Opinion: Will D&D ever acheive caster vs martial balance?

[Pex]

Making such variable scaling work is challenging, especially because of the Normal People Problem.

Specifically the game has to have rules to represent what a bog standard human being with average abilities is capable of doing, even when this category doesn't include any PCs or significant NPCs. Because a setting is going to have normal people in it, the only alternative is a bizarro world that poses even worse challenges. This, in turn, produces a floor for what the minimum numbers in a system must represent. Whatever the ultimate power ceiling is, it has to scale up from said 'normal person' floor (in many games it's actually from lower, if you want to represent weaker-than-human entities like giant rats). This is a big part of the inherent mathematical challenge for high-power games, especially in tabletop where the number of increments that can plausibly be placed between floor and ceiling is limited by the simplified math available (cRPGs can, and do, utilize much larger ranges).

This is a problem that has long existed in many games, not just D&D. White-Wolf struggled with it immensely, and managed to create mechanically horrific systems three different times (Aberrant, Exalted, and Scion), when they kicked the power ceiling above what the storyteller system's dicepool structure could handle.

It's the game designers' job to do that work, not bump it off to the DM to make it up. If it is exactly that, so challenging, how do you expect all the DMs out there to do it? That's why you get DMs who don't allow stunts or make then so hard to do no one bothers, ergo spellcasters rule warriors drool because spells are defined on how they work as well as PCs only do whatever their class buttons allow them to do and nothing more, which was Telok's issue.

If I got my way and there were defined DC tables, the people here who yell at the idea of the game telling them what to do can still do whatever it is they do. If they don't need tables hooray for them. Ignore them. The tables are for the gaming groups who do need them. Just as there are variant rules for resting there can be variant rules for the tables. Have a sentence offering the idea if you want a grittier game increase the DCs by 5 and for wushu games decrease the DCs by 5. Whatever the math is to make it work, that's the game designers' job to figure out. I don't need to provide the numbers.

[Batcathat]

If you honestly believe a good game master can do that, then the overarching question should be "is there a way to make every game master that good?"

Or, put differently: quality advice for how a game master should handle unequal characters reduces the need to have equal characters, and vice versa. There are probably multiple balance points to that equation, with a trivial case of course being the one where all allowed characters are mechanically equal.

Yes, I think it's possible (even if the hypothetical party in my example would be quite the challenge, I suspect). No, I don't think everyone can do it. Which was kind of my point, a good enough GM can handle almost any problem with the game, but with a better design not every GM needs to be that good.

I also suspect that better balance would put less strain on the suspension of disbelief, since a party might notice that every major battle just happen to include something to do for the party members with fewer and weaker tools.

[Satinavian]

Making such variable scaling work is challenging, especially because of the Normal People Problem.

Honestly, i prefer if games know what they want and provide that.

The idea that a single game should be able to do everything is what leads to discussions like thing. Because pretty much inevitably it will get a playerbase that has very different ideas about what they even want to achieve and rules will never bridge that.

[Lord Raziere]

It's the game designers' job to do that work, not bump it off to the DM to make it up. If it is exactly that, so challenging, how do you expect all the DMs out there to do it? That's why you get DMs who don't allow stunts or make then so hard to do no one bothers, ergo spellcasters rule warriors drool because spells are defined on how they work as well as PCs only do whatever their class buttons allow them to do and nothing more, which was Telok's issue.

Yeah. If its so hard, then DM's making it up isn't a solution because thats playing the lottery and hoping to get the winning numbers every time. campaign advice is something a GM will maybe look at, rules are something they HAVE to reference. but DnD will never be a wushu/wuxia game and saying a good GM can make it that way is like saying musicians should only learn one instrument and play it really really well so they improvise with that instrument to produce something like the sound of another instrument, rather than multiple instruments that can do different tunes for different purposes. you don't use a violin to play a song that calls for an electric guitar, and you don't use drums when you need to play it on a flute.

also Mechalich's comment about WW making horrific systems is out of date, Exalted 3rd edition cleans up a lot of the mechanical stupidity of 2e and I've heard the new edition of Scion is much better mechanically as well. its not as if these systems froze their development while DnD went from 3.5 to 5e.

[Telok]

Making such variable scaling work is challenging, especially because of the Normal People Problem.

Specifically the game has to have rules to represent what a bog standard human being with average abilities is capable of doing, even when this category doesn't include any PCs or significant NPCs. Because a setting is going to have normal people in it, the only alternative is a bizarro world that poses even worse challenges. This, in turn, produces a floor for what the minimum numbers in a system must represent.

Champions has a bit of an issue with that, in that normal people can fall off 3 storey buildings almost continuously and keep walking away from it. That actually works out pretty well when you low ball for a street level hero game as long as you keep focus on the pcs & equal point value villians, but you can still get the occasional "rubber ball hostage" on accident. That system is set for supers and the normal people ended up with extra physical padding. But its mostly just a rare artifact in combat since super punches, killing attacks like guns, & long falls still have the correct results, and skills/non-combat aren't affected. I have found a couple systems that do fine, but they don't claim everything and the kitchen sink or try to do everything from "young Conan can barely defeat a skeleton" to "which elder god are we beating up this week".

You can fit things two ways. Define your dice system stats, fit normal people stats to that, then figure out what bonuses to give pcs & villians to reach the desired power level. Or define normal people & pc/opfor stats to get your desired spread before designing your dice system to give appropriate results. I guess you could calibrate the dice system & pcs then figure stats for normal people from that too.

