In Praise of Nerfs

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've been hearing quite a few people proclaim "don't nerf the strong, build the weak" as if it's a generally-applicable policy, or as if nerfing is disfavored/generally inappropriate. My opinion is that nerfing is quite often justified and appropriate, but so is buffing.

My basic policy: decide what range of power levels your system and current table can handle and desire. Anything that falls below that minimum power level should be buffed or removed from play. Anything that falls above that maximum power level should be nerfed or removed from play.

Every system and every table has a "sweet spot" (rather a sweet range) at which it works best. Going outside of that, while it may stroke power fantasies (or the reverse, maybe call them oppression fantasies?) generally causes issues. There is a decided limit to which you can (as the DM) strengthen the challenges to keep up with a growing party. Conversely, there's also a decided limit to how much you can weaken challenges (although IMO that's a line that depends much more on the narrative/world than on the exact mechanics). Not every system/table/DM can handle a PO T1 (in the 3.5e meaning) party. In fact, 3e itself strains at it mightily unless heavily modified. Which means you probably shouldn't decide that wizard is the line to match for 3e balance. Conversely, a full T6 party is also probably not a good balance point.

In addition, only buffing leads to positive feedback loops. Unless your balance is perfect, it's easy to overshoot. And then you have to buff everyone else, and the cycle repeats. The same is true of only nerfing, just in reverse (still a positive feedback loop, just spiraling toward 0 instead of +infinity).

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As a side point, I also believe that buffing and nerfing should be based primarily on actual play. Sure, there are some abilities that theorycrafting alone can show are inappropriate (in either direction). But just as programmers are supposed to profile before optimizing, DMs and system designers should be guided by actual experience with the abilities in the context of actual scenarios from the game. And DMs, especially new DMs, shouldn't rush to rebalance things based on forum feedback without seeing what matters for their actual party. I, for one, have never had to rebalance martials vs casters in my 14 parties of 5e so far. Whether that's about play style, scenario design, or what, but it's just never been a problem at my tables. And the adjustments people propose would have been (because I've tried a few of them for other reasons and uniformly got negative feedback).

[Mechalich]

Humans are extremely loss averse, a nerf, when inflicted during play counts as a loss, and it tends to make people very angry (ie. the most hated and feared monster in D&D is the Rust Monster).

As such, nerfs are best used as a design principle or laid out during a session zero while buffs are best used during play.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Humans are extremely loss averse, a nerf, when inflicted during play counts as a loss, and it tends to make people very angry (ie. the most hated and feared monster in D&D is the Rust Monster).

As such, nerfs are best used as a design principle or laid out during a session zero while buffs are best used during play.

I prefer to play with people who act like adults, able to put their loss aversion aside for the good of the game. I'd never do it without discussing it with the people, as people (ie OOC). But there have been times I've had to pull back on items I've made. And that's known up front.

But I generally agree. However, buffs can also come across as nerfs--if you're giving everyone except one character stuff, that doesn't go over any better than just putting same limits on the over powered things that are causing the issue.

[gijoemike]

As a GM I would not discuss the enemies tactics prior to the party meeting said enemy. PhoenixPhyre, you say you would discuss this up front. Do you mean session 0 mentioning stuff will get broken from time to time? Do you mention that if you anger rich and powerful NPCs they will pay for assassins?

I have been on the battlefield where OH SHIZ rust monsters happen. And the fighter lost his magic plate mail. It was not replaced that fight. The "Tank" character lost +10 AC in that fight. I have also seen fights against npc swordsman who will a round or 2 into the fight sunder a shield or weapon, I have had invisible thieves yank a headband of intellect right off the wizard in the surprise round. I have had horses killed while my PC was riding them. And during ambushes like these I would never expect the GM to explain tactics or discuss taking items. How you deal with it in the moment is important to the flow of the game.

Sometimes those NPC's get away with the loot. Sometimes it is destroyed and your character is a a major loss for sessions at a time. Random dice rolls, poor battlefield placement all contribute.


To your OP though.

