D&DNext: Playtest Review

[hogarth]

Do you guys think there's any way to make bounded accuracy work without making the game incredibly tedious through massive hitpoint bloat?

Play E6.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well, you can have "bounded accuracy" while still having reasonable hit point totals so long as you have abilities that simulate having more hit points or unbounded accuracy. So for example, let's say you had a "parry die"

Other mechanical possibilities for this sort of thing would be

• Abilities for melee PCs to gain 3e style Temp HP each round. Thus meleeing becomes about trying to soak just enough attacks to eat up Temp HP instead of the meleer's real HP or the HP of any other party member.
• Small amounts of 3e/4e numerical damage reduction. If goblin spears deal 1d6 damage, and your armor gives you DR 3/-, then you outright ignore half of the goblin's attacks.
• HERO style percentage damage reduction. If you take 50% less damage from everything, that's like having twice as many HP.

All of these would have issues that would have to be addressed (encouraging dogpile tactics, being totally immune to some enemies, difficulty of doing on the fly division for tabletop) but they would let the game stay on the RNG while keeping HP totals lower.

[Duke Flauros]

"I think that's kind of a harsh reading. He doesn't say jack about pluses or all levels being identical, all he really says is he wants the game to stop sucking before level 5 and after level 15.""Of course, given what we actually got in 4E, you're probably justified in reading it that way."

Since none of us can go back in time and read minds, we can't be completely certain of what the designers were thinking. We can, however interpret what he said based on his actions. We don't know if he was intending to reign in high level cheese, make every level mostly similar, or do something else. But in practice he took the second option.

"If you asked me if I'd like to have high-level play work as quickly and smoothly as low level play, I'd probably agree that I would. That's setting aside that making high-level play work as smoothly as low-level would be a pretty fvcking impressive accomplishment, since high-level play hasn't worked at all yet. "But the goal of having high-level play work without breaking down into arguments over how Gate works and whether the PCs need to have Mind Blank 24 hours a day just to stay alive is not a bad one."

I'll agree with you there completely.

Maybe I'm just a generous mood, but I read "hard math" in the same way I read "hard science fiction" -- that is, not "difficult" but "we can't MTP around this". That is: "By the time you reach 20th level, the fighter is incapable of missing any enemy who the wizard is capable of hitting. That's not just my opinion, the hard math says so."

Maybe that's what they meant too. In practice, given their record of poor balance, it makes it look like he is saying "I can't do math well." Maybe it isn't what he means, but he should have picked a different phrase then. Communication isn't just saying what you think; it's also saying it in a way that other people will understand. So if he wants to say that "you can't just MTP the math" he should come out and say it. Because otherwise, given his/their track record of severely imbalancing the numbers, it looks like he is saying "I can't do math well."

Other mechanical possibilities for this sort of thing would be
Abilities for melee PCs to gain 3e style Temp HP each round. Thus meleeing becomes about trying to soak just enough attacks to eat up Temp HP instead of the meleer's real HP or the HP of any other party member.
Small amounts of 3e/4e numerical damage reduction. If goblin spears deal 1d6 damage, and your armor gives you DR 3/-, then you outright ignore half of the goblin's attacks.
HERO style percentage damage reduction. If you take 50% less damage from everything, that's like having twice as many HP.
All of these would have issues that would have to be addressed (encouraging dogpile tactics, being totally immune to some enemies, difficulty of doing on the fly division for tabletop) but they would let the game stay on the RNG while keeping HP totals lower.

If Mearls, Heinsoo, and co. understood that the numbers they came up with were severely imbalanced, then they could implement those solutions. But they will invariably miss some crucial problems, and hypercompensate in other areas. (See: GM fiat being no substitute for actual framework, 4e being too easy, 5e being too hard, some classes being flat out better than others, lack of synergy)

[ModelCitizen]

Since none of us can go back in time and read minds, we can't be completely certain of what the designers were thinking. We can, however interpret what he said based on his actions. We don't know if he was intending to reign in high level cheese, make every level mostly similar, or do something else. But in practice he took the second option.

