UPDATE: It occurs to me I made a huge mistake here. In addition to DEALING less damage, since it takes less damage to fell an enemy, the damage they do over the course of an entire encounter is substantially less. Therefore, damage to be "equal threats" scales at a much slower rate than I noted here.
There've been hints (not exactly in great detail) of toying with the idea of what I call atomic scaling of damage. The idea, as I understand it, is that an orc is an orc is an orc; rather than having a 5th level monster whose "longevity" as a threat is done away with due to attack and defenses scaling, a monster's "level" is a function of its HP and its damage. Therefore, an orc at 5th level (I don't have hard stats so we're just talking in the abstract) is as dangerous as 5 orcs at 10th level (or 15th level, or whatever), not because it's suddenly a minion and thus has higher attack and defenses but less damage and the like, but because an orcs damage at 10th (or 15th) level is 1/5 that of 5th level.
Here's my problem: the math quickly proves untenable. Let's assume that orcs are actually a 1st level threat-you think "Oh there's a party of five orcs. My party of 5 PCs will be reasonable challenged by them." Now, let's assume that there is a monster that deals so little damage that even a single PC can take out five of them. Let's say that this applies to kobolds. Thus, our atomic damage rating is measured in "Kobolds." Finally, let's assume that there are such monsters that we expect them to be able to challenge an entire party at 1st level all by themselves. Let's call them "Adult Dragons." We can define kobolds, orcs, and dragons, using kobolds as the common unit.
1 Kobold = 1 Kobold
1 Orc = 5 Kobolds
1 Adult Dragon = 25 Kobolds
So, we're not past 1st level, and already, in order to keep to the "danger is purely a function of damage/HP" we have to have one type of enemy have 25 times the HP of another. If Kobolds deal 1 damage, that means that Adult Dragons have to deal 25 damage (on average) (orcs deal about 5, so, 1d10, or 1d6+2, or the like). On the other hand, if we want even Kobolds to deal variable damage, then we have to have them deal at minimum 1d4. This means that orcs would have to deal the equivalent of 5d4, and Adult Dragons 25d4 damage! We're at first level, and we're already throwing 25 dice? Of course, the raw dice problem can be easily avoided by simply using static values (for instance: 5d4+50), but this means that the variability of the dice becomes massively less significant for higher level threats.
What's more crucial is that, we're still at the lowest level scale. We know, for instance, that Orcs will eventually become the new kobolds-which means it's necessarily true that Adult Dragons will become the new orcs, and SOMETHING will become the new Adult Dragons. This something (We'll call them "Wyrms") will have damage scaling of 125 times the damage of kobolds.
Now, you can reduce this problem by eliminating kobolds entirely-let's say there's no monster on earth that's weaker than an orc. Okay, so now our wyrms-which you're not expected to face until you're well into the game (how well into it? Beats me)-only deal 25 times our atomic value. However, since Orcs are 1 PC threats, we presume we want them to deal more than 1 damage per hit, so that's still 50+ damage.
The other question is, how many adult dragons equals a Tarrasque? If we assume a Tarrasque is "worth" the same as a single Wyrm, then that means that the answer is five-and only 25 orcs. Somehow, I can't see the Tarrasque being taken down by anything less than a massive army. So we can pretty much assume there's at least one more level of scale beyond wyrms-so instead of a scale of 25 orcs (or 125 kobolds), we're left with a scale of 125 orcs (or 625 kobolds!)
Now, the fact that a monster is worth hundreds of times the damage of another monster is only a problem if we're talking extremely high damage values (moreover, it's a problem if we realize "how are we going to get PC HP to scale like that?") What is almost certainly going to happen is that damage will be measured by "After Resistance" damage values. Imagine armor that absorbs damage, rather than just sets your AC (sacriledge in Dungeons and Dragons I know, but I'm trying to give this system the benefit of the doubt). So, an orc may always deal 5 damage, but then your resistance reduces that to four at the same time that your net total HP has doubled, meaning that the percentage of HP is roughly 1/5. It's impossible to really say without the specifics-but if you want to avoid exponential HP, you need to have a resistance value that will, eventually (probably not quickly, but eventually)-reduce enemy damage to 0.
