Monte Cook IS working on 5th edition...

[TOZ]

Because the answer to "Why can you only do that special move once per day?" is almost always "Game Balance" rather than anything that actually makes sense.

Actually, I did hear one idea that made some sense.

Your daily power is a narrative power. It gives the player the ability to say 'and then he gets a crit' rather than wait for the dice to give it to him.

It's Player Fiat rather than DM Fiat.

(Of course, most powers aren't flavored that way, or even balanced to be meaningful, so it's hard to think of it that way. But it makes a certain amount of sense.)

[Leper]

It's always going to reduce to 'it's magic!' at some point if you try to explain some kind of phlebtonium without using technobabble. [and other stuff along this line]

How does the fighter swing his sword? Contraction of muscles? Why do those muscles contract? Does he fire off each one individually or not? What sort of power source do these muscles use? How does it work? Can you explain the minutae of microcelular anatomy? Probably not, and you don't need to. People get "You swing a sword" because it's somewhat relatable. We move muscles every day. Saying "it's magic" and nothing else leaves the person with no reference point.

Beyond this, "because it's magic" is no justification at all. It's saying "I cannot explain this." It carries no connotation of good or bad, no genuinely meaningful response. If i create a game where we subvert the usual trope and wizards suck ass, and a player asks me "why are wizards an unplayably bad class that fails to function at anything other than incompetently making broomsticks into animate slaves that carry water in a fashion that is notably worse than the wizard's own ability to carry water?" My response can be "it's magic!" and be just as (in)valid of an explanation.

Not necessarily. It will mean that different characters will respond differently to long or short encounters or adventuring days or something, but if you have it balanced for the "average" encounters and can clearly explain what kinds of characters win and lose from what kinds of deviations from the norm, the different recharge mechanisms can be an invaluable way for the DM to show some love to an underperforming character.

A. Varying recharge mechanics in combat only help if your recharges are faster than average combat rounds... For instance, "every 4 rounds" in a 3.5 game would be nigh-useless. This also means you'll need to balance your combats in the system around an expected length, which you may wind up having to artifically inflate to make it longer just to make things work--I didn't like dragging combats in older versions of D&D or other games, and it was my biggest complaint about early 4e design.

B. If a character is underperforming you must now either artificially shorten or lengthen fights (neither of which is particularly satisfying in most cases) which also goes towards telling other players "fuck off, Danny chose a class the developers didn't like so he needs some face time."

C. Isn't it far more expedient to just do your best to avoid ways for players to build charaters that will underperform in the first place?

But the means that the classes recharge don't have to be different. They could all work on roughly the same system, it just has to be a system that is explainable for all the characters who use it.

And I agree completely.

And that means explaining it for the Fighters, because as previously noted the Wizards can get by with absolutely any power recharge schedule because "It's Magic" is actually a sufficient explanation for why it works however it does.

Fine. Fighters recharge as they do because 'It's Fighters.'

Snark aside, why are you relying on the mechanics to dictate your imagination? "Surely he can ONLY use that ability once a day because the mecahnics say so!" As opposed to "Surely he can attempt that damned maneuver all day long but the enemies are really only going to fall for the old rope-a-dope once, and the rest of the time he just manages to asspull something else vaguely useful out of the situation." (I actually had a player describe his character very much like this.)

Daily actually works perfectly fine for things that can be explained away as some form of exhaustion. As such, if all the Fighter Dailies were stances of some kind, people wouldn't really have a problem with it. The statement "I'm going to need to soak my feet and have a lie down before I do chicken stance again" actually works fine. People don't have a problem with that. It's when your dailies start including shit like "an attack exactly like your normal attack except that it does 9 more damage" that the "stamina" metaphor breaks down.

Except that it doesn't work just fine. It works just fine for allowing your brain to shut down while a designer tells you what's an okay story to tell, and what is an acceptable level of imagination to have within his carefully crafted permissions... But it's shit as a gameplay mechanic for a number of reasons, not the least of which is:

There are problems with the Daily Resource Schedule - like how it encourages the five minute workday that many people find insulting.

Does it work okay for people who want to be told what they're allowed to imagine whether or not it actually results in a shitty game? Yeah. Does it work okay as a part of a game where "day" is a highly variable amount of actual gameplay and effectiveness? No.

Meaning that actually the 4e Barbarian makes enough sense to not be insulting. All his dailies are him flying into weird totemic rages, so it's actually explicable why he can only do that a limited amount of times before falling asleep and eating a heavy meal.

Why? The source of the rage is totemic, why aren't they empowering him to rage all day long and fueling his body with magic totem power? It's magic, after all, so it's cool, yo.

It's a little weird that he can do each type of rage exactly once, but you could even accept that with a little bit of handwaving about how they used different muscle groups and were mentally exhausting in different ways.

