The Pursuit of Equality and Balance in Game Design

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Throughout the years of 3.0-> 3.5 The CharOp Board, this board, and others have made posts and such detailing methods for strong builds, rapid accumulation of power, and often heavily breaking the assumptions of the designers of the game system.

We have a lot of fun referring to Chain-binding Efreeti, Phoenix Duplication, Infinite Wishes, and the like, and often we get flack for mentioning and discussing and proving such assertions are valid. The Sage will make up crap saying this or that doesn't work, grognard anti-player DMs will decry "roll-players", etc and similar intellectual dribbling.

That being said, the game system does give credence to players potentially having powerful, majestic, and fantastic tools at their disposal. The ability to teleport, fly, create planes, summon solars, create artifacts, create clones, animate the dead, dominate others, create and destroy items and buildings, etc.

Truly, even this short list gives the player the ability to transform from merely being an adventurer needing to be spoonfed quests toward a protagonist: a world shaker who makes their own mark in the world, and is the prime determiner of where they go and what they do.

It's interesting to me that I hear of so many campaigns where DMs forbid magic, such powers, or such aims, and that no matter what progress the PCs make, they are forever indebted adventurers to follow the plots set by the powers of the world and to never create their own.

We can see a trend in 4E to completely remove such "story" powers. None of these powers is available significantly to the player. As such, the PCs are roughly in the same boat at level 30 as they were at level 1. There is a distinct lack of evolution of the character within the system. Aye, there are some "invulnerable builds" posted in the 4E CharOp Forum, but the position is the same, and characters can merely hope to become more glorified killers.

The above is my opinion, My question to you all is if the system is truly better off by removing these "story powers" from the game? Is the game system truly better when we sacrifice fun and evolution for the sake of balance?

[PhoneLobster]

Here is, one aspect of, what happened.

It isn't just about that being STORY rather than combat power. It isn't just about that being put in the "too hard basket" and thrown out along with the baby and the bath water.

Many of those story powers were about the PLAYERS influencing, even out right telling their OWN story and at least briefly ignoring, derailing or side tracking from the GMs precious little wank fest.

That apparently should not be allowed. "Narrative" is a magical mystical thing the GM is automatically good at, and entitled to a 100% share of. That is very much a view held by a lot of idiots out there many of which fail to see what is wrong with 4Es removal of story powers from mechanics available to the players in return for allocating them instead to the GMs complete and arbitrary control outside of the rules set.

There IS a crowd of horribly bad GMs out there that WANT The players to be eternally the poorly justified and largely irrelevant killer hobo errand boys of mighty plot effecting NPCs.

They see the removal of a players ability to found their own small nation in their backpack pocket dimension as a genuinely good thing because that means they can forever be bossed about by the DM's penis extension post epic level deity demi lich who is the only one allowed to own pocket dimensions because the DM says so and thats the full extent of the rules on the matter and thats the way they like it.

[MGuy]

In a game where you have "powers" at all then of course they should be allowed to have an effect on the story.

[CCarter]

That being said, the game system does give credence to players potentially having powerful, majestic, and fantastic tools at their disposal. The ability to teleport, fly, create planes, summon solars, create artifacts, create clones, animate the dead, dominate others, create and destroy items and buildings, etc.

In 3E player's got those things, but it was by accident rather than by design. In 1E/2E they were largely NPC-only because characters only got these at higher levels than they'd normally reach in actual play. 3E making higher levels actually accessible gave PCs access to what was formerly just part of the NPC toybox.
4E removing all these abilities from the rules completely in an attempt to return from story-driven campaigns with interesting PCs to "there's a 10' by 10' room, you see an orc guarding a chest" is a huge step backward, but its hardly surprising.

[Swordslinger]

The problem is that the majority of high level powers were either beyond the scope of the game or supported a playstyle that was contrary to heroic fantasy. D&D is a game of

Lets see the majority of this stuff.

PC minions and allies (Domination, Summoning, Followers and Rulership): Including a bunch of PC driven minions only slowed the combat to a crawl. When you got into armies, well... what happens when two armies meet? Do the 2 solars you sent to kill the evil king do it? Congratulations, the game is now all DM fiat.

PC Power-up (money-making schemes/creating items):Most of the game is about amassing treasure by killing monsters. Once you establish some system where PCs become rich merchants instead of adventurers, you wonder why they went into dungeons at all.