Here's what Heinsoo said about it:

Heinsoo, D&D XP 2008[/url]]Rob: Well, the thing that we hope is that the sweet spot extends all the way up. I am aware that it’s always possible that that isn’t true, it’s always possible that somewhere in epic play – well epic level play is different, it’s very clear that there are things going on in epic level play that won’t happen earlier – but we try to keep the same dynamic. If you start off as a fighter, and you’re mainly about helping to protect your friends and doing damage to the enemy, you’re still doing that as an epic level character. You haven’t suddenly metamorphosed into, “Well, I do an awful lot of area damage effects, and I’m all about the flying, and hey, teleportation!”

It’s an element that we had to keep the flavor still the same, even though characters are capable of MUCH more ‘explosive’ things. I think that because the game spreads out more at epic, characters are faster, there’s more things moving around and using different areas, that’ll be different for some games. You can easily play the heroic and paragon teir on a small / dungeon tile map, but once characters get really-really powerful you want to have bigger areas, and you also want to be using huge and large miniatures more to the point. I think as the game changes it may have more to do with what space are you using, what size things are you using.

It’d be ideal if I had a perfect answer for you. “Oh, this is the sweet spot!” But I know, if there is a sweet-spot, the players will end up telling us. We think that it goes all the way up, and that’s what our goal was. Nobody set out with 3.0 or 3.5 to do that either, it was just the case with 3e. This time around we’ve designed all the development, we’ve designed all the powers, so we know what our target numbers are, and the same for monster math. The reason that the sweet spot goes away in 3.5 is that the math no longer makes sense, it’s like: “How much damage can you do?” “Not enough to get rid of that!” …unless you’re using this broken spell from this other class, or a save-or-die effect. The game uses all these shortcuts to allow us to keep playing, we’re trying not to have that anymore. So that it’s a consistent mathematical experience, and there’s no save-or-die effects that suddenly enter, and that means that the sweet-spot should extend. Funny, I gave you an incredibly long answer to what should have been a simple question.

He seems confused about what he even thinks the problem is. I can't even tell if he thought high level PCs needed more or less mobility, because he seems to do a 180 on that between the first and second paragraphs. Then he starts talking about runaway scaling divergence, which is a real thing but doesn't have much to do with anything he said previously. Even if you were a time traveling mind reader I think all you'd find would be a vague understanding that high level 3e didn't work.

[talozin]

Since none of us can go back in time and read minds, we can't be completely certain of what the designers were thinking. We can, however interpret what he said based on his actions. We don't know if he was intending to reign in high level cheese, make every level mostly similar, or do something else. But in practice he took the second option.

I thought Heinsoo was the guy that had most of his ideas for 4E dismissed as "crazy" by Mearls et al. -- was that somebody else?

If it was Mike Mearls writing that, I would agree with you 100%. But Rob Heinsoo has actually designed a decent game in the past, so I am willing to cut him a little slack in that he might have intended something other than the absolute trainwreck 4E became.

Communication isn't just saying what you think; it's also saying it in a way that other people will understand.

I think he could have been clearer, but you know what Popper said about speaking so you can't be misunderstood, right?

[talozin]

He seems confused about what he even thinks the problem is. I can't even tell if he thought high level PCs needed more or less mobility, because he seems to do a 180 on that between the first and second paragraphs. Then he starts talking about runaway scaling divergence, which is a real thing but doesn't have much to do with anything he said previously. Even if you were a time traveling mind reader I think all you'd find would be a vague understanding that high level 3e didn't work.

I have mixed feelings after reading that. If I were feeling generous, I'd interpret that whole business about not being a flying teleporting AOE blasting character as a roundabout way of saying, "A character who starts off as one archetype should not have to change archetypes to be viable at high level" -- i.e., an archer should be able to stay an archer, a blaster wizard should be able to stay a blaster wizard, etc. But it could equally well just be a rant about high level craziness in general.

The last paragraph is frustrating, because I read that as saying that he understood why Evocation sucked a barrel of cocks in 3.5. But 4E's "fix" for this was to remove SOD effects for the game entirely, and that cure was much worse than the disease.