The bad thing to do is define all three in isolation from each other, which is about what 5e has. They inherited an assumption about normal people stats (10s), took an existing dice system & idealized a "bounded accuracy" thing without putting rigorous boundaries on it, and designed pcs & monster separate from both of them (no consideration what 18+prof vs 10+0 should be except less than a 12 point spread). Then they could only jigger the proficency bonus to fit the "bounded accuracy" thing. Naturally they immedately went and busted out spells & effects that let casters semi-reliably blow "bounded accuracy" on ability checks to crap. It works ok if a DM knows stats, doesn't use the core mechanic much outside combat, and you fiat a lot of autosuccess & autofail to keep the d20+0 uneducated dirt farmers from showing up the level 20, int 20 wizards in magic trivia contests and the like. Actually thats a bit extreme, about only 8% dirt farmer wins if the quickie math was right.

But still the d&d 5e DM still has to know statistics & have a solid idea of thier intended style in order to stop the system from giving out bad results. You get one that thinks three 33% chances = a 99% chance, or one doesn't know how setting dcs baseline 10 versus baseline 15 changes outcomes at low levels, or they call for a lot of rolls because they can't decide if pcs should auto-succeed/fail so they trust the "professional designed system" to decide. Groups just fell apart with those because the game was all whacked out.

[Mechalich]

It's the game designers' job to do that work, not bump it off to the DM to make it up. If it is exactly that, so challenging, how do you expect all the DMs out there to do it? That's why you get DMs who don't allow stunts or make then so hard to do no one bothers, ergo spellcasters rule warriors drool because spells are defined on how they work as well as PCs only do whatever their class buttons allow them to do and nothing more, which was Telok's issue.

If I got my way and there were defined DC tables, the people here who yell at the idea of the game telling them what to do can still do whatever it is they do. If they don't need tables hooray for them. Ignore them. The tables are for the gaming groups who do need them. Just as there are variant rules for resting there can be variant rules for the tables. Have a sentence offering the idea if you want a grittier game increase the DCs by 5 and for wushu games decrease the DCs by 5. Whatever the math is to make it work, that's the game designers' job to figure out. I don't need to provide the numbers.

I was not suggesting that GMs should do that work, rather that there need to be entirely different games for different purposes. D&D tries to do too much, in practically every parameter, not just math scaling, and the one edition that is mostly balanced, 4e, is also the one that massively pared back what the system attempted/pretended it was capable of accomplishing. One of the many problems 4e faced was that, unfortunately, people liked having things attached to the game more than they liked having all of those things work - also not a solely D&D problem, the second most popular TTRPG ever was VtM, and that had all kinds of things in it that fundamentally did not function (to the point that even White-Wolf recognized and blew up some of them, ex. the True Black Hand madness) but that many fans howled at the very idea they could be removed.

Actually thats a bit extreme, about only 8% dirt farmer wins if the quickie math was right.

Even an 8% win rate is a big problem though. That's not sufficient infrequent that you can brush it off as a data artifact. It's a roughly 1 in 12 chance, which is common enough to happen once per session if the GM calls for a lot of checks. A system that outputs anomalous results on a regular basis has problems.

[Dr.Samurai]

@Random Peasant: I don't think further exchanges will be very productive. I seem to be having difficulty conveying my meaning to you, and having to explain it again each time is frustrating me, so to stay positive, I'm abandoning this particular part of the conversation.



If we ignore the concept that mundane martials don't deserve to exist at high levels and simply accept that the game has had them since the very beginning and continues to have them, what do people think martials need to "keep up" at those levels?

Is it any of the following or some combination or both or something else I haven't listed?

1. Ability to navigate different terrain. (Altitude, underwater, hazardous, other dimension, etc.)
2. Ability to debilitate the enemy other than through HP damage.
3. Ability to contribute outside of combat. (On a par with utility spells? Differently?)
4. Ability to withstand enemy attacks/abilities?
5. Ability to reshape the battlefield?

[Tanarii]

There's no requirement that a games resolution system has to be able to represent what normal people can do. Nor NPCs that are effectively on par with the PCs, for that matter. They can have a totally different resolution system, or even no system at all. D&D 5e could in theory be considered a combination of both, although it breaks down when opposed checks are required. For a good example of the latter, see AW.

[NichG]

@Random Peasant: I don't think further exchanges will be very productive. I seem to be having difficulty conveying my meaning to you, and having to explain it again each time is frustrating me, so to stay positive, I'm abandoning this particular part of the conversation.



If we ignore the concept that mundane martials don't deserve to exist at high levels and simply accept that the game has had them since the very beginning and continues to have them, what do people think martials need to "keep up" at those levels?

Is it any of the following or some combination or both or something else I haven't listed?

1. Ability to navigate different terrain. (Altitude, underwater, hazardous, other dimension, etc.)
2. Ability to debilitate the enemy other than through HP damage.
3. Ability to contribute outside of combat. (On a par with utility spells? Differently?)
4. Ability to withstand enemy attacks/abilities?
5. Ability to reshape the battlefield?

For the highest-end play I've participated in in a D&D campaign, here are the sorts of things that can stonewall a character if they have no answer or way of getting an answer to these needs:

Ability to interact with and influence abstract, conceptual, and nonphysical forces: plagues, curses, extreme weather, corruptive energy, alterations to the state or nature of souls, transformations of body or mind, time, subjective reality, etc.

Ability to adapt to alien environments: continuously harmful places, places that remove some aspect necessary to life or function (airless, timeless, zero-g, null magic, planes that actively suppress hope or purpose or sanity...)

Ability to scale one's impact on a situation with time or resources, and to make impacts which stick or persist or grow even when the character is no longer there. Not just defeat a criminal in battle, but have the tools to create an empire without crime. Not just heal someone from a disease, but render someone forevermore immune to disease.

