Zero Buzz on 5E...Is It Dead Out The Gate?

[Koumei]

Perhaps they should just abstract combat such that when you see X enemies, you have to spend X arrows to end the combat and win :/

[nockermensch]

Perhaps they should just abstract combat such that when you see X enemies, you have to spend X arrows to end the combat and win :/

D&D: Fletcher Edition

[ACOS]

Real ultimate power is expressed as win initiative: alpha strike. Repeat each combat.

How is this different from previous editions (namely 3.x)?
I mean, it's boring as all hell; but it's certainly not new.

I guess they couldn't figure out how to curb alpha strikes without making everything underwhelming.

[Voss]

Real ultimate power is expressed as win initiative: alpha strike. Repeat each combat.

How is this different from previous editions (namely 3.x)?
I mean, it's boring as all hell; but it's certainly not new.

Its a function of how its being done, I suppose. Partly, the HP bloat of third is diminished in 5th, and additionally, the extra attacks are all at full attack bonus, rather than a diminishing one based on BAB-x*5. Plus, this time it is the fighter that has the majority of the alpha capability. The spell casters have so few resources that they have to horde them for fights that matter, while shooting laser crossbows at people, the rogue has a laughably bad (and horrible contingent) damage burst, and the other warrior types get utility bullshit and spell buffs rather than actions (and many of the spells turn out to be direct damage crap (paladin spells include an awful lot of 'smites' that are +xd10 damage).

Barbarians, paladins and rangers aren't terrible but their extra attacks don't scale after level 5, and they are largely limited to buffs rather than extra actions (which the fighter gets a level 1). Over the long term, those buffs may prove to be better, but I suspect for low level play/most campaigns, extra actions are just superior currency. Same with most of the spellcasters- eventually you might get to shit that confers real power, but it is so limited in quantity that it doesn't carry the same weight as just being able to murder people.

It will be vaguely interesting to do the math on extra actions vs buffs once the final version comes out, but I can't be bothered to do it on the play test docs.

[ishy]

The save your good spells approach only works if you can cast spells that are good enough.
And since spellcasters gains so few spells, I suspect the blow your load and blame everyone else if they don't want to rest, seems like the default approach.

People don't like adventuring with someone who is spent, so the sooner you're empty, the more you can rest, the more you can use your good spells. 5e will be all about blowing your load prematurely.

[Krusk]

I think you are missing the more important part. One guy has spells and the other doesn't.

We still have the same problem every other edition, and most RPGs have where some people can do stuff that isn't fighting and some people can't. It doesn't matter how good at fighting the fighting dude classes are. They still can't do anything else. (Except maybe go play magic and pretend to cast in game?)

Chasm needs crossing? Hope someone rolled a mage. King need charming? No magic no deal. Need to travel really far? Horses and months or a mage.

This is just the same problem we had in previous editions (except 4e where no one got anything cool) where some classes contribute in any encounter and some contribute in fights. The ones who contribute in any encounter always beat the one who contributes in fights.

(And it will probably be worse once they put out the extra spells that make mages better at fights we haven't seen and/or they haven't written yet)

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

Well, I typed 5E D&D sucks and got this result:

http://crushingskulls.blogspot.ca/2012/ ... -suck.html

Referencing this:

Second—and this sounds so crazy that you probably won't believe it right now—we're designing the game so that not every player has to choose from the same set of options. Again, imagine a game where one player has a simple character sheet that has just a few things noted on it, and the player next to him has all sorts of skills, feats, and special abilities. And yet they can still play the game together and everything remains relatively balanced. Your 1E-loving friend can play in your 3E-style game and not have to deal with all the options he or she doesn't want or need. Or vice versa. It's all up to you to decide.

That's really fucking stupid. Seriously. I realize what Monte Cook is saying, and it *sounds* fantastic: everyone can play their preferred version of D&D at the same time! But that's idiotic...when you play a game, everyone follows the same rules. That's sort of the point. If you don't particularly care for the rules, you can change them, but all the players must adhere to the same rules-set. Having a ton of options for Player A (power attack and cleave or whatever) and none for Player B (1st level fighter!) isn't using the same rules, even if player B would never use those options. The fact that they don't exist means the two players aren't playing the same game, regardless of what the fuck Monte says. Either Player A's options are a simple charade or Player B is getting fucked.