[fectin]

Regardless of whether the solution was palatable, he sure seemed to understand what the problem was. That understanding is something Mearls has yet to show in any of his intellectual onanism.

[Duke Flauros]

He seems confused about what he even thinks the problem is. I can't even tell if he thought high level PCs needed more or less mobility, because he seems to do a 180 on that between the first and second paragraphs. Then he starts talking about runaway scaling divergence, which is a real thing but doesn't have much to do with anything he said previously. Even if you were a time traveling mind reader I think all you'd find would be a vague understanding that high level 3e didn't work.

All the space wasted, and he could have just said: "We understand that previous editions of DND went to hell in a handbasket at the high level. In our next edition, we will curb some of the insanity, while still allowing players to feel like they are accomplishing appropriately awesome adventures."

I thought Heinsoo was the guy that had most of his ideas for 4E dismissed as "crazy" by Mearls et al. -- was that somebody else?
If it was Mike Mearls writing that, I would agree with you 100%. But Rob Heinsoo has actually designed a decent game in the past, so I am willing to cut him a little slack in that he might have intended something other than the absolute trainwreck 4E became.

Mearls wrote iron heroes, which was an okay supplement. If I were to take a leap of faith, I would guess that the failure of 4e was a team effort, and was not the fault of any specific person.

I think he could have been clearer, but you know what Popper said about speaking so you can't be misunderstood, right?

The gold posts have shifted. In this day in age you don't need to be a rocket surgeon to realise that it's a doggy dog world and you really need to keep your eye on the pulse and your finger on the ball because your company and your games will just be seen as a diamond dozen by the average punter so every little imperfection in your product will have users declaring it a pizza shit and moving on. I mean, I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family but you'd be wise not to misunderestimate the market forces at work here, all controlled by powerful psychology. Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our industry learning?

The last paragraph is frustrating, because I read that as saying that he understood why Evocation sucked a barrel of cocks in 3.5.

Not really. Most evocations spells were almost useless, but streamers from shining south was the most damaging spell published by WOTC period, dealing 5d10 damage up to four times every time an enemy attempts to take an action. Reality maelstrom from spell compendium was easy to abuse. Howling chain (also from spell compedium) could lock down an enemy caster, or even several at once. Forcecage, telekinetic sphere, wall of force, sending, and wind wall were all evocation spells. An incantatrix could cast a maximized empowered energy admixtured twinned repeat persistent acid arrow, and make the enemy take 96 damage per round for the rest of the day. Really, evocation could be the poster child for WOTC balance: a whole lot of useless junk, and the occasional effect which will snap the game in half.

But 4E's "fix" for this was to remove SOD effects for the game entirely, and that cure was much worse than the disease.

It wasn't just the removal of SOD's, it was padded sumo, orbizards, and an excess of healing. The game could have survived quite well without SODs specifically- but the WOTC designers made it so that you just couldn't die, and neither would the enemies.

[Blicero]

Mearls wrote iron heroes, which was an okay supplement.

[Duke Flauros]

Mearls wrote iron heroes, which was an okay supplement.

I said okay, not good. As in, probably not worth the $10, but it wasn't awful.

[Josh_Kablack]

Relevant prior go round

[Duke Flauros]

Relevant prior go round

Read Frank's post, remembered that I never actually used iron heroes in a game, reread iron heroes. I must have missed the skill and feat sections, because

[Username17]

I thought Heinsoo was the guy that had most of his ideas for 4E dismissed as "crazy" by Mearls et al. -- was that somebody else?

The "Heinsoo Craziness" that was crushed by the other team members was "large damage expressions at higher levels". Certainly, when they posted up the Paladin Preview in early 2008, the damage calculation presented involved the Paladin being able to take most or all of the sample spine devil's hit points with a single smite. The parts that Heinsoo made were a lot less grindy and didn't have nearly the padded sumo problems that the release version did.

The thing that puzzles me is that this is not an isolated situation. Several times during the 4e design phase there was a team mutiny where they forced the abandonment of what was apparently a good idea in order to replace it with an untested idea that hadn't been math-checked and would ultimately turn out to be horribad. Reducing the damage outputs of attacks made high level 4e into an unplayable morass of padded sumo. And anyone with a hand calculator could have told the team that before they were even done altering Heinsoo's damage numbers.

