing Games are collaborative exercises engaged with for entertainment in which the players and GM are complicit in each others fun.

Therefore, breaking things doesn't matter as much because people have less reason to break anything. It would go against the explicit design goals, the target audience, and the core assumptions of collaboration in the games.

I agree and I disagree. I'm not worried about motivated people breaking stuff. As you say, that's inevitable.

I am worried about, and want to make more difficult[1], accidental breakage. In either direction. Someone who wants to break something should have to do so knowingly and intentionally by cobbling together options with malice aforethought, not just by picking the straightforward path.

As you say, having clear design goals and explicitly and clearly stating them makes a big difference. As does flagging some of the (inevitable) pitfalls along the way. But so does making sure that
1) archetypes (where they exist) are explicit
2) any sample characters/template bundles (in a classless system) produce valid (by system standpoints) characters who have clear upgrade/progression paths
3) classes (in a class-based system) similarly produce valid characters. Where you have a closed list of options within a class (such as a 5e Battlemaster's Maneuvers), you can actually make sure that none of them, in isolation or in combination, produces an out-of-bounds character. Open-list, shared elements (like feats or spells in D&D) should either have guidance (e.g. pick at least one spell that does damage, don't heavily specialize in only one element/type unless you have a feature that lets it apply more broadly, etc) or should have "obvious" (or worst case suggested) choices. And those should work.
4) none of the game elements, applied in its straightforward use, should be out of bounds. No one-button nukes. No useless spells or feats in isolation. Everything, used in isolation, should be an acceptable outcome. Yes, even if spammed. Because resource constraints aren't really binding constraints.

Note that #4 doesn't restrict combinations of game elements much at all. It's about stopping the obvious ones. If you have any ability that, standing alone, produces unacceptable results, change it so it doesn't or remove it.

[1] nothing is impossible--it's important to never underestimate the boundless power of people to screw things up accidentally. But you can make it less probable.

[Chronos]

Quoth Mechalich:

One difficulty is that the obvious and thematically evocative options in specific source material may include non-competent characters. With regard to superhero genre, this is a major problem, since that genre hides the fundamentally squishy nature of certain builds behind a series of dodges that while acceptable in single-author fiction don't work in a collaborative tabletop game. A proper superhero game probably needs to forbid Batman, since without his plot armor he gets shot and killed sometime before the third mission is finished, but it's really hard to enforce a 'no Batman' design code in a superhero scenario.
Not necessarily. One superhero game I play (a computer game, but the principle should still hold) has separate build space for origins and powers. Everyone, of any origin, selects their powers in the same way, and the same powers have the same mechanical effects for everyone, regardless of origin. And one of the origins is Natural, which is described as you not actually having superpowers, just being very highly trained and skilled. Some powers are an easier thematic pick for some origins, and you can end up with silly combinations like someone who constantly spews radioactive fire from their body just by practicing really hard at it, but mechanically, it's no problem, and you can cut down the silliness (or encourage it, if that's your thing) just by talking with your players and not being jerks.

[KorvinStarmast]

What classes actually do is give players a bunch of abilities they're not aware of / don't understand / have no interest in using / don't fit their character concept. When you pick each and every power your character has - and you don't need fifty powers to be effective - you're far more able to make meaningful decisions about what your character will do. Your bias is noted.
As a generalization, the bolded bit is utterly false.
In some cases, yes, there's some "what is this doing here?" in class-based games.
In the recent example I offered, Mothership, that is not the case and I also had four skills to select from (in terms of boosting a capability like first aid or repair) that were beyond the class template.
The class template saved me a lot of work/prep in terms of having to know the whole game in order to create a character.


In Blades in the Dark, there are a limited number of upgrades available based on class, but you pick one. Then, through play, as you earn enough flags/points to choose another, the ones you choose are still defined by your class/archetype. (I have a Leech and a Hound in play at the moment, depending on the night and what the Crew needs).

[Pex]

Probably a side concern but I still think relevant is the knowing the difference between what is breaking the game in the overpowering perspective and what is a character being powerful as intended. At the extreme end it's easy to determine what is breaking the game in the overpowering perspective where the Thing that is breaking is making the game unplayable. However, different people have different tolerance levels of PC power so one person's game breaking bug is another person's powerful feature. The guidance given to the DM should be clear the game expects this particular power level, the players are to benefit and enjoy it, and here is advice on how to use it. If the game can handle it there's no harm in offering suggestions and advice for those people who don't want such high power and the consequences there of in how the game will function. However, the game should own the power it gives, not apologize for it, and those players who refuse to accept it are advised this game is not for them.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Probably a side concern but I still think relevant is the knowing the difference between what is breaking the game in the overpowering perspective and what is a character being powerful as intended. At the extreme end it's easy to determine what is breaking the game in the overpowering perspective where the Thing that is breaking is making the game unplayable. However, different people have different tolerance levels of PC power so one person's game breaking bug is another person's powerful feature. The guidance given to the DM should be clear the game expects this particular power level, the players are to benefit and enjoy it, and here is advice on how to use it. If the game can handle it there's no harm in offering suggestions and advice for those people who don't want such high power and the consequences there of in how the game will function. However, the game should own the power it gives, not apologize for it, and those players who refuse to accept it are advised this game is not for them.

Yeah. I'm all for clearly marked boundaries on what the system supports. Going outside that should be knowing and intentional, and buyer beware. It's not the system's fault if you use it outside the clearly marked safe zone and it shatters. I do feel more comfortable blaming system designers who don't mark that area clearly or at all or when it shatters when you combine obviously synergistic elements and stay within the marked zone

[Pauly]

One of the best guardrails a system can have is to deliver on what it promises.
For example D&D is often sold as having highly tactical combat, which in reality is complete bollocks. Character creation has far more to do with the ability to win fights in D&D which is why you have so many pixels slaughtered on threads about how to build [X] class and so few on what are the best actual tactics in a given encounter.

Games like old school Traveller with randomized chargen get people more engaged with who their character is as a person instead of treating their character as a shopping list of bonuses.

[Zombimode]

OCharacter creation has far more to do with the ability to win fights in D&D which is why you have so many pixels slaughtered on threads about how to build [X] class and so few on what are the best actual tactics in a given encounter.

That a fallacious argument. The reason why you don't see online discussions about tactics for D&D is that there is no common ground. Every encounter for every party is it own unique tactical scenario. And those are all private.

I don't know about your games, but in my games the players do analyze and discuss their tactics, especially after great victories or great failures. This suggest that tactics not only exists in D&D but also matter quite strongly.

[Telok]

That a fallacious argument. The reason why you don't see online discussions about tactics for D&D is that there is no common ground. Every encounter for every party is it own unique tactical scenario. And those are all private.

Hogwash, people play the modules with the same encounters all the time, with parties that commonly map to things like "2 warriors + mage + priest + 5th wheel". There's no real D&D tactics discussion because nearly all martial builds only really get one effective option and everyone else has the top 3 spells for their class & level and they're used the same way nearly every time.

There just isn't the depth of options to support tactics in current D&D once you're past which spells to cast in what order. Melee walks to the closest enemy to smash, archers shoot whatever is dangerous, casters drop the same patterns of "conc buff/cc + nuke/cc & repeat" basically every single encounter.

Game I'm running there's real trade-offs between light armor and sealed space suit armor for everyone. Suppressing fire works as an alternative to just shooting for hit point depletion. The shooty guys are also very good brawlers with excelent perception and first aid skills, plus they're the pilots & drivers. The sword-mage is also the party hacker in a Shadowrun-like environment. They can all effectively stealth in one way or another. They have options for flying, burrowing, and submersible vehicles, armed and civilian (which matters in many many places). And then there's always explosives. They've got choices on how to approach their problems. If they were a D&D 5e group the approach would always be the same "walk up for SMASH while the cleric casts bless and the sorcerer casts haste" like the previous year of D&D we played.

[Pex]

One of the best guardrails a system can have is to deliver on what it promises.
For example D&D is often sold as having highly tactical combat, which in reality is complete bollocks. Character creation has far more to do with the ability to win fights in D&D which is why you have so many pixels slaughtered on threads about how to build [X] class and so few on what are the best actual tactics in a given encounter.

Games like old school Traveller with randomized chargen get people more engaged with who their character is as a person instead of treating their character as a shopping list of bonuses.

I'd rather play what I want to play than what the dice tell me I must play. That and not die during character creation.

[Pauly]

That a fallacious argument. The reason why you don't see online discussions about tactics for D&D is that there is no common ground. Every encounter for every party is it own unique tactical scenario. And those are all private.

I don't know about your games, but in my games the players do analyze and discuss their tactics, especially after great victories or great failures. This suggest that tactics not only exists in D&D but also matter quite strongly.

Basically what Telok said. I play a lot of wargames and have achieved a few 3rd place finishes in nationals in different systems. I’ve also flamed out in more than a few tournaments too. Which is to say I’m not consistent enough to be a top tier wargamer but I know my way around a TTMWG. D&D has close to zero tactical depth or breadth. A good example of a RPG which has decent tactical combat is Cyberpunk.


I'd rather play what I want to play than what the dice tell me I must play. That and not die during character creation.

Playing what the dice gives you is a different experience to choosing what you want. My experience has been that the randomized characters work well enough as long as the players are open to non optimized characters or preset ideas if what they want to play. I personally get more invested in my rolled up characters than my optimized chracaters.