Amazing how far a little handwaving will go when you're not being a prick about the very specific ways in which you will let fighters have nice things. (And i know text doesn't covey it well, so let me point out that I'm teasing here.)

It's not that it couldn't be made to make sense, see the 4e Barbarian. It's that they didn't bother to make it make any sense.

I think they put in enough work as was needed to make sense without going so overboard as to constrain players with "default descriptions which must be obeyed." I think they probably could have made the presentation a little bit less encyclopedic, but I think some readers could have done a better job of actually reading the book rather than seeing color-coded blocks and noting that you didn't have "push button win classes" anymore and go into mouth-foamy nerdrages.

But it works just fine to represent power batteries, fatigue, or Batman utility belts. Anything that is clearly exhausting or which requires out of combat preparation can go on the "uses per day" paradigm and have that make as much sense as it matters.

Frankly, they're far better served (both in narrative and in mechanical playability) by reverting to a "per scene" mechanic, even if that results in "once every two scenes" or somesuch. Much like that caravan your PCs invariably get hired to guard, time in game will always move at the speed of plot, and tying plot-relevant mechanics (and if the mechanic isn't plot relevant, why have it?) to genuine measures of time just winds up screwing things up somewhere.

Out of curiosity, what Fantasy literature are you reading that makes Fighter Daily Powers plausible?

Sampson, kills a buncha dudes with an improvised weapon before he's captured, chained up and blinded. THEN tears down an entire temple on top of himself and his enemies as one great big "up yours." Other heroes chop through mountains, rip the arms off of trolls and beat them to death with them, walk across the heads of an entire enemy army, drop kick ancient dragons, and punch-fuck magical demon bulls to death, because fuck us some magical demon bulls... or something. Most of this is pretty much "one shot" sortof stuff, and they generally don't walk around doing this kind of crazy crap every five minutes.

There's a pretty strong tradition for both "non-wizards" being relatively cool (without being magical coatracks) and for doing some crazy stuff at a rate of about once per day--sometimes just once a week, but we've all got downtime between adventures. The "dumb, lame ass fighter" is mostly a trope brought to the fore and further reinforced by the gaming culture, rather than a pre-existing one that is a genuine storytelling tradition.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Why does gravity act as a force, particle, & characteristic of space-time and where does it come from?

It's magic.

Your pretty flip answer ignores the fact that you can also go 'it's based on real world physics!' which could also work to an extent for several DMF schticks. You can't do that for how a Wall of Fire or a Force Choke works because someone will attack it at some point in the chain and point out how it deviates from real-world physics. At which point the person will have to accept that it's not a demonstration or application of real-world physics after all or they'll have to use some technobabble to allow people to believe that's the case.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Beyond this, "because it's magic" is no justification at all. It's saying "I cannot explain this." It carries no connotation of good or bad, no genuinely meaningful response.

No shit? That's the reason why Raise Dead and Fireball are magic and X-rays or swinging a sword at RL human strength is not. If you could explain how Raise Dead would work in the real world it wouldn't be magic anymore because we could do that shit in real life. Duh.

[Seerow]

Because the answer to "Why can you only do that special move once per day?" is almost always "Game Balance" rather than anything that actually makes sense.

Actually, I did hear one idea that made some sense.

Your daily power is a narrative power. It gives the player the ability to say 'and then he gets a crit' rather than wait for the dice to give it to him.

It's Player Fiat rather than DM Fiat.

(Of course, most powers aren't flavored that way, or even balanced to be meaningful, so it's hard to think of it that way. But it makes a certain amount of sense.)

This would actually be pretty cool if a critical hit instead of doing more damage gave you access to the daily powers.

Like X per day you can choose to do this. But when you roll a crit on an attack you can use any of your daily abilities in place of the normal attack.


But then it's not really a daily mechanic so much as a random use mechanic.

[tzor]

How does the fighter swing his sword? Contraction of muscles? Why do those muscles contract? Does he fire off each one individually or not? What sort of power source do these muscles use? How does it work? Can you explain the minutae of microcelular anatomy?

Actually, I can. I was at a college reunion and the recently built building on microbiology had an entire display on the molecular process of muscles. It was really fascinating. And not really germaine to role playing.

As Arthur once said, "when you're a king, you have to know these things."

[virgil]

Why does gravity act as a force, particle, & characteristic of space-time and where does it come from?

It's magic.

Your pretty flip answer ignores the fact that you can also go 'it's based on real world physics!' which could also work to an extent for several DMF schticks. You can't do that for how a Wall of Fire or a Force Choke works because someone will attack it at some point in the chain and point out how it deviates from real-world physics. At which point the person will have to accept that it's not a demonstration or application of real-world physics after all or they'll have to use some technobabble to allow people to believe that's the case.

That's precisely my point. Anything you create will have an in-universe "just because" clause, be it magic or RL physics or something.