WotC is doing the worst thing imaginable: trying to please everyone. This is impossible. 4th edition pissed me off, but a lot of people like it. I like 1st, 2nd, 3.X, B/X, Mentzer, etc, all for various reasons. Each of these games offers something subtly different and is worth playing for those traits. Trying to shoehorn everything into one unified game will not only strip out any of the reason for playing those games but also create a game that has no identity. Instead of another game some people like and some don't, we're going to get the equivalent of plain oatmeal: yeah, you can add whatever flavors you want, but in the end it's still fucking oatmeal. That is awful tripe.

I honestly looked forward to D&D 3 when it came out and was actually pleasantly surprised. I preordered 4th and hated it, gave away the books. But I *did* read them. I have no idea if I'll even bother with 5th because I ALREADY HAVE the versions of the game I like. Why the fuck do I want to waste money on something that attempts to duplicate what I already have? That's stupid. So goddamn stupid.

Also, Wizards is re-releasing AD&D, so that's cool. I mean, I already have 15 copies of the PHB, but hey, I'll buy a new printing. Why not? If you support OSR games whatsoever and do not purchase the new printing of AD&D you are in fact full of shit and a cheap bastard. All the complaining over the years about WotC just sitting on the D&D IP and doing nothing...well, those arguments are long gone. Buy it and shut up.

I bet this guy is feeling very vindicated.

Seriously though, the lack of good gaming design in D&D 5E that is evident so far has me thinking I'll just buy fucking pathfinder. At least the art is pretty. And to balance thing, I'll just have everyone play a caster.

[Dogbert]

The problem you describe, Krusk, is on a concept level, and it will never be fixed as long as the game is still d&d because that's the way d&d players want it. d&d as a genre is all about magic haves and have nots.

The only solution to d&d's concept-level problems is playing Exalted.

[Lago PARANOIA]

@Heaven's Thunder Hammer
I don't really feel like that guy is vindicated. Again, they might have changed everything since the last playtests, but 5E D&D definitely felt like it had an identity to me. And that identity was: the 4th revision of AD&D after seeing the criticisms of its own game, 3rd Edition, and 4th Edition with buzzwords and shibboleths slathered onto it to make it look like it has an appeal outside of nostalgia mutants.

In other words, imagine if Bioware and Pathfinder were contracted to make an adaptation of 2E D&D that was explicitly marketed to draw in BG: Shadows of Amn and 4Erry fans.

The only solution to d&d's concept-level problems is playing Exalted.

Say that again, you mendacious motherfucker.

[brized]

In other words, imagine if Bioware and Pathfinder were contracted to make an adaptation of 2E D&D that was explicitly marketed to draw in BG: Shadows of Amn and 4Erry fans.

That might actually be pretty good. Wait, Black Isle's employees are now with Obsidian, not Bioware, and Bioware's real talent got driven away by EA anyhow. Paizo's strengths are art direction and marketing, not writing or design, so that leaves a pretty and well-marketed but otherwise shitty product.

[Silent Wayfarer]

Say that again, you mendacious motherfucker.

The conceit is that magic > mundane. So everyone has to be a different flavor of mage or mundanes get left behind. Maybe you're a muscle wizard, sword wizard, fire wizard, sex wizard, but you have to be a wizard or you're just background dressing.

Exalted is not necessarily the best thing for this, but sorcery has the clearly defined role of being a plot device/infrastructure thing while Charms are the actual magic-powered skillset that make things work. Some sorceries can duplicate Charm effects but they are always going to be slower and less resource efficient than actually learning how to do it with Charms. On the other hand, they are more XP-efficient and are a cheap way for any sorcerer to expand their theme just by plonking down another spell. Kind of like 4e D&D rituals.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

For one, Exalted explicitly tiers its various flavors of charms and charm-users to a greater extent than what even 3E D&D did. Whatever class-based balance problems you think D&D has with access to special effects, Exalted has them worse.

Sorcery has the same problem, what with their fucking circles available only to certain Exalt types. And since it takes up a permanent and unrecoverable character resource, sorcery at best does the combat/plot advancement segregation as well as a 3E D&D sorcerer and does it less well than a wizard. This isn't even getting into the problem that like half of the sorcery crap is unusable even in their own idiom and there exist Celestial/Sidereal charms, especially in expansion material, that have better game effects than 95% of printed rituals.

Exalted doesn't do anything right mechanically. It's, without any intentional exaggeration on my part, as fucked-up and broken of a system and game you can get while still being technically playable.