[Pex]

Playing what the dice gives you is a different experience to choosing what you want. My experience has been that the randomized characters work well enough as long as the players are open to non optimized characters or preset ideas if what they want to play. I personally get more invested in my rolled up characters than my optimized chracaters.

That can be your preference in taste, but it doesn't dictate players choosing the character they want to play exploits a game.

[kyoryu]

Hogwash, people play the modules with the same encounters all the time, with parties that commonly map to things like "2 warriors + mage + priest + 5th wheel". There's no real D&D tactics discussion because nearly all martial builds only really get one effective option and everyone else has the top 3 spells for their class & level and they're used the same way nearly every time.

I'll also add that D&D, as a rule, is a game where your build matters far more than your tactics. Any relevant tactics are either obvious (don't have the mages tank), outshined by build effectiveness, or effectively would only matter if the GM was actually using tactics against you.

Side note: I think D&D would be a better game if it were organized such that:

a. Failure at the encounter level was common
b. GMs were expected to play hard with the resources they had in a given encounter

[Pex]

I can agree D&D is not heavy tactical, but it has some. Not liking that little is a matter of personal taste not game functionality. "Beer & pretzels" gaming is a thing. Certainly for those into heavy tactics with precision, planning, and formations have their fun with it, but other players don't want to have to concentrate that hard. Go with what works and the occasional hiccup to need to do something else is all the fun they need.

[kyoryu]

I can agree D&D is not heavy tactical, but it has some. Not liking that little is a matter of personal taste not game functionality. "Beer & pretzels" gaming is a thing. Certainly for those into heavy tactics with precision, planning, and formations have their fun with it, but other players don't want to have to concentrate that hard. Go with what works and the occasional hiccup to need to do something else is all the fun they need.

True, but (heavily version-dependent statement inbound) I think that the tactics in D&D are either a) incredibly obvious and general or b) tightly bound to a specific build.

I saw more tactical advice around 4e, which upped the tactics more than previous games, than around other editions. (Defining "tactics" as "movement/positioning/etc." vs. "abilities to use in order").

[Xervous]

A big part of D&D’s appearance of shallow tactics is that most maps end up far too close to featureless white planes. You can do the terrain justice, but that tends to expose how melee only is generally a failed concept.

[PhoenixPhyre]

A big part of D&D’s appearance of shallow tactics is that most maps end up far too close to featureless white plains. You can do the terrain justice, but that tends to expose how melee only is generally a failed concept.

I make no claims about being a tactical DM. I'm not. Not at all. And would rather not play a heavily-tactical TTRPG, preferring to leave that to playing things like XCOM with playing pieces I'm not invested in at all in a disposable setting. The war game experience is just not something I care for.

That said, I do try to include terrain, and melee characters tend to be way more useful and important than ranged ones. The fighter and monk in my current game are way ahead on the "important targets taken down" metric compared to the (homebrew, but basically wizard-ish) caster, even including assists with disabling spells. And the druid is basically at zero since she's a support caster by choice. The melee have carried the group, really.

The caster has excelled at taking down groups of smaller foes though. So he does play an important role. Just a different one.

[Xervous]

I make no claims about being a tactical DM. I'm not. Not at all. And would rather not play a heavily-tactical TTRPG, preferring to leave that to playing things like XCOM with playing pieces I'm not invested in at all in a disposable setting. The war game experience is just not something I care for.

That said, I do try to include terrain, and melee characters tend to be way more useful and important than ranged ones. The fighter and monk in my current game are way ahead on the "important targets taken down" metric compared to the (homebrew, but basically wizard-ish) caster, even including assists with disabling spells. And the druid is basically at zero since she's a support caster by choice. The melee have carried the group, really.

My experience whenever I run a moderately competent TTRPG OPFOR is that switch hitters are the typical MVPs. Melee gets to pick off stragglers and generally waits for someone else to reduce or divide the enemies below the critical point where it’s actually safe to join the main fight at full efficiency. A troll street samurai, a 3.5e THF gish, or a WFRP knight are definitely A grade melee kits. The gish can fireball the goblins rather than charging their fortified position, the troll sammy brought axe+minigun because you don’t want to run up to the cybered super cops when they’ve got VTOL gunships hovering outside, and the knight brought a bow. Melee only characters get to sit on their thumbs or collect projectiles/status spam from the firing line.

I should note that my players overwhelmingly choose to pursue hard quests and contracts. Melee-exclusive is the first archetype to crumble when pushing content like this, and they seem implicitly aware of that.

So many games outside modern D&D set a low cost for competent switch hitters. It’s only with STR/DEX split and D&Ds method of stat progression that various STR archetypes get hedged out.

[kyoryu]

I should note that my players overwhelmingly choose to pursue hard quests and contracts. Melee-exclusive is the first archetype to crumble when pushing content like this, and they seem implicitly aware of that.

Melee-exclusive is a terrible archetype, in general, without a lot of abilities to make it viable.

I think that a good fighter archetype should be closer to Batman than anything - canny, resourceful, and able to use a variety of tactics based on what they're encountering.

If you really want an archetype that's that heavily melee-based, they need to have some abilities specifically to counter range advantages - either ways to slough off ranged damage, make better use of cover, extremely high mobility, etc. Or, just, you know, give them other options. Conan throwing swords and knives doesn't make him less barbarian-like to me.

Fighter is often a weird archetype in D&D land (specifically) because it's the one archetype that, more than anything else, is defined by what it doesn't do.

[RandomPeasant]

Melee-only is fine if the melee-only builds can reliably get maneuverability advantages. If your typical melee character is a superhero-style "flying brick", that works fine because the flying brick is also the most mobile character in most fights. If your typical melee character is Sword-o, the regular guy with a sword, you're going to have a bad time the second you add, like, manticores to your game because they will hit Sword-o with tail spines and he will sit there crying because his sword is useless against flying enemies.

As far as the original premise of the thread, I honestly think that the idea of "guardrails" is overestimating how good designers are at balancing games. Most of the broken things in TTRPGs are the result of designers writing an ability and not understanding they have written it with an infinite loop (e.g. Bloodzilla in Shadowrun). In all of the D&D cheese I know across all the various editions, the only thing that springs to mind as "this broke because designers didn't understand how the different pieces of their system interacted" is the d2 Crusader. In software terms, TTRPGs are typically operating without unit tests, and in that environment any sweeping statements you make about the system are going to be coincidentally correct at best.

[kyoryu]

If you really want an archetype that's that heavily melee-based, they need to have some abilities specifically to counter range advantages - either ways to slough off ranged damage, make better use of cover, extremely high mobility, etc. Or, just, you know, give them other options. Conan throwing swords and knives doesn't make him less barbarian-like to me.


Melee-only is fine if the melee-only builds can reliably get maneuverability advantages.

Your tone sounds like it's disagreeing with me, but you're just expanding on one of the things I said.

[KorvinStarmast]

As far as the original premise of the thread, I honestly think that the idea of "guardrails" is overestimating how good designers are at balancing games. Most of the broken things in TTRPGs are the result of designers writing an ability and not understanding they have written it with an infinite loop (e.g. Bloodzilla in Shadowrun). In all of the D&D cheese I know across all the various editions, the only thing that springs to mind as "this broke because designers didn't understand how the different pieces of their system interacted" is the d2 Crusader. In software terms, TTRPGs are typically operating without unit tests, and in that environment any sweeping statements you make about the system are going to be coincidentally correct at best.
Similar to software, though: as the number of features (and in D&D, also spells) increases the number of things that can interact in a non-linear (or other disruptive) fashion increases greatly.
Also, as with software, play testing is required to find some of the problem areas. But you are so right, the depth and degree of play testing most TTRPG dev teams can't afford (as a practical matter).

The above a part of the reason I have for disliking spell bloat. (And n ow I need to look up the D2 Crusader and figure out what you

Put another way, you don't need a spell list in the hundreds.


In Empire of the Petal Throne, the number of spells in the game was not that great (IIRC, a few dozen, I can check later) and spell use was (as compared to WotC D&D) quite limited (eyes were the frequent mitigation to that). Even so, the players were able to have a great deal of fun and full on swords and sorcery + residual SF feel.

[NichG]

I guess my view of guardrails is that you have a few things in the rules where you write explicitly what the intended outcome and dynamics are. Not in absurd detail like 'characters should have a 60-85% chance to hit equal level enemies', but more broadly like 'in any sort of conflict, there should be a monotonic push towards resolution, with abilities and actions serving to guide where that resolution lands, not to prevent it or cause stagnation' or 'anyone no matter how strong should still be threatened by sufficient numbers of weaker individuals'. Then just say, again explicitly, that these intentions are more important than the particular mechanical options and the rules for how they combine. Establish in advance that while the players have the freedom to choose their options and actions, it is also their job to respect those lines, and if something goes over the line it is expected that the specific mechanics will be changed to bring it back into alignment with those lines.

For example, I played with a GM who ran an intentionally gonzo game. Bring your own system, bring your own sources, and he'd integrate them on the fly in a haphazard way and off you go. Homebrew? Even homebrew you wrote? It's fine! Have one character playing by 3.5e D&D rules and another by 4e rules? We'll make it work! Want to throw in a World of Darkness Exalted character? A Nobilis character? Sure, he'd price it out and off you go.

