4E and the Current Conception of Balance

[NineInchNall]

So I was feeling masochistic today and decided to check out the WotC CO boards for 4E. I barely had to scroll before I saw a thread entitled "Handbook of Broken", and somewhat intrigued, I read the first post.

So, here's the relevant portion:

Broken

Broken things make the game unplayable. In sCRuLooSe's post, that includes "Shattered" and "Fractured"
• Rules that don't function (Brutal 5 dagger, Brutal 4 Vorpal Dagger).
• Any use of the word "infinite". Or "Effectively Infinite"
• Killing an at-level solo with a single encounter power.
• Killing an at-level solo with your every-round DPR.
• Killing all normal monsters in the encounter with a single encounter power.

The first two, okay, I can agree with those. But the rest ...

The fuck?

I remember one of the things that really hooked me on 3E was reading a certain flame war resulting from a certain entry (or pair of entries, I guess) in a certain CO contest. It made me start looking at rules as, well, rules and the game as, well, a game in which clever planning and ability use could let you ascend to nigh divinity.

*sigh*

[Previn]

So I was feeling masochistic today and decided to check out the WotC CO boards for 4E. I barely had to scroll before I saw a thread entitled "Handbook of Broken", and somewhat intrigued, I read the first post.

So, here's the relevant portion:

Broken

Broken things make the game unplayable. In sCRuLooSe's post, that includes "Shattered" and "Fractured"
• Rules that don't function (Brutal 5 dagger, Brutal 4 Vorpal Dagger).
• Any use of the word "infinite". Or "Effectively Infinite"
• Killing an at-level solo with a single encounter power.
• Killing an at-level solo with your every-round DPR.
• Killing all normal monsters in the encounter with a single encounter power.

The first two, okay, I can agree with those. But the rest ...

The fuck?

I remember one of the things that really hooked me on 3E was reading a certain flame war resulting from a certain entry (or pair of entries, I guess) in a certain CO contest. It made me start looking at rules as, well, rules and the game as, well, a game in which clever planning and ability use could let you ascend to nigh divinity.

*sigh*

From a 4e stand point, the last 3 do break the game, by making combat a non-factor (you're basically assured to win every combat), and since combat is the vast majority of what 4e does besides magical tea party, it's fair to say it breaks the game of 4e.

[NineInchNall]

But ... you can't just pit harder threats (either by virtue of whatever-they-call-CR-in-4e or numbers or tactical concerns) against the party to compensate?

I ... I mean ...

WHARGARBL

[Miryafa]

I guess they don't want to violate the Oberani Fallacy "there's no problem because the DM can fix the problem."

[NineInchNall]

But that's not even Obero --

Fuck it. 4e is not worth the cognitive effort.

[Kaelik]

Well: A) You probably can't pit harder threats by CR, since the whole point is the numbers work, which means you can't even hit something over CRed.

B) More might work, except that if you can only do your kill the thing in one turn once per combat, then it might turn around that if there are 3 of them, the entire party gets murdered.

I mean really, 4e is just that bad, that if you find a way to win it, the only way to fix that is by revoking it, not by changing the enemies.

[NineInchNall]

You just made me really sad, Kae.

I mean, "broken" shouldn't just mean exceptionally powerful within the confines of the damn level system.

[Dean]

A duo of phrases I've heard in groups I work with are "Hard Breaks" and "Soft Breaks". I find these useful and use them myself now.

"Hard Breaks" in a system are any rules that, if included, make the game unplayable or wholly and unrecognizably different than intended. In D&D these are things like Gate and planar binding nonsense, Wish cycling, Polymorph and Shapechange problems. Basically you can't run a game with these inclusions because they destroy the world in form, or in function.

"Soft Breaks" are things that work far better than intended but still absolutely let you play the game you signed up for. Even if your Cleric archer gets 8 super awesome attacks a round he still needs to shoot the dragon that shows up to burn down his town, and even if your Dragon has abilities far outshining his supposed Challenge Rating he still has to show up and try to burn down peoples towns to take their shit. You are still PLAYING the game you're just doing it with bigger numbers or bigger results. Examples like this are too numerous in 3.5 to bear mentioning.

So in regards to this persons statements I would say his first 2 points (or 3 if you include his intro) are quite possibly hard breaks and worth changing or banning while the last 3 are merely soft breaks and not really worth anyone's actual time or effort to address

[Ice9]

On the other hand, Hard Breaks are often much easier for the MC to address, simply by going "Lol, no" to the tactic in question. Soft Breaks are harder to deal with, because you can't ban something like "making multiple attacks" or "casting buff spells on yourself", so you have to figure out what's a "reasonable" amount of effect and agree on that with the players.