Because you will run into it at some point in your magic system doesn't mean you should make the answer to ANY level of questioning about it go straight to "it's magic!" How deep it needs to go with your audience will vary, but I feel that it needs to be deeper than what you suggest; if anything so it can create predictable outcomes for magic in other scenarios (magic physics, as it were).

[Username17]

A. Varying recharge mechanics in combat only help if your recharges are faster than average combat rounds... For instance, "every 4 rounds" in a 3.5 game would be nigh-useless. This also means you'll need to balance your combats in the system around an expected length, which you may wind up having to artifically inflate to make it longer just to make things work--I didn't like dragging combats in older versions of D&D or other games, and it was my biggest complaint about early 4e design.

This is actually extremely wrong. Because the players can adjust their tactics to the recharge mechanics and they will. In 3.5, if your abilities came back every 4 rounds it would make web and solid fog tactics much more effective.

B. If a character is underperforming you must now either artificially shorten or lengthen fights (neither of which is particularly satisfying in most cases) which also goes towards telling other players "fuck off, Danny chose a class the developers didn't like so he needs some face time."

If the blitz character is performing too well relative to the long haul character, you throw in some more large "set piece" battles and the players won't even notice you're doing it. If the glass cannon character isn't pulling his weight, throw in some more battles against like a Troll on a bridge or something. Again, the players won't notice.

C. Isn't it far more expedient to just do your best to avoid ways for players to build charaters that will underperform in the first place?

That's a ridiculous pipe dream. Even if every class was exactly the same, some players would do better than other players just by being better at the game. Having differences in the way classes respond to threats allows the MC to handicap for player skill at their table.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

How does the fighter swing his sword? Contraction of muscles? Why do those muscles contract? Does he fire off each one individually or not? What sort of power source do these muscles use? How does it work? Can you explain the minutae of microcelular anatomy? Probably not, and you don't need to. People get "You swing a sword" because it's somewhat relatable. We move muscles every day. Saying "it's magic" and nothing else leaves the person with no reference point.

Here's a thorough explanation to your query. Instead of the minutes of muscular anatomy though, it is about the maximal use and limitations of those muscles, with emphasis on the parts I think are relevant to this discussion.

Three systems produce energy in the human body, one aerobic and two anaerobic.
The three systems are:

· ATP/CP system - anaerobic.
· Lactic acid (LA) system - anaerobic.
· O2 system - aerobic.

The ATP/CP system.
It is anaerobic because whilst using it, oxygen is not supplied from the air breathed in. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is a compound necessary for muscular contraction. The compound is stored in the muscles and a very quick contraction, lasting only a fraction of a second uses it all. For an exercise lasting longer than this, another compound called creatine phosphate (CP) is used. CP can provide a muscle with virtually instant energy without the need for oxygen. It is the muscle's emergency system, but it is stored in only very small amounts and so is depleted very quickly.

In an untrained person ATP/CP is exhausted in about 8 seconds. Through proper training it can be made to last only a few more seconds. Anything requiring short bursts of energy at maximum intensity relies heavily on this system.

It takes about three minutes of complete rest to get a fairly full restoration of ATP. Proper training to maximize ATP/CP would be short bursts of 15 seconds or less at maximum intensity, with rest periods between short bursts of three minutes or more.

2. The lactic acid system (or the anaerobic lactic system) - LA system.
This system can also supply the muscle with energy in the absence of oxygen. But it uses glycogen and because of the lack of oxygen, lactic acid is formed. Intense activity of a muscle causes this system to operate at a high level until eventually the build up of lactic acid inhibits the muscles action and causes it to slow down. The blood system removes lactic acid to the liver where it is detoxified. During a recovery period the muscle regains its ability to function. The period of time that the muscle can support this type of effort is up to two minutes. An example of an activity of the intensity and duration that this system works under would be a 400 m sprint (or perhaps an Encounter with a dragon)

3. The aerobic system (O2 system).
This system utilizes breathed in oxygen in the muscle and thus interacts with the cardio respiratory system. The presence of oxygen in the muscle allows stored foodstuffs (mainly glycogen but also protein or fat for very long duration exercise) to be transformed into muscle energy by a series of reactions which avoid the production of lactic acid. The O2 process can therefore continue for as long as the energy demands of the muscle are within the capabilities of the oxygen delivery system and the food store. Lactic acid may well have been built up in previous work bouts because the LA system may have been used first. But in this case transferring from the LA system to the O2 system will allow the lactic acid to somewhat dissipate.

This can be used to explain the difference between an At-Will and Encounter power.
As for dailies, well note that even with a 3 minute rest you don't get absolutely 100% restored, nor is strain removed. Athletes have some pretty intense, lengthy recovery processes after games like massages and ice baths (In something as stressful as combat sports, it's often months before the fighter's next match). There is also mental fatigue to consider. But most important is to get a good night's rest.

