The Granularity Condundrum: a possible solution?

[K]

So, another thought came to me me when I was camping some crap in FFXI and reading old Dungeon Magazines: why is granularity so fun but so damaging to the system?

I mean, everything in 3.x DnD has fiddly little bits. Almost every spell can be used in lots of ways the designers probably didn't intend, and lots of the abilities are same. I mean, I seriously don't think the designers ever expected chain-binding efreet for vast cosmic power, or using djinn as cash machines, or ever seriously thought out stacking fear effects, or any number of things that happened when you add some sourcebooks into the mix and suddenly people are making builds that do crazy crap. Basically, the system is designed for people to have arguments with their DM about what should be allowed.

Then you have 4e DnD, where all of that has been minimized. There is still enough fiddly parts to make game-breaking builds, but for the most part the granularity on the game is very low.... so low that I often cannot tell the difference between abilities by name (it does some dice of damage and and maybe one of eight effects and has a name that is two to three nouns and/or verbs, that's all I know).

One of the problems is feats and the way that you can get a pile of feats that all add to one thing, often in indirect ways. Class and PrC abilities work the same way. So one of the simplest way to avoid game-breaking abuses would be to just allow one feat or ability to add to an action.

The second would be to find the open-ended abilities and draconically clamp down on what they do. Illusion, mind control, summoning, shapeshifting, etc, all need their own fix to keep stupid things from happening ("haha! I used Diplomacy on the king and now I'm king!").

The question then becomes: will we have a game as fun as 3.x DnD without 4e levels of not fun? Where is the optimum point for the slider?

[Murtak]

Granularity: The extent to which a system is broken down into small parts.

[Thymos]

I think one of the biggest answers to this is what kind of game you want to run.

If you want high flying fantasy adventure then the open ended stuff is great. Just make sure there aren't any fighters.

If you want grim and gritty or lower level adventures then you need to crack down on the open ended-ness of abilities.

At no point should you embrace 4e's level of granularity. It's being generous to even say that most of the abilities are actually abilities.

[K]

Granularity: The extent to which a system is broken down into small parts.

Yeh, and it's those small parts interacting with each other that produces things like Grapplemancer or Triptastic builds. I mean, I don't think anyone ever wanted the Uttercold Assault Necromancer build when they built all the subsystems that allow it.

The opposite of granularity would have few subsystems, so less potential for abuse and other unexpected consequences.

[RandomCasualty2]

That's not so much granularity as it is simply complexity.

Granularity is more about defining individual actions to ones of more detail.

A system with individual combat rounds and attack rolls is more granular than a system that resolved a dice with a single roll. A system that mapped each parry and thrust in the system is more granular than a vanilla attack roll.

Granularity is generally not linked to balance so much as game speed. A good example of granularity gone to hell is the Shadowrun matrix. Every fucking little thing you do, even down to perceiving icons takes a roll. And that takes an extraordinarily long time due to the raw number of rolls you have to make. Now generally granularity is harder to balance simply because there are more options, but inherently a system that's more granular isn't automatically less balanced.

What a lack of granularity can do is make something uninteresting because you have no options. An attack system of slash, chop or hack, assuming it's done right, is going to be a more engaging system than simply a basic attack roll with no options or modifiers.

4E isn't really unfun because of a lack of granularity so much as a lack of dramatic impact. 4E combats always flow the same way, and that's fucking boring. Nobody ever gets KOed out of combat, because healing automatically brings them back. People never have to change their schtick because their primary schtick always works. The game is slanted to cockwhip you if you try to do anything remotely different from what it wants your role to be, so you can't do anything marginally original like be a fighter with a bow. No, that's reserved for the ranger.

That being said, the base 4E chassis or level of granularity isn't bad, they just needed to hand out more powers and more interesting powers. Turning D&D into M:tG honestly wouldn't be a terrible idea. Give people a deck of powers and have them draw each time. Divide powers into say 3-4 power sources (colors) and let people build a deck of stuff they want. They could even drop miniatures altogether.