Ability to get information about how to accomplish goals or pursue ends that almost no one else in the setting knows or can conceive of doing, and to analyze and understand new creatures, phenomena, etc Someone has to figure out which of a billion alternate realities the true cosmic artifact was hidden in. Someone has to figure out the properties of the new toxic energy entering the multiverse and where it came from. At high enough levels, that's the party's job.

You could of course ignore all of this and just be 'the combat guy', but in my experience that risks having entire sessions where you sit on the sidelines. You don't need all of these things in the same character, but you probably do need at least one.

For reference, for the campaign I'm basing this from was heavily modded 3.5e D&D. I was playing a swordsage (so primary schtick was martial) but who went heavily into magic item crafting to be able to make things to solve particular needs and also diversified into Cleric casting and eventually basically having all spells available via Spell domain -> Anyspell + Miracle + other shenanigans, as well as a ton of custom high-end stuff from that particular campaign. Outside of combat considerations, that character had to do things like halt an asteroid impact, retrieve something from the core of an operating antimatter reactor, navigate home from the paradox plane that created plausible but false versions of reality, rebalance the alignment distribution of the planes as a whole, communicate and then negotiate peace with a sentient zombie-apocalypse-causing disease, deal with an exponentially growing incurable corruption that spread memetically through populations, etc. As far as combat went, an important part of his schtick was being able to self-resurrect up to three times in a row, allowing him to deal with things that made HP totals and defenses irrelevant. I think by the end of the campaign he was Lv33.

So that's my image of 'what do I want high level play to handle/be like'

[RandomPeasant]

This is a big part of the inherent mathematical challenge for high-power games, especially in tabletop where the number of increments that can plausibly be placed between floor and ceiling is limited by the simplified math available (cRPGs can, and do, utilize much larger ranges).

It is a challenge for certain types of math. HP scaling over that range is a huge pain to handle. But 1d20 + 5 isn't really much different than 1d20 + 25 or even 1d20 + 45. It can be painful if there are a lot more situational bonuses at high level, but that strikes me as bad design. There are other things that are hard to scale (like going from "human speed" to "the Flash speed", especially on a fixed grid), but D&D has gotten by just fine having speed scale relatively little.

Honestly, i prefer if games know what they want and provide that.

The idea that a single game should be able to do everything is what leads to discussions like thing. Because pretty much inevitably it will get a playerbase that has very different ideas about what they even want to achieve and rules will never bridge that.

The issue is that "scale from low to high power levels" is a valid thing to want and the thing that D&D has historically been. For all that people will pretend that D&D has "always been" the game where the Fighter never had to be more than a guy at the gym, that's just not remotely true. The I in "BECMI" stands for "Immortals", not "Is Mundane". D&D is a zero-to-hero, kitchen sink, epic fantasy game. That's what it is. And the people who want it to be something else are the ones who want to remove things from D&D, no matter how much they protest to the contrary.

@Random Peasant: I don't think further exchanges will be very productive. I seem to be having difficulty conveying my meaning to you, and having to explain it again each time is frustrating me, so to stay positive, I'm abandoning this particular part of the conversation.

The past exchanges weren't productive because you didn't explain yourself. We're how many pages in and the "Aragorn Archetype" is still one example that doesn't do the things you claim the archetype does. Do you know what the Avenger who is most closely associated with a specific magic item is? Thor! The guy who is obviously not mundane, and somehow claimed as "not martial" by your side.

what do people think martials need to "keep up" at those levels?

To not be mundane. As they are demonstrably not when they survive having meteors thrown at them. You still haven't explained how your totally mundane character is supposed to interact with a Xixecal. I understand you don't want to defend your position, but that makes your position wrong, not something we can all simply assume.

You could of course ignore all of this and just be 'the combat guy', but in my experience that risks having entire sessions where you sit on the sidelines. You don't need all of these things in the same character, but you probably do need at least one.

The real risk of not having those things, IME, is that it means that they simply aren't made the focus of the campaign. So by insisting you be allowed to simply opt out of them, you're (in practice) saying they shouldn't be a part of the campaign for anyone. And that can be fine at the level of a table, I think the game probably should allow you to have a campaign that is "just" the combat minigame plus maybe some basic exploration, but kicking them out of the game in general to preserve your vision of what your character should be is a level of selfish I just don't understand.

For reference, for the campaign I'm basing this from was heavily modded 3.5e D&D. I was playing a swordsage (so primary schtick was martial) but who went heavily into magic item crafting to be able to make things to solve particular needs and also diversified into Cleric casting and eventually basically having all spells available via Spell domain -> Anyspell + Miracle + other shenanigans, as well as a ton of custom high-end stuff from that particular campaign. Outside of combat considerations, that character had to do things like halt an asteroid impact, retrieve something from the core of an operating antimatter reactor, navigate home from the paradox plane that created plausible but false versions of reality, rebalance the alignment distribution of the planes as a whole, communicate and then negotiate peace with a sentient zombie-apocalypse-causing disease, deal with an exponentially growing incurable corruption that spread memetically through populations, etc. As far as combat went, an important part of his schtick was being able to self-resurrect up to three times in a row, allowing him to deal with things that made HP totals and defenses irrelevant. I think by the end of the campaign he was Lv33.

This is the exact sort of thing that the high end of D&D should be. And, no, this is not his table being weird there are official D&D adventures and enemies that scale this much as well. It's fine to scale less, but dealing with this is what it should mean to hit the top end of D&D's level range.