But he had a couple of these guardrails (mixed in with table social contract stuff, so I'll pick out the more 'mechanical' ones):
- One was, explicitly, no infinite combos. Anything that returned a result of 'infinity' or 'arbitrarily high' (e.g. nigh-infinite or NI from charop parlance) just wouldn't work.
- Another was, if you have something cool that makes it hard for others in the group to contribute or participate, everyone else will start getting handouts and opportunities that will catch them up. So you are allowed to use all sorts of system mastery to get yourself things you think are cool, but you're not allowed to use system mastery to justify being cooler than someone else at the table. While it wasn't your responsibility in that case to hold yourself back, no complaining when after you build Pun-Pun someone else finds out that they were secretly the inheritor of the power of an overgod and ends up with 25 free divine rank or something like that.

That's the kind of 'guardrail' I think it makes sense to have even in a system document. Say what the rules are broadly trying to achieve, and say that any interpretation of the rules that would end up causing that to fail just means that the rules are spot-edited, refunds happen as necessary, and you move on.

[gbaji]

Similar to software, though: as the number of features (and in D&D, also spells) increases the number of things that can interact in a non-linear (or other disruptive) fashion increases greatly.
Also, as with software, play testing is required to find some of the problem areas. But you are so right, the depth and degree of play testing most TTRPG dev teams can't afford (as a practical matter).

I think this highlights a point about classes in games and how they *can* operate as guardrails. They work well if there is a relatively small number of classes available and the classes are relatively broad. They serve the purpose of giving new players an "easy way to build a character they want", and ensure that each of these broadly created characters will function "well enough" within the context of the game when played.

Where class based systems get into trouble, IMO, is as the number of classes grows, so as to create more detailed variation between one class selection and another. This appears on first glance to be a natural progression of the game design. Start with a few very broad/basic classes, and then add more variation so that players can customize more exactly what they want. Except what inevitably happens is that these new classes introduce explots. As the number of special abilities designed to differentiate one class from another similar one, grow, the number of potentially exploitable interactions between those abilities grows as well. And that's before considering the fact that it's quite common for the folks writing the expansions which include these new classes just don't spent the time/effort considering how these new abilities they are creating might be used in the first place.


I don't know if there's a single "right/best way" to do this though. I think that if you want "simple and easy to get in and play" then class based systems work great. If you want "greater variation", then I think that skills/ability based games, with a range of well thought out and balanced skills/abilities/spells/whatever, work better. Those latter style games tend to have a higher buy-in cost in terms of learning curve to play, but allow for balanced variation right out of the box. That's not to say that later expansions/revisions which may introduce new things into said games can't also break things anyway, but IME the number of new "things" introduced is often less significant in a more free form classless game system. So those game *can* go off the rails, but I've yet to see a class based system where at some point, the introduction of more and more classes and sub-classes and whatnot don't cause significant problems (and usually require GMs making hard decisions in terms of what is actually allowed in the game).


It's also telling that most expansions for skills/ability based games are more focused on introducing new settings/locations/NPCs/organizations/whatever to the game to be used as a resource, than they are at introducing new core abilities and game mechanics. Well made classless games simply don't need to add a whole lot of that stuff over time, so they tend to focus on setting/adventure stuff rather than "new choices for players to run".

At least, that has been my experience. Again, there are certainly examples that can run counter to this, but as a general trend, this is what I've observed.

[Satinavian]

I don't know. That argument boils down to "If you have many things you can freely combine, unexpected results can happen. If you heavily limit the combinations, you can avoid this".

That is obviously true. But it is also true that when a system restricts combinations enough that the designer can easily foresee every possible character, then so can the GM and the players, making the system restrictive enough that no surprising or unexpected character can ever exist.


That is not guardrails, that is a trade-off. And thus just a design decision about valuing one thing or another.

[kyoryu]

I don't know. That argument boils down to "If you have many things you can freely combine, unexpected results can happen. If you heavily limit the combinations, you can avoid this".

That is obviously true. But it is also true that when a system restricts combinations enough that the designer can easily foresee every possible character, then so can the GM and the players, making the system restrictive enough that no surprising or unexpected character can ever exist.


That is not guardrails, that is a trade-off. And thus just a design decision about valuing one thing or another.

For sure. It's all tradeoffs.

This isn't binary, though. You can have a system where classes exist, and have some breadth in them. That significantly reduces the combinations you have to deal with, while offering a decent-to-good amount of customization.

[gbaji]

I don't know. That argument boils down to "If you have many things you can freely combine, unexpected results can happen. If you heavily limit the combinations, you can avoid this".

It's a bit more nuanced than that. If you start with a large number of things, and fully test their combinations, as part of the game design, then the players are free to combine those things, and avoid exploits. So systems that are designed from the ground up as "buy/choose sets of skills/abilities/spells/whatever and make your character as you wish" tend to be pretty good at avoiding exploits (not all of them though!). Since the game was built to be flexible, the initial testing for the game included that flexibility in the testing, so it's less likely to break based on a varity of combinations of those things. Even as new "things" are added to the game, since the core game already incluides essentially a "template for balacing things", it's less easy to accidentally introduce exploits.

On the flip side, a game system designed with a smallish number of classes, with a limited set of "things", can be more easily balanced and tested by just comparing what each class gets as a set. So there may be no need to test for "what if I take ability A from this class, and use it with spell B from this other one". That literally doesn't come up in testing, and isn't in scope, so it's more likely that there will be problems when you start mixing and matching those "things". Then, as new classes are introduced to the game, the likelihood is that there is less testing of those things. And as the number of expansions with new classes gets added, it becomes increasingly each to accidentally introduce exploits. The game, and the "things" within it, weren't literally designed to be balanced except via combination exclusion. So as new classes are added, the combinations which weren't tested previously (or maybe were, but the new writers don't realize it), could be included and break things.


That is obviously true. But it is also true that when a system restricts combinations enough that the designer can easily foresee every possible character, then so can the GM and the players, making the system restrictive enough that no surprising or unexpected character can ever exist.

Sure. Which, I suppose, depends on how much enjoyment of an adventure based RPG is from the details of the character as written on the sheet, versus the personality imparted by the player when running that character, and the various decisions and encounters and interactions the PC has while in the game. Some of us really enjoyed playing "Dungeon" back in the day, despite there only being exactly 4 classes (and each was functionally identical). I consider a character to be a lot more than just a combination of stats and abilities written on a sheet. And I can absoluitely say from many years of tourney GMing, that I can hand 5 different players the exact same character sheet, and I'll get 5 very very different characters played at the table.



That is not guardrails, that is a trade-off. And thus just a design decision about valuing one thing or another.

Eh. Not necessarily. What I was observing is that if the "things" in the game are designed from day one to interact a specific way, and to be balanced based on a variety of different interactions, then you give the players a template to build a wide variety of characters, and (assuming decent testing was done initially), there should be no major exploits (there will certainly be come combinations that are more optimal than others, but that's to be expected in a more open format game system).

The trade off, as you say, is that those systems have a higher "buy in" cost for the players and GM. It can be harder to figure out what does make a good character, or how best to reflect different sets of "things" in a game, when it's more free form. That can turn off players to the game, while a more restricted class based system can get someone up and running in a game very quickly. Which is "better" kinda depends on the players and the GM.

[Pex]

It's a bit more nuanced than that. If you start with a large number of things, and fully test their combinations, as part of the game design, then the players are free to combine those things, and avoid exploits. So systems that are designed from the ground up as "buy/choose sets of skills/abilities/spells/whatever and make your character as you wish" tend to be pretty good at avoiding exploits (not all of them though!). Since the game was built to be flexible, the initial testing for the game included that flexibility in the testing, so it's less likely to break based on a varity of combinations of those things. Even as new "things" are added to the game, since the core game already incluides essentially a "template for balacing things", it's less easy to accidentally introduce exploits.

On the flip side, a game system designed with a smallish number of classes, with a limited set of "things", can be more easily balanced and tested by just comparing what each class gets as a set. So there may be no need to test for "what if I take ability A from this class, and use it with spell B from this other one". That literally doesn't come up in testing, and isn't in scope, so it's more likely that there will be problems when you start mixing and matching those "things". Then, as new classes are introduced to the game, the likelihood is that there is less testing of those things. And as the number of expansions with new classes gets added, it becomes increasingly each to accidentally introduce exploits. The game, and the "things" within it, weren't literally designed to be balanced except via combination exclusion. So as new classes are added, the combinations which weren't tested previously (or maybe were, but the new writers don't realize it), could be included and break things.



Reminds me of a classic 3E oopsie.

A splat book is published. Divine Metamagic feat is created. Allow a cleric to expend Turn Undead uses to fuel a metamagic feat on a spell instead of increasing spell slot level. Powerful but manageable given the limited number of Turn Undead uses a cleric will have.

Another splat book is published for its own niche. Nightsticks magic item are created. Give a cleric more uses of Turn Undead. A useful item for an undead heavy campaign of which the published splat book facilitates.

Individually Divine Metamagic and Nightsticks are cool things to have. Put the two together and the game falls apart not even counting Persistent Spell.

[Witty Username]

I don't have a strong preference between classless and classes. I do have moods and and opinions on what is fit for purpose.