[Dogbert]

Say that again, you mendacious motherfucker.

That line made my day!

[Silent Wayfarer]

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

For one, Exalted explicitly tiers its various flavors of charms and charm-users to a greater extent than what even 3E D&D did. Whatever class-based balance problems you think D&D has with access to special effects, Exalted has them worse.

Sorcery has the same problem, what with their fucking circles available only to certain Exalt types. And since it takes up a permanent and unrecoverable character resource, sorcery at best does the combat/plot advancement segregation as well as a 3E D&D sorcerer and does it less well than a wizard. This isn't even getting into the problem that like half of the sorcery crap is unusable even in their own idiom and there exist Celestial/Sidereal charms, especially in expansion material, that have better game effects than 95% of printed rituals.

Exalted doesn't do anything right mechanically. It's, without any intentional exaggeration on my part, as fucked-up and broken of a system and game you can get while still being technically playable.

I did not, at any point, defend its mechanics, because they are indefensible. My point was that the concept of weak/versatile vs strong/focused existed there and pointed out how the mechanics supported that idea, and added to that the idea that since everyone is magical by default, even the "mundane" types have more leeway to do gonzo shit to compete with the more overtly magical types, because in its own way it's all magic and only final effectiveness matters.

You can hate Exalted all you want, but it explicitly broadens the conceptual space of nonmagic guy vs magic guy by making everyone magic and putting everyone on a playing field in which they can theoretically compete. Like you yourself said,

This isn't even getting into the problem that like half of the sorcery crap is unusable even in their own idiom and there exist Celestial/Sidereal charms, especially in expansion material, that have better game effects than 95% of printed rituals.

So the problem where magic is strong/versatile over nonmagic (like in 3e) is curbed. I'm not even going to touch the hideous imbalance between Terrestrial/Celestial/Solar shit because that is explicitly built into the system (by idiots), but even a Terrestrial Exalt using Charms alone will be more effective in that Charm's area of influence than a Terrestrial Exalt using sorcery.

[Dogbert]

For one, Exalted explicitly tiers its various flavors of charms and charm-users to a greater extent than what even 3E D&D did.

Please tell me you're not on team "Dragon Blooded should be balanced against solaroids." It's White Wolf, I was assuming same-tier games.

[TiaC]

One thing Exalted has going for it in terms of avoiding caster/mundane imbalance is its metaphysics. It just comes out and says "Physics don't exist in Creation. If you can talk the river god into not drowning you, you can stay underwater for hours."

[Username17]

For one, Exalted explicitly tiers its various flavors of charms and charm-users to a greater extent than what even 3E D&D did.

Please tell me you're not on team "Dragon Blooded should be balanced against solaroids." It's White Wolf, I was assuming same-tier games.

Not only am I on that team, I am openly contemptuous of people who are not. Obviously Dragon Blooded and Solars should be the same power at the same point totals. Like, fucking obviously. People who don't understand that are imbeciles who aren't worth listening to.

If you want a typical Solar to be more powerful than a typical Dragon Blooded, the thing to do, obviously is to give the Solars more points for their typical game. Not to do what Exalted actually did, which was to give them the same number of points, but make their points worth more by letting them buy better stuff for the same cost. That's idiotic. It just means that when someone figures out one of the many ways to take shit off different lists that even whatever internal splat balance you had is down the fucking toilet.

If you make the things you buy with points be "intentionally unbalanced," then you will "succeed" at your design goal. But your design goal was apparently to make a horrible game that would be better to be replaced with Cops and fucking Robbers, so fuck you.

One thing Exalted has going for it in terms of avoiding caster/mundane imbalance is its metaphysics. It just comes out and says "Physics don't exist in Creation. If you can talk the river god into not drowning you, you can stay underwater for hours."

This isn't a good thing at all. The inability to make basic assumptions of cause and effect makes player/storyteller cooperative storytelling essentially impossible.

-Username17

[TiaC]

If you want a typical Solar to be more powerful than a typical Dragon Blooded, the thing to do, obviously is to give the Solars more points for their typical game. Not to do what Exalted actually did, which was to give them the same number of points, but make their points worth more by letting them buy better stuff for the same cost. That's idiotic. It just means that when someone figures out one of the many ways to take shit off different lists that even whatever internal splat balance you had is down the fucking toilet.