[K]

Granularity is generally not linked to balance so much as game speed.

Right, I'm linking granularity to balance because with more subsystems comes more potential for unexpected abuses. I mean, it becomes harder to abuse the way that subsystems interact with each other if you have fewer subsystems and are writing fewer abilities for those subsystems.

Is that such a foreign idea?

[RandomCasualty2]

Right, I'm linking granularity to balance because with more subsystems comes more potential for unexpected abuses. I mean, it becomes harder to abuse the way that subsystems interact with each other if you have fewer subsystems and are writing fewer abilities for those subsystems.

Is that such a foreign idea?

When granularity doesn't necessarily have to be about subsystems is what I'm saying. You could pretty much us a 4E style power format for every class's abilities in 3.5 and not really lose much of the game. The fact that some classes run on vancian slots, others run on power points and some run on refreshable maneuvers isn't so much what makes 3.5 good. It's more about the potency of the powers.

You could seriously take the 4E powers and map them onto vancian slots and Tome of battle style, and the game still sucks ass because the powers are still boring.

It's not that granularity can't cause balance problems so much as I don't feel like granularity is your issue here. The addition of classes like the binder or various PrCs don't make 3.5 more granular. They just make it more complex. You still have the same amount of levels to distribute between more classes, and the same amount of feats. It's just you have a larger range of options, but still make the same number of choices. Granularity means you make more choices.

For instance, doubling the number of feats you get to take but halving their benefits adds more granularity. Simply doubling the number of feats available simply makes the system more complex.

[Hieronymous Rex]

You can give people more subsystems to play with by making ones that are not directly tied to them (the difference between taking a feat that allows you to use a certain maneuver, and a stunt system that is open to anyone).

Lago's thread dealt with this sort of thing. One advantage of this is that you have less of a need to worry about making a good build for a character, since you'll be able to participate even if you screw up a bit.

[hogarth]

That's not so much granularity as it is simply complexity.

I agree. It's possible to have a lot of granularity in terms of subsystems without much interaction between the subsystems.

For instance, the Ringworld RPG is based off of the Call of Cthulhu/BRP system. It has dozens and dozens of possible skills, and yet the system isn't very complex; task resolution is based off of a single skill roll or an ability check of some kind.

[CCarter]

Granularity: The extent to which a system is broken down into small parts.

Yeh, and it's those small parts interacting with each other that produces things like Grapplemancer or Triptastic builds. I mean, I don't think anyone ever wanted the Uttercold Assault Necromancer build when they built all the subsystems that allow it.

The opposite of granularity would have few subsystems, so less potential for abuse and other unexpected consequences.

More subsystems might actually decrease the amount of potential for abuse, depending on how the system is set up - it could be a matter of how much each system is compartmentalized from the others. If you use d20 for attack rolls and d100 for skill rolls say (Palladium system), then a ability that gives you "+15% to all skills" inherently wouldn't modify your combat abilities (d20 roll), because of the way the systems are separated.

The main way 4e killed interaction between abilities was of course how anything interesting became a power (which requires its own action) rather than having individual feats that can be stacked onto the same action. "Number of Fists:2" (Two Weapon Fighting) is a power in 4th ed. say, whereas in 3rd the TWF character could use each attack in their full attack to perform a trip or sunder or whatever. I don't know how you'd build a middle road between those two extremes.

4e does have some synergies but they're usually grossly retarded - like how your half-elf fighter is best suited to be a warhammer fighter (Con bonus) or how your gnome orbizard can cut himself to turn invisible and get Combat Advantage on his sleep spell...
Sorry pet peeves...

[Lago PARANOIA]

The best way to avoid game-combos in the game are to:

A) Limit the amount of vertical advancement in your game.

and

B) Carefully monitor abilities that deprive the enemy of the ability to fight back or take actions.