My own fears are more along the lines that a Tarrasque won't be "worth" enough orcs. Because epic level play has always been problematic, I suspect there will be a push to more "traditional" gaming-which I've always seen means low level grinds. And if we're talking low level, we're generally not talking about a need for monsters that can single handedly take out entire armies.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
My thoughts on 5th edition
Don't kid yourselves. You can call it D&D Next all you want, but even if you add stat blocks for Phibrizio, it's still just Season Five.
Okay, that analogy was stupid and I apologize, but I'm going to continue calling it 5E-if only because I want my blogger domain name to remain relevant.
Wizards has links to a number of Q and A sessions with the staff on their site, so head over there and make a search check if you want the full context of what I'm ranting about.
So, my thoughts? Well-
1.) Roleplaying is not game balance. Seriously, when you break the game down into Combat, Roleplaying, and Exploration, if you're going to have some classes be better at Roleplaying than others because-hey-that's how the game is balanced, what you're really doing is you're disincentivizing those classes that aren't as good at Combat.
I have always had a problem with predominantly roleplaying game stats-things like charisma especially, but even Intelligence-because I feel it gives the wrong kinds of incentives for those of us that like to twink builds. I don't want to play a dumb barbarian because being dumb is the ability score economically feasible choice, I want to play a dumb barbarian because playing a dumb character can be fun. On the flip side, I'd like to be able to play a smart fighter without having to pigeonhole myself into intelligence score based fighter abilities.
The entire thing just creates a giant unnecessary conflict of interests. Roleplaying involvement should have to do with a player's active involvement in the game-how much backstory they have, how much they work with the DM, and how much they actually care about those things. When you reward certain classes with roleplaying benefits at the expense of combat benefits, you're saying some classes are better at being involved in the game than others.
2.) I'm not sure I trust their math. In particular, the Fighter versus Wizard scenario discussed here. I understand what Monte is getting at, but he gave a really bad example:
Monte: Fireball is a static 5d6. If you want more damage, you use a higher-level spell slot. Much more balancing. Monte: the play session that I envision with the fighter and wizard fighting together is that the figher is always better than the wizard. The fighter hits someone for 12 damage and then the wizard hits someone for 4, and the wizard wishes he was a fighter. Then that happens again on the second round, and the wizard feels the same way again. But then on the third round the wizard whips out his fireball and does 16 or 20 damage total and the fighter goes ahh, I wish I was a wizard. I want each class to shine and to have reasons to want to play that class.
Seriously Monte? In your suggested example, the fighter did 36 damage over three rounds, whereas the Wizard did a crappy 28. This is assuming that a Wizard has enough spells to use one every three rounds equivalent. At that rate, there's never any reason to play a Wizard-their peak may be higher, but their average damage is a whole lot lower, and consistency of play is a lot more useful in combat than having occasional novas that don't even deal twice as much damage as the guy who's being consistent all the time!
But, maybe I'm underestimating how many spells per day/encounter/full-moon that Wizards have in this newfangled old school Vancian magic system (which, BTW, I'm rather conflicted on-I like how the Mage uses spells in Essentials, and I'm not sure whether they're moving away from that from the discussions here). Maybe Monte forgot to note "Oh yeah, and the wizard is damaging two or three targets at once." Any number of possible justifications for the rather shoddy math. But those weren't there, which gets me to wonder if anyone really understands what they're talking about.
3.) Skills: You know me, I hate skill checks. So, when they're talking about things like "Oh, your strength is 17? Yeah, you can do that" that's a definite move forwards in my book. Kudos.
4.) Classes as themes: Works for me, but without knowing what constitutes a theme, I can't say anything particularly meaningful. The "kits" idea makes sense, but I question the game balance involved. After all, a lot of the things that end up being broken are mixing unexpected combinations with one another. 4E was nice in that there was a lot of mutual exclusivity baked into the game system, so it was a lot easier to balance-having some old style classes as themes sounds like it has the potential to break some of that. Still, I'm optimistic.
5.) Ability score boosting items: Meh. I know that our old pal Percio over at Square Fireballs seems to have a beef with these, but I'm a bit more conflicted. I like the idea of ability score boosting items, but I HATE the effective necessity of them. The idea that you can take a dumb character and make them smarter by, say, bonking them on the head with a wooden paddle (been reading Nodwick) is fun, but if ability scores are crucial to the game's balance, that means that any significant increase to scores is appropriately more useful for characters who are likely to already have high ability scores.