Plot Smashers (Teleportation/Long-term Flight/Divination/etc.): Generally most of the game involves "Getting there." Whether it's traversing a dragon's lair, getting to Mt.Doom or whatever, most of the fun of the game involves the random encounters and mishaps you have along the way. But instead, you just skip all that, go right to the main villain as encounter #1 and get the adventure over with in one battle. Why bother determining whose lying in this tale of intrigue, I'll just use a spell and find out instantly. Sounds like a real exciting adventure.

As for what to do with this stuff...

4E style - The idea is to do similar to what 4E did and limit the abilities. You can teleport, it just takes a while and only goes to pre-determined spots. You can fly but only for one encounter a day. You can craft magic items, but only certain items.

3E style - The game becomes an arms race between the DM and the PCs. Obviously the world didn't collapse when NPCs got the abilities the PCs have, so the world has some kind of counter waiting for them. Random atmospheric ionization or strong concentrations of arbitrarium can render teleports useless. Whenever you send your followers to do anything remotely useful, they all die. When your players find some way to amass infinite gold, create a new currency and declare their old one useless. Basically whenever the PCs think they're gonna take over the world, you sucker punch em by making their ability useless.

PCs win - They're no longer adventurers, they're kings or gods or whatever. They are beyond the scope of the game and are no longer playable. Present epilogue and start rolling up new characters.

[Josh_Kablack]

The above is my opinion, My question to you all is if the system is truly better off by removing these "story powers" from the game? Is the game system truly better when we sacrifice fun and evolution for the sake of balance?

My short answer is that I would like a happy medium between 3.x crazy-go-nuts plane-hopping teleport ambush chain simulacrua wish-economy shannigans happening in any game where the DM doesn't bring a ton of banhammer and 4e "You're epic level:you can fight orcs with higher numbers!"

The crazy-reality narrative warping / obstacle bypassing abilities should be in the game, but they should be both pegged to minimum levels and also clearly tagged so that the MC realizes what challenges are trivial, easy, challenging and supposedly impossible for given levels.


Example: In 3.x A hallway filled with mechanical traps by itself just isn't a challenge for parties of over 12th level - even without the crazy stuff, like the umpteen ways of bypassing or destroying said hallway, they'll be able to send someone with Flight, some form of DR, an appropriate elemental resistance, actual immunity or crazy saves Vs Poison and Disease and Freedom of Movement against entangles - and they'll still have enough potential healing to negate Hit Point damage short of insta-gib.

[Novembermike]

The fundamental point of any game system is to tell the players that they can't do something. The most rules light system you can have is just pure make believe, and there's no method in that to really tell a player that his attack missed or that he can't catch the glass globe before it hits the ground and breaks.

3E had a problem where Wizards were given a set of spells that did many of these things (teleport, fly etc) which made it hard for the DM to say no. 4E did a pretty good job of fixing this by making the plot abilities (the things that let you just say fuck you to an entire encounter concept) take time. You can't just say "I have a spell that does that!" all the time, you actually have to work within the framework that the DM gives you. This is largely a positive thing since it forces the players to actually react to the situations they are put in rather than pressing the emergency escape button.

There's also a problem where most of the "magic" we tend to see in DnD doesn't reflect traditional fantasy magic very well. It's too cheap, easy and convenient. Traditional fantasy tends to have either weak magic (ie. in a knight vs wizard fight the knight always wins, although he may come out cursed in some way) or have serious repercussions (deal with the devil). I can't think of many myths where the wizard can do exactly what he wants with magic at any point in time. Even in the Vance stories magic was fairly rare and while potent it tended to be very specific.

[Fuchs]

The fundamental point of any game system is to tell the players that they can't do something. The most rules light system you can have is just pure make believe, and there's no method in that to really tell a player that his attack missed or that he can't catch the glass globe before it hits the ground and breaks.

3E had a problem where Wizards were given a set of spells that did many of these things (teleport, fly etc) which made it hard for the DM to say no. 4E did a pretty good job of fixing this by making the plot abilities (the things that let you just say fuck you to an entire encounter concept) take time. You can't just say "I have a spell that does that!" all the time, you actually have to work within the framework that the DM gives you. This is largely a positive thing since it forces the players to actually react to the situations they are put in rather than pressing the emergency escape button.

There's also a problem where most of the "magic" we tend to see in DnD doesn't reflect traditional fantasy magic very well. It's too cheap, easy and convenient. Traditional fantasy tends to have either weak magic (ie. in a knight vs wizard fight the knight always wins, although he may come out cursed in some way) or have serious repercussions (deal with the devil). I can't think of many myths where the wizard can do exactly what he wants with magic at any point in time. Even in the Vance stories magic was fairly rare and while potent it tended to be very specific.