You mention 3.5 and I assume you have experience with it. You also mention 5e and 5e has a WAY WAY lower ceiling than 3.X. The buff instead of nerf argument comes specifically from the desperate need to buff martials in 3.X games as compared to even poorly built casters. A wizard can full move and get off its full offensive power every round (and have multiple ways of extending and changing that mode of travel). If a martial moves more than 10 ft of their limited move types, they instead get only 1/3 or 1/4 of their total offensive ability. There are a select # of items, and class abilities, & feats that offset that to a point. And the wizard has the greater offensive power of caster vs martial. So don't try to nerf casters which would radically change the format of the game. Instead buff the martial by giving them a few extra already available abilities.


T1 theorycrafting characters are almost completely universally stupid/absurd. Those players are abusing specific readings of abilities and items and combining them in a way the designers never ever intended. TO handle most T1 characters the GM just needs to enforce the general ruling of items and feats. And when a player says "but when combined with" .... The gm interrupts with "No."

I believe that Lower T2 and Upper T3 is the sweet spot for 3.X

[PhoenixPhyre]

As a GM I would not discuss the enemies tactics prior to the party meeting said enemy. PhoenixPhyre, you say you would discuss this up front. Do you mean session 0 mentioning stuff will get broken from time to time? Do you mention that if you anger rich and powerful NPCs they will pay for assassins?

I mention that the world will react to you. And what I meant with "discussed up front" was that I will tone down things I homebrew that end up causing issues for the game. And I'll do so OOC, discussing that fact with the people and figuring out how to tone it down with the minimum hurt. I don't fight against my party, I work with my party.

I have been on the battlefield where OH SHIZ rust monsters happen. And the fighter lost his magic plate mail. It was not replaced that fight. The "Tank" character lost +10 AC in that fight. I have also seen fights against npc swordsman who will a round or 2 into the fight sunder a shield or weapon, I have had invisible thieves yank a headband of intellect right off the wizard in the surprise round. I have had horses killed while my PC was riding them. And during ambushes like these I would never expect the GM to explain tactics or discuss taking items. How you deal with it in the moment is important to the flow of the game.

Sometimes those NPC's get away with the loot. Sometimes it is destroyed and your character is a a major loss for sessions at a time. Random dice rolls, poor battlefield placement all contribute.

Depending on the group, I could do that. But I've rarely had to put my thumb on the scale, and basically only due to badly balanced items I've made.

But none of those are IC discussions. There are some tactics I won't use, because my party doesn't find them fun (even if they're "fair"). There are other things I will do.

To your OP though.

You mention 3.5 and I assume you have experience with it. You also mention 5e and 5e has a WAY WAY lower ceiling than 3.X. The buff instead of nerf argument comes specifically from the desperate need to buff martials in 3.X games as compared to even poorly built casters. A wizard can full move and get off its full offensive power every round (and have multiple ways of extending and changing that mode of travel). If a martial moves more than 10 ft of their limited move types, they instead get only 1/3 or 1/4 of their total offensive ability. There are a select # of items, and class abilities, & feats that offset that to a point. And the wizard has the greater offensive power of caster vs martial. So don't try to nerf casters which would radically change the format of the game. Instead buff the martial by giving them a few extra already available abilities.


T1 theorycrafting characters are almost completely universally stupid/absurd. Those players are abusing specific readings of abilities and items and combining them in a way the designers never ever intended. TO handle most T1 characters the GM just needs to enforce the general ruling of items and feats. And when a player says "but when combined with" .... The gm interrupts with "No."

I believe that Lower T2 and Upper T3 is the sweet spot for 3.X

I agree that T3 is probably the best balance point for 3.X. But to get there, you have to both heavily buff the T4 and T5 people AND nerf the everliving daylights out of all the T1 and T2 people. Or, as is probably more practical due to the insane power differences even within tiers, drop everything outside of the low T2-high T4 range entirely. And all the supporting builds/spells/etc that can get abused to break the game.