[Satinavian]

The issue is that "scale from low to high power levels" is a valid thing to want and the thing that D&D has historically been. For all that people will pretend that D&D has "always been" the game where the Fighter never had to be more than a guy at the gym, that's just not remotely true. The I in "BECMI" stands for "Immortals", not "Is Mundane". D&D is a zero-to-hero, kitchen sink, epic fantasy game. That's what it is. And the people who want it to be something else are the ones who want to remove things from D&D, no matter how much they protest to the contrary.

I am not one who wants D&D to be something that it isn't. I am perfectly fine playing my various more focussed games, thank you very much. That way i don't have to listen to people claiming the game we are playing should really be Sword and Sorcery and we were doing it all wrong or such nonsense. And I certainly don't care about what D&D "has always been", the early versions are not actually good enough to be worth revisiting imho.

That said, BECMI hat the good sense to provide quite different rulesets for its parts making those nearly standalone games. I remember trying to get some people for an Immortals campaign long time ago.

[Psyren]

What I've always wanted. Defined DC tables for skill use,

Which will accomplish nothing but creating a bunch of dysfunctional RAW arguments and getting weaponized against even the DMs that have them memorized. Pass.

but Telok said it better and he didn't even suggest defined numbers. He just said for wushu jumping double your distance would be an average skill but gritty jumping even a couple of feet more than max would take effort. Don't just tell the DM to make it up.

You and Telok literally just did that! So why then do you think it's hard?

Show the various styles and how they affect the rules, explain the pros and cons of each, and reinforce the idea PCs are supposed to be able to do these things. Also be blunt. No PC can use Athletics to jump to the moon, but don't let that mean a PC can't jump onto the back of a dragon when he does a flyby.

A DM who wants it to be possible for the martial PC to jump onto the dragon's back can allow that under the current rules. And the DM that doesn't, with your tables, will now have to worry about making sure the encounter is designed to make that impossible, referencing said table to keep the dragon the right distance away, checking the PC's jump distance against said table etc., or else simply say no which will be a lot more likely to cause a table argument when there's an explicit table they're throwing out to do so.

The past exchanges weren't productive because you didn't explain yourself. We're how many pages in and the "Aragorn Archetype" is still one example that doesn't do the things you claim the archetype does. Do you know what the Avenger who is most closely associated with a specific magic item is? Thor! The guy who is obviously not mundane, and somehow claimed as "not martial" by your side.

You still haven't responded to the fact that he beat Hela, a major villain, with his magic - not any weapons.

[Willie the Duck]

That said, BECMI hat the good sense to provide quite different rulesets for its parts making those nearly standalone games. I remember trying to get some people for an Immortals campaign long time ago.

Definitely. In the end I don't really like the Immortal rules*, I think Godbound does the same theme better ruleswise (and most people I know who want to explore this power level seem to prefer Exalted anyways). I do like the Companion-Master level dominion play -- occasionally (and would thus prefer there be an alternate progression for fighters for levels 10-~18 so they do get something while the MUs keep getting spell levels for the 90% of games where we don't do the leader-of-armies routine. However, they are there, they are relatively well-spelled out, and they add new rules and gameplay loops and don't pretend you can use the levels lower level dungeon-crawl subsystems when your character is past the zero-to-hero phase.
*caveat: the universe and metaphysics of BECMI, IMO, are superior to AD&Ds

[Telok]

You and Telok literally just did that! So why then do you think it's hard?

Well I've never said its hard for someone with 30 years DMing, a dozen plus different game systems, can do statistics in their head, has seen (and made some of) the mistakes & intentionally tried to learn from them. I've always said its the novice DMs and those who don't grok statistics who I keep seeing have d&d 5e games fail because they turn into all-caster parties that break the DMs ability to cope because a few of the spells are that good. The players going all caster because the DM relies on the core dice mechanic "too much" and turns ability check classes into a Three Stooges skit. And the DMs not understanding why when they don't know if pcs should succeed and call for a roll everyone either cashes out or casts a win spell.

Never said its hard for forumites who are basically the expert users. Said I keep seeing novices fail & rage quit because they don't understand dc 15 & "average" are actually pretty hard for the vast majority of characters.

That's why I asked about if it was a general or build specific thing about the ability check stuff back last page.

Edit: here, this was the original question of mine before the weird tangent.

Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
Rogues, dominate ability checks the same way that Fighters, Barbarians and Paladins dominate combat. Monks and Rangers can often do quite well. The Martials as a group hold their own against arcane casters out of combat.
............
Question. Do you mean rogues are good at dex checks and, depending on specific build + feat + maybe magic item or multiclass choices, at investigation & athletics & perception checks?

[LibraryOgre]

That's like saying Batman is "just some dude who lost his parents and was raised by his butler". Having well-defined backstories for characters is good. The fact that DC has enough fidelity to consistent canon that a C-tier Batman villain like Mr Freeze has a recognizable backstory (loved a woman, she got a horrible disease, froze her to save her) makes the DC universe much richer and makes it much easier to contextualize things within it.

I don't think you really need a fully defined backstory to have a good character, and I think Batman is a good example... through the movies, shows, and ages, his background IS "orphaned rich boy who lost his parents and was raised by his butler", but what that means, and who the Batman actually is, varies widely. In BTAS/JLU, he has a close relationship with Zatanna; he doesn't in other versions. In the Nolan Trilogy, he had an intimate relationship with Ras al Ghul... this doesn't always apply. We don't know where Patman learned his stuff, but it is less relevant to the story than his character arc in the movie.

Batman's background hangs on a couple key points, but it is not always defined, or it is defined as needed, or it varies from presentation to presentation.