[Murtak]

More subsystems do not indicate a finer granularity. Die size is an example of granularity. What K describes is something else entirely. I can't find a simple description for it, but in a computer game it would be a physics engine. And it is entirely true that 4E simply does not have it. 2E had a lot of special cases where you could use spell x to do y when special condition z was fulfilled. 3E unified those special rules into general rules, in essence giving us DnD physics for the first time.

Everything else follows. This stuff is fun because a) it makes the world more believable and b) it allows for neat tricks and general creativity, both in solving encounters and in describing and creating the world. On the other hand you have to think a lot harder to think of everything when you can do so much more. Compare this to computer games again. If you have a simple shooter game you can just code the game to only open the door to the next level if all monsters are dead. Easy. However, if you have a physics engine you have to keep in mind that the player can just destroy the door and be done with it. And if you put in arbitrarium doors the player can just find some explosives and go through the wall. The same thing happens to DnD. If you put in rules for destroying doors and walls the players will use them to skip encounters. If you put in rules for falling damage they will drop elephants on opponents. And if you put in rules for summoning Efreets the players will try to get a couple of thousands of wishes. Not expecting the players to use the rules is kind of silly and I would argue that the designers should have foreseen a lot of the silly tricks possible in 3E.

Granted, they had some less than ideal constraints on their work. They had to work with a base of 2E material. This includes pretty much every mythology on this planet, plus half a dozen random bullshit campaign settings. They had to keep the flavor of the classes, which pretty much means having multiple classes who get to do crazy world-changing shit. They had to figure on people they barely (if at all) knew writing addons to their game. And even starting with a complete clusterfuck of rules and with dozens of idiots shitting all over what semblance of balance they created I would argue that 3E was a success as far as creating a stable system to play DnD with was. Ok, that may be stretching it. But it certainly was far ore balanced than 2E, contained fewer world-breaking fuckups and yet allowed more freedom for the players, created more verisimilitude for the world and gave the DM a better base to build his world with.

The measure by which we judge, for lack of a better word, the "physics" of a game, should be verisimilitude, robustness and options. 3E scores high on on options, low on robustness and decent on verisimilitude (mostly because of the same crazy shit that happens to break the world). I would argue this is not an issue of there being a slider between 3E mayhem and 4E sterility. It is merely an issue of 3E not having been playtested and redesigned enough. Heck, look at the Tome series. You can totally fix some of that shit and lose out on nothing. The question is not where between 3E and 4E to put the slider. The question is how far beyond 3E it should be put.

[CCarter]

More subsystems do not indicate a finer granularity. Die size is an example of granularity. What K describes is something else entirely. I can't find a simple description for it, but in a computer game it would be a physics engine.

"Emergent complexity?"

[Murtak]

More subsystems do not indicate a finer granularity. Die size is an example of granularity. What K describes is something else entirely. I can't find a simple description for it, but in a computer game it would be a physics engine.

"Emergent complexity?"

That would be the unintended consequence, but not the original goal or process.

[mean_liar]

The question then becomes: will we have a game as fun as 3.x DnD without 4e levels of not fun? Where is the optimum point for the slider?

I think your assumption about "more parts = more power" is an incorrect one. DnD's constantly interlocking, stacking bits is what made the game so breakable, not just it's variety. Lago's point about Vertical power creep is the main gauge, and far more relevant than the overall complexity.

Having a hard cap on capabilities by level, or a system with non-stacking modifiers, or strict separation between subsystems, or some other method or combination of methods to prevent overclocking directly addresses the "more parts = more power" non-problem.

[Murtak]

Lago's point about Vertical power creep is the main gauge, and far more relevant than the overall complexity.

I can't see how power creep can possible destroy the game. Power creep is existing abilities getting better and better over time. Power creep is weapon Focus scaled by BAB, is Scorching Ray instead of Magic Missile, is finding another +2 to stack onto your grapple or trip build. But none of that destroys the game.