[Leper]

No shit? That's the reason why Raise Dead and Fireball are magic and X-rays or swinging a sword at RL human strength is not. If you could explain how Raise Dead would work in the real world it wouldn't be magic anymore because we could do that shit in real life. Duh.

Conscious Quantum Wave Collapse.

Done.


Ogre... I'd offer you an e-hug, but... you know... I'm all unclean and stuff.

[tzor]

Personally, I like the idea of daily powers. I just don't like how they are implemented or described. Oh, I also don't like how they are assigned; making a stick that one can reasonably imagine doing non stop for a full hour again and again a "daily" is asking for the impossible suspension of disbelief.

A daily ..

• Should be damn inpressive
• Should be obvious in the use of some sort of limited resource
• Be clearly obvious that it would require a period of "recovery" of some sorts, and an extreeme one at that

Thus if you look at the types of powers, instead of giving them a "time" limit you use a "time out rest/sleep" period. Encounter powers require, for example, a rest of at least 5 minutes. "Daily" powers require a "sleep" of at least 8 hours. I know the question that arises, why can't you just fight five minutes, and then rest 8 hours and get 3 dailys each day? Because you make the rules so you can't do that. (Seriously, in the real world, it's not that easy to fall asleep when you are not tired. You can train yourself, but you generally get sleep periods of more like 1 hour than 8. Perhaps there should be "Semi-Daily" powers as well that only require one of sleep ... "OK gang ... it's siesta time!")

If you really want to see real world people abuse rechargeable abilities, watch a hockey game. The players jump over the wall and enter into the fray blowing as many powers as possible, only to quickly go back for a few minutes rest when there is non-important time or when the clock has stopped for whatever reason. After their few minute rest they are back on the ice blowing those powers all over again. Football is also a good example as well.

[Leper]

This is actually extremely wrong. Because the players can adjust their tactics to the recharge mechanics and they will. In 3.5, if your abilities came back every 4 rounds it would make web and solid fog tactics much more effective.

Which doesn't make them more effective than the usual " cast something that's save or die (or no-save-and-die) and we can go bang the barmaid after 2 rounds." Why waste time with web and solid fog when we just skip past all that crap and go do something interesting after we auto-win/auto-loot?

Just because slightly crappy mechanics become slightly less crappy mechanics doesn't mean they're as good as the Great mechanics. Which is a whole other argument, really, and one I'm pretty sure you both get and have actually made yourself at some point, Frank.

Are turn based recharges better on a huge magnitude than daily recharges? Yeah. But their effectiveness as a balanced or even balanceable gameplay mechanic dwindles rapidly with sorter expected combats--considering the general tendency to gravitate towards shorter combats as a desirable set of mechanics I've seen across a number of systems, this is just planning to fail.

If the blitz character is performing too well relative to the long haul character, you throw in some more large "set piece" battles and the players won't even notice you're doing it. If the glass cannon character isn't pulling his weight, throw in some more battles against like a Troll on a bridge or something. Again, the players won't notice.

How stupid do you think players are, on average?

(No, you are not allowed to consult the Paizo playtest and rules discussion forums as the whole of your sample)

That's a ridiculous pipe dream.

No, expecting to accomplish perfection is a ridiculous pipe dream. Aiming for it rather than just giving up and declaring the idea unworkable is what makes you a designer of games rather than someone playing at designs. Quit it with the a priori BS, Frank, if I wanted to talk to a bunch of naysaying idiots I'd go back and start another fight with Vic Wertz.

Even if every class was exactly the same, some players would do better than other players just by being better at the game. Having differences in the way classes respond to threats allows the MC to handicap for player skill at their table.

Yes and no.

Yes, in that it is one way out of hundreds of tweaks allowed in a system for an MC to adjust the game to suit the needs of his players.

No, in that that choice is by and large in the hands of the players and the designer, rather than the MC. When you use this line of BS you wind up with 30 years of shit mechanics under the aegis of "advanced roleplayers will naturally gravitate towards the class I designed to ROFLstomp the game and the MC will spend most of his energy thinking up ways to frustrate the player into not wanting to play that class anymore."

What happens when the concept we've designed to our inherently feeble class meant to "handicap" our advanced player appeals to the unlearned player? What happens when the advanced player gets his hands on all the mechanical goo-gaws of the uncrippled class for no reason other than he realizes it's the one that works? Who gets to be the guy who say "that concept deserves to suck more?" Who deserves to be that person?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Because you will run into it at some point in your magic system doesn't mean you should make the answer to ANY level of questioning about it go straight to "it's magic!" How deep it needs to go with your audience will vary, but I feel that it needs to be deeper than what you suggest; if anything so it can create predictable outcomes for magic in other scenarios (magic physics, as it were).