I mean, you can write a 15 page backstory, but you can also write "Parents died in an orc attack, now fights bad guys" and move forward, building the character out of the events of the game, rather than events of the past.

[Dr.Samurai]

The past exchanges weren't productive because you didn't explain yourself. We're how many pages in and the "Aragorn Archetype" is still one example that doesn't do the things you claim the archetype does.

I tried to be generous but let's be frank lol, I'm not the problem here. I did not mention Aragorn first, despite your repeated insistence that I did. You and others did. I tried to explain that Aragorn is a concept or an aesthetic, a mundane warrior. I thought I was communicating with someone seeking an understanding. Others also explained what they mean by it.

You constantly shift goal posts.

You: Aragorn doesn't kill a balrog.

Us: That's fine, in D&D there are magic items and stuff that can help. The point is to play the concept of mundane warrior.

You: A warrior with magic items is a relic knight, not a mundane warrior.

Us: Eh, no. Many warriors in myth had magic weapons, it's why it's a staple in fantasy. Is King Arthur not an example of this?

You: King Arthur isn't on par with Thor and Hulk.

Anyone can go back through the thread and see this to be the case. I've already called out your double standards as well. You're not really interested in meeting anyone at the points they're making.

Do you know what the Avenger who is most closely associated with a specific magic item is? Thor! The guy who is obviously not mundane, and somehow claimed as "not martial" by your side.

LMAO, coming from the same guy that said Captain America doesn't count because he was wielding Mjolnir, meanwhile I use him as an example all the time.

To not be mundane. As they are demonstrably not when they survive having meteors thrown at them.

Once again RandomPeasant refusing to elaborate at all on their position.

You still haven't explained how your totally mundane character is supposed to interact with a Xixecal.

And you haven't explained how your caster would either, nor why that should be the standard. Nor even what the difficulty would be for an epic level warrior to face a xixecal. By all means, please do the work to make your case.

I understand you don't want to defend your position, but that makes your position wrong, not something we can all simply assume.

I don't have a position to defend RandomPeasant. No matter which edition of D&D I choose, I can play a mundane martial at high levels. My position is the default position of every edition of the game. You, as the person that wants to prevent that from being the case going forward, are the one that needs to prove their point. Not the other way around.

[Psyren]

+1000 Dr.Samurai.

I don't think you really need a fully defined backstory to have a good character, and I think Batman is a good example... through the movies, shows, and ages, his background IS "orphaned rich boy who lost his parents and was raised by his butler", but what that means, and who the Batman actually is, varies widely. In BTAS/JLU, he has a close relationship with Zatanna; he doesn't in other versions. In the Nolan Trilogy, he had an intimate relationship with Ras al Ghul... this doesn't always apply. We don't know where Patman learned his stuff, but it is less relevant to the story than his character arc in the movie.

Batman's background hangs on a couple key points, but it is not always defined, or it is defined as needed, or it varies from presentation to presentation.

I mean, you can write a 15 page backstory, but you can also write "Parents died in an orc attack, now fights bad guys" and move forward, building the character out of the events of the game, rather than events of the past.

He also hasn't responded to the fact that plenty of famous DC characters have vague/ill-defined backstories too. Joker's changes constantly for instance, as do that of Black Manta, Hawkman etc. There's a whole trope around this phenomenon and DC is not immune.

Said I keep seeing novices fail & rage quit because they don't understand dc 15 & "average" are actually pretty hard for the vast majority of characters.

The DMG does point that out though - saying that even a DC 10 is a 50% fail rate for a commoner (10 ability score and no proficiency). Easy for an adventurer may not actually mean easy. I think they can elaborate on this point (not that it's strictly needed) without going all the way down into Pex-style DC tables for dozens of different actions.

[Elves]

Which will accomplish nothing but creating a bunch of dysfunctional RAW arguments and getting weaponized against even the DMs that have them memorized. Pass.

"There shouldn't be rules because then there will be rules arguments"

A DM who wants it to be possible for the martial PC to jump onto the dragon's back can allow that under the current rules. And the DM that doesn't, with your tables, will now have to worry about making sure the encounter is designed to make that impossible

"There shouldn't be rules because then PCs will be able to do things and the DM can't arbitrarily say no because he feels like it"

If what you want is essentially a guided improv with a dictator DM, why would you bother playing something as rules-heavy as D&D in the first place? And even if you do want a guided improv, isn't the first rule of improv "yes, and", not "no you can't do that"?

What puzzles me is that your argument seems to explicitly support the worst kind of DM, who only lets PCs do what he thought of beforehand and shuts down any solution that would "ruin" his encounter. You're admitting that clearer skill rules enable player creativity more than they impede it, but then saying that's a bad thing.

[BRC]

If what you want is essentially a guided improv with a dictator DM, why would you bother playing something as rules-heavy as D&D in the first place? And even if you do want a guided improv, isn't the first rule of improv "yes, and", not "no you can't do that"?

What puzzles me is that your argument seems to explicitly support the worst kind of DM, who only lets PCs do what he thought of beforehand and shuts down any solution that would "ruin" his encounter. You're admitting that clearer skill rules enable player creativity more than they impede it, but then saying that's a bad thing.

Eh

There's a design ethos in 5e that the DM should be arbitrating a lot of stuff as they see fit, rather than building out large tables for specific actions, partially as an explicit break from 3.5, which was a lot more generous with explicitly laying out mechanics for specific actions.

And the fact is, there are always going to be MORE situations than you could possibly print tables for.

Under the current system, where things are pretty loosely defined, it's up to the DM to judge the scenario and determine if the action is possible, and how hard it would be.