Thinking about 2nd edition (my experiences of which were mostly the various computer games and the like), we can remember that Gauntlets of Ogre Strength and the like tended to grant flat specific ability scores, rather than granting a bonus (excluding Manuals of Awesomely Overpoweredness).
Of course, the big thing to remember is that it doesn't matter if magical items can boost your stats if you don't HAVE them. But, well, it's hard to imagine that monty haul DMs aren't going to monty haul.
Okay, that analogy was stupid and I apologize, but I'm going to continue calling it 5E-if only because I want my blogger domain name to remain relevant.
Wizards has links to a number of Q and A sessions with the staff on their site, so head over there and make a search check if you want the full context of what I'm ranting about.
So, my thoughts? Well-
1.) Roleplaying is not game balance. Seriously, when you break the game down into Combat, Roleplaying, and Exploration, if you're going to have some classes be better at Roleplaying than others because-hey-that's how the game is balanced, what you're really doing is you're disincentivizing those classes that aren't as good at Combat.
I have always had a problem with predominantly roleplaying game stats-things like charisma especially, but even Intelligence-because I feel it gives the wrong kinds of incentives for those of us that like to twink builds. I don't want to play a dumb barbarian because being dumb is the ability score economically feasible choice, I want to play a dumb barbarian because playing a dumb character can be fun. On the flip side, I'd like to be able to play a smart fighter without having to pigeonhole myself into intelligence score based fighter abilities.
The entire thing just creates a giant unnecessary conflict of interests. Roleplaying involvement should have to do with a player's active involvement in the game-how much backstory they have, how much they work with the DM, and how much they actually care about those things. When you reward certain classes with roleplaying benefits at the expense of combat benefits, you're saying some classes are better at being involved in the game than others.
2.) I'm not sure I trust their math. In particular, the Fighter versus Wizard scenario discussed here. I understand what Monte is getting at, but he gave a really bad example:
Monte: Fireball is a static 5d6. If you want more damage, you use a higher-level spell slot. Much more balancing. Monte: the play session that I envision with the fighter and wizard fighting together is that the figher is always better than the wizard. The fighter hits someone for 12 damage and then the wizard hits someone for 4, and the wizard wishes he was a fighter. Then that happens again on the second round, and the wizard feels the same way again. But then on the third round the wizard whips out his fireball and does 16 or 20 damage total and the fighter goes ahh, I wish I was a wizard. I want each class to shine and to have reasons to want to play that class.
Seriously Monte? In your suggested example, the fighter did 36 damage over three rounds, whereas the Wizard did a crappy 28. This is assuming that a Wizard has enough spells to use one every three rounds equivalent. At that rate, there's never any reason to play a Wizard-their peak may be higher, but their average damage is a whole lot lower, and consistency of play is a lot more useful in combat than having occasional novas that don't even deal twice as much damage as the guy who's being consistent all the time!
But, maybe I'm underestimating how many spells per day/encounter/full-moon that Wizards have in this newfangled old school Vancian magic system (which, BTW, I'm rather conflicted on-I like how the Mage uses spells in Essentials, and I'm not sure whether they're moving away from that from the discussions here). Maybe Monte forgot to note "Oh yeah, and the wizard is damaging two or three targets at once." Any number of possible justifications for the rather shoddy math. But those weren't there, which gets me to wonder if anyone really understands what they're talking about.
3.) Skills: You know me, I hate skill checks. So, when they're talking about things like "Oh, your strength is 17? Yeah, you can do that" that's a definite move forwards in my book. Kudos.
4.) Classes as themes: Works for me, but without knowing what constitutes a theme, I can't say anything particularly meaningful. The "kits" idea makes sense, but I question the game balance involved. After all, a lot of the things that end up being broken are mixing unexpected combinations with one another. 4E was nice in that there was a lot of mutual exclusivity baked into the game system, so it was a lot easier to balance-having some old style classes as themes sounds like it has the potential to break some of that. Still, I'm optimistic.