The overwhelming negative aspect of reducing players to "level 1, with bigger numbers, forever!" is that it forces you to deal with the same shit each adventure. You never really outgrow something, it always returns with the serial number filed off and a new coat of paint.

Traditional fantasy stories (the good ones at least) don't have the protagonist deal in detail with yet another pit trap, they skip such after the first one described in detail because re-reading the same thing is only slightly less boring than redoing the same thing.

[Novembermike]

I'm not sure why you consider that a negative. If "the same shit" is unfun, then why are you doing it in the first place? If it's fun, then it isn't a problem. If nobody likes traps, why are you playing with them in the first place?

[LR]

The fundamental point of any game system is to tell the players that they can't do something. The most rules light system you can have is just pure make believe, and there's no method in that to really tell a player that his attack missed or that he can't catch the glass globe before it hits the ground and breaks.

3E had a problem where Wizards were given a set of spells that did many of these things (teleport, fly etc) which made it hard for the DM to say no. 4E did a pretty good job of fixing this by making the plot abilities (the things that let you just say fuck you to an entire encounter concept) take time. You can't just say "I have a spell that does that!" all the time, you actually have to work within the framework that the DM gives you. This is largely a positive thing since it forces the players to actually react to the situations they are put in rather than pressing the emergency escape button.

There's also a problem where most of the "magic" we tend to see in DnD doesn't reflect traditional fantasy magic very well. It's too cheap, easy and convenient. Traditional fantasy tends to have either weak magic (ie. in a knight vs wizard fight the knight always wins, although he may come out cursed in some way) or have serious repercussions (deal with the devil). I can't think of many myths where the wizard can do exactly what he wants with magic at any point in time. Even in the Vance stories magic was fairly rare and while potent it tended to be very specific.

Reread what you wrote. You are saying that 4e is better because it is more like a novel. In a novel, plot devices are kept out of protaganist hands until the plot allows them and the heroes save the day by the skin of their teeth because they have plot armor. In a roleplaying game, there are other storytellers at the table and they all need to get a say. There's no plot armor, and the players can only tell the story through what is written on their sheet. If storytelling abilities are missing, then the players can do nothing but sit through the DM's novel until the combat music starts. In 4e, abilities that interact directly with the plot are either missing, permanently deducted from your combat funds, or cruel mockeries that only serve to give the illusion of control.

I'm not sure how to handle your complaints of scale other that to tell you that you don't have to play the levels that are meant to replicate epic myths.

I'm not sure why you consider that a negative. If "the same shit" is unfun, then why are you doing it in the first place? If it's fun, then it isn't a problem. If nobody likes traps, why are you playing with them in the first place?

It's fine when you're the plucky squire, but when you're supposed to be Tolthos the Wave God, it gets a bit weird if you still carry around your 10-foot pole and Bag of Tricks and spend your days crawling around 10x10 corridors and 50x50 rooms. You'd expect a Wave God to have better things to do with his time.

[Novembermike]

Reread what you wrote. You are saying that 4e is better because it is more like a novel. In a novel, plot devices are kept out of protaganist hands until the plot allows them and the heroes save the day by the skin of their teeth because they have plot armor. In a roleplaying game, there are other storytellers at the table and they all need to get a say. There's no plot armor, and the players can only tell the story through what is written on their sheet. If storytelling abilities are missing, then the players can do nothing but sit through the DM's novel until the combat music starts. In 4e, abilities that interact directly with the plot are either missing, permanently deducted from your combat funds, or cruel mockeries that only serve to give the illusion of control.

I'm not sure how to handle your complaints of scale other that to tell you that you don't have to play the levels that are meant to replicate epic myths.

If this is what you're getting out of my post I don't know what to tell you. I'm not talking about the DM being the storyteller, he's the moderator. He sets up the circumstances and the players turn those circumstances into a story. Setting limits on player actions allows the DM to create better circumstances.

It's fine when you're the plucky squire, but when you're supposed to be Tolthos the Wave God, it gets a bit weird if you still carry around your 10-foot pole and Bag of Tricks and spend your days crawling around 10x10 corridors and 50x50 rooms. You'd expect a Wave God to have better things to do with his time.

Why would they have a 10 foot pole and a Bag of Tricks? At higher levels they might have flying mounts or a belt that lets them teleport a short distance. The flaw with 3E wasn't that the players could do powerful things, it's that they tended to be able to do a lot of powerful things with little effort.

Also, if you read the post the "same shit" that was discussed was stuff like traps. You're always going to have combat, always going to have conversations etc. If any of these things aren't good then they shouldn't be in the system.