If you make the things you buy with points be "intentionally unbalanced," then you will "succeed" at your design goal. But your design goal was apparently to make a horrible game that would be better to be replaced with Cops and fucking Robbers, so fuck you.

So the party with both Dragon-blooded and Solars would be either a very weak Solar or a very strong Dragon-blooded depending on which was out of place?

One thing Exalted has going for it in terms of avoiding caster/mundane imbalance is its metaphysics. It just comes out and says "Physics don't exist in Creation. If you can talk the river god into not drowning you, you can stay underwater for hours."

This isn't a good thing at all. The inability to make basic assumptions of cause and effect makes player/storyteller cooperative storytelling essentially impossible.

-Username17

That is the major problem. However, if you assume that all the gods do their jobs and when they do it acts like physics it isn't much of a problem. However, no Exalt is limited by realism and that is as it should be.

[Laertes]

Not only am I on that team, I am openly contemptuous of people who are not. Obviously Dragon Blooded and Solars should be the same power at the same point totals. Like, fucking obviously. People who don't understand that are imbeciles who aren't worth listening to.

If you want a typical Solar to be more powerful than a typical Dragon Blooded, the thing to do, obviously is to give the Solars more points for their typical game. Not to do what Exalted actually did, which was to give them the same number of points, but make their points worth more by letting them buy better stuff for the same cost. That's idiotic. It just means that when someone figures out one of the many ways to take shit off different lists that even whatever internal splat balance you had is down the fucking toilet.

If you make the things you buy with points be "intentionally unbalanced," then you will "succeed" at your design goal. But your design goal was apparently to make a horrible game that would be better to be replaced with Cops and fucking Robbers, so fuck you.

Fuck this and fuck you.

The reason behind my disagreement with you is because this isn't D&D or Ars Magica, this is a White Wolf game. And White Wolf games are noted for two conceits that need to be properly understood before one is permitted to discuss them. Attempting to discuss them without understanding said conceits is like talking about physics without knowing calculus, or talking about game design without knowing probability: it means you say stupid bullshit things like Frank just did without knowing it's bullshit, because you lack the frame of reference.

Firstly, they have this tired conceit that multiple games can exist in the shared world. If you're running Vampire: the Masquerade and you encounter a bunch of ghosts, then you're supposed to pretend on some level that they're the ghosts from Wraith: the Oblivion. This doesn't work, obviously. We all know that it doesn't work. Hell, Mark Rein-Hagen probably cries himself to sleep at night knowing that it doesn't work. However, that's the conceit under which the games are written.

Secondly, White Wolf has historically paid little attention to how advancement affects design, and specifically has paid very little attention to how advancement affects balance. This is a fairly catholic point, I hope, but it has an often-overlooked consequence: inasmuch as there is balance, all the balancing between archetypes occurs at the level of newly-generated characters. Once you start putting XP into the game, all bets are off. We all know this. We've all seen it. It's not as if it's simply unbalanced and poorly designed; there was simply no thought put into it at all.

So how do these two points affect Exalted?
a) Firstly, Exalted must be understood as a shared setting for multiple different games. If you are playing Dragon Blooded, then the actual rules for Solars affect you as little as the rules for Garou would affect you if you're playing Kindred. Not at all. They're simply big scary monsters you have to go and kill.

Saying that Dragon Blooded and Solar Exalted have to be balanced against one another in any way, at any level, is like saying that player options in Battlefield 1942 and in Hearts of Iron 3 have to be balanced against one another because they're both World War 2 games. It's nonsensical. They have a shared setting, but they're different games. End of story.

b) Secondly, inter-party balance is important. Nobody likes being anyone else's sidekick, and this means that regardless of your balance against the rest of the world, the different PCs have to be balanced against each other. In a White Wolf tabletop game, with their advancement system that was clearly just tacked on as an afterthought, this is only possible at chargen. It doesn't work after chargen. Like, simply doesn't work. The same number of XP given to two different characters will result in them playing different games entirely.

Therefore: In Exalted, you cannot start a game by saying "Hey everyone, have a pile of XP on top of your chargen points." It cannot be done. The only way to run a higher level game is to say either "hey everyone, here's the normal White Wolf chargen system except the numbers are higher."

Therefore: When Frank says that "obviously Dragon Blooded and Solars should be the same power at the same point totals" what he means is "I'd like to play in a White Wolf game which has well thought out advancement systems." And that's great and I'd like to be a pretty pony princess too, but I live in the real world and we don't get those things. What we get is a game where spending X points does not get you a consistent Y return on your character, and therefore simply saying that adding X points to a character puts it to the next tier is deluded thinking.

