Intentional System Mastery

[Red_Rob]

I've heard from a few people around the Den that the designers of 3e have suggested that they intentionally added weak choices to promote a sense of "system mastery". I've heard a similar concept from Mark Rosewater in his article When cards go bad, however I was wondering what evidence there is that in 3e this was an intentional choice rather than an after the fact explanation for imbalance. Particularly because the designers seemed genuinely shocked by some of the major imbalances that occured, and worked to fix these later on.

So, was "intentional system mastery" a design goal or a bug that got touted as a feature?

[Libertad]

The article you're looking for is Ivory Tower Game Design, by Monte Cook.

The link is to the Alexandrian instead of the article itself; I couldn't find the original on montecook.com, but Alexander sums up the gist of it.

So according to Cook, it was intentional, but he regrets its inclusion because it wasn't clear enough to other designers how things really worked.

Of course, some people think that the imbalanced system was an accident, and that Cook created the article to save face. I myself don't believe this, and think that several of the designers created superior options in the game.

[John Magnum]

It's also entirely possible that the options they intended to be the superior ones actually ended up somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, and that the really powerful stuff was indeed unforeseen.

[Ice9]

Based on stuff like feat points, it's not only possible but likely.

[Username17]

Based on stuff like feat points, it's not only possible but likely.

Feat Points.

Now to be honest: SKR's contributions to the original 3e system were pretty minimal. But he was brought in early to write bullshit like Magic of Feyrun, so it's obvious that whatever design documents they had were available to him. So it's clear that internally, there was an understanding that Run and Endurance were shit - just as there was equally obviously not an understanding that Weapon Specialization was also shit.

-Username17

[sabs]

D&D has always fetishized +1 to hit. I never understood why.
@ 1st level on a fighter, Weapon Spec gives you a 20-25% increase on BAB. Which translates into a 5% increase in your chance to hit.

By level 10 though, it's 6% increase in BAB tops, and an almost meaningless increase in your hit chance. Weapon Spec is a mediocre feat at level 1 that gets significantly worse the higher you level. It's exactly like Toughness.

D&D always had a problem with accuracy bonuses. The BAB was either stupidly too high (+15 once you got into the mid levels) or stupidly low, (+3 at level 1) At low level the dice was such huge variance that it didn't really matter what your to hit bonus was, all that matters is your roll. Conversely by 10th, it doesn't matter what you're die roll is, what matters is how good your magic items are.

[Kaelik]

D&D has always fetishized +1 to hit. I never understood why.
@ 1st level on a fighter, Weapon Spec gives you a 20-25% increase on BAB. Which translates into a 5% increase in your chance to hit.

By level 10 though, it's 6% increase in BAB tops, and an almost meaningless increase in your hit chance.

Only if by almost meaningless you mean 5%. You know, exactly the same as it was at first level.

[ishy]

This one libertad http://montecook.mulehill.com/line-of-s ... ame-design ?

[Ravengm]

D&D has always fetishized +1 to hit. I never understood why.
@ 1st level on a fighter, Weapon Spec gives you a 20-25% increase on BAB. Which translates into a 5% increase in your chance to hit.

By level 10 though, it's 6% increase in BAB tops, and an almost meaningless increase in your hit chance.

Only if by almost meaningless you mean 5%. You know, exactly the same as it was at first level.

I think he's referring to the fact that at level 1 it looks more enticing because it provides your to-hit bonus with a much larger percent increase, thus providing a trap option that degrades in shiny-factor over time.

But yeah, the effect is always exactly the same overall.

[Red_Rob]

It's also entirely possible that the options they intended to be the superior ones actually ended up somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, and that the really powerful stuff was indeed unforeseen.

This does seem the most likely. It also makes the very idea of deliberately making some options better than others laughable - no games designer understands their own game well enough at launch to correctly evaluate the relative power level of abilities. You only have to look at the sample characters shipped with most RPG's to see this.

On a tangent, it always amazes me that a designer can create a game by setting up the rules and restrictions, however it can take years of play to discover how to play the resulting game well. Magic the Gathering I particularly noticed took years for concepts such as the mana curve, card advantage, tempo and the 3 archetype model to solidify as the basics of strategy.

So then, what implications does this have for game design in general?

[ishy]

This does seem the most likely. It also makes the very idea of deliberately making some options better than others laughable - no games designer understands their own game well enough at launch to correctly evaluate the relative power level of abilities. You only have to look at the sample characters shipped with most RPG's to see this.

On a tangent, it always amazes me that a designer can create a game by setting up the rules and restrictions, however it can take years of play to discover how to play the resulting game well. (...)