Edit:

Powers evolved from Heinsoo crazy (6d12? Really?) to the versions you see today. The early mandate was to push limits on design.

-Username17

[virgil]

I see this argument constantly in groups. Once a character is able to take out 25%+ of a monster's HP, then they envision a party focus-fire scenario, and that is a boring scene to them. If a monster reliably dies from a single Care Bear Stare, then it's a monster not even deserving of a name. It calls to question the point in having the scene if a simple "and then we stabbed it" finishes the fight. A good chunk of this is form the mental investment in learning/using the rules for combat; and resolving the fight so quickly makes the effort seem wasted (might as well use Arkham Horror rules for combat).

They make this decision and the line of logic will dictate they defend it with their dying breath (as gamers are wont). Thus, when their decisions lead them to a crappy game, they blame the game being too balanced, or something.

Oh, and discussing the math makes you look like an autistic OCD rollplayer. It's an actual case of ostracizing the nerds, now that I think about it, and the 'roleplayers' are the jocks in this scenario.

[Josh_Kablack]

Edit:

Powers evolved from Heinsoo crazy (6d12? Really?) to the versions you see today. The early mandate was to push limits on design.

-Username17

So 39 average damage is somehow crazy in the context of 4e? The edition where the 7W epic power is LESS DAMAGING than the other option in for the same class at the same level in the PHB? The edition and where each attack is taking the die roll and then adding 1 + ( level / 5 ) enhancement and another +5 {6 at 8th, 7 at 14th, 8 at 21st, 9 at 24th and 10 at 28th} ability mod before you get into the race, item, feat and power bonuses that are the actual game?

At 16th level, which is halfway through the game with the "expanded sweet spot" a 2h meleer in 4e will be dealing something like W +7stat +4 enhancement + 6 power attack,+4 item, for like 1d12+21 before power, vulnerability or race adds and they will have powers that deal multiple [w]s if, and they really want multihit and/or minor action powers. Thus in most cases they will have damage expressions that have higher damage than 6d12.

tl;dr, In what world is 6d12 LESS crazy than N(x[W]+stat+enhancement+power+feat+race+item) ?
Apparently in Mearlzarro world.

Edit: I'll at least admit when I make a math flub. Thanks, Frank.

[Duke Flauros]

Edit:

Powers evolved from Heinsoo crazy (6d12? Really?) to the versions you see today. The early mandate was to push limits on design.

-Username17

So 39.5 average damage is somehow crazy in the context of 4e? The edition where the 7W epic power is LESS DAMAGING than the other option in for the same class at the same level in the PHB? The edition and where each attack is taking the die roll and then adding 1 + ( level / 5 ) enhancement and another +5 {6 at 8th, 7 at 14th, 8 at 21st, 9 at 24th and 10 at 28th} ability mod before you get into the race, item, feat and power bonuses that are the actual game?

At 16th level, which is halfway through the game with the "expanded sweet spot" a 2h meleer in 4e will be dealing something like W +7stat +4 enhancement + 6 power attack,+4 item, for like 1d12+21 before power, vulnerability or race adds and they will have powers that deal multiple [w]s if, and they really want multihit and/or minor action powers. Thus in most cases they will have damage expressions that have higher damage than 6d12.

tl;dr, In what world is 6d12 LESS crazy than N(x[W]+stat+enhancement+power+feat+race+item) ?
Apparently in Mearlzarro world.

Remember, Josh, math is hard.

[OgreBattle]

It FEELS crazier

because dice. The creators of D&D are about the FEELings

[RobG]

An incantatrix could cast a maximized empowered energy admixtured twinned repeat persistent acid arrow, and make the enemy take 96 damage per round for the rest of the day.

That would actually be 7d4+8 for the next few rounds.

Sorry. It bugs me when when people make the Metamagic stacking mistake.

Remember, Duke, math is hard

[hogarth]

I see this argument constantly in groups. Once a character is able to take out 25%+ of a monster's HP, then they envision a party focus-fire scenario, and that is a boring scene to them. If a monster reliably dies from a single Care Bear Stare, then it's a monster not even deserving of a name.