But I would say two big drawbacks of classes is stagnation and bloat. Advancement in a core function is a system expectation of a class system, and so past a determined range you will have these as consequences of that.
Bloat is the obvious one, HP in 5e, attack bonuses in previous versions of D&D. The numbers grow and hit a breaking point in the fiction or system. A control for this is frontloading, where early levels are higher impact than late levels, but this only mitigates the issue rather than remove it, and can exasperate the second issue.
Stagnation, the sense of advancement losing meaning. 5e has this problem all over, the best spells are 3rd-5th level for the most part, new features are a rarity past 11th level. This creates indifference towards high level play. There are two possible solutions here, non-defined lateral gain like multiclassing, or consistent improvement on the supported level range. Both of which run counter to the advantages of a class system, and tend to accept bloat as inevitable.

Classless systems tend to avoid this with an expectation of lateral growth, and a flat removal of most numeric gains. Even systems like Blades in the Dark draw on this, with class being much more a starting point than a route of progression.

[Xervous]

I don't have a strong preference between classless and classes. I do have moods and and opinions on what is fit for purpose.

But I would say two big drawbacks of classes is stagnation and bloat. Advancement in a core function is a system expectation of a class system, and so past a determined range you will have these as consequences of that.
Bloat is the obvious one, HP in 5e, attack bonuses in previous versions of D&D. The numbers grow and hit a breaking point in the fiction or system. A control for this is frontloading, where early levels are higher impact than late levels, but this only mitigates the issue rather than remove it, and can exasperate the second issue.
Stagnation, the sense of advancement losing meaning. 5e has this problem all over, the best spells are 3rd-5th level for the most part, new features are a rarity past 11th level. This creates indifference towards high level play. There are two possible solutions here, non-defined lateral gain like multiclassing, or consistent improvement on the supported level range. Both of which run counter to the advantages of a class system, and tend to accept bloat as inevitable.

Classless systems tend to avoid this with an expectation of lateral growth, and a flat removal of most numeric gains. Even systems like Blades in the Dark draw on this, with class being much more a starting point than a route of progression.

This appears to be a partial conflation of the classed nature of the system with its chosen dice mechanic. Dicepools like those seen in BitD provide decreasing returns for investments past the point of competence. For D20 a +1 is forever +5%. A hypothetical D&D where you assign level up bonuses a la carte still runs into the fact that +1 is a consistent adjustment to your success rate until you’ve reached the bounds of the D20. Flipping additional coins looking to get at least one heads quickly sees the gains plummet after you hit 3 coins. What value is a 6% success rate gain here when adding a coin to a different pile may be establishing its 50% success rate (up from zero) or pushing a single coin pile from 50% to 75%? In D&D any of those attempts to broaden a character’s competencies run into the D20, +1 remains a 5% whether it’s nudging your underwater basket weaving or your murderous sword arm.

[gbaji]

Stagnation, the sense of advancement losing meaning. 5e has this problem all over, the best spells are 3rd-5th level for the most part, new features are a rarity past 11th level. This creates indifference towards high level play. There are two possible solutions here, non-defined lateral gain like multiclassing, or consistent improvement on the supported level range. Both of which run counter to the advantages of a class system, and tend to accept bloat as inevitable.

To be fair, original AD&D had the same "problem" (if we call it that). I always found that the most enjoyable level ranges to play was in the 5th through 8th levels. Below that, characters feel like they are out of their depth a lot of the time, and "death to minor foes" could happen frequently. Above that, it seemed like the power scale just got off kilter and didn't work well. Within that range though, the scope and scale of the characters relative to what most considered an "heroic" environment, just worked well. This is also the reason why most tourney scenarios were set in this range back in the day as well. It allowed for PC parties that had enough power and flexibiility to be capabile of handling a wide assortment of challenges, but hadn't yet hit the more "problematic" power ranges yet.


Classless systems tend to avoid this with an expectation of lateral growth, and a flat removal of most numeric gains. Even systems like Blades in the Dark draw on this, with class being much more a starting point than a route of progression.

Eh... The two are strongly interconnected, but I'd argue it's the Level based system component that is the real problem here, and not the very existence of classes. But yeah, most games which have classes also have levels, so that may be a moot point.

But, IMO, what drives the linear rather than lateral growth of PCs is the game mechanics associated with the levels of characters and specifically creating level equivalents for opponents for them to conflict with. When the level of opponents is scaled to the level of the party, and that level determines how difficult they are to affect in some way (to-hit rolls, opposed skills, spell resistance, whatever), it drives the PCs to focus on maximizing the equivalent value of their respective skills/abilities (so as to be effective against the opposing values of "level appropriate" opponents).

Which really encourages a narrow focus on the advancement itself. So even if you introduce skill points into a level based game, there's going to be a tendency towards focusing on maximizing a small number of skills instead of speading those points around. This is precisely what happened with all editions of D&D that have included skills (which is basically every one past 1st edition). You get X skill points per level, and you really have to keep spending most of them on the same set of skills you've been focusing on since level 1, or you will "fall behind" in the effectiveness of those skills against any opponents you will encounter.


This appears to be a partial conflation of the classed nature of the system with its chosen dice mechanic. Dicepools like those seen in BitD provide decreasing returns for investments past the point of competence. For D20 a +1 is forever +5%. A hypothetical D&D where you assign level up bonuses a la carte still runs into the fact that +1 is a consistent adjustment to your success rate until you’ve reached the bounds of the D20. Flipping additional coins looking to get at least one heads quickly sees the gains plummet after you hit 3 coins. What value is a 6% success rate gain here when adding a coin to a different pile may be establishing its 50% success rate (up from zero) or pushing a single coin pile from 50% to 75%? In D&D any of those attempts to broaden a character’s competencies run into the D20, +1 remains a 5% whether it’s nudging your underwater basket weaving or your murderous sword arm.

That's not 100% correct (but close enough, I suppose). In theory, as long as you keep the "scaling windoow" of difficulty for a D20 system within a nominal 20 point range of relative difficulty, then a +1 is a +5%, and the scaling works (yeah, yeah, relative increase odds are different... blah blah). If you don't, then you do get a minimized return on investment. If the difficulty window never changes, then once you hit a "I succeed on any roll other than a one", there's no value to increasing the points in the skill. The problem is if we are considering some kind of opposed roll dynamic, if we don't scale the enemies up, then the PCs will simply buy skill points to where they will "auto win" every time (but will stop at that point, which I suppose allows for lateral skill growth at that point). But if we do scale enemies up, then the need to keep increasing skill points is ever present for the PCs, and will almost require them to keep spending those points on linear growth instead.

It would be interesting to see if one could insert some sort of actual increasing cost versus return math into a game like D&D. But to do this, you would have to also apply a similar diminishing increase rate for NPC opponents as they gain levels. I'm not sure the sheer volume of hacking the system to bits to make this work would be worth the effort though, since those values are embedded in like everything in the game system.

I'm not sure if this fits into the topic in terms of "preventing exploits" though, unless we consider the problem of PCs "auto-winning" an exploit. It's certainly a problem though. And I think the real trick, if we're looking at relative skill levels, is how to scale these upwards, while both retaining a reasonable boundary at any given experience "level", but also allowing for reasonable and matching scaling of opponents at the same relative "level" (I'm putting "level" in quotes, because this need not be defined by actual game levels, but just relative assessments of "how powerful/skilled is someone"). And yeah, having actual level based advancement makes this far far more difficult IMO.

[RandomPeasant]

Similar to software, though: as the number of features (and in D&D, also spells) increases the number of things that can interact in a non-linear (or other disruptive) fashion increases greatly.

I think people significantly overestimate this as a source of brokenness. Most broken mechanics I have encountered aren't a result of some weird interaction between four different things from three different books. They're a result of writing an ability that does something broken. planar binding doesn't break 3e D&D because there's a weird outsider in the MMV that throws off the CR/HD curve that the spell relied on for balance. It breaks 3e D&D because the basic thing that it does is "allow you to recruit as many minions as you want that are individually as strong as any member of your party".

Maybe this is more of a problem in classless systems, but frankly I see that as a problem with classless systems. If you understand what your system is trying to do, you can write classes that do those things, and if you write those classes in a halfway-competent way, you can avoid most of the "it turns out these unrelated abilities form Voltron" problems. Look at a game like MTG. They have tens of thousands of cards, and even the largest formats have small banlists, where many of the entries are a result of overtuning rather than obscure interactions.


The above a part of the reason I have for disliking spell bloat.

Honestly I don't think this is really the problem with spell bloat. If you look at 3e, there's a huge amount of spell bloat, but the number of places where two balance spells interact to do a broken thing is basically zero. The problem with spell bloat is that, when it is not accompanied by an increase in the number of classes, it results in casters rapidly outstripping everyone else in terms of how many options they get. And even that is only a problem for certain ways casters can work (that is: the Sorcerer's "you know X spells" is fine, the Cleric's "you know all the spells at each level" is broken, and the Wizard's "you can learn new spells by finding items" works if you can impose limits).


Put another way, you don't need a spell list in the hundreds.

Well, that depends on what you want from spells. I can certainly think of hundreds of spells I would like to have in the game, but they don't all need to be accessible to the same character at the same time. That said, I think many people over-correct and ask for spell lists to be cut too short.