But even in 5e, there's lots of people complaining that casters are leaps and bounds above "martials". I don't necessarily agree--I haven't run into that issue at all. But for those that do, the suggestion is always made to balance to the wizard (who is, again, the one causing the complaints) and lots of complaints any time anyone suggests even just enforcing the existing casting rules (like not giving everyone free subtle spell just for "clever" descriptions or letting spells do way more than they say they do). That's when the "buff, don't nerf" mantra comes out. And my point is that it's a misleading statement. You can and should do both. Especially as a game designer.

[Mastikator]

Having played both martial and casters in 5e recently I can say that yes, casters are *better*. They have more tools in combat and more tools outside combat. As such I'm very wary when someone wants to nerf martial classes, not because of loss aversion but because it's not justified. Even if a well built martial class can *finally* outshine caster class in one thing, DPR does not mean it's over powered. There are 3/5ths of combat a caster will do better and 2/3rds of the game a caster will do better.
A well built caster can easily fall into "I am the MAIN protagonist"-mode in a way that a martial class just can't. (Unless you count Warlock Hexblade as a martial class, but I don't)

[Rynjin]

The problem with nerfing, at least when it comes to things which are merely overtuned, rather than gamebreaking, is not just loss aversion.

The difference is fairly simple: nerfs REMOVE OPTIONS, while buffs ADD OPTIONS. That is really all.

If you decide that, say, fighting with a Greatsword is too powerful, and nerf it to deal a d10 or something, you have effectively removed the Greatsword as a viable option to use, as A.) the fantasy no longer fits the stats and B.) there are now objectively superior options (the Bastard Sword, for instance).

Obviously this is simplified, but it illustrates the point. Removing options is not often a desirable choice to make when it comes to core character concepts. If someone wants to make Conan the Barbarian, but greatswords suck, they're going to be sad. And this is especially bad if it leaves behind a plethora of other options (such as the Earthbreaker) which are mechanically equivalent in strength to a greatsword untoucched. That just makes bad feelings, because you're essentially telling someone that they're not allowed to enjoy a certain flavor of character; not at your table anyway.

A nerf should really only come down if there's no way to play the option in a balanced manner. And the form that nerf should take is...a ban. Because if you're going to remove an option, simply remove an option. It's much better to do so up front instead of in a roundabout way.

That is, unless you're willing to put in the work to rework the offending piece of material rather than nerf it. And that is a much harder target to swing for than a straight nerf. Even professionals have a hard time getting that right; see the infamous nerfs to Crane Wing that Pazio put out years ago, and the backlash to it.

If something is merely overtuned in a small way, it's probably just safe to allow as-is. If the option is nominally balanced, but is "breakable" in some way, it's simply better to tell someone "don't do the thing that breaks this". Stuff like Simulacrum is a good example. There are well known ways to make Simulacrum ridiculously overpowered...but if you're not doing stuff like farming wishes, or making your character's dream body, it's really not that bad of a spell. Powerful, of course, but no more so than casting a Summon spell at high levels of play.

If someone insists on doing so, the problem is not with the option, but with the player. And those are just as easily removed from the equation.

[Batcathat]

Obviously this is simplified, but it illustrates the point. Removing options is not often a desirable choice to make when it comes to core character concepts. If someone wants to make Conan the Barbarian, but greatswords suck, they're going to be sad. And this is especially bad if it leaves behind a plethora of other options (such as the Earthbreaker) which are mechanically equivalent in strength to a greatsword untoucched. That just makes bad feelings, because you're essentially telling someone that they're not allowed to enjoy a certain flavor of character; not at your table anyway.

This can be true, but so can the opposite. A wizard who can do almost anything is a lot less interesting of a concept to me than a wizard who's focused on a particular type of magic, for example.

As I've frequently stated in response to "just buff every class to top tier", I don't want characters to be able to handle almost any situation in ten different ways. There should be options, yes, but there should also be limits.

[Mastikator]

This can be true, but so can the opposite. A wizard who can do almost anything is a lot less interesting of a concept to me than a wizard who's focused on a particular type of magic, for example.