Improved Metamagic and Sudden Metamagic does. Planar Binding does. Quadruple damage full attack charges and sixtuple auto-crits do. And all of these are either the designers fucking up in the original design or some author trying to fix or power up a crappy ability and not realizing you can also apply the powerup to a non-crappy ability. Of course power creep still fucks with game balance, but I can't imagine the game breaking just because with the new Dragons of the Underdark Dark Blasphemer ability you can finally push your spell resistance from 34 to 36.

About the only example of game-breakage I can remotely link to power-creep is one-shotting opponents with damage. That pretty much means charges and super-crits. And while power creep certainly contributes a couple of hundred points of damage the main offenders are the combination of pounce and charge multipliers (or auto-crits and critical multipliers respectively). The intent of the rules was clearly to not let this happen, as can be seen by the basic "multiply by 2 = add 1"-rule. The main problem is not in someone getting +30 damage to their charge from stacking a dozen abilities, it is in him getting to add not 30 but 360 damage.

[mean_liar]

I chose a poor phrase.

"Power Creep" to me means anything doing more than it should, since there are no hard, expected limits on what something should be capable of doing. An Efreet's ability to wish is crazy on a CR8 creature, or Shivering Touch doing 3d6 DEX damage as a 3rd level spell. Stacking damage is one thing, and you see the same sort of thing with combos using Karmic Strike, Double Hit and Robilar's Gambit... but also immunity to Daze + Celerity.

When I say, "Power Creep" I mean to respond to K's assertion that with time, more releases and expansions will naturally lead to more and more things sneaking by the soft caps on vertical power.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Of course power creep still fucks with game balance, but I can't imagine the game breaking just because with the new Dragons of the Underdark Dark Blasphemer ability you can finally push your spell resistance from 34 to 36.

This is precisely what causes 3E D&D to go off the rails at level 12-13 and 4E to go off the rails at level 21. People getting +2 bonuses to their will save or to their caster level here and there is what caused the game to break.

The d20 range is frankly not very big. Moreover, characters in 3E and 4E D&D have a lot of opportunities to grab bonuses. A +1 bonus to saves for being a halfling there, a +1 bonus for grabbing a luckstone here, a multiclass into paladin for another +3 bonus there, grabbing a PrC that gives a +2 bonus to Will and Fortitude there and before you know it you have a halfling outrider who is just unable to be hurt by the same DCs that can take out another fighter--and he didn't even try very hard.

If you're going to have a game with as much power advancement and character-building opportunities as D&D you are either going to have to strictly control the rate of bonuses, you are going to have to cut down on avenues of character advancement, or you are going to have to strictly dictate how a character can level up. Vertical power creep is the single largest problem facing 3E D&D; I'd rather be tasked with getting polymorph and caster multiclassing under control than normalizing the bonuses.

[Murtak]

This is precisely what causes 3E D&D to go off the rails at level 12-13 and 4E to go off the rails at level 21. People getting +2 bonuses to their will save or to their caster level here and there is what caused the game to break.

It's certainly an issue, but hardly game-breaking like Polymorph, the various no-save battlefield control spells or diplomacy bullshit are. Heck, even in core-only 3.0 you can easily have a level 20 fighter with a +9 will save (+6 base, +3 item) and let a wizard cast a DC 30 (10+spell level+9 stat+2 feat) spell at him, even before figuring in wishes. Even if you give the fighter a +5 item and a wisdom score of 16 he is only at +14 and will be dead on the first shot 3 out of 4 times. Power creep is hardly the main issue when the basic setup is already fucked up - it merely adds to it.

[DragonChild]

why is granularity so fun but so damaging to the system?

Have you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics? I love that game - for each character you get a class, a secondary ability set (basically another class's powers), a counter-attack, a support ability, and a movement ability. Lots of fun to customize stuff.

I've played the shit out of that game, easily 200+ hours. When you try a new class, or put together a new set of abilities, and then it works better than you expected, that's totally awesome. Seeing a Knight with geomancy powers, or an archer who can break weapons at a distance, and so on, actually come into play because you wanted to try stuff and it turned out interesting is great.