I think this highlights a point about classes in games and how they *can* operate as guardrails. They work well if there is a relatively small number of classes available and the classes are relatively broad. They serve the purpose of giving new players an "easy way to build a character they want", and ensure that each of these broadly created characters will function "well enough" within the context of the game when played.

I don't think you even need the list of classes to be small (you do want broad classes, but that's just so that you don't have a game that makes it impossible to implement concepts before the right splatbooks are released -- 4e had a huge problem that resulted from making Barbarian and Bard splat content). You just need classes to be modular elements that can be tested in isolation. If you can look at a Scout or a Fire Mage or a Knight or an Oracle and tell if it is balanced without cross-checking against every other class and every non-class option, you can crank out classes. And this is quite doable with a combination of well-defined balance targets, reasonable tolerance for imbalance, and willingness to errata major outliers.


Except what inevitably happens is that these new classes introduce explots.

Could you speak to the examples of this you see? Because I really can't think of any cases where this happens at all.


And that's before considering the fact that it's quite common for the folks writing the expansions which include these new classes just don't spent the time/effort considering how these new abilities they are creating might be used in the first place.

Well, sure, but you can't design a set of guardrails that's robust against people not using them.


Reminds me of a classic 3E oopsie.

A splat book is published. Divine Metamagic feat is created. Allow a cleric to expend Turn Undead uses to fuel a metamagic feat on a spell instead of increasing spell slot level. Powerful but manageable given the limited number of Turn Undead uses a cleric will have.

Another splat book is published for its own niche. Nightsticks magic item are created. Give a cleric more uses of Turn Undead. A useful item for an undead heavy campaign of which the published splat book facilitates.

Individually Divine Metamagic and Nightsticks are cool things to have. Put the two together and the game falls apart not even counting Persistent Spell.

I don't think this is a good example, because I don't really think DMM + Nightsticks is the issue. It's the easiest way to abuse it, but the real problem is DMM + Persistent. Which is just "if you are going to write an effect that reduces the cost of metamagic, you need to make sure it works with all the metamagic your system has", and I don't really think missing something that obvious is forgivable. Like I said, the d2 Crusader is the best example of this, combining a "reroll 1s" ability from one book with a "roll an extra die if your first die rolled its max" ability from an unrelated book to do literally infinite damage. And the fact that there's one really clear example of this in the edition that went the hardest for a content explosion suggests to me that this is not really the problem with content explosions.

[Pex]

I don't think this is a good example, because I don't really think DMM + Nightsticks is the issue. It's the easiest way to abuse it, but the real problem is DMM + Persistent. Which is just "if you are going to write an effect that reduces the cost of metamagic, you need to make sure it works with all the metamagic your system has", and I don't really think missing something that obvious is forgivable. Like I said, the d2 Crusader is the best example of this, combining a "reroll 1s" ability from one book with a "roll an extra die if your first die rolled its max" ability from an unrelated book to do literally infinite damage. And the fact that there's one really clear example of this in the edition that went the hardest for a content explosion suggests to me that this is not really the problem with content explosions.

It's not just Persistent spell. You can Quicken your highest level spells. With Silent Spell cast Silence and go to town while other spellcasters are impotent. Maximize makes cleric damage spells more potent and does wonders for healing.

[Satinavian]

You can Quicken your highest level spells. With Silent Spell cast Silence and go to town while other spellcasters are impotent. Maximize makes cleric damage spells more potent and does wonders for healing. I would say that was kinda the intended effect.

I mean seriously, what else do you think the writers intended divine metamagic to be used ?

[RandomPeasant]

It's not just Persistent spell. You can Quicken your highest level spells. With Silent Spell cast Silence and go to town while other spellcasters are impotent. Maximize makes cleric damage spells more potent and does wonders for healing.

Quicken is the only one that comes particularly close to Persistent in brokenness. "I can do my magic in a silence" is really not exactly big cheese when has a 20ft radius, psionics exists, and most monsters have SLAs anyway. Honestly I struggle to really imagine a situation where "get in close with a caster and then cast spells on them while we are both in a silence" is better than the alternatives of "cast spells on them from far away" and "get in close with them and beat them to death with a stick while they can't cast because of silence". I really question the idea that Maximize "does wonders for healing" when healing spells famously have the caster level-based part of their scaling come in a flat number rather than more dice.

[Pex]

I would say that was kinda the intended effect.

I mean seriously, what else do you think the writers intended divine metamagic to be used ?

The issue is combining Divine Metamagic with Nightsticks giving the cleric a lot more Turn Undead uses than common. The cleric is spamming metamagicked spells which was a problem for many people in 3E at the time.


Quicken is the only one that comes particularly close to Persistent in brokenness. "I can do my magic in a silence" is really not exactly big cheese when has a 20ft radius, psionics exists, and most monsters have SLAs anyway. Honestly I struggle to really imagine a situation where "get in close with a caster and then cast spells on them while we are both in a silence" is better than the alternatives of "cast spells on them from far away" and "get in close with them and beat them to death with a stick while they can't cast because of silence". I really question the idea that Maximize "does wonders for healing" when healing spells famously have the caster level-based part of their scaling come in a flat number rather than more dice.

If you don't see value in preventing a spellcaster from casting while you still can, that's your issue. A 1st level spell for 13 healing is not nothing. 2nd level spells are 26 healing a pop. 3rd level is 39. It can make healing in combat worth it, and even if you still won't using one spell to heal out of combat when you would have had to use two or three makes a difference.

[Telok]

We played with the nightstick dmm thing. It wasn't a problem if you kept it to a single nightstick. The only issues were when you started threating them like ultra flexible metamagic rods. That's frankly what they were if you went in on dmm + stacks of them, flexible & underpriced metamagic rods. But just using them to run stuff like a few uses of extend and reach metamagics was no problem at all.

[Witty Username]

This appears to be a partial conflation of the classed nature of the system with its chosen dice mechanic. Dicepools like those seen in BitD provide decreasing returns for investments past the point of competence. For D20 a +1 is forever +5%. A hypothetical D&D where you assign level up bonuses a la carte still runs into the fact that +1 is a consistent adjustment to your success rate until you’ve reached the bounds of the D20. Flipping additional coins looking to get at least one heads quickly sees the gains plummet after you hit 3 coins. What value is a 6% success rate gain here when adding a coin to a different pile may be establishing its 50% success rate (up from zero) or pushing a single coin pile from 50% to 75%? In D&D any of those attempts to broaden a character’s competencies run into the D20, +1 remains a 5% whether it’s nudging your underwater basket weaving or your murderous sword arm.

I can see the reading but this misses the forest for a tree.

Say for the sake of argument, we applied 3.5 D&D attack progression (an extreme example to illustrate) to the dice mechanic to Blades in the dark.
By 12th level you would be rolling 12 dice for any attack, That is about 80-90% of a perfect success, and a little lower for a critical success. that is the bloat in effect.
then stagnation, as you correctly Identify, the closed nature does cap the limit of growth, but that means after a certain point the growth has lost meaning.

So we could slow that growth, say 1 dice every 5 levels, to approximate Blades in the Dark's cap of 4. so 1st. 5th. 10th, 15th and 20th. Now you are not gaining any benefit on this line for most of your leveling path. In other words we have warded off bloat at the cost of stagnation.

The specific resolution mechanics will change the speed, but not the trajectory inherent to set progression.

[KorvinStarmast]

Just wondering if the OP has found what they are looking for.

[Slipjig]

A big part of D&D’s appearance of shallow tactics is that most maps end up far too close to featureless white planes. You can do the terrain justice, but that tends to expose how melee only is generally a failed concept.

I think part of the problem there is that most game systems don't interact with terrain in any meaningful way. Most spells ignore cover, even when cover should logically provide some protection. And the most basic defense against archers, hiding behind something, is completely negated when 99% of ranged characters have Sharpshooter. There's also no penalty to using weapons clearly unsuited to the environment, like using a polearm in a narrow hallway.

The only people who really interact with terrain are melee martials, and even then it's almost exclusively in terms of "What terrain is preventing me from getting to my opponent?", with terrain being irrelevant again once they close the distance.

[gbaji]

I think part of the problem there is that most game systems don't interact with terrain in any meaningful way. Most spells ignore cover, even when cover should logically provide some protection. And the most basic defense against archers, hiding behind something, is completely negated when 99% of ranged characters have Sharpshooter. There's also no penalty to using weapons clearly unsuited to the environment, like using a polearm in a narrow hallway.

That's another unfortunate side effect of class based games though. What they gain in "quick and easy definitions for characters" they lose in "flexible encounters". The archer point you made is relevant here. No one uses bows unless they are some kind of archery based build, or creature, or whatever. In fact, we can argue that all characters (PC or NPC) are going to tend to focus on and use whatever skills/weapons/spells that they are "best at", pretty much all the time.

So yeah. If someone is bothering to shoot at you with a bow, they probably have bow feats, so cover beomes irrelevant. If someone is using pretty much any weapon or spell or ability it pretty much means that "this is something my class/creature-type uses, so I'm super good at it" (well, unless we're playing at very low levels).


The only people who really interact with terrain are melee martials, and even then it's almost exclusively in terms of "What terrain is preventing me from getting to my opponent?", with terrain being irrelevant again once they close the distance.