As I've frequently stated in response to "just buff every class to top tier", I don't want characters to be able to handle almost any situation in ten different ways. There should be options, yes, but there should also be limits.

I totally disagree with this sentiment. A wizard who can do almost anything is a thousand times more interesting to play than a fighter who can only do one thing and isn't even as good as the wizard at it. Simply by the fact that you, the player, get to do stuff a lot of the time. Whereas the fighter is wondering if he should bother showing up.

If you honestly think that Angel Summoner is just as boring as BMX Bandit then we are at an impasse.

[Batcathat]

I totally disagree with this sentiment. A wizard who can do almost anything is a thousand times more interesting to play than a fighter who can only do one thing and isn't even as good as the wizard at it. Simply by the fact that you, the player, get to do stuff a lot of the time. Whereas the fighter is wondering if he should bother showing up.

If you honestly think that Angel Summoner is just as boring as BMX Bandit then we are at an impasse.

Sure. If I had to pick between the two, I would also pick the wizard. However, I would prefer something in between – doing almost everything and doing barely anything are not the only options.

In my ideal system, the fighter would be boosted but the wizard would also be nerfed, so they could meet somewhere in the middle.

[Mechalich]

Increases in character power erode character differentiation. If one playable option is 'a wizard who can do anything' then all other options must all be able to 'do anything' and at that point actual mechanical differentiation between characters ceases to exist and you just have fluff aesthetics.

Balancing characters with wildly different power schemes is much easier to do at lower levels of power - something that has held true across essentially every game ever created. The Disgaea series, in which initially tiny variances like a 0.5% different in growth rate balloon into multiple orders of magnitude differences in damage when the levels crank to 9999, is a highly illustrative example.

What a game needs to do is to stabilize the core offered player concepts throughout the power growth curve available to characters. Note that this include hard caps they may leave the characters several steps below the true powers of the world, if that's the nature of the game. Concepts that don't match the power growth curve for whatever reason, such as their maximum power level topping out well below that of the overall max or a minimum power vastly higher than the starting floor, should not be supported. And most games do this. VtM, for example, does not support playing a mortal (too weak) or a mage (too strong) alongside a vampire. The game only supported various forms of vampire as core concepts (they weren't balanced against each other, of course, because WW, but you get the idea).

Nerfs and buffs, applied during play, are a means to keep PCs on the generalized power curve that they have departed from for some reason. Buffs are a generally superior method of doing this for psychological reasons, but they do have the side effect that they tend to move the party up the curve at an accelerated rate, which may result in reduced overall character lifespan (the solution for when the characters get too powerful for the game system to handle is to stop playing those characters and make new ones, not to try to mangle the system to handle a scale it was not designed to operate at). Nerfs do have their place, especially when characters have grown too powerful due to over-reliance on some non-intrinsic ability like a piece of gear or an allied NPC, but they are more difficult to apply, especially in the case of a character that grew overpowered not out of any deliberate min/max plan, but simply because a character took a specific option of combo that they thought was cool and it turned out to be incredibly powerful.

D&D (especially in 3.PF versions, but in other editions too) has this problem particularly bad, as players may build characters that turn out to be vastly more powerful than expected without either the player or the DM realizing it until several sessions in.

[Anonymouswizard]

You can and should do both. Especially as a game designer.

The issue with doing both as a TTRPG designer is that tables essentially get to decide which patches to use. It's why 5e has mainly focused on buffing via subclass, sometimes problematically (see: Hexblafe being the best choice for Bladelocks by a mile). It's also why 3.X mainly solved the issue by adding new options like the Dread Necromancy and Tonne of Battle.

Really, the easiest way to apply nerds is to release a new edition to create a new paradigm, which is why 5e managed to return in wizards (mostly, they're more powerful but less powerful). Buy when the opportunity does present itself yes, I'll agree that designers should nerf options unless they are intentionally powerful*.

* Stuff like letting characters with shields give each other bonus AC, my game includes intentionally unrealistic shield walls.