Well what I always found very telling is an article posted by WotC during the 3.0 -> 3.5 revision.

Q: Is anything being done to half-orcs and half-elves?

A: Many of the races in the Player's Handbook received minor changes, but both half-orcs and half-elves are extremely popular as PCs. If we changed them significantly (particularly the half-orc, which is a very powerful and popular PC race) we would do a disservice to fans of those races and the revision.

You can't tell me that when they looked at half-elfs as a race (and when they got a specific question about them) that they didn't realise they sucked.

[Ravengm]

On a tangent, it always amazes me that a designer can create a game by setting up the rules and restrictions, however it can take years of play to discover how to play the resulting game well. Magic the Gathering I particularly noticed took years for concepts such as the mana curve, card advantage, tempo and the 3 archetype model to solidify as the basics of strategy.

So then, what implications does this have for game design in general?

Hopefully that system mastery isn't a product of "durr, don't take traps!" and more optimization-oriented. Magic is bursting to the seams with trap options, but they at least serve a specific purpose most of the time (drafts). Unless we're drafting what feats characters can use, D&D won't really have that convenient "it's for another format" excuse on why options are bad.

The biggest problem I have with trap options is that they're usually created to serve some contrived purpose that only one out of 100 characters would ever actually do. For instance, if Chuck the Peruvian Paraplegic Archer Marathon Swimmer needed a feat, don't write up a feat that says:
"If you're underwater and wielding a bow, increase your swim speed by 10 feet. Prerequisites: Weapon Focus (Peruvian Longbow), STR 17, Endurance"
Write up a feat that says:
"If you're wielding a bow, increase your movement speed by 10 feet"
And call it a day. There's no real reason to reward hyper-specific builds and not anyone else.

[John Magnum]

Even that is only remotely worthwhile as a feat if you're in some D&D-like system that gives you way, way, way more feats than D&D does.

[Kaelik]

D&D has always fetishized +1 to hit. I never understood why.
@ 1st level on a fighter, Weapon Spec gives you a 20-25% increase on BAB. Which translates into a 5% increase in your chance to hit.

By level 10 though, it's 6% increase in BAB tops, and an almost meaningless increase in your hit chance.

Only if by almost meaningless you mean 5%. You know, exactly the same as it was at first level.

I think he's referring to the fact that at level 1 it looks more enticing because it provides your to-hit bonus with a much larger percent increase, thus providing a trap option that degrades in shiny-factor over time.

But yeah, the effect is always exactly the same overall.

I'm pretty sure he fell for that trap, because we've had fights about this on this forum before where people think smaller numbers are more meaningful on smaller totals with the same RNG, because they increase your total by a percentage, which is completely meaningless because the relevant number is the change in effects.

You can see it right in his post, where he talks about 36 vs 6 percent as if those things are even remotely relevant.

[hogarth]

The article you're looking for is Ivory Tower Game Design, by Monte Cook.

The link is to the Alexandrian instead of the article itself; I couldn't find the original on montecook.com, but Alexander sums up the gist of it.

So according to Cook, it was intentional, but he regrets its inclusion because it wasn't clear enough to other designers how things really worked.

Of course, some people think that the imbalanced system was an accident, and that Cook created the article to save face. I myself don't believe this, and think that several of the designers created superior options in the game.

Note that, in the article, Monte Cook doesn't say that he regrets that Toughness is an unbalanced feat. His claim is that it's good in limited circumstances and that maybe it's useful to point that out.

He certainly can't dislike Toughness very much if he put Sturdy (a.k.a. Mildly Different Version Of Toughness) in his own game Arcana Evolved.

By the way, the Magic article was interesting, and I agree that Magic and D&D are "games of exploration", in the sense that it's fun to look through options and search for hidden treasures.

[Libertad]

This one libertad http://montecook.mulehill.com/line-of-s ... ame-design ?

Yes.

He's got a new website. That explains my trouble finding it.

[Sashi]

3.5 definitely had "weak choices" as in "there are better choices". But there aren't any intentional traps as in "taking this leaves you worse off than not having it" and times when that occurs are obviously bad design and (hopefully) unintentional. I think the closest 3E gets to this kind of trap is Spring Attack (which is useless if you don't use it, and almost always less effective than choices you have by default) or maybe Use Rope.

What 3.5 did do was implicitly say "make your own damn choices, and try not to fuck up". All of the Sorc/Wiz spells are just on a single list, divided by magic school. It's completely possible to have a first level Sorcerer who only knows Obscuring Mist and Mount, the game doesn't have a check to say "You know this is a game about killing things, right? You should have at least one spell that can harm the enemy in some way."