[Fuchs]

I'm not sure why you consider that a negative. If "the same shit" is unfun, then why are you doing it in the first place? If it's fun, then it isn't a problem. If nobody likes traps, why are you playing with them in the first place?

That's why I don't play 4E - same shit every level is not fun.

[Fuchs]

If this is what you're getting out of my post I don't know what to tell you. I'm not talking about the DM being the storyteller, he's the moderator. He sets up the circumstances and the players turn those circumstances into a story. Setting limits on player actions allows the DM to create better circumstances.

Not if the limits limit the story to grunt combat forever. If you want to journey from farmboy turned hero to epic legend then you need to go beyond the farmboy limits. As was pointed out - if you don't want to stay the errand boy forever then you need to have powers to eclipse the NPC king.

It's fine when you're the plucky squire, but when you're supposed to be Tolthos the Wave God, it gets a bit weird if you still carry around your 10-foot pole and Bag of Tricks and spend your days crawling around 10x10 corridors and 50x50 rooms. You'd expect a Wave God to have better things to do with his time.

Why would they have a 10 foot pole and a Bag of Tricks? At higher levels they might have flying mounts or a belt that lets them teleport a short distance. The flaw with 3E wasn't that the players could do powerful things, it's that they tended to be able to do a lot of powerful things with little effort.

Also, if you read the post the "same shit" that was discussed was stuff like traps. You're always going to have combat, always going to have conversations etc. If any of these things aren't good then they shouldn't be in the system.

But the combat shouldn't feel like 1st level forever. The flaw with 4E is that it limits the story to the same stupid dungeon crawl. The designers should have watched some anime for combat, and read some more epic novels for non-combat stuff.

[Novembermike]

Not if the limits limit the story to grunt combat forever. If you want to journey from farmboy turned hero to epic legend then you need to go beyond the farmboy limits. As was pointed out - if you don't want to stay the errand boy forever then you need to have powers to eclipse the NPC king.

Well, all of this is naturally fairly arbitrary but 4E does a pretty good job of giving players more options in combat at higher levels. Players have more mobility options, more ways to deal damage, more interesting enemies etc. It's still the same basic mechanics but the individual actions you can take are different.

But the combat shouldn't feel like 1st level forever. The flaw with 4E is that it limits the story to the same stupid dungeon crawl. The designers should have watched some anime for combat, and read some more epic novels for non-combat stuff.

This seems like a terrible idea. The combat doesn't feel 1st level forever (not sure where you got this idea), Anime doesn't tend to have particularly compelling combat (assuming your talking about shonen it's mostly just bullshit plot powerups) and DnD has never been particularly good at replicating epic fantasy (without a good DM at least).

[Fuchs]

4E combat is supposed to feel the same, actually. 4E designers admitted to and planned to take a "sweet spot" and spread it out over 30 levels.

And better a stupid power up than no power up at all. Anime and Wuxia-movies at least show epic fights, not dungeon grindfests.

[Novembermike]

4E combat is supposed to feel the same, actually. 4E designers admitted to and planned to take a "sweet spot" and spread it out over 30 levels.

If this was their goal they failed. It's well balanced across the range of levels, yes, but at higher levels you have increase access to things like flight or other powerful abilities. It still tends to play out on a grid and you are still using abilities to do damage and such but it's hardly the same thing.

And better a stupid power up than no power up at all. Anime and Wuxia-movies at least show epic fights, not dungeon grindfests.

Anime and Wuxia are rarely epic. They often try (very hard) to be, but flashy effects don't really make something "epic" most of the time. It's generally a factor of how the conflict relates to the story that makes something good like that.

[Fuchs]

Well, the story of "grind this mob like it was an MMOG" is about as far from epic as you can go. I'd also not consider flight a particularly powerful ability for higher levels.

[Jilocasin]

At higher levels they might have flying mounts or a belt that lets them teleport a short distance.

Those are effects that I'd want to see slightly below halfway to highest level. If I'm playing a fantasy ttrpg and I'm nearing the highest level, things like cutting off the top of a mountain with one strike and actually hurling it at the massive approaching army or making a river that provides water to a huge region embroiled in seemingly endless conflict simultaneously exist in my plane of existence and the plane of harmony (or whatever) or even just building an entire city overnight and giving it as a gift to the nomads you like (also the city is on a floating island), those are things I want to be able to do. I can't take any fantasy game that considers "flight" or "short-range teleporting" to be powerful effects seriously.

[Fuchs]

I can't take any fantasy game that considers "flight" or "short-range teleporting" to be powerful effects seriously.

Yeah, especially since "Fey Step" aka short range teleportation is an encounter power for level 1 Eladrin characters...