I totally disagree with this sentiment. A wizard who can do almost anything is a thousand times more interesting to play than a fighter who can only do one thing and isn't even as good as the wizard at it. Simply by the fact that you, the player, get to do stuff a lot of the time. Whereas the fighter is wondering if he should bother showing up.

If you honestly think that Angel Summoner is just as boring as BMX Bandit then we are at an impasse.

I've watched that sketch, Angel Summoner does one kind of magic. Sure, summoning a horde of celestial superbeings is an incredibly useful form of magic, but it's still just one kind of thing.

Which means that the issue is not limiting magicians, but by making magic one note. Which is something I'm struggling with in a fantasy game I'm trying to write, limiting mages to one discipline makes options like pyromancy too limiting, while letting them have free reign of all the spells might be problematic even with the relatively steep XP cost per spell (the same as a new Talent/Feat, plus the need to increase it as if it was a skill).

[MoiMagnus]

Another interesting question is, "what is the goal of a nerf?"

With numbers, assume the expected strength of a power is 50 (of an arbitrary metric).
Most powers are in the range 40-60, which is reasonable. One power is OP at 80.
What should be the goal of the nerf?
(A) Kill it, reducing the power to 40, to be sure 100% sure it isn't OP anymore, and force a change in the meta?
(B) Reduce the power to the average of 50?
(C) Keep the power as stronger than average, but more reasonable, so 60?

IMO, (A) is probably a very bad answer in a TTRPG, but could make sense in a videogame environment where the goal is not that much to be fair, but to maintain a constant change of meta to renew the game.

I think that (C) is the best choice for change in the middle of a campaign. The best thing that can happen after a nerf is the player thinking "well, that's still the choice which is the most powerful for my character, so I guess that's a fair nerf". By aiming at (B), there is a significant chance that another choice you didn't nerf becomes "more optimal" than the option you nerfed for the character. And even if you allow for the players to change their mind on any ability you nerfed, that's still not pleasant.

[Mastikator]

I've watched that sketch, Angel Summoner does one kind of magic. Sure, summoning a horde of celestial superbeings is an incredibly useful form of magic, but it's still just one kind of thing.

Which means that the issue is not limiting magicians, but by making magic one note. Which is something I'm struggling with in a fantasy game I'm trying to write, limiting mages to one discipline makes options like pyromancy too limiting, while letting them have free reign of all the spells might be problematic even with the relatively steep XP cost per spell (the same as a new Talent/Feat, plus the need to increase it as if it was a skill).

Doesn't matter if it's one spell that can overcome any challenge or 100 different spells that can each overcome one challenge, they do it better than BMX bandit and he can only overcome a narrow list of challenges.

My point is that if then the BMX Bandit is so good at popping wheelies that in this one situation that relies on it that he totally outshines Angel Summoner that is a good thing and he should not be nerfed.

I'm using this as an analogy for comparing Martial Classes and Caster Classes in 5E D&D. If a Martial class happens to out-DPS a caster by a lot that is a good thing. If anything its the casters who should be nerfed, limit their cantrip use, be more strict about their spell interpretations.

[MoiMagnus]

I'm using this as an analogy for comparing Martial Classes and Caster Classes in 5E D&D. If a Martial class happens to out-DPS a caster by a lot that is a good thing. If anything its the casters who should be nerfed, limit their cantrip use, be more strict about their spell interpretations.

Spoiler: Derailing the thread

Show

IMO, one of the problem is that you can't specialise caster enough.

You should be able to build an blaster-spellcaster that gives up all its subtlety and versatility to kill things as efficiently as a martial, to accommodate for tables that only care about killing monsters without any subtlety but still want a variety of ways (sword, fireball, etc) to do it.

Lack of specialisation of casters mean that each time a designer think that "obviously, magic should be able to do THAT very well", suddenly almost every caster is able to do it very well.

[Azuresun]

I've been hearing quite a few people proclaim "don't nerf the strong, build the weak" as if it's a generally-applicable policy, or as if nerfing is disfavored/generally inappropriate. My opinion is that nerfing is quite often justified and appropriate, but so is buffing.