When Frank says that "even whatever internal splat balance you had is down the fucking toilet", what he actually means is "I am under the misapprehension that Dragon Blooded and Solars are splats within the same game." Dawn caste and Zenith caste are splats within the same game, and Wood and Fire Dragon-Blooded are splats from within the same game. However, Solars and Dragon-Blooded are not splats from the same game, any more than Nosferatu and Celestial Chorus are splats from the same game. There is no internal splat balance there, because there is no "internal" there.

What Frank doesn't say, but what he meant to say, is that White Wolf crossover fundamentally does not work, and also For the love of God, don't let White Wolf characters take out-of-splat powers. Both of which are entirely true and everyone knows it.

And if Frank has forgotten either of the important factors to consider when dealing with White Wolf games, then I am openly contemptuous of him.

[ishy]

Therefore: When Frank says that "obviously Dragon Blooded and Solars should be the same power at the same point totals" what he means is "I'd like to play in a White Wolf game which has well thought out advancement systems." And that's great and I'd like to be a pretty pony princess too, but I live in the real world and we don't get those things. What we get is a game where spending X points does not get you a consistent Y return on your character, and therefore simply saying that adding X points to a character puts it to the next tier is deluded thinking.

So if I understand you correctly, you basically agree with Frank.
But since White Wolf is incompetent, you feel you can't criticize their incompetence?

[Kaelik]

Laertes, we are all fundamentally aware that WHite Wolf games have huge gaping flaws. The point is precisely that the game would be better without those flaws.

Criticizing people for saying "The game would be better without these flaws" by saying "But the games has those flaws" is so far beyond the point that it is actually backwards. Of course the game has the flaws Frank is saying should be fixed. If it didn't have those flaws, saying they need to be fixed would make no sense.

[Laertes]

So if I understand you correctly, you basically agree with Frank.

I absolutely agree that Exalted is, in its current published form, not well designed. I absolutely disagree - to the point of feeling that a lot of Frank's reputation for being a guy who understands system is evidently undeserved - that fixing this by saying "here you go, Solars, you start like Dragon Blooded but have some extra points" is a solution.

What you could do is just start over with a new system for the same fluff. Which has been done and I'm told works quite well. But it does this by understanding its own source material.

But since White Wolf is incompetent, you feel you can't criticize their incompetence?

I'm a Vampire player. I'm an Ars Magica player. I ran Orpheus. I am totally not above criticising their incompetence and will do so at every opportunity. But if you're trying to fix something, you need to make it better, not add in a kludge that breaks the entire rest of the game because you didn't understand what it was that you were fixing. And you especially need to approach it with some fucking self-awareness, rather than the words "I am openly contemptuous."

Laertes, we are all fundamentally aware that White Wolf games have huge gaping flaws. The point is precisely that the game would be better without those flaws.

Criticizing people for saying "The game would be better without these flaws" by saying "But the games has those flaws" is so far beyond the point that it is actually backwards. Of course the game has the flaws Frank is saying should be fixed. If it didn't have those flaws, saying they need to be fixed would make no sense.

I'm not disagreeing that it needs to be fixed. I'm disagreeing with the choice of fixes, because it is not merely a bad fix, it is wrong on a conceptual level and no implementation of it will work. It misunderstands the nature of what it is that he's trying to fix.

To argue by analogy: If I said "D&D 4th is, as written, bad", you might agree with me. If I said "D&D 4th is bad because it has class&level advancement, and class&level is bad" then you would disagree with me, because my proposed solution betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what I'm trying to fix. Sure, some of it does not work, but some of it is also the USP of the game, and if I dislike the USP of the game then I need to step the fuck away from that game because I am the wrong person to fix it.



Edited by Laertes to remove gratuitous ad hominem.

[Josh_Kablack]

Firstly, they have this tired conceit that multiple games can exist in the shared world. If you're running Vampire: the Masquerade and you encounter a bunch of ghosts, then you're supposed to pretend on some level that they're the ghosts from Wraith: the Oblivion. This doesn't work, obviously. We all know that it doesn't work. Hell, Mark Rein-Hagen probably cries himself to sleep at night knowing that it doesn't work. However, that's the conceit under which the games are written.

Huh?