Or to put it another way, the fact the the 3.5 Druid is pervasively overpowered in many categories has a lot more actual impact on games than the fact that you can hypothetically get infinite wishes out of a single Candle of Invocation.

[Judging__Eagle]

DMs who can't handle PCs getting infinite wishes aren't worthy of the title imo. My players figured out a way to pull it off around level 7-8 without Planeshift or a Candle of Invocation.

They wanted the +5 to their stats, and wooden nickel items. I was happy to oblige them.

Using Tome of Fiends Wish rules, it's not a big deal; and it let me give all npcs minor magic swag, and never give a rat's ass about the players looting all of the +2 stat items and +2 swords or +3 armours that the higher end NPCs they were going after carried.

The only thing better than that, was when they got a young dragon's hoard; and the barbarianess player made the nastiest face when they heard they had found 10 million (roughly) in gold (about a 20-20 foot gold pile). They were noticeably happier and relieved that they had found something worth keeping in the treasure pile; a magical staff that no one in the party really wanted to use, but they could trade for planar currency.

[Murtak]

DMs who can't handle PCs getting infinite wishes aren't worthy of the title imo. My players figured out a way to pull it off around level 7-8 without Planeshift or a Candle of Invocation.

Using Tome of Fiends Wish rules, it's not a big deal;

Are you aware that you are using a houserule to fix this issue? And even using a houserule you are warping the world - namely by creating the wish economy. Note that the wish economy basically turns infinite wishes from broken as all fuck into merely regular broken (as in: alters the world to a large degree) and then assumes this is as the status quo. You can play this way, but your original world, a world where coin has value to everyone, is irredeemably gone.

[Dominicius]

You can play this way, but your original world, a world where coin has value to everyone, is irredeemably gone.

Why would you even want to play in such a world though? D&D does not support this because it expects the players to become demigods somewhere at around level 16 and I feel that it is kinda insulting when a demigod still has to scrounge up gold pieces from killed goblins.

The system itself is incompatible with most of the worlds that it governs so either you change the system where players always remain low level or you change the worlds to make the wish economy into a standard.

If you are doing neither then you are not addressing the problem.

[hogarth]

But ... you can't just pit harder threats (either by virtue of whatever-they-call-CR-in-4e or numbers or tactical concerns) against the party to compensate?

And then the rest of the party sits around with their thumbs up their asses while Joe-Bob uses his fantastic attack combo. Snore.

[Swordslinger]

You just made me really sad, Kae.

I mean, "broken" shouldn't just mean exceptionally powerful within the confines of the damn level system.

Well no, it really does. The whole point of a level system is to set people to a power range. If one guy at level 5 is a total wimp and another guy is the destroyer of worlds, then yes, the system is broken.

For a good example of this, see class balance in Rifts.

[Ice9]

DMs who can't handle PCs getting infinite wishes aren't worthy of the title imo. My players figured out a way to pull it off around level 7-8 without Planeshift or a Candle of Invocation.

They wanted the +5 to their stats, and wooden nickel items. I was happy to oblige them.

Using Tome of Fiends Wish rules, it's not a big deal; and it let me give all npcs minor magic swag, and never give a rat's ass about the players looting all of the +2 stat items and +2 swords or +3 armours that the higher end NPCs they were going after carried.

In addition to needing a rules modification start with, this doesn't even handle the "infinite scrolls" case. I don't think you can really spin "infinite scrolls" as a beneficial feature - if you did, then the spell charts for classes might as well not exist after 7th level or so.

But as mentioned, infinite wishes isn't a big deal one way or another, because it can be removed if desired just by saying "no infinite wishes".

[Murtak]

You can play this way, but your original world, a world where coin has value to everyone, is irredeemably gone.

Why would you even want to play in such a world though? D&D does not support this because it expects the players to become demigods somewhere at around level 16 and I feel that it is kinda insulting when a demigod still has to scrounge up gold pieces from killed goblins.

The system itself is incompatible with most of the worlds that it governs so either you change the system where players always remain low level or you change the worlds to make the wish economy into a standard.

This is not the point. The default assumption in DnD is that coin is valuable, period, as evidenced by the wealth-by-level chart. Infinite wishes break this guideline. Infinite but limited wishes still break it, though differently. Additionally both versions also irredeemably alter your entire world.

Whether or not this new world is preferable does not even matter. The point is: as soon as someone starts chaining wishes your world breaks and your game breaks. You may prefer this new world and this new game, but it is no longer the game you started with.