People don't want to lose their stuff, and are terrible at recognising when their stuff is breaking a game.

There's also a very insidious effect from having overpowered outliers that I've seen several times, when the fans start demanding that everything be as good as that outlier. Just look at any thread here where X sucks because it's not as powerful as an optimised wizard played by someone with precognition.

I played the minis wargame Warmachine for a while, but one of the things that pushed me out was a relentless cycle of player-feedback-driven "buff everything, now buff something else to make it as good as the things we just buffed", and the power creep devoured the game whole within five years.

[Cluedrew]

If you decide that, say, fighting with a Greatsword is too powerful, and nerf it to deal a d10 or something, you have effectively removed the Greatsword as a viable option to use, as A.) the fantasy no longer fits the stats and B.) there are now objectively superior options (the Bastard Sword, for instance).

Which is actually why a single overpowered option can be much more destructive. An underpowered option will only remove itself as a viable option, an overpowered option could remove EVERYTHING else as a viable option.

I agree with bit of fitting the fantasy although in terms of abstracted damage you could push them around a dice size and it would generally be fine. But for a different example (also from D&D) I think the caster/martial disparity solution is about 1/3* caster nerfs and 2/3* martial buffs, at least for me. There are some parts of casters that feel problematically strong just in general (wish for example) but most martials just don't feel up to the general promise of "epic level".

* Very rough numbers.

[Anonymouswizard]

Doesn't matter if it's one spell that can overcome any challenge or 100 different spells that can each overcome one challenge, they do it better than BMX bandit and he can only overcome a narrow list of challenges.

My point is that if then the BMX Bandit is so good at popping wheelies that in this one situation that relies on it that he totally outshines Angel Summoner that is a good thing and he should not be nerfed.

I'm using this as an analogy for comparing Martial Classes and Caster Classes in 5E D&D. If a Martial class happens to out-DPS a caster by a lot that is a good thing. If anything its the casters who should be nerfed, limit their cantrip use, be more strict about their spell interpretations.

Oh sure, I don't disagree with you, but honestly most of the time I see 'limit the caster' arguments they're more about bringing casters down to the level of Angel Summoner, so the usage rubs me the wrong way a bit.

I mean, it's not when I'm talking about limiting casters, but I think that D&D magicians cast too much magic.

Otherwise I agree with what you say, although I've rarely seen people make such statements, it's almost always arguments over whether or not casters are better than mundanes in 5e, which is highly dependent on your resting frequency (one encounter a session plus a long rest at the end of every session? Yes I've been in it, and it made even low level casters too strong).

Now at the end of the day if you try to balance the two you're going to make somebody unhappy. If you buff the Fighter to match the Wizard people who want to play Conan instead of Thor aren't going to be happy. If you limit the wizard to the Fighter's level people who want to play Doctor Strange rather than, I dunno the Lords frmo Thomas Covenant, won't be happy. If you try to find a middle ground anybody who doesn't want to play somebody like Captain America or Spiderman for their fighter is probably disappointed. Which hits at the [I]actual[/I issue with D&D, not the power level of any particular class but that beyond the relatively low levels it doesn't know what power level it wants and splits into two/three tracks. Even in 5e, where casters start to get a lot of new big things even if they've traded in rare frequency for magnitude, whereas mundanes mostly do what they already did better. 5e's main responses seems to have been 'make everybody we can a caster'.

The differentiation is fine to a point, as long as the table agrees that an 8th level Fighter can be more like Guts than Conan. Plus honestly D&D isn't the only game which such a problem, most systems which try to allow for high powered gameplay fail to balance all their archetypes (assuming the designers understand their system, hello Scion and the default gunfighter with no Epic Dexterity). But I'm rambled enough for now, time to get back to work.

[Berenger]

If you honestly think that Angel Summoner is just as boring as BMX Bandit then we are at an impasse.

But Angel Summoner is completely, 100% boring. There are neither meaningful stakes nor relevant threats nor any true conflicts whenever he is around, and those are literally indispensable for any interesting story.