If you have a giant table of different DC's for specific actions then not only are you slowing down the game, you've got the implicit assumption that anything NOT on these tables is not allowed.

"Jump onto a Dragon's back during a flyby attack" is on there, but they didn't think to put "Leap off a rooftop to land on a Giant's shoulders". If there's a giant "Jumping onto things" table, and the GM scans it and doesn't see any parallels for the current situation, they're probably going to feel like they need to stop the action rather than feeling empowered to adjudicate it as they see fit.


I DO think the game could use a little more explicit support for interesting movements in combat and interactions, but I don't think explicit tables is the way to go.

[Psyren]

"There shouldn't be rules because then there will be rules arguments"

Unnecessary rules, yes.

"There shouldn't be rules because then PCs will be able to do things and the DM can't arbitrarily say no because he feels like it"

If you want to track a hundred random different things PCs can do so that you can design encounters that challenge those things, then 3.5 already exists, go nuts. Changing 5e into 3.5 is bad business, and retrograde.

You're admitting that clearer skill rules enable player creativity more than they impede it, but then saying that's a bad thing.

I'm saying they handcuff the DM who doesn't want to get out a protractor and TI-84 every time they design a fight.

Also what BRC said.

[Batcathat]

I'm saying they handcuff the DM who doesn't want to get out a protractor and TI-84 every time they design a fight.

So making the GM having to account for that when designing encounters would be bad but making the GM having to account for a very wide range of power levels and abilities when designing encounters (to ensure that everyone can contribute) is good?

[BRC]

So making the GM having to account for that when designing encounters would be bad but making the GM having to account for a very wide range of power levels and abilities when designing encounters (to ensure that everyone can contribute) is good?

The DM should be accounting for their party's abilities regardless.

Setting things up to line up with specific rules is a lot more difficult.

Let's say you have a low-mid level party fighting some Griffons attacking a town. You want your fighter to be able to climb up a roof and jump off it to jump on a griffon's back and bring it down. Your fighter only has a +6 to Athletics, but you want this to be pretty doable, with a well over 50% chance of success. It's the sort of dynamic move you want to encourage.


Currently, you just say "Well, If you've readied yourself to jump from the roof onto the griffon's back, it's a DC 12 check if the griffon is below the roof line. "


If you've got a table for "Jumping on a creature's back" that says "Landing on the back of a large flying creature is DC 12+1 for every 10 feet of fly speed it has". Well your griffon has a fly speed of 80ft, rules say making that jump is going to be Extraordinarily Difficult for your low level fighter, so much so that it's probably just better for him to throw javelins from the ground rather than try to do anything cool.


I do think the game could use some more general guidance, explicitly calling out "Jumping onto a flying monster's back" as something Fighters should be allowed, even encouraged, to do, without necessarily handing out specific rules and DC for doing so.

[Satinavian]

If you've got a table for "Jumping on a creature's back" that says "Landing on the back of a large flying creature is DC 12+1 for every 10 feet of fly speed it has". Well your griffon has a fly speed of 80ft, rules say making that jump is going to be Extraordinarily Difficult for your low level fighter, so much so that it's probably just better for him to throw javelins from the ground rather than try to do anything cool.

As someone frequently playing games with more clear rules that does not match my expectations. Many players are far more reluctant to try stuff that needs to be handwaved than stuff they can reliably guess difficulty and risk from the rules.
Furthermore, they feel better about successes that come from them seeing an opportunity and using that via rules than about having the GM give them a success via low difficulty because they think it is cool.
And if i wcreate an encouter and want to have a specific cool strategic option in it, i have o far always been able to do that in a rule conforming way even in systems with lots of DC tables.

So i would very much disagree.

And many players seem to do the same. The reason utility spells are valued so much over skill use in 5E is because skill use is completely dependend on handwaving and randomness. That makes it worth far less in many eyes.

[Mechalich]

I do think the game could use some more general guidance, explicitly calling out "Jumping onto a flying monster's back" as something Fighters should be allowed, even encouraged, to do, without necessarily handing out specific rules and DC for doing so.

Giving non-casters better tools to handle flying monsters isn't a bad thing for balance, but it's treating the symptom not the disease. Flight-capable beings, whether it's monsters or PC-option species or even vehicles, are massively overpowered in fantasy generally because of nearly universally accepted violations of the actual biology and physics of flight. Broadly, animals that are far too heavy, far too robust, or have no wing muscles at all, and so forth are allowed to fly like birds and in many cases even hover like helicopters while being just as robust as non-flying creatures of exactly the same size. This is perhaps the most common, and most distortional intrinsically fantastical trait in fantasy. Certainly the titular dragons, a fantasy staple, rely upon it in almost every case.

So really the 'mundane classes' are playing with an unfair handicap when it comes to flying opponents, one that has in many cases gotten worse over time as flight mechanics continue to be simplified and turn all flying animals into perfectly maneuverable helicopters rather than something with wings and a metabolism.

Making flight less of a massive cheat within the game system would go a long way to rectifying this problem. For example, dragons often have the best hit dice of any kind of monster when arguably they should have some of the worst. The likely largest animal to ever fly, Quetzalcoatlus, stood roughly as tall as a giraffe. But it only weighed around 250 kg at the upper end. A giraffe weighs around 1,000 kg (males are heavier than females). If a Quetzalcoatlus attacked a giraffe it would dive down, take a nasty bite out of the neck, and then when it tried to launch again the giraffe would slam it to the ground and kick it to death in short order.

Fighters switching to bows or javelins to face flying opponents and suffering a massive DPR drop shouldn't actually be a problem, because flying opponents should have really low HP and low armor class, since armor is prohibitively heavy for a flier, and should go down in a hurry.