Eh. You *can* introduce terrain effects into any game (yes, even D&D). It's just tricky though, and fraught with potential for creating restrictions for some classes, but not others. Yeah. It may make complete sense for the polearm focused melee fighter to be at a disadvantage when fighting in a narrow hallway, but... how much of a disadvantage? And is that likely to make using their "best weapon" less worthwhile than using something else? If I've stacked up feats with using polearms, you'd have to apply a boatload of negatives to make me switch to a different weapon. Which, yeah... is part of the problem.

And if you do? I'm going to feel like you are going after my build. If the effects/damage/whatever of polarm use was balanced in the game system as a whole with the "can't be used in some situations" restriction, then it'll work. But if me using a polarm is already balanced to "other guy dual wielding short weapons", and we both get simlar/balanced damage/hits/effects as a result, then adding in an additional "mine wont work in narrow hallways but his do", becomes a balance problem that has to be sorted out.

I do agree with you though that, along the way, the designers for D&D basically just threw up their hands when it comes to terrain. Which maybe makes for a less realistic game experience, but at some point, you just have to accept the game for what it is. The problem with actually balancing things with terrain in mind, is that if the GM/players don't use it, then some builds become more powerful as a result. I think the designers just went with "we're going to balance against flat featurelness plains" and were done with it.


The way you solve this problem is to encourage broad rather than deep character builds. That way, you can introduce modest environmental effects (including, but not limited to terrain), and players will be respond to those by making action choice differences with their characters. The decision to switch to different weapon combinations based on conditions works if the characters have multiple different, somewhat similarly effective, configurations available to them. Most game systems go in the other direction though. So it's not surprising that terrain becomes less relevant in them as well.

It's just interesting to me, because I play mostly in RuneQuest, where there is literally zero "balance" between "big weapons" and "small weapons". On paper a greatsword or a polearm is *always* a better weapon. Everything else being the same, they have longer reach, and do more damage. The balance point in the game isn't with some kind of "you can do other things with shorter weapons that balance those out", but literally "you can't always use the big weapons". Sometimes, it's due to terrain. Sometimes it's a matter of "how exactly are you carrying those weapons on you in town without everyone noticing?". All characters who use larger weapons, also develop skills and carry around shorter weapons, precisely for cases when they can't use the big ones. And since there are no classes, there's no particular reason for one character to choose any one weapon over another. Everyone can choose to use any weapon they want. They just have to spend time to become good at it. It's not uncommon for experienced characters to have a half dozen different weapons combinations depending on what they are fighting. Maybe I use greatsword when I need to do lots of damage. Or broadsword and shield sometimes. Or maybe dual wielding soemtimes. Or I have a 1h weapon in one hand, and a thowing weapon in the other. Lots of different combinations, and lots of different reasons to use different ones.

So I know it can be done. It just requires a game system that works well with (and encourages) flexible character builds. Most class based systems just don't though.

[Satinavian]

So I know it can be done. It just requires a game system that works well with (and encourages) flexible character builds. Most class based systems just don't though.I am not sure i really want this.

Most inspiration for whatever fighting character has their primary weapon. And then some small sidearm for emergencies which which they gor significantly less training on top of it being inferior and where the whole strategy revolves around avoiding situations where they ever need to use it.
Sure, it is only most, not all. There always were some special units or individuals trained on a huge viriety of weapons. But this is not the norm. Weapons are expensive, heavy and unwieldy so you would never take a whole set to war anyway and training takes time.

That does not mean that weapons should not be of situational usefulness. But that should result in their weilders being of situational usefelness, not that your archer batallion grabs spears on a foggy day and is as useful as a spearmen unit.


I would prefer different maneuvers, stances and tactics that can be done with the same weapon.

[Errorname]

That's another unfortunate side effect of class based games though.

So yeah. If someone is bothering to shoot at you with a bow, they probably have bow feats, so cover beomes irrelevant. If someone is using pretty much any weapon or spell or ability it pretty much means that "this is something my class/creature-type uses, so I'm super good at it" (well, unless we're playing at very low levels).

That doesn't seem like it follows? Ranged feats making cover irrelevant is a design choice that a classless game could also make, and a choice that a game with classes but where terrain and cover is a core tactical concern probably wouldn't make.

The actual cause is that D&D doesn't really value cover, it's not a core mechanic.

[gbaji]

I am not sure i really want this.

Most inspiration for whatever fighting character has their primary weapon. And then some small sidearm for emergencies which which they gor significantly less training on top of it being inferior and where the whole strategy revolves around avoiding situations where they ever need to use it.
Sure, it is only most, not all. There always were some special units or individuals trained on a huge viriety of weapons. But this is not the norm. Weapons are expensive, heavy and unwieldy so you would never take a whole set to war anyway and training takes time.

I'm not talking about people being trained in a huge variety of weapons. RQ is a skill based game, so you do still have to pick weapons and spend time learning how to use them. The difference is that it is not a class based game, so your class doesn't define what weapons you use, and it doesn't define what feats you pick up which further refines what weapons you become really really good at (there are no feats, and no concept of such things).

You just pick up a weapon and start using it. Over time, you become good at it. And since there are times when having a smaller or more concealable weapon is desired, characters tend to pick those up as well, and become good with them over time as well. It's still pretty much always the case that any given character will have one "best weapon skill", and will prefer to use that weapon when possible. However, it's also not uncommon at all for folks to have to use different weapons for one reason or another, and not feel so completely gimped as a result.

RQ is also not a level based game, and there are significant diminishing returns by simply increasing your skill in a single weapon. First off, it takes longer and is harder to gain more skill the higher your skill is *and* the benefit to you, once you are over a specific skill level is relatively minimal (you increase special and critical chances, but otherwise a hit is a hit). We actually had to add in some house rules to provide advantages for exceptionally high skill (which are otherwise really lacking). But even with those rules, there's still a huge amount of value and abillity to become "very good" with a second or third weapon, despite being "insanely good" with your primary one.

Highly experienced characters commonly have a wide assortment of "very good" weapon skills. Um... Also, since it's a skill based on not level based game, there is no "cost" to learning a backup weapon. You just use it. If you succed at it (get a hit or parry), you have a chance to go up with that skill. The only cost is that you used a weapon you are less skilled at (and may do less damage with) in this one combat, instead of your main weapon. It's not like you adventure for X time, gain a level and then decide where to spend skill points, or which feats to take. The GM literally says "you can roll for skill increases" (there's some conditions on when that can happen in the game), and you look on your sheet, and every skill you've used succesfully since the last increase check, you get to roll to see if you increase. So "use my backup once per game session" is sufficient here. There is no zero sum game choice involved.


That does not mean that weapons should not be of situational usefulness. But that should result in their weilders being of situational usefelness, not that your archer batallion grabs spears on a foggy day and is as useful as a spearmen unit.

Not "as useful" as someone for whom that is their primary weapon. Just not "so completelly unskilled" that using it is effectively useless or that they'd continue to try to use their "best weapon" even in the most extremely incompatible situations, because the bonuses and benefits are so stacked up that it's still going to be the best choice. If firing blindly in a fog bank is still going to result in more hits for more damage than "pick up a melee weapon and engage", then that may be an indication that the system is too deep and not broad enough.

And in RQ, it would actually be strange (outside of maybe specifically trained miltary units) to have anyone who was highly skilled at a missile weapon, but not equally (or more) skilled with a melee weapon. Just as mentioned above, there is no reason not to fire your bow at opponents when at range, and then close to melee and finish the fight hand to hand. You get skill checks in each, and one doesn't prevent you from increasing in the other. The concept of picking weapon feats, or applying a specific set of skill points, and having a fixed amount at any period during character advancement, simply doesn't exist in that game.

I guess my point is that because those concepts don't exist, they also don't push character development in a "deep not broad" direction.


I would prefer different maneuvers, stances and tactics that can be done with the same weapon.

How about "different weapons are more/less useful with different tactics"? Again, remember that my objective here isn't to force weapon diversity, but as a response to "what do you do if the game environment/terrain prohibits some specific weapons from being used?". If your character uses greatsword, and has developed a ton of different maneuvers, stances, and tactics that allow him to use his greatsword to do a ton of stuff, it's going to really suck if the GM says "You are in a 2.5' wide hallway, and can't use your greatsword". The game system, focusing on "more things you can do with the one weapon you focus on" kinda cuases that to be a high cost probolem (which is precisely why most GMs ignore it).

If, instead of focusing on "all the cool things you can do with your one weapon", you instead create a "each weapon has its own pros and cons and you are free to pick any of them up and learn to use them" approach, then any character can, by picking up different weapon skills, be capable in a wide assortment of situations they may find themselves in. If the concept of "you can't always count on being able to use that weapon" is embedded into the game system itself, it will lend itself to greater diversity.

But yeah. It also requires significant changes from the core game assumptions in D&D. Which was kinda my point. You really can't do this (or can't do it easily) while still using the class/level system that D&D uses. I'm not saying "change D&D to be like this". I'm saying "this is why this tends to happen in D&D". Honestly, any sort of experience point based system tends towards this (though some can mitigate it somewhat with increasing costs as you move up the skill trees). But D&D? It's probably the absolute worst game in this sense. Classes with specific feat selections (and feat trees/prereqs). Feats gained by gaining levels. Levels used to determine CR/difficulty of opponents. Skills that are "flat costs", but many of which require increasinbly high point values to be functional against "level appropriate" threats. Heck. Feats that are "flat cost", but become more powerful the father up a feat tree you are.