I don't think it needs to go very deep at all. As long as you don't rub it in peoples' faces hat the mechanic was primarily implemented for a gameplay reason rather than some kind of story-based reason (even though that's what you DID, unless you feel like dicing with gameplay fail) the vast majority of players won't even give a care. Only sperglords who feel like they're being clever and edgy by poking at perceived holes in the fluff care at all, so there's no need to bother appeasing them. Of course I say that, but the fact remains that even though systems like WoF or Rage Meter are exactly as arbitrary as Vancian Casting or Spell Points people need more technobabble and logical fallacies to get over themselves for the former two than the latter two. And not just fanboys either. So what are you gonna do?

But for most systems that are being kicked around (At-Will, Spell Charges) if someone goes 'why does it work like that?' you should just sneer at them dismissively and move on with your life. That paragraph could've gone towards something that could've improved game experience like a picture of a hot elven warlock or a description of the Lotus Assassins or another maneuver or something.

[Lago PARANOIA]

No, expecting to accomplish perfection is a ridiculous pipe dream. Aiming for it rather than just giving up and declaring the idea unworkable is what makes you a designer of games rather than someone playing at designs. Quit it with the a priori BS, Frank, if I wanted to talk to a bunch of naysaying idiots I'd go back and start another fight with Vic Wertz.

Okay, imagine you have two teams of benders for your game of Avatar: The Last Airbender: one of them is just firebenders and the other are a combination of all four elements. One of the players is Trevor, who is new to the game and has no tactical sense and the other is Brian who is like a total ninja and spends his free time coming up with contingency plans against every monster in the manual and even those from past editions in case the DM tries to surprise the party with one.

If everyone is a firebender then Brian will always dominate and Trevor will always lag behind. There's nothing you can really do to stop this; if you throw earthbenders at them Brian and Trevor will be boosted by the same amount and if it's airbenders then they'll be hurt the same amount. So the net effect is that Brian always dominates and Trevor always lags.

However, if Brian is a firebender and Trevor is an airbender then the DM can adjust the encounter spread to have more waterbenders in it so Brian doesn't dominate as much or put in more firebenders in it so that Trevor shines more. It's a valuable tool for balancing out screentime.

Now, I am totally against Frank's idea of people having difference recharge schedules because people will just favor the blitzers and game the workday for maximum effectiveness. And they'll do this no matter how many Ninjas In The Night or guilt trips you try to put in the game to break them out of the five-minute workday. I'm a cynical old cuss and I strongly believe that if you gave most players a choice between 'save the kingdom' and 'fight at 100% effectiveness rather than 70% effectiveness' in a game where death is real and can happen to you they'll choose the latter. Even if you threaten to show a cutscene of the princess getting murdered and children turning into zombies and all that. But the idea of having difference balance points between classes is sound because DMs can manipulate the encounter spread.

[...You Lost Me]

This is actually extremely wrong. Because the players can adjust their tactics to the recharge mechanics and they will. In 3.5, if your abilities came back every 4 rounds it would make web and solid fog tactics much more effective.

Which doesn't make them more effective than the usual " cast something that's save or die (or no-save-and-die) and we can go bang the barmaid after 2 rounds." Why waste time with web and solid fog when we just skip past all that crap and go do something interesting after we auto-win/auto-loot?

Just because slightly crappy mechanics become slightly less crappy mechanics doesn't mean they're as good as the Great mechanics. Which is a whole other argument, really, and one I'm pretty sure you both get and have actually made yourself at some point, Frank.

Are turn based recharges better on a huge magnitude than daily recharges? Yeah. But their effectiveness as a balanced or even balanceable gameplay mechanic dwindles rapidly with sorter expected combats--considering the general tendency to gravitate towards shorter combats as a desirable set of mechanics I've seen across a number of systems, this is just planning to fail.

Dude... solid fog and web ARE save-or-dies. You get them stuck and then you kill them at your leisure.


And then your argument seemed to tangent and youlostme...

How stupid do you think players are, on average?

(No, you are not allowed to consult the Paizo playtest and rules discussion forums as the whole of your sample)

Not stupid. But changing the encounters a bit is not going to make the players go "OMFGBBQ UR TEH CHEATERS". They'll just figure "oh, look another troll/ogre/bag of HP to stab." They could look at the curve of their combats, see the trend from precious combats, apply that to their current combats, and come up with the solution that the MC is cheating, but they don't do that. When people play, they don't try and seek out errors.

No, expecting to accomplish perfection is a ridiculous pipe dream. Aiming for it rather than just giving up and declaring the idea unworkable is what makes you a designer of games rather than someone playing at designs. Quit it with the a priori BS, Frank, if I wanted to talk to a bunch of naysaying idiots I'd go back and start another fight with Vic Wertz.

My friend, it would also be nice to have a car that runs on Lithium-Oxygen Batteries. But you might notice that no matter how awesome that is, no company is investing its savings into Lithium-Oxygen Research. And the reason why is because that's a waste of resources.