[Lord Raziere]

This is why you need a proper setting.

without a proper setting to define what is the range of power and progression a character SHOULD experience in their time of playing a world, you get people demanding things should be buffed for no reason.

DnD of course has a maybe-a-setting in its corebook, a default setting of Forgotten Realms that is just likely as to be ignored to create one's own setting as to be adhered to, Eberron, then everything else. and that isn't a good recipe for defining a setting well at all.

without a power ceiling you don't have a setting, you have an inevitable fragile playground of supergods spiraling upwards in power, reducing everyone else to spectators to their own doom as they watch a glorified circus of reality-warping and/or destruction. the story becomes more about the whims and lives of these supergods than the normal people living in them. On the other hand, a power floor of street level human stories comes naturally. Examples of this failure to establish power ceiling are: DC, Marvel, Dragon Ball, Doctor Who.

[MoiMagnus]

This is why you need a proper setting.

Choosing a proper setting would force to make a unique choice of power level, which just cannot work without losing half of the player base.

Setting-free approach allows to make different choices depending on the level range.
There is already plenty of tables that have a high preferences for the level 1-4, and plenty of tables (like mine) that will probably never play below level 5 in the future.

And I think that's the way to go: accept that while the core rules remain the same, different Tiers of gameplay target different players, and hence different powerlevel. And accordingly, different settings depending on the power level (let individual settings put a recommended level cap or a higher recommended starting level).

[Lord Raziere]

Choosing a proper setting would force to make a unique choice of power level, which just cannot work without losing half of the player base.

Good!

Bigger isn't always better. The more you try to make a franchise big, bland and generic the more you leave it someday to be bloated, watered down, unable to please anyone and overwrought, becoming an overdesigned parody of itself. Like DC, Marvel, Pokemon, Star Wars, and many others.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Good!

Bigger isn't always better. The more you try to make a franchise big, bland and generic the more you leave it someday to be bloated, watered down, unable to please anyone and overwrought, becoming an overdesigned parody of itself. Like DC, Marvel, Pokemon, Star Wars, and many others.

You don't need one specific setting, you just need higher constraints or guidance so that the settings that do exist are coherent. And you can do that at the mechanical level. Sure, you cut out all those potential out-of-power-band settings out, but :shrug:.

And I'd strongly object to forcing D&D into one particular, pre-written setting. Because I'm never happy about other people's settings. Not just the details, but the metaphysics. I need full power to adjust things, and tying the mechanics to the setting too heavily means that I can't do that without breaking everything. I'm much more willing to accept the need to do some power adjustments myself, as long as the baseline isn't too off[1].

[1] 3e is way too far off, I'd need to take a machete and flamethrower to the entire list to get close. It's broken by design. 5e is close enough that I rarely have to meddle, for at least my own tastes and play style.

[MoiMagnus]

Good!

Bigger isn't always better. The more you try to make a franchise big, bland and generic the more you leave it someday to be bloated, watered down, unable to please anyone and overwrought, becoming an overdesigned parody of itself. Like DC, Marvel, Pokemon, Star Wars, and many others.

But that's the whole point of a big franchise. That's the only reason why you would use the name D&D, to put a common name over a whole set of set of different gameplay that peoples recognise as being D&D. It's a feature, not a bug.

If you want something more specific, tailored to a specific kind of players or power level, that's why there are tons and tons of other medieval fantastic RPGs, that are less widely known in particular because they target a smaller audience. But that doesn't mean they are lesser RPGs in term of quality.

[Arguably, D&D could be split into different subRPGs (with slightly different set of rules) that target different groups, which is not that different from having different Tier of a single RPG have different gameplay. But that could easily end up to be quite a mess]

[Tanarii]

OP options are usually few, obvious, and outliers with the entire rest of the system.

Buff don't nerf is definitely a back to front mentality to take towards fixing game balance, as a general principle. Nerf, but not into oblivion (worse than all other options) is usually the most beneficial general policy for a GM to take.