But I can't enjoy the game the same way anymore. I know what all the best combos are, and there are certain difficulty spikes (I'm looking at you, Weigraff) where you HAVE to break out those best combos, or heavily over-level. And to use those combos, you need at least a little bit of fore-planning. Which means, yes, I know I have to break out the ninja with martial arts from the get-go.

Anyway, to try and make this analogy a useful one, I'm saying that while it's a ton of fun to experiment, it's not as much fun once you've experimented a lot. I see this the same with D&D - complain all you want about 4e, there still is SOME experimenting. I made a 'masochistic warlord' in one game, and it turned out really well, and I was happy fooling around with it. But by now, most of us know how 3e wizards work - there's no experimenting left, and so it feels a bit drab.

[Lago PARANOIA]

It's certainly an issue, but hardly game-breaking like Polymorph, the various no-save battlefield control spells or diplomacy bullshit are. Heck, even in core-only 3.0 you can easily have a level 20 fighter with a +9 will save (+6 base, +3 item) and let a wizard cast a DC 30 (10+spell level+9 stat+2 feat) spell at him, even before figuring in wishes. Even if you give the fighter a +5 item and a wisdom score of 16 he is only at +14 and will be dead on the first shot 3 out of 4 times. Power creep is hardly the main issue when the basic setup is already fucked up - it merely adds to it.

... and polymorph/save divergence/diplomancer stuff problems that are the direct consequence or cause of the vertical advancement issues.

If the bonuses to diplomacy were more tightly controlled you would instantly solve the diplomancer problem right away. Blaming diplomacy problems on the skill itself is getting the cart before the horse.

[RandomCasualty2]

Controlling straight bonus accumulation is best done with aggressive bonus typing.

[Murtak]

... and polymorph/save divergence/diplomancer stuff problems that are the direct consequence or cause of the vertical advancement issues.

Save divergence is itself an issue, but it is not an issue of power creep. It is an issue of even allowing for defenses and offenses to grow that far apart. Power creep makes it happen faster and in a given game may be what pushes people off the RNG, but the basic issue is the divergence itself. Polymorph and Diplomancy on the other hand are designer mistakes. Polymorph especially is utterly insane, no matter what kind of game, group or campaign setting you can imagine, no matter what power level you are designing your abilities to.

If the bonuses to diplomacy were more tightly controlled you would instantly solve the diplomancer problem right away. Blaming diplomacy problems on the skill itself is getting the cart before the horse.

If diplomacy worked in a sane way there would have been no need to put titanic bullshit bonuses into the game. If diplomacy had been written with combat application in mind it certainly would not have included an option to instantly win combat. But the main fuck-ups were pegging a skill check against a will save and writing abilities to allow you to use it in combat.



Seriously, I can't see a case to be made for power creep breaking the game. The core books already allow you to go off the RNG pretty much instantly. Any bonuses added on to pale in comparison to the retarded core setup. That's not to say a guideline for appropriate skill bonuses, save bonuses and DCs is a bad idea - in fact such a thing is sorely needed. But the first thing that needs to change are the core rules. Save progressions, size of bonuses and attribute contributions all need to be rewritten from scratch before there is a point in looking at whether it should be possible to get another point of DC from greater spell focus.

And even that pales in comparison to the dozens of abilities that manage to break the setting without ever bothering to check for numbers. Scry-and-die for example. Shadows. Vampires. Wishes.

[hogarth]

Controlling straight bonus accumulation is best done with aggressive bonus typing.

Mutants & Masterminds just uses a hard cap on how good attacks and defenses can be.

[RandomCasualty2]

If the bonuses to diplomacy were more tightly controlled you would instantly solve the diplomancer problem right away. Blaming diplomacy problems on the skill itself is getting the cart before the horse.

Well no, diplomacy just sucks ass as it's written. Mainly because the DCs are static and don't take into account the person you're diplomatizing at all. There's just no excuse for that. It's just poorly written rules.