Trying to delve into all of the mechanics of a game (especially something as expansive as D&D) and balance all of the relevant pieces is a metric fuckton of work. Just because something is a good goal doesn't mean it's feasible, and all that effort we waste in making a game more balanced (instead of saying "oh hey guys, figure it out yourselves" which players can actually DO, since they're intelligent) is now spent in making more options for the players, so they'll enjoy themselves more.

The pipe dream argument is only half of the solution there. The "We seriously don't want to waste your time" argument is the other half.

Even if every class was exactly the same, some players would do better than other players just by being better at the game. Having differences in the way classes respond to threats allows the MC to handicap for player skill at their table.

Yes and no.

Yes, in that it is one way out of hundreds of tweaks allowed in a system for an MC to adjust the game to suit the needs of his players.

No, in that that choice is by and large in the hands of the players and the designer, rather than the MC. When you use this line of BS you wind up with 30 years of shit mechanics under the aegis of "advanced roleplayers will naturally gravitate towards the class I designed to ROFLstomp the game and the MC will spend most of his energy thinking up ways to frustrate the player into not wanting to play that class anymore."

Jesus, I'm sorry. Your 3rd edition play experiences must have really sucked. I'll help you with this nice hint--people who play that way are in the minority. Oh, and I really don't think D&D 3.x has been making that "advanced roleplayers" argument, in fact Paizo and WotC were pretty dead-set on the fact that their published options were the best balanced evar.

What happens when the concept we've designed to our inherently feeble class meant to "handicap" our advanced player appeals to the unlearned player? What happens when the advanced player gets his hands on all the mechanical goo-gaws of the uncrippled class for no reason other than he realizes it's the one that works? Who gets to be the guy who say "that concept deserves to suck more?" Who deserves to be that person?

Why are you turning this into a "I can't learn but I want to be speshul!" argument?

Kindly take it to another thread.

[Leper]

Okay, imagine you have two teams of benders for your game of Avatar: The Last Airbender: one of them is just firebenders and the other are a combination of all four elements. One of the players is Trevor, who is new to the game and has no tactical sense and the other is Brian who is like a total ninja and spends his free time coming up with contingency plans against every monster in the manual and even those from past editions in case the DM tries to surprise the party with one.

I'll try to keep up, although I'll admit the subject matter of your premise is not one I'm intimately familiar with.

If everyone is a firebender then Brian will always dominate and Trevor will always lag behind. There's nothing you can really do to stop this; if you throw earthbenders at them Brian and Trevor will be boosted by the same amount and if it's airbenders then they'll be hurt the same amount. So the net effect is that Brian always dominates and Trevor always lags.

However, if Brian is a firebender and Trevor is an airbender then the DM can adjust the encounter spread to have more waterbenders in it so Brian doesn't dominate as much or put in more firebenders in it so that Trevor shines more. It's a valuable tool for balancing out screentime.

Except that there are plenty of other variables to tweak here than enforcing class mores on your players--which they're likely to resent. The problem comes in when you have classes that were designed to slow Brian's roll and put a spring in Trevor's step and you wind up with the opposite assignment due to player choice.

Or we could put our benders all on a relatively even keel but with a few checks and balances (as much as I generally dislike "rock/paper/scissors design") and adjust where needed to generate the same effect. Or we sit down with Trev and say "here's how you don't suck." Or we perhaps aim for a game where Trevor's lack of grasp does not put him significantly behind Brian and his mastery, or we do some combination of all of the above.

Now, I am totally against Frank's idea of people having difference recharge schedules because people will just favor the blitzers and game the workday for maximum effectiveness. And they'll do this no matter how many Ninjas In The Night or guilt trips you try to put in the game to break them out of the five-minute workday. I'm a cynical old cuss and I strongly believe that if you gave most players a choice between 'save the kingdom' and 'fight at 100% effectiveness rather than 70% effectiveness' in a game where death is real and can happen to you they'll choose the latter. Even if you threaten to show a cutscene of the princess getting murdered and children turning into zombies and all that. But the idea of having difference balance points between classes is sound because DMs can manipulate the encounter spread.

And I agree with you wholly on this point--as this was the bulk of my point against Frank's assertion that this was a Good Idea. Having relatively close but notably different balance points (task-related balance works quite well, assuming you maintain actual balance) among classes is an excellent way to provide variety to players as well as give an MC a point of articulation to adjust their game flow. Like you, I don't think that "recharge rates" are among the viable options for those points.

Dude... solid fog and web ARE save-or-dies. You get them stuck and then you kill them at your leisure.

And then your argument seemed to tangent and youlostme...

Fine, nomenclature fail on my part. I meant genuine "the combat is over on round 2" tactics rather than "the combat ended on round one but we'll mechanically play it out for 6 more rounds so we can pretend the guy with the 4 round recharge mechanic was actually contributing to this victory instead of just they guy who cast the spell in the first place."