For example, in basic DnD a thousand farmers could conceivably save up and hire a team of high level adventurers to kill their evil overlrod for them. Under the wish economy they can not, because they have literally nothing to offer to those adventurers. An entire standard trope - fighting for good, but publically justifying it as work for hire - has been eliminated. You just removed Han Solo from your games.

[DSMatticus]

Han Solo is definitely not a wish economy character and that's not how I'd describe what he did. Otherwise, yeah, the wish economy is a different game than default D&D. Infinite wishes is 'broken' in the context of the original D&D rules, mostly in that nothing makes any sense once you realize the mutual existence of WBL and infinite wishes.

[Dominicius]

This is not the point. The default assumption in DnD is that coin is valuable, period, as evidenced by the wealth-by-level chart. Infinite wishes break this guideline.

This is a bad reason and you know it.

For example, in basic DnD a thousand farmers could conceivably save up and hire a team of high level adventurers to kill their evil overlrod for them. Under the wish economy they can not, because they have literally nothing to offer to those adventurers. An entire standard trope - fighting for good, but publically justifying it as work for hire - has been eliminated. You just removed Han Solo from your games.

The PCs do not care about the money of the peasants. The real reason that the PCs are going after the EO is because the EO is a high level NPCs with PC levels and has better loot than anything that the peasants can ever hope to get together (which is part of the reason why he is an EO). It would be faster for them to pick up adventuring themselves than try to save up enough money to actually make the PCs care. And even if they do get enough to make PCs care the EO or somebody else with actual power in the setting is going to come and take it away from them.

[Murtak]

This is not the point. The default assumption in DnD is that coin is valuable, period, as evidenced by the wealth-by-level chart. Infinite wishes break this guideline.

This is a bad reason and you know it.

Why do I even bother to spell it out for you? Why do I even argue, why do I bother to find an actual argument? Here, I can have it easier: You are wrong and you know.

Fuck that. Use reasoning or stop wasting bandwidth.

For example, in basic DnD a thousand farmers could conceivably save up and hire a team of high level adventurers to kill their evil overlrod for them. Under the wish economy they can not, because they have literally nothing to offer to those adventurers. An entire standard trope - fighting for good, but publically justifying it as work for hire - has been eliminated. You just removed Han Solo from your games.

The PCs do not care about the money of the peasants. The real reason that the PCs are going after the EO is because the EO is a high level NPCs with PC levels and has better loot than anything that the peasants can ever hope to get together (which is part of the reason why he is an EO). It would be faster for them to pick up adventuring themselves than try to save up enough money to actually make the PCs care. And even if they do get enough to make PCs care the EO or somebody else with actual power in the setting is going to come and take it away from them.

Here, let me spell it out for you:

Under default DnD assumptions, even level 10+ characters care about, say, 10.000 gp. They might even care about a measly 1.000 gp, but let's make it a decent number. 10.000 gp, or 10 gp from each farmer, or the equivalent amount of indebtured labor, will buy you a campaign arc worth of level 5 adventurers, a week of work from a group of level 10 characters or a day's work of level 15 characters. If you you want to adjust the numbers, go ahead, but no matter the actual number requries, enough peasants will add up to being able to hire adventurers. Under the wish economy this is not true. An entire planet planet's worth of peasants promising to work for a hundred generations for the sole benefit of the adventurers will not make han Solo bat an eyelid. And that is because under the wish economy mundane wealth is worth precisely zero.

And no matter how many metagame arguments you throw into the mix the fact remains that this is a standard, if someone tired, story plot that the wish economy removes from your world.

The wish economy divides your world into two tiers, and that is fundamentally different from the default gameworld. I don't even care whether you like this new world better or find it more believable ot convinient or whether you think it better lends itself to gaming in it. It is fundamentally different from the default gameworld and as such anything that turns one into the another is broken in that context.

[Dominicius]

Why do I even bother to spell it out for you? Why do I even argue, why do I bother to find an actual argument? Here, I can have it easier: You are wrong and you know.

Fuck that. Use reasoning or stop wasting bandwidth.

Don't demand explanations for obvious shit or I lose any fucking respect for you. There are a lot of guidelines in D&D that are utter crap and nobody uses them. Everybody hates WBL because it means that you have dragon hoard that are puny and you can't put gold doors in the lairs of your villains.

The only reason that people are still using it is because coming up with a better system is actually hard and should have been handled by the designers of the game.