Unfortunately, fantasy aesthetics is heavy wedded to super-flight - and I'll be the first to admit that classical dragons are indeed supremely cool looking - so this fix is difficult to sustain.

[awa]

If martial were a little less specialized it would be less of a problem. If switching to a back up weapon represented a significantly smaller damage downgrade it would be less of a problem.

For dragons a few tricks could be
1) to make their underbelly vulnerable thus when facing anything that could be considered a real threat they land so as to protect that vulnerability.
2) force a dragon to land once they have lost a quarter of their hp indicating they are to wounded to fly
3) allow people to target the wings which due to their size and lack of scales are more vulnerable, the damage does not carry over to the main Hp or at least only a fraction does and then once the wings are sufficiently damaged the dragon is forced to land.

[Dr.Samurai]

As someone frequently playing games with more clear rules that does not match my expectations. Many players are far more reluctant to try stuff that needs to be handwaved than stuff they can reliably guess difficulty and risk from the rules.
Furthermore, they feel better about successes that come from them seeing an opportunity and using that via rules than about having the GM give them a success via low difficulty because they think it is cool.
And if i wcreate an encouter and want to have a specific cool strategic option in it, i have o far always been able to do that in a rule conforming way even in systems with lots of DC tables.

So i would very much disagree.

And many players seem to do the same. The reason utility spells are valued so much over skill use in 5E is because skill use is completely dependend on handwaving and randomness. That makes it worth far less in many eyes.

I tend to agree. There are pros and cons with DC tables. In my experience the cons of leaving it to the DM to ad hoc stuff outweigh the cons of having the tables.

Giving non-casters better tools to handle flying monsters isn't a bad thing for balance, but it's treating the symptom not the disease. Flight-capable beings, whether it's monsters or PC-option species or even vehicles, are massively overpowered in fantasy generally because of nearly universally accepted violations of the actual biology and physics of flight. Broadly, animals that are far too heavy, far too robust, or have no wing muscles at all, and so forth are allowed to fly like birds and in many cases even hover like helicopters while being just as robust as non-flying creatures of exactly the same size. This is perhaps the most common, and most distortional intrinsically fantastical trait in fantasy. Certainly the titular dragons, a fantasy staple, rely upon it in almost every case.

So really the 'mundane classes' are playing with an unfair handicap when it comes to flying opponents, one that has in many cases gotten worse over time as flight mechanics continue to be simplified and turn all flying animals into perfectly maneuverable helicopters rather than something with wings and a metabolism.

Making flight less of a massive cheat within the game system would go a long way to rectifying this problem. For example, dragons often have the best hit dice of any kind of monster when arguably they should have some of the worst. The likely largest animal to ever fly, Quetzalcoatlus, stood roughly as tall as a giraffe. But it only weighed around 250 kg at the upper end. A giraffe weighs around 1,000 kg (males are heavier than females). If a Quetzalcoatlus attacked a giraffe it would dive down, take a nasty bite out of the neck, and then when it tried to launch again the giraffe would slam it to the ground and kick it to death in short order.

Fighters switching to bows or javelins to face flying opponents and suffering a massive DPR drop shouldn't actually be a problem, because flying opponents should have really low HP and low armor class, since armor is prohibitively heavy for a flier, and should go down in a hurry.

Unfortunately, fantasy aesthetics is heavy wedded to super-flight - and I'll be the first to admit that classical dragons are indeed supremely cool looking - so this fix is difficult to sustain.

This is an interesting point. It makes me more amenable to hyper intelligent caster dragons. If they are feather-light and relatively fragile, super cunning and flying in in the midst of a storm or magical effect would provide defenses against conventional weaponry.

But, like you, I tend to think classic dragons are awesome so I wouldn't want to see them go. Also, part of the problem is I appreciate the sort of underdog vibe this creates. Some people see this as "martials need to be boosted" and I'm like "but earning a kill like this is precisely what is so fun".

If martial were a little less specialized it would be less of a problem. If switching to a back up weapon represented a significantly smaller damage downgrade it would be less of a problem.

For dragons a few tricks could be
1) to make their underbelly vulnerable thus when facing anything that could be considered a real threat they land so as to protect that vulnerability.
2) force a dragon to land once they have lost a quarter of their hp indicating they are to wounded to fly
3) allow people to target the wings which due to their size and lack of scales are more vulnerable, the damage does not carry over to the main Hp or at least only a fraction does and then once the wings are sufficiently damaged the dragon is forced to land.

I would like a MM with these types of things in them.

[Pex]

Eh

There's a design ethos in 5e that the DM should be arbitrating a lot of stuff as they see fit, rather than building out large tables for specific actions, partially as an explicit break from 3.5, which was a lot more generous with explicitly laying out mechanics for specific actions.

And the fact is, there are always going to be MORE situations than you could possibly print tables for.

Under the current system, where things are pretty loosely defined, it's up to the DM to judge the scenario and determine if the action is possible, and how hard it would be.

If you have a giant table of different DC's for specific actions then not only are you slowing down the game, you've got the implicit assumption that anything NOT on these tables is not allowed.

"Jump onto a Dragon's back during a flyby attack" is on there, but they didn't think to put "Leap off a rooftop to land on a Giant's shoulders". If there's a giant "Jumping onto things" table, and the GM scans it and doesn't see any parallels for the current situation, they're probably going to feel like they need to stop the action rather than feeling empowered to adjudicate it as they see fit.


I DO think the game could use a little more explicit support for interesting movements in combat and interactions, but I don't think explicit tables is the way to go.