The whole game is almost designed from top to bottom with character specialization in mind. Which, don't get me wrong, still works just fine and is loads of fun to play (and one can argue makes party makeup variations significant in play). But yeah. It also therefore introduces a much higher cost to any thing which blocks the use of anything a character has specialized in (whatever that may be). You can play a wizard in a dungeon that exists entirely in an AMF, for example. But you would rightliy feel your character was useless as a result. A melee character with no ranged attacks, will simllarly feel useless when all opponents are at range and can't be reached. A ranged attack focused character will feel useless if the environment somehow prohibits ranged attacks (fighting in a windstorm maybe?).

A game system where "my character has spells, but can also fight in melee, and has a ranged weapon, and is reasonably skilled with all of them", doesn't have the extreme "I'm uber"/"I'm useless" swings to it. That's not to say it's superior or more fun, or whatever, but is quite relevant when considering "why don't more people use terrain/environmental effects in D&D?". The answer is that they don't, because those effects will either be too minor and thus (mostly) irrelevant and not worth the bother *or* they will nullify a characters entire build and be too great an effect (and perhaps result in player crying or something).

[KorvinStarmast]

The actual cause is that D&D doesn't really value cover, it's not a core mechanic. Suggest you read the basic rules for 5e.
It is a fundamental mechanic that too many players don't use very well.
It is right there in Chapter 9

Cover
Walls, trees, creatures, and other obstacles can provide cover during combat, making a target more difficult to harm. A target can benefit from cover only when an attack or other effect originates on the opposite side of the cover.

There are three degrees of cover. If a target is behind multiple sources of cover, only the most protective degree of cover applies; the degrees aren’t added together. For example, if a target is behind a creature that gives half cover and a tree trunk that gives three-quarters cover, the target has three-quarters cover.

Half Cover
A target with half cover has a +2 bonus to AC and Dexterity saving throws. A target has half cover if an obstacle blocks at least half of its body. The obstacle might be a low wall, a large piece of furniture, a narrow tree trunk, or a creature, whether that creature is an enemy or a friend.

Three-Quarters Cover
A target with three-quarters cover has a +5 bonus to AC and Dexterity saving throws. A target has three-quarters cover if about three-quarters of it is covered by an obstacle. The obstacle might be a portcullis, an arrow slit, or a thick tree trunk.

Total Cover
A target with total cover can’t be targeted directly by an attack or a spell, although some spells can reach such a target by including it in an area of effect. A target has total cover if it is completely concealed by an obstacle.
There are a substantial number of abilities, features, and spells that have "that you can see" as a criterion.

[Errorname]

Suggest you read the basic rules for 5e. It is a fundamental mechanic that too many players don't use very well.

If most players don't use it, it's probably not really fundamental. I'm not saying D&D doesn't have cover mechanics, but they're not expected and the game still plays like itself without them.


There are a substantial number of abilities, features, and spells that have "that you can see" as a criterion.

I would draw a distinction between "concealment" and "cover" because a game can have mechanics for one without having the other. I actually revised my post because I initially wrote both, but D&D places a lot of value on concealment and has a lot of abilities designed to create it.

[Telok]

In D&D 5e I've never seen anything short of absolute total cover/concealment do a damn thing. The movement rules, melee range requirement for many classes, and access to abilities/effects that ignore cover/concealment have diminished it to nearly pointless. The melee didn't care, the first guy soaked all the opportunity attacks and they walked around cover to beatstick. The archers didn't care they had feats/items to ignore it. The casters didn't care, they can move at least as well as anyone (often better) or drop area effects around corners, and anything that can't see them can't counterspell them either.

[Xervous]

Even in the kiddie pool of depth that is D&D 5e there’s much to be done with LoS denial. Most maps end up too small and too open for it to be properly leveraged. Walk into LoS, shoot, walk back is ludicrously efficient against most PCs. It denies archers their extra attacks, it forces the casters to ready actions when using targeted spells, and when placing your goblins strategically you get a 1 v many kill box for the idiots who can only use sword.

[KorvinStarmast]

If most players don't use it, it's probably not really fundamental.
Incorrect.
For Telok:
The use of half and 3/4 cover is very common in the games that I play. That your table(s) choose to ignore it is maybe a problem for your table(s) to solve: know the game, know the rules, play the game.


I would draw a distinction between "concealment" and "cover" because a game can have mechanics for one without having the other. I actually revised my post because I initially wrote both, but D&D places a lot of value on concealment and has a lot of abilities designed to create it. Concur. Wood Elf ability, Mask of the Wild, for example. :smallwink:

[Telok]

Incorrect.
For Telok:
The use of half and 3/4 cover is very common in the games that I play. That your table(s) choose to ignore it is maybe a problem for your table(s) to solve: know the game, know the rules, play the game.

Concur. Wood Elf ability, Mask of the Wild, for example. :smallwink:

Your "git gud noob" attitude is extremely insulting and makes some very bad assumptions. That the players avail themselves of cover negating abilities and the requirement of small maps to cater to melee classes in 5e is something you can discuss. Snarky brush offs without any basis are useless.

[KorvinStarmast]

Your "git gud noob" attitude is extremely insulting and makes some very bad assumptions. That the players avail themselves of cover negating abilities and the requirement of small maps to cater to melee classes in 5e is something you can discuss. Snarky brush offs without any basis are useless. Just as useless as your assertion.

In D&D 5e I've never seen anything short of absolute total cover/concealment do a damn thing. The movement rules, melee range requirement for many classes, and access to abilities/effects that ignore cover/concealment have diminished it to nearly pointless.
Not true, in our experience. Not even close.

Also, I have a good deal of experience dealing with players who can't be bothered to read up on all of chapter 9. I am continually having to teach and mentor other players, regardless of if I am DM or Player for that session.
TBH, it doesn't surprise me that you have shared that you, and /or some of the folks at your tables, approach the game in a similar way to a goodly portion of the folks I have played with in this edition.

But I do something about it. Mentoring and coaching is a thing.

So is learning new bits that we haven't covered before.
A good example is how the wind walk spell's movement amplification kind of overwhelms the typical battlemap's tactical scale. We ran into that a week ago, and I am not sure I got the ruling right. We will be revisiting that next week at our next session.

Lastly: git gud noob. Your words, not mine.

[Quertus]

There's... a lot to unpack here. Like... do class-based systems provide more guiderails than point-buy systems? Do class-based systems provide more obvious "happy paths" than point-buys? Is class-based vs point-buy a false dichotomy? How does a novice GM, or experienced GM new to the system affect these considerations? Do players build characters? What role do things like the adventure, communication, role protection, and action economy play? How much of an idea of the character do or should players have / where do character ideas come from?

Let me start with that last one. Once upon a time, I built a character, Balteus Battlerager, "Rage" to his friends, the only Dwarf I've ever played. He was a Dwarven Berserker // Psionicist. He was a very calm, collected individual (when abducted by Ravenloft, greeted all the horrors of the realm with open arms, attempting Diplomacy over Combat despite how foolish that obviously was) because he knew just how bad his temper could get.

Sans the parenthetical, that's stuff I walked into character creation knowing. I picked up a music proficiency in fife, grabbed a few items like said fife, and a knife and a bowl, on top of armor and a battleaxe.

Then the other players convinced the GM to use not just "proficiencies", but also "secondary skills". The other players kept rolling and rolling until they got something thematic, like "Tanner" for a Ranger. Then they turned to me. I sighed, and said, "roll once - if I like it, I'll take it; otherwise, I'll just ignore it.". They rolled, and said I clearly needed to reroll - I had rolled "no skills of negligible worth" (afb - I've got to be remembering that text wrong). I thought for a moment, noticed the fife and bowl on my inventory, and said, "I'll take it". Everyone stared at me. "I'm clearly running a beggar - someone who never found their place in society".

Marvel faserip, OTOH? The default path for character creation is completely random. So I'm playing a <roll> Breed Mutant with <roll> 14 powers, including <roll> Flight and <roll> Matter Transmutation. Or, even if you picked your powers (but roll everything else - evil grin), you could have a "space marine" with a Feeble(1) Plasma Rifle and a Monstrous(63) Flashlight, whose stats include Poor(3) Strength and Endurance, and Amazing(46) Reason.

Just the basic premise of "what should you walk into character creation knowing about your character?" isn't trivial to just nail down and assume it's the right answer across all groups and all systems and all scenarios.

So, is "no skills of measurable worth" (probably what that text said) balanced with "Tanner" or "Hunter"? Obviously not. At least, not mechanically. However, for providing richness to the background of the character? IME, yes, they were quite balanced in that regard. Of course, D&D has 3 pillars: COMBAT, ... what were we talking about? D&D as seen at most tables is mostly about combat, and none of those "secondary skills" affected combat, so whether or not they were balanced didn't really matter, did it? Well... as it turned out, when we were given our first "quest reward", the other PCs went shopping. My character? As a beggar unaccustomed to such money, he went and donated all but pocket change to the church. And was rewarded with a copy of "Van Richten's Guide to Something Something". Which should obviously be able to have some impact on the Plot or something (and - gasp - maybe even on COMBAT).