3E could have had a list of Spells that Fvcking Kill People and then forced every sorcerer to select a certain number of spells known from that list, to ensure some bare modicum of combat effectiveness.

[sabs]

Yes, at 10th, when you've already increased your to hit chances by almost 100% another 5 percent IS meaningless. At first level, you might actually notice when that extra +1 was the difference between a hit and a miss. It's actually something that will happen on a somewhat regular basis, in a game with a lot of combat. But by 10th, that extra 5% just isn't valuable.

the difference between hitting on a 5 or a 4 on a d20 is fairly meaningless, and while yes.. the difference between hitting on a 15 vs a 14 is still a 5% difference, it will come up much more often during actual play.

[CatharzGodfoot]

the difference between hitting on a 5 or a 4 on a d20 is fairly meaningless, and while yes.. the difference between hitting on a 15 vs a 14 is still a 5% difference, it will come up much more often during actual play.

No, Sabs, it won't. It will come up exactly as often in play: 5% of the time.

[hogarth]

The more I think about it, the more I think that Monte's "ivory tower" essay is roughly backwards. He seems to be claiming that the only problem with having lame feats like Toughness is that it's no fun trying to figure out the correct use case for it. But, in my experience, figuring out the use cases for feats, spells, etc. is fun and the problem with feats like Toughness is that they're boring and a waste of space.

[sabs]

Except that at level 10, you're hitting on 70-80% of your die rolls. You're just not missing as much. So a 5% increase in your accuracy isn't a big advantage. But when you're only hitting 20% of the time, that extra 5% will be the difference between hitting or not hitting has more of an effect in game play.

[Kaelik]

Except that at level 10, you're hitting on 70-80% of your die rolls. You're just not missing as much. So a 5% increase in your accuracy isn't a big advantage. But when you're only hitting 20% of the time, that extra 5% will be the difference between hitting or not hitting has more of an effect in game play.

See, told you guys.

1) No it doesn't have more of an effect on gameplay. You as an irrational creature that is bad at figuring out how important things are will feel like it is, but it isn't.

We can do math to determine how much that +1 adds to your average damage, and it adds the same amount in both cases. It's effect on the game in terms of the additional damage caused to opponents vs damaged from them avoided is identical. It only feels bigger because when something is rare you subjectively feel like it is each one is more valuable than it is.

2) You are also wrong that level 1 Fighters hit only 20% of the time and level 10 Fighters hit 80% of the time. So even if your feelings were right and math was wrong, you would still be wrong.

[phlapjackage]

If a character will hit 5% of the time, giving them an additional 5% doubles their chance to hit.

If a character will hit 80% of the time, giving them an additional 5%....is some amount smaller than double their chance to hit.

It doesn't scale to higher levels.

[Korgan0]

If a character will hit 5% of the time, giving them an additional 5% doubles their chance to hit.

If a character will hit 80% of the time, giving them an additional 5%....is some amount smaller than double their chance to hit.

It doesn't scale to higher levels.

If I'm correct (and I'm probably not)- going from a 5% to a 10% chance to hit means that you'll kill a monster in half the time, doing twice the average damage, while that obviously doesn't apply to going from 80% to 85%. Am I doing something wrong, or what?

[...You Lost Me]

Yes, that is correct, but that's not how Kaelik is looking at it. Say each attack does 40 damage. If you have a 50% chance to hit each round (no crits), your average dpr is 20 (.5 * 40). If you increase that by 5% to 55%, your average dpr is now 22.

On the other hand, say your chance to hit is 20%, so your dpr is 8. If you bump it up to 25%, your dpr is now 10. Both of those instances are an increase in 2 damage.

So statistically, these things equivalent. But if a monster has, say 80 HP, then with a 20% chance to hit you're taking it down in 10 rounds, but with a 25% chance to hit you're taking it down in 8. 50% chance takes it down in 4, and 55% chance takes it down in... 4. So Kaelik does seem to be wrong, but maybe he has some insight of his own to share.

In another argument, it's not really fair to say "at level 1 you have a 20% chance to hit and at level 10 you have an 80% chance to hit" because things don't actually work that way. AC does get obviated at a certain point, but if you're level 1 and you've got a 20% chance to hit enemies (which probably have around 15 AC) that means you have a to-hit of -2, which is stupid. A guy with +1 BAB and decent strength has at least a 50% hit chance, and while that does go up at higher levels, the difference doesn't change so drastically that the magnitude of a +1 really matters.