Under default DnD assumptions, even level 10+ characters care about, say, 10.000 gp. They might even care about a measly 1.000 gp, but let's make it a decent number. 10.000 gp, or 10 gp from each farmer, or the equivalent amount of indebtured labor, will buy you a campaign arc worth of level 5 adventurers, a week of work from a group of level 10 characters or a day's work of level 15 characters. If you you want to adjust the numbers, go ahead, but no matter the actual number requries, enough peasants will add up to being able to hire adventurers. Under the wish economy this is not true.

Again that is assuming that the EO does not steal their money, which he is perfectly capable of doing because he has power. The PCs are also capable of just taking the money and then going to the next village for more free loot.

But of course, by the WBL rules the next time the PCs come to another village, the villagers will have no money. Even if the PCs enslave the villagers and make them work day and night they won't get any money until they go kill x goblins or something. And that is the point where your game breaks down because you just shat all over verisimilitude.

You still cry about "WAH WAH I CAN'T TELL THE STORY ABOUT PEASANTS HIRING PCs!!!" but you don't even bother to think for a moment how many stories WBL prevents, how it harms verisimilitude and how shitty it makes your world. It means that the elven king needs to take all the gold from his subject so that he can have another +1 on his sword or else he is going to get face stabbed by a nazghul.

[Swordslinger]

DMs who can't handle PCs getting infinite wishes aren't worthy of the title imo. My players figured out a way to pull it off around level 7-8 without Planeshift or a Candle of Invocation.

Are you kidding? Once you have infinite wishes, you can get as many scrolls of gate or greater planar binding as you want, and just throw infinity solars at anything threat you have. Don't even bother doing missions anymore at that point.

[Murtak]

Don't demand explanations for obvious shit or I lose any fucking respect for you. There are a lot of guidelines in D&D that are utter crap and nobody uses them. Everybody hates WBL because it means that you have dragon hoard that are puny and you can't put gold doors in the lairs of your villains.

That is utterly besides the point. WBL has upsides and downsides, as does the wish economy. WBL is the default assumption and infinite wishes breaks WBL, as well as various aspects of the default world. You prefering this other world does not make this any less true. Even you being correct in prefering this other world does not make this any less true.


Also, disregarding specific numbers, WBL-type systems and wish econony systems in general have similar properties, namely one being tiered and the other not being tiered. Worlds in which wealth is tiered are very different from worlds in which that is not the case. Anything that changes a world from one type into the bother breaks that world.

10.000 gp, or 10 gp from each farmer, or the equivalent amount of indentured labor

Again that is assuming that the EO does not steal their money, which he is perfectly capable of doing because he has power. The PCs are also capable of just taking the money and then going to the next village for more free loot.

Damnit, I even spelled out that there need not actually be any money, but you chose to just ignore that part. The point is, in default DnD peasants have value, the stuff peasants possess has value and the stuff they create has value. Low value, but value nonethless. In the wish economy peasants are worthless past a certain capaign level. Utterly and completely worthless. Dragons killing your peasants? Who cares? You don't care for their food, you don't care for their taxes, you don't care for anything at all those peasants can do or create. They might as well not exist.

But of course, by the WBL rules the next time the PCs come to another village, the villagers will have no money.

Unless of course they leveled up in the previous adventure. But yes, this is a real problem with WBL. It is also completely unrelated to my argument.

[Dominicius]

Wrong. WBL is not the default assumption in the games I play, wish economy is.


But more to the point, high level characters might not care about peasants but low level characters still do. If you are below levels 9-12 then you can still have your stories where the players participate in peasant economies. Is that a good enough deal for you? It is far better alternative than having a level 20 Good immortal elven king who takes every last gold piece from his farmers because he needs one more +1 on his sword.

[Murtak]

I will give it one more try.

For the sake of this argument I do not care which type of wealth paradigm is better. Both are complete shit, both are kludges desperately trying to hold incompatible stories together. But they do create distinctly different worlds. One is the official DnD world, the other is the tome world. One of these requires infinite wishes to work and the other requires it to not work. Both are, in prerequisites and effects, incompatible. Anything that enables infinite wishes breaks default DnD. Anything that disables infinite wishes breaks tome DnD.

And default DnD is, unless otherwise stated, the default setting. I don't care what you are running, I don't care about your houserules, I don't care about the artifacts in your world and I don't care about your campaigns, stories, cities and factions. All of these are going to differ from game to game, from DM to DM and from player to player. If we are not discussing the same ruleset we will never get anywhere.

And quite apart from that, going all "aha, but tome houserules are my default rules!" on me, when I have been explicitely stating how infinite wishes breaks default DnD is, frankly, quite disingenuous.

[Dominicius]

Default D&D is already broken.