You list the conceit as having multiple games in the same world, but the actual point you are making is that it doesn't work and there is not any overlap between the games at all, just a gentleman's agreement to pretend that it works even though everyone knows it doesn't.

Secondly, White Wolf has historically paid little attention to how advancement affects design, and specifically has paid very little attention to how advancement affects balance. This is a fairly catholic point, I hope, but it has an often-overlooked consequence: inasmuch as there is balance, all the balancing between archetypes occurs at the level of newly-generated characters. Once you start putting XP into the game, all bets are off. We all know this. We've all seen it. It's not as if it's simply unbalanced and poorly designed; there was simply no thought put into it at all.

True, but completely irrelevant.

So how do these two points affect Exalted?
a) Firstly, Exalted must be understood as a shared setting for multiple different games. If you are playing Dragon Blooded, then the actual rules for Solars affect you as little as the rules for Garou would affect you if you're playing Kindred. Not at all. They're simply big scary monsters you have to go and kill.

Except that
1.VtM, WtA, WtO, DtF, Mage, etc were all distinct game line while Lunars, Dragon Blooded, etc are sourcebooks for a single game line
2. Each type of WoD critters runs off a different superpower stat: Garou use Rage and Kindred use Blood, Street Fighters use Chi, and so on and so forth. Solars and Dragonblooded use Essence and motes.

So the separation in Exalted is much less enforced than elsewhere in White Wolf. Unlike WoD monster PCs, who are only playing with 80% of the same game mechanics as any other type of monster; different types of Exalted are in fact playing the same game. The only difference being chargen.

And what Frank proposed was that you could tweak the numbers at chargen to make the different types actually compatible to the point where you could have them in the same party.

You could say something along the lines of:
A typical Dragon Blooded gets attributes of +1/+2/+3 and 5 freebie points - in a Dragon Blooded campaign all PCs should start with this.
A typical Solar gets attributes of +9/+12/+15 and 25 freebie points - in a typical Solar Campaign all PCs should start with this.
And if you want to run a mixed campaign - pick a set of numbers and everybody gets the same. Justify it by saying that the Dragon Blooded are all much more hardcore/experienced/past-livest than typical Dragon Blooded or that the Solars are newer/younger/more powers-sealed away than typical Solars

b) Secondly, inter-party balance is important. Nobody likes being anyone else's sidekick, and this means that regardless of your balance against the rest of the world, the different PCs have to be balanced against each other. In a White Wolf tabletop game, with their advancement system that was clearly just tacked on as an afterthought, this is only possible at chargen. It doesn't work after chargen. Like, simply doesn't work. The same number of XP given to two different characters will result in them playing different games entirely.

Pretty sure you meant to say intra-party balance, because the lack of inter-party balance is exactly what Frank is complaining about and proposing a solution for. And that solution just calls for "more points", not specifically "more experience points", because everyone here knows that triangular advancement appended to linear chargen is the express train to rendering character experience totals meaningless as any sort of metric.

[ishy]

To argue by analogy: If I said "D&D 4th is, as written, bad", you might agree with me. If I said "D&D 4th is bad because it has class&level advancement, and class&level is bad" then you would disagree with me, because my proposed solution betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what I'm trying to fix. Sure, some of it does not work, but some of it is also the USP of the game, and if I dislike the USP of the game then I need to step the fuck away from that game because I am the wrong person to fix it.

No, I'd actually dismiss you out of hand. You'd need to establish why class&level are bad first.
If you make a valid case why your solution is better I might agree.
USPs are not immune to criticism, changes and sometimes the product is better off if you remove it outright.

[Kaelik]

I'm not disagreeing that it needs to be fixed. I'm disagreeing with the choice of fixes, because it is not merely a bad fix, it is wrong on a conceptual level and no implementation of it will work. It misunderstands the nature of what it is that he's trying to fix.

The problem is that you are an idiot who is completely full of shit.

At no point did Frank say "And then just give one set more XP and make no other changes at all." He specifically said to make all the characters balanced at both Dragonblood and Solar level. That means rebalancing the fucking game.

So when you say "Your solution of completely rebalancing the game to have all the people at balanced at equal XP will never ever work, because it fundamentally fails to understand that to rebalance white wolf games you would have to completely rebalance the game to have all the people balanced at equal XP" you are once again being an idiot by telling him that his problem is he has failed to adequately understand the problem he has adequately understood, and then you told him the solution is the thing he just said is a solution.