The problem is not having peons that can be killed in a single attack; nobody's bitching about kobolds, for instance. The problem is that yesterday's boss monster (an ogre, say) is expected to be tomorrow's peon, and trying to do that through rising damage alone ends up with rocket launcher tag.

4E's idea of solo-elite-regular-minion is kind of a clever solution, except for the botched up implementation and the moaning from "simulationists" who don't like that an ogre has different stats when fighting a level 1 party vs. a level 10 party.

[Username17]

An incantatrix could cast a maximized empowered energy admixtured twinned repeat persistent acid arrow, and make the enemy take 96 damage per round for the rest of the day.

That would actually be 7d4+8 for the next few rounds.

Sorry. It bugs me when when people make the Metamagic stacking mistake.

Remember, Duke, math is hard

It's illegal actually. Because Acid Arrow has a variable range and is thus not a valid subject for Persistent Spell. As for the rest of it, you'd do 8d4+ 64 damage per round. Everything works exactly the way you'd think it does (repeat spell doubling and twin spell redoubling) except Maximize and Empower which have a special "go fuck yourself" clause where they don't stack properly. If you cast an Empowered, Enlarged Fireball, you don't do regular damage at extended range and half damage at normal range. It really is just Empower and Maximize that have special text in them that they don't play nice.

So 39.5 average damage is somehow crazy in the context of 4e?

39.0 actually, but yeah. The Chris Sims quote comes from 2010 in the runup to Essentials. That was when they were trying desperately to not scare away the 4rries they had by admitting that 4e was a clusterfail, while still trying to get new people to sign on for a different game. Certainly a tough sell, and historically we know that they failed to make their case to the consumer.

But the thing I think is interesting is that when they tried to get across the idea of "It's exactly 4e, but better", the tack they went with was to blame Rob Heinsoo for having gotten damage to scale as much as it did. This is fascinating to me, because anyone even passively acquainted with 4e knows that the biggest damage problem is padded sumo - namely that damage doesn't scale nearly enough. The expressed sentiment in that quote is so wildly out of touch with reality that I figure it basically has to be genuine. If it was well crafted market-speak, he'd have been blaming Rob Heinsoo for having hit points explode too much on team monster or for players not having interesting abilities or something. The fact that he was distancing himself from Heinsoo on the grounds that Heinsoo was trying to fix 4e's biggest problem really makes it look like a true story.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

4E's idea of solo-elite-regular-minion is kind of a clever solution, except for the botched up implementation and the moaning from "simulationists" who don't like that an ogre has different stats when fighting a level 1 party vs. a level 10 party.

How does this sound for a solution:

When you are X levels above a monster, inflicting the bloodied condition in them drops them to 0 hp. Dealing damage to a foe that a lower leveled person bloodied will also drop them to 0.

a 50hp ogre is beefy to lower level foes, but only has 25hp to higher level ones.

You only have to be able to deal 25 damage in one blow to do a 1 hit kill, instead of 50.

[fectin]

Sounds like the same problem as walls getting harder to climb, but in reverse.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Has anyone seen the MM3 math in action and does it fix the padded sumo? All the 4rries are claiming it does.

[hogarth]

4E's idea of solo-elite-regular-minion is kind of a clever solution, except for the botched up implementation and the moaning from "simulationists" who don't like that an ogre has different stats when fighting a level 1 party vs. a level 10 party.

How does this sound for a solution:

When you are X levels above a monster, inflicting the bloodied condition in them drops them to 0 hp. Dealing damage to a foe that a lower leveled person bloodied will also drop them to 0.

Frank's "CAN" (Combat Awesomeness Number?) idea works vaguely along these lines, I think.

[erik]

Re: illegal persistent acid arrow and fixed range... I believe Short/Medium/Long range is fixed to certain distances. I always read that clause to be ruling out touch spells.

When I look at things with "fixed range" in real life usage they tend to be things that function over only a certain set of ranges rather like acid arrow where it fails beyond its range limit.

Edit fucking autocorrect ipod slipped an apostrophe past me.