[Pex]

Nerfing isn't the problem; it's overcompensating. It can be objectively agreed that some Ability or Power is too powerful for the game. Even if one disagrees something is too powerful you can appreciate how others do, and it's not a hill to die on to acquiesce toning it down or getting rid of it completely. The problem comes in taking away too much or piling on restrictions, conditions, and payments that makes doing the Thing not worth the effort, banning by passive aggresiveneess instead of direct admittance. As I like to say, don't punish a player for doing something you said he could do. If something is so horrendoulsly powerful to you how dare anyone do it don't have it in the game at all. Don't make a player wish he never did it. If you get rid of too much don't blame the players who disagree and refuse to play at all. It's your problem, not theirs.

[Man_Over_Game]

I played the minis wargame Warmachine for a while, but one of the things that pushed me out was a relentless cycle of player-feedback-driven "buff everything, now buff something else to make it as good as the things we just buffed", and the power creep devoured the game whole within five years.

A bit off-topic, but I saw the exact same thing happen in real-time with Borderlands 3 over the course of about 4 months. Made me realize that giving people what they ask for won't make them happy, even when it comes to games.

People don't like nerfs, but it still might be good for them.

[Xervous]

A bit off-topic, but I saw the exact same thing happen in real-time with Borderlands 3 over the course of about 4 months. Made me realize that popular opinion can't be trusted.

I’ve seen something vaguely similar happen to Grim Dawn over the course of four years. Fortunately the devs there have a decent grasp on what their target performance band is and aren’t afraid of calling idiots out, but some changes they made led to too much power creep when they changed FOUR different areas over time to address the same problem and didn’t peel off the earlier bandaids.

Biggest takeaways I have from GD are that bandaids should be avoided because the end users will view them as final intended features. That and the first thing a new player will ask is “wots da best buildz?”

Grim Dawn wasn’t a competition as much as the Russians tried to (and succeeded at) poison the community with that mindset. Neither are TTRPGs generally.

As for popular opinion the Grim Dawn forums are a treasure trove of nonsense...

Dev: “okay enlightened user, how do you propose we buff the recently nerfed hammer of this set piece without putting back the retal property that did not fit with our intended use case?”

Next post: “set is dead without retal property, put it back”


So yeah, nerf the outliers, keep your system doing what you want it to do.

[Starbuck_II]

Spoiler: Derailing the thread

Show

IMO, one of the problem is that you can't specialise caster enough.

You should be able to build an blaster-spellcaster that gives up all its subtlety and versatility to kill things as efficiently as a martial, to accommodate for tables that only care about killing monsters without any subtlety but still want a variety of ways (sword, fireball, etc) to do it.

Lack of specialisation of casters mean that each time a designer think that "obviously, magic should be able to do THAT very well", suddenly almost every caster is able to do it very well.

In 3.5:
But isn't a Warmage basically a super specialized wizard almost?
Granted, he is missing a lot of splatbook damage spells that keep forgetting him.

However, even then, they didn't go far enough.

[PhoenixPhyre]

A bit off-topic, but I saw the exact same thing happen in real-time with Borderlands 3 over the course of about 4 months. Made me realize that giving people what they ask for won't make them happy, even when it comes to games.

People don't like nerfs, but it still might be good for them.

This is a key takeaway. It's like cheat codes. Sure, you get victory...but it often leaves a hollow taste. At least in single-player games...competitive games you get the boost from "pwning the noobs" or whatever the current lingo is. But D&D (especially, but most TTRPGs) should not be approached with that same kind of competitive attitude, where "winning" is the only thing that matters at the player level.

I think the keys to well-received nerfs are
a) a sane base system so any nerfs are for obvious outliers/obvious unintended and broken interactions, of which there aren't many. This lets you (as the DM or dev) reserve your nerfing hammer for things most people agree really need it.
b) Communication. Including sharing what you mean by "OP" and why X is OP by those standards.
c) Communication. At the individual table level, you can talk to the players involved, OOC, and come to an agreement about how to handle things. Much of this should happen at Session 0. But if a hotfix is needed, talk to the players. Get their buy-in. Or accept that it may not be broken enough at your table to need changing for this campaign.