In Marvel faserip, you can walk in with no concept of the character, roll up a random character, and create something completely unbalanced (in either direction). Or you can walk in with a very concrete character concept, use an alternate, official character "creation" method to just pick Thor or Doctor Strange or Quasar or Dagger or Aunt May... and still potentially end up with something completely unbalanced (in either direction)

In D&D, you can walk in with no concept, pick a class at random, and potentially create something unbalanced (in either direction). Or you can walk in with a very concrete character concept, and create a Tier 1 Druid or take 1 level in each class, and create something (the playground generally considers) unbalanced (in either direction).

So my tentative answer is, how much of an idea you have for your character coming into character creation doesn't necessarily change how (un)balanced an end result you'll get.

But what about the "happy path" of picking "obvious, thematically evocative options"? Well... in D&D, you could create something completely balanced, like a Talky Rogue w/ SA DPS, but come to find out that it is completely unbalanced for the intended campaign. If everything is vulnerable to and easy to Sneak Attack, and everything is vulnerable to Diplomancy, you've built something OP; OTOH, if everything in the module is mindless undead, you're a peasant with one extra HP per level. Hooray?

So there's an awful lot of moving parts to this equation that one would have to line up in order to get a proper, holistic view of the question (and why doesn't "holistic" start with a "w"? Isn't "whole" the root word here?). I'm really not sure there's any correlation between "class vs point-buy" and "likelyhood of (un)balanced", even going through the potentially obfuscating middle step of correlating them with somewhat nebulous "guardrails".

That said, I strongly agree with the main sentiment of the OP, that it would be nice if an RPG could gently guide new players to create functional characters by default. Absolutely. And, yes, classes have some definite advantages over point-buy - especially for players who enter the game with little concept for their character. But I've found the arguments that classes correlate to unbroken characters unconvincing.

[KorvinStarmast]

I strongly agree with the main sentiment of the OP, that it would be nice if an RPG could gently guide new players to create functional characters by default. Interestingly, D&D 5e does that with their Basic Rules Quick Build tool, and the choice to roll for the background traits, ideals, bonds and flaws.

[Quertus]

Interestingly, D&D 5e does that with their Basic Rules Quick Build tool, and the choice to roll for the background traits, ideals, bonds and flaws.

And (as much as I dislike it) I’d imagine it’d be pretty easy for someone to argue that Bounded Accuracy helps minimize those pitfalls, too.

Can you expand on how “the choice to roll for the background traits, ideals, bonds and flaws” would “gently guide new players to create functional characters by default”?

[kyoryu]

But what about the "happy path" of picking "obvious, thematically evocative options"? Well... in D&D, you could create something completely balanced, like a Talky Rogue w/ SA DPS, but come to find out that it is completely unbalanced for the intended campaign. If everything is vulnerable to and easy to Sneak Attack, and everything is vulnerable to Diplomancy, you've built something OP; OTOH, if everything in the module is mindless undead, you're a peasant with one extra HP per level. Hooray?

I'd argue this is several layers of failure layered on top of each other.

First, I think it's an error of the system to encourage people to hyper-specialize to the point that if their specialization doesn't work they're useless... especially if they need to specialize to that level to be useful! Talky Rogue should be able to do more than Diplomacy, in many ways, and they should also be useful even if SA isn't viable.

Secondly, I think it's an error in creature design to make it so that a given adventure is likely to have all opponents that line up very well with a particular set of strengths/weaknesses.

Third, I personally think it's an error in scenario design if you can't, as a player, figure out a way to bring (especially non-combat) abilities into the situation. Surely, on an adventure, there's some people that can be talked to, and some way to leverage that strength - unless, of course, the GM sets up the entire thing in advance.

So, you're not wrong, but I think there's some core assumptions that can and should be fixed at the system level.


That said, I strongly agree with the main sentiment of the OP, that it would be nice if an RPG could gently guide new players to create functional characters by default. Absolutely. And, yes, classes have some definite advantages over point-buy - especially for players who enter the game with little concept for their character. But I've found the arguments that classes correlate to unbroken characters unconvincing.

Sure. And while I'll agree that there's no guarantee that a particular class-based game is more balanced, or a particular skill-based game is less so, the fact that class-based games have a smaller amount of combinatorial complexity means that, in general, it's going to be easier to balance things in a class-based game. There are exceptions! D&D 3.x (though I don't know if I'd really call it 'class-based') is one of the systems most prone to optimization out there. OTOH, Fate is skill-based and is very hard to do optimization abuse.

But, still, in general class-based games are easier to put baselines/guardrails in if that's your goal. Much like we can reasonably say that cars use less fuel than trucks, but there are certainly gas-guzzling cars and fuel-efficient trucks.

[Telok]

And (as much as I dislike it) I’d imagine it’d be pretty easy for someone to argue that Bounded Accuracy helps minimize those pitfalls, too.

Can you expand on how “the choice to roll for the background traits, ideals, bonds and flaws” would “gently guide new players to create functional characters by default”?

From my dim memories it went something like: pick class & race, take standard stat array & assign the highest score(s) to the class primary stat(s). Then a few "you get A & B plus choose two from <list>" for skills, gear, and spells. The backgrounds stuff was basically about as impactful as the AD&D secondary skills (thus all totally GM dependent unless they gave an actual proficency) plus a couple optional character quirks.

Its a first level character template with decent stats and half standardized non-terrible gear/spell choices. Thats functional in every version of D&D ever, and most any other game.

I've seen the same done in Champions & Gurps& other games. A set of basic templates for different archtypes with some "choose from <list>" customizations. Its been around forever.

[KorvinStarmast]

And (as much as I dislike it) I’d imagine it’d be pretty easy for someone to argue that Bounded Accuracy helps minimize those pitfalls, too. Yes, if you follow the Quick Build advice, the pitfalls can be easily avoided.

Can you expand on how “the choice to roll for the background traits, ideals, bonds and flaws” would “gently guide new players to create functional characters by default”? The answer is in Chapter 4 of the PHB/Basic rules. You pick a background and then roll a die for each trait (or pick one, either / or) and there you are. There you have 4 role playing hooks (to use as needed) to help give more shape to the imaginary character.

I've seen the same done in Champions & Gurps& other games. A set of basic templates for different archtypes with some "choose from <list>" customizations. Its been around forever.
Yes.

Mothership does something similar in terms of using the archetype to bound the high and low save attributes simply, and an easy menu of "what are you good at" that I found very clear and easy to use.
(The gear selection is a bear, though; they could use a Quick Build feature, IMO).

Blades in the Dark, while not new player friendly, does have a pretty good "pick a class now follow along as you pick features" scheme.
I found it easy to use. (But as I have been playing a long time, maybe I am not a good example)

[Quertus]

But, still, in general class-based games are easier to put baselines/guardrails in if that's your goal.

Ah. Not “class has inherent correlation to guardrails”, but “class is easier to design with guardrails”? Hmmm…

On the one hand, I agree that there are indeed inherently fewer combinations/objects to test if there are fewer combinations/objects possible. But OTOH… like we agree, there’s lots of factors that add together to create this problem, including things like scenario design.

Like, if you’re doing a 1-shot, and the entirety of the scenario is, “suddenly, bus accident!” (or anachronistic equivalent), I imagine a lot of characters will struggle to meaningfully contribute. In classic D&D, Cleric has the decided advantage over Fighter Mage and Thief IMO, and I know irl I’d struggle to contribute to that scenario (I’ve got a phone, low on charge from posting on the Playground) compared to my mom, a trained trauma surgeon nurse. OTOH, I’d be fairly useful in a zombie apocalypse (although possibly still beaten by my mom, Dagnabbit!)… while Cleric still seems a strong contender for undisputed MVP.

Not to go too deep into the weeds, but I suspect any system robust enough to handle arbitrary scenarios like “suddenly, bus accident!” or “zombie apocalypse” will need similar degrees of care to not create great disparity between characters in such scenarios, regardless of their class/points core.

[Slipjig]

I am not sure i really want this.

Most inspiration for whatever fighting character has their primary weapon. And then some small sidearm for emergencies which which they gor significantly less training on top of it being inferior and where the whole strategy revolves around avoiding situations where they ever need to use it.
Sure, it is only most, not all. There always were some special units or individuals trained on a huge viriety of weapons. But this is not the norm. Weapons are expensive, heavy and unwieldy so you would never take a whole set to war anyway and training takes time.

That does not mean that weapons should not be of situational usefulness. But that should result in their weilders being of situational usefelness, not that your archer batallion grabs spears on a foggy day and is as useful as a spearmen unit.

That's generally true of superheroes and anime. And peasant levies were probably only trained in a single way to fight.

But professional soldiers (which is what the D&D martial classes emulate) were ABSOLUTELY expected to be proficient in a variety of combat scenarios. A knight was expected to be able to take his place with a lance in a cavalry charge, but he's also expected to be able to dismount and fight another knight on foot using a warhammer, storm a castle with a sword, or even take up a pike if needs to take command of a peasant levy. A samurai was at minimum expected to be able to switch hit between sword and bow. A viking raider was expected to charge in with his axe and shield, but he's also expected to be able to climb over the castle wall and quietly knife a sentry during an infiltration. Heck, your standard action hero is almost certainly good with a gun AND his fists (and possibly a melee weapon, depending on the genre).

Even for modern soldiers, earning the Expert Infantry Badge (which is something we expect ordinary privates to attempt) requires demonstrating at basic proficiency with eight different weapons.