So... your counterpoint about my phrasing still only goes back to prove my point further. The guy with the longer recharge mechnic is given a (really crappy and utterly transparent) mechanical illusion of being a contributor despite the fact that he clearly can be replaced by a commoner and a sharp stick willing to coup-de-grace for you all day long. I fail to see how that is in any way fun for our 4-round recharge guy.

Not stupid. But changing the encounters a bit is not going to make the players go "OMFGBBQ UR TEH CHEATERS". They'll just figure "oh, look another troll/ogre/bag of HP to stab." They could look at the curve of their combats, see the trend from precious combats, apply that to their current combats, and come up with the solution that the MC is cheating, but they don't do that. When people play, they don't try and seek out errors.

Most players don't seek out errors, true, but we're talking about artificially inflating combat length (which is itself not fun to many players) to make one player finally look like they're doing okay and sorrt of keeping up with the guys that actually ARE doing okay. This level of shenanigans is really only going to go unnoticed for so long. With a genuinely excellent MC who is busting his ass to keep all this from the players and keep them immersed, etc. it can genuinely be literal years, but (as everyone here can surely attest to) not all MCs are that good, or ever will be--I'd further posit that not every MC should have to be and folks who are genuinely that good might well appreciate being able to channel their awesomeness and creativity into other parts of the game rather than spend half the games trying to fix what shouldn't have been broken in the first place.

[specious comparison]
Trying to delve into all of the mechanics of a game (especially something as expansive as D&D) and balance all of the relevant pieces is a metric fuckton of work. Just because something is a good goal doesn't mean it's feasible, and all that effort we waste in making a game more balanced (instead of saying "oh hey guys, figure it out yourselves" which players can actually DO, since they're intelligent) is now spent in making more options for the players, so they'll enjoy themselves more.

The pipe dream argument is only half of the solution there. The "We seriously don't want to waste your time" argument is the other half.

Come to think of it, you're absolutely right. Why bother to make any improvements at all? I mean when I was little we rode around on solid tires made of wood, tacks, and pig iron and the seats was hard metal benches. Some crazy man wanted to make them soft and comfy and I said "why frickin' bother?! It's a waste of resources and no one would ever buy a car that won't make yer anus feel like ya been the bull in an impromptu prison rodeo because we can always just grab a blanket or stuff our pockets full of onions fer cushionin' if we really wanna! Ain't like we ain't smart 'nuff to know how to make a jalopy more comfy!"

How incredibly silly that feller was. Wonder what ever happened to him.

Jesus, I'm sorry. Your 3rd edition play experiences must have really sucked.

You use the past tense... as if i don't still play. There are many days I wish you were right. But there are good days, and there were good days with AD&D and BECMI and we even managed to finagle a copy of the old comb-bound OD&D transcribed onto a BBS that we downloaded and printed out--we managed to have a lot of fun in spite of what it was.

In fact, that describes a lot of my play experiences across 25+ years of multiple systems--I have fun in spite of the system, because the system is too busy punishing me for choosing the "wrong" concept to find cool.

I'll help you with this nice hint--people who play that way are in the minority. Oh, and I really don't think D&D 3.x has been making that "advanced roleplayers" argument, in fact Paizo and WotC were pretty dead-set on the fact that their published options were the best balanced evar.

No, not WotC or Paizo. That was a Gygaxian design quote, actually. (why more people don't love Arneson, I genuinely have no clue)

Why are you turning this into a "I can't learn but I want to be speshul!" argument?

Why are you dismissing simple universal concepts of design (tolerance for error, equity of use, etc.) in the name of some sort of misguided elitism?

If anything, I'm arguing exactly against that, by Frank's reasoning. Putting all classes on a more even keel eliminates the "oh, well we'll give Junior the easy class to kick ass with to make up for his learning disability" under his reasoning.

[Whipstitch]

Or we could put our benders all on a relatively even keel but with a few checks and balances (as much as I generally dislike "rock/paper/scissors design") and adjust where needed to generate the same effect.

Yeah, that's pretty much what Lago is suggesting with the benders. In Avatar each bender makes use of an element and has one opposed element. Head to head match-ups against an equally skilled user of the opposed element is either a one sided roflstomp or a horrible grind depending on environmental circumstances but as far as utility goes each element is pretty damn useful. When the writers of the show feel like highlighting an earth bender character they seriously just put the characters in a situation where being able to create a landslide is super handy and obvious.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Most players don't seek out errors, true, but we're talking about artificially inflating combat length (which is itself not fun to many players) to make one player finally look like they're doing okay and sorrt of keeping up with the guys that actually ARE doing okay. This level of shenanigans is really only going to go unnoticed for so long.

'Choosing to offer adventures that naturally have longer combats' isn't the same as 'artificially inflating combat length'

If anything, I'm arguing exactly against that, by Frank's reasoning. Putting all classes on a more even keel eliminates the "oh, well we'll give Junior the easy class to kick ass with to make up for his learning disability" under his reasoning.