[Roy]

But... flight is a plot power, and you totally should never have the party fight winged opponents, because they're completely helpless against such foes!

[violence in the media]

PC minions and allies (Domination, Summoning, Followers and Rulership): Including a bunch of PC driven minions only slowed the combat to a crawl. When you got into armies, well... what happens when two armies meet? Do the 2 solars you sent to kill the evil king do it? Congratulations, the game is now all DM fiat.

I agree that D&D could use better rules for quickly and fairly resolving the efficacy of PC-directed minion duties. Though, it's nice to be on the other side of the quest/mission equation from time to time. Just because you're telling some lowbies to go handle somthing that you're too busy to deal with doesn't mean that you don't have things to do yourself. Maybe I played too much Suikoden in the past, but I enjoy that aspect of assigning NPCs to go do things.

Plot Smashers (Teleportation/Long-term Flight/Divination/etc.): Generally most of the game involves "Getting there." Whether it's traversing a dragon's lair, getting to Mt.Doom or whatever, most of the fun of the game involves the random encounters and mishaps you have along the way. But instead, you just skip all that, go right to the main villain as encounter #1 and get the adventure over with in one battle. Why bother determining whose lying in this tale of intrigue, I'll just use a spell and find out instantly. Sounds like a real exciting adventure.

The Plot Smashers are largely a problem because many DMs decide that it would be brilliant to use last week's Law & Order plot for their next game session, forget about the different abilities that the PCs have, and then get pissed off when the players don't have to follow their poorly-strewn trail of breadcrumbs.

The other party responsible for this failure though is the game/module designers who don't take abilities into account when writing the world. Every location, badguy, and plot that those guys write out should have detailed information about how they're warded or protected from various things that other people in the world can demonstrably do. This would provide a basis for DMs to lift these countermeasures onto things they create, and also keep them mindful of them so that things don't come as such a surprise when they show up later. Yeah, at 1st level, knowing that nobody can teleport anywhere in the city because of X, or that only people that can make a DC 20 Int check can scry on location Y for reason Z is kind of irrelevant, but having it in place now saves lots of headaches later.

If you don't want your plot/badguy/whatever undone by a single spell or ability, take that into account when designing them. Don't neuter the PCs by making their ability useless, but don't act as if they're the only ones in the world with that ability either.

[Novembermike]

At higher levels they might have flying mounts or a belt that lets them teleport a short distance.

Those are effects that I'd want to see slightly below halfway to highest level. If I'm playing a fantasy ttrpg and I'm nearing the highest level, things like cutting off the top of a mountain with one strike and actually hurling it at the massive approaching army or making a river that provides water to a huge region embroiled in seemingly endless conflict simultaneously exist in my plane of existence and the plane of harmony (or whatever) or even just building an entire city overnight and giving it as a gift to the nomads you like (also the city is on a floating island), those are things I want to be able to do. I can't take any fantasy game that considers "flight" or "short-range teleporting" to be powerful effects seriously.

There are plenty of games that can accommodate that too, so if that's what you want to do there's nothing stopping you. Just because your idea of what high level play should be doesn't match what the game gives doesn't mean there's a problem, however. It just means that you probably shouldn't be playing the game (which I can totally understand, I'm not really much of a player because I've never been too fond of DnD roleplaying).

EDIT: Also, you can actually do a number of these things in 4E with rituals, it's just that you'll need a half hour to set it up and you generally won't be able to fight particularly well while doing it.

But... flight is a plot power, and you totally should never have the party fight winged opponents, because they're completely helpless against such foes!

Feel free to set up straw men if you feel inadequate, but the actual argument was that you shouldn't set up a level appropriate encounter full of flying ranged attackers when the party can't effectively deal with it (ie. all melee characters with no bows or flight).

[Roy]

Hi Welcome

It's not a straw man, it's an actual argument you actually said.

[NineInchNall]

Feel free to set up straw men if you feel inadequate, but the actual argument was that you shouldn't set up a level appropriate encounter full of flying ranged attackers when the party can't effectively deal with it (ie. all melee characters with no bows or flight).

Except that you absolutely should occasionally set a group of flying, ranged attackers against a group of purely melee characters with no bows or flight. In fact, the story will probably be better if the heroes have to retreat, regroup, re-equip, and return to do battle later on. Then when they do return, ready to defeat or bypass the flying, ranged attackers it's A) actually an accomplishment, B) represents a miniature story arc, and C) establishes details of the world.

I mean seriously.

[MGuy]

If I'm a bad guy, and I know a group of purely melee people are coming to ruin my day, why wouldn't I hand some bows to my flying monkeys?