Sigh. Here we go again.

Of course there can't be a DC for every possible scenario of everything. That's not what is being asked for. DC tables for skill use would be a way to give examples, benchmarks, on things PCs should be able to do and the difficulty level of those things. Just existing is telling the DM PCs are supposed to do these and other similar things. A DC for jumping on a dragon's back does not mean no other monster can ever have a PC jumping on it. That's being pedantic literal. That a DC exists means the DM knows when a player wants to jump on a monster's back the game supports the idea. He doesn't have to think about. He doesn't have to worry if that's too powerful as an always on option should a player want to do it. The game is telling him it's all hunky dory let the PC try. The DC number offers the DM and player an idea of how difficult that task is. If the DM thinks jumping on the back of a giant is the same difficulty as jumping on the back of a dragon then he can use that number. If he thinks it's harder use a higher number. If he thinks it's easier use a lower number. It might not even be a static DC number but a variable formula based on creature size and/or CR. What the math is is not the point. The point for the discussion is the DC exists and what that means. If the game designers ever choose to finally do this it's up to them to do their job and figure out the math to have it work, not me here.

Even if they don't want to give DC numbers for all the skills they can stick with the simple Very Easy to Impossible one size fits all table. All they would need to do is give examples of various tasks and assign This Is Easy, This Is Hard as expected of adventurers. For a wuxia game make things easier by one step. For a gritty game make things harder by one step. Show the DM how they work, the pros and cons of style, not just tell the DM to make it up.

What about a player wants to do something that no table offers anything similar? The game is telling the DM PCs can do all these other fantastic stunts of various difficulties. The DM will more likely allow the attempt. Further, showing how all the difficulties and styles interact the DM can determine his own difficulty based on his style. He's adjudicating. He has a guideline to help him figure it out. With experience he gets better at it.

[False God]

I would like a MM with these types of things in them.

Including a "body chart" with semi-independent HP, AC, and such really isn't that difficult to tack on.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Including a "body chart" with semi-independent HP, AC, and such really isn't that difficult to tack on.

But increases the complexity and overhead tremendously, slowing play. Also, it is ripe for the same sorts of abuse as called shots.

And unless every type of monster had their own chart, absurdity results. Because not all monsters have vulnerable underbellies. And adding those charts is a big undertaking to do right.

Edit: more fundamentally, dragons are powerful flying creatures because they're magical creatures. A dragon inherently draws on power to fly and to even exist. Heck, the square cube law has gone out the window a long time ago just by getting to land-dwelling creatures that size. Let alone giants. Introducing realism to D&D always goes poorly. Which also gives us the out--martials can do heroic things that aren't realistic because the world isn't realistic. Or even trying to be.

[Mechalich]

But increases the complexity and overhead tremendously, slowing play. Also, it is ripe for the same sorts of abuse as called shots.

And unless every type of monster had their own chart, absurdity results. Because not all monsters have vulnerable underbellies. And adding those charts is a big undertaking to do right.

Complexity bloat is a problem. 2e AD&D actually had a bunch of rules to mitigate the advantages of flying creatures generally - ex. no flying below 50% of max HP, and dragons specifically - dragons couldn't cast spells while engaged in powered flight, only while gliding, and since they dropped rapidly while gliding this made it very difficult for them to throw spells at anything on the ground without crashing. 2e generally had all kinds of special rules for different creatures, often applied entirely ad hoc in the various MM entries, and they were confusing and bizarre and not at all balanced.

The real world is complicated, and a game is a necessarily simplified model. The more complexity that is added to the model the more difficult to utilize it becomes. Simplification of various real-world phenomena is essential. The problem is that doing so inevitably creates imbalances in the system. D&D, especially from 3e onwards, simplifies flight in a manner that in unbalanced in favor of flying beings. That wouldn't be a problem if flying enemies were rare encounters built around a gimmick, but flying enemies are found at every level, and players quickly realized that flight was an OP ability and significant investment was justified in getting it as soon as possible. This meant that class/race combinations able to acquire flight quickly or at minimal cost gained an advantage over those that were not able to do that. That's a consequence of simplifying in favor of mechanistically easy but fundamentally inaccurate flight rules.

Edit: more fundamentally, dragons are powerful flying creatures because they're magical creatures. A dragon inherently draws on power to fly and to even exist. Heck, the square cube law has gone out the window a long time ago just by getting to land-dwelling creatures that size. Let alone giants. Introducing realism to D&D always goes poorly. Which also gives us the out--martials can do heroic things that aren't realistic because the world isn't realistic. Or even trying to be.

Dragons might be inherently magical (in some settings, not all of them), but a huge number of fantasy fliers are not. No one's calling a Griffon or Hippogriff inherently magical. The square cube law actually allows for really, really big terrestrial animals, like sauropods, so massive animals like landwyrms are perfectly plausible. Even giants are to a degree doable if you alter the bone structure from something beyond 'scaled-up human.'

And the worlds of D&D are trying to be realistic (admittedly how much varies by edition), but it's confined to the bottom end of the power scale. Notably the extraordinary amount of detail lavished on tiny mechanical differences between various weapons - 2e AD&D applied minutely different stats to something like thirty different polearms right in the PHB - is absolutely intended to simulate a more 'realistic' quasi-medieval world. D&D moves away from realism as power increases, not out of any deliberate intent, but because the amount of input supplied by differences in wholly fantastical factors simply swamps that provided by simulated variation.

Martial classes are at a disadvantage because they get more boosts to simulated real-world abilities, like skills or combat moves (feats, etc.) while caster classes get boosts to wholly fantastical abilities.