It's not, "give Junior the easy class," it's, "the class Junior chose is good in X, Y, and Z situations; let's throw more of those situations in."

[Psychic Robot]

new guy just an fyi don't chop up posts into little tiny segments, it doesn't really accomplish what you hope to accomplish. it also makes it difficult to read what's going on

[Leper]

'Choosing to offer adventures that naturally have longer combats' isn't the same as 'artificially inflating combat length'

Choosing portions of the adventure that will create needlessly long sections of combat because the designers included those systems because those characters would only shine in those combats because designers put them into the system to create longer combats because characters needed longer combats because we made longer combats because we needed longer combats because...

Again, I ask, why fucking bother? Why build a system where you have to create situations with really long combats so Junior doesn't feel like a burden? Is it seriously that difficult to imagine that everyone can have fun all at once, or does someone's spotlight have to come at the expense of someone else standing in the corner?

It's not, "give Junior the easy class," it's, "the class Junior chose is good in X, Y, and Z situations; let's throw more of those situations in."

And invalidate or at least strongly mitigate the other players until junior has had his fun, and then we'll move on to player 2, and then player three and then player 4, and then player 5 who's had to wait a while, really, but it's all good...

Maybe I've gone nuts but doesn't a scenario where players work together to overcome X, Y, and Z rather than trading out time sitting in the corner seem like a slightly better option?

[sake]

as far as utility goes each element is pretty damn useful.

Water was the damn do everything god element of the show and fire was generally a worthless trap choice for anybody who couldn't do the high end lightning crap.

I mean, it seemed like the other nations had entire exotic technologies built around their elements, while all the Fire Nation had... pretty much what any country with sufficient levels of blacksmithing and metallurgy could do (and all the pollution that would come with it.

[Whipstitch]

If you give everyone a way of getting around every situation than that's just going to lead to the guy who really understands the system solving every scenario without even having to bother talking to anyone else much like how sufficiently high level wizards do in D&D. Meanwhile if team avatar needs to build a dam then the earth and water benders have obvious things to offer the project and it'd be dumb to not include them even if it was the Fire Bender who came up with the idea. It's not a perfect solution, but it does give options to work as a team while still giving people the ability to point at their sheet and say "I have things I bring to the table that nobody else does."

[edit]
Actually, it was me who said every element was pretty damn useful, not Leper. To a degree I can roll with the idea that fire is something of a trap option if you don't just want to wreck shit. Wheeler was definitely the most useless of the Captain Planet crew, for example, and it was often relegated to combat monkey status in Avatar aside from all the steam punk bullshit the fire nation came up with. But mostly I was just using Avatar as an example because it was already brought up.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Again, I ask, why fucking bother? Why build a system where you have to create situations with really long combats so Junior doesn't feel like a burden? Is it seriously that difficult to imagine that everyone can have fun all at once, or does someone's spotlight have to come at the expense of someone else standing in the corner?

Why build a system without really long combats just so Senior doesn't feel like a burden?

Maybe I've gone nuts but doesn't a scenario where players work together to overcome X, Y, and Z rather than trading out time sitting in the corner seem like a slightly better option?

You really don't get it, do you? Everybody contributes something in each scenario, it's just that you arrange the scenarios so that, on average, all the players get approximately the same amount of, 'time to shine'.

Maybe my RPS metaphor was bad. Maybe imagining it like Pokemon is better. If the Characters are Charizard and Venusaur, but Venusaur is feeling like a third wheel, then you can throw out enemies that are either faster than Charizard or slower than Venusaur to mitigate Charizard's speed advantage over Venusaur.

[Krusk]

Dude... solid fog and web ARE save-or-dies. You get them stuck and then you kill them at your leisure.

Fine, nomenclature fail on my part. I meant genuine "the combat is over on round 2" tactics rather than "the combat ended on round one but we'll mechanically play it out for 6 more rounds so we can pretend the guy with the 4 round recharge mechanic was actually contributing to this victory instead of just they guy who cast the spell in the first place."

Dude. When you web a group of dudes on round 1, combat ends. You don't roll dice anymore. You say "We stab him repeatedly until he dies". Combats over.

[shadzar]

daily/encounter powers are pretty much miniature wargames constructs and have no sense being in something that doesnt intend to be used that way.

you cannot get cinematic play out of something liek that, either the "powers" are to frequent or too infrequent.

they are a failed idea for an RPG.

if they persist, then D&D will remain dead as an RPG and continue to be the miniature game it has been since 4th came out. there are better miniature wargames out there. D&D NEVER fit well as a miniature wargame.

Chainmail...dead
Battle System...dead
DDM...only succesful for a while but knew it was a miniature wargame, not trying to emulate an RPG in any way.

only a fool would try a second time to claim a moiniature wargame as a TTRPG as they did in 2007~8 when 4th came out.