5.) Ability score boosting items: Meh. I know that our old pal Percio over at Square Fireballs seems to have a beef with these, but I'm a bit more conflicted. I like the idea of ability score boosting items, but I HATE the effective necessity of them. The idea that you can take a dumb character and make them smarter by, say, bonking them on the head with a wooden paddle (been reading Nodwick) is fun, but if ability scores are crucial to the game's balance, that means that any significant increase to scores is appropriately more useful for characters who are likely to already have high ability scores.
Thinking about 2nd edition (my experiences of which were mostly the various computer games and the like), we can remember that Gauntlets of Ogre Strength and the like tended to grant flat specific ability scores, rather than granting a bonus (excluding Manuals of Awesomely Overpoweredness).
Of course, the big thing to remember is that it doesn't matter if magical items can boost your stats if you don't HAVE them. But, well, it's hard to imagine that monty haul DMs aren't going to monty haul.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Concerns for 5th edition
I've personally been a fan of the direction Essentials took 4th edition, so structurally, I'm not too concerned. However, there is one thing that will inevitably suck:
A complete lack of content at first. After all, it took quite a long time to get the monk into standard play. The amount of content actually available not only shapes play experiences, it shapes campaign design. This is probably just a necessary evil of starting a new edition, but it still sucks balls.
A complete lack of content at first. After all, it took quite a long time to get the monk into standard play. The amount of content actually available not only shapes play experiences, it shapes campaign design. This is probably just a necessary evil of starting a new edition, but it still sucks balls.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Monday, November 21, 2011
The Problem with Skill Checks
I don't like skill checks. In fact, I don't really like skills either. To me, skills are part of that glorious part of roleplying that is tertiary to actual play, but essential to character development. That is, it feels that, by having rules based access to skill checks, all you do is prevent characters who otherwise have good reason to have those skills from having those skills.
To me, skills feel like something that's not part of the challenge, but rather part of the narrative. To be part of the challenge, it really has to be something where players make active informed decisions. And when your skills boil down to "I have X% chance of doing this," that element doesn't really apply.
Skills, in my mind, should not be part of the challenge of the game. They are pass fail. That's not to say that your character may or may not play differently based on what skills they have. But rather, it's to say that if you distant skills from gameplay, then it doesn't matter what skills a character has, it's not going to be gamebreaking. It may break the *narrative,* but I think it's unwise to try and shoehorn protections against the destruction of narrative structure into the game-this is the same reason why I feel rituals, rather than being explicitly codified, should be vague and subject to the DM's whims. It's less about challenge and more about narrative.
That being said, I absolutely love skill powers. A DM can completely ignore skill checks altogether, yet skills can still be a useful part of a character's build. I feel like there's something to that. In the same way that you're technically permitted to select as many backgrounds as you want, but only get one background benefit, I feel that the same should apply to skills: you get as many as you want, but when it comes to gameplay, you gain one bonus skill power.
I'm not going into specifics here.
One other issue with skills is that there's an implication that because it's a d20 roll, a high enough roll should be able to pull off any task. So you get skill monkeys with +50 to diplomacy, expecting to talk the main villain out of their plot. It's a problem with narrative. Players feel entitled to their skills, because it's part of their build. The point is, that's where the problem lies: you shouldn't have to sacrifice your gameplay for the sake of your narrative. Your narrative should be able to flow without sacrifice.
But I'm rambling a bit more than usual.
To me, skills feel like something that's not part of the challenge, but rather part of the narrative. To be part of the challenge, it really has to be something where players make active informed decisions. And when your skills boil down to "I have X% chance of doing this," that element doesn't really apply.
Skills, in my mind, should not be part of the challenge of the game. They are pass fail. That's not to say that your character may or may not play differently based on what skills they have. But rather, it's to say that if you distant skills from gameplay, then it doesn't matter what skills a character has, it's not going to be gamebreaking. It may break the *narrative,* but I think it's unwise to try and shoehorn protections against the destruction of narrative structure into the game-this is the same reason why I feel rituals, rather than being explicitly codified, should be vague and subject to the DM's whims. It's less about challenge and more about narrative.
That being said, I absolutely love skill powers. A DM can completely ignore skill checks altogether, yet skills can still be a useful part of a character's build. I feel like there's something to that. In the same way that you're technically permitted to select as many backgrounds as you want, but only get one background benefit, I feel that the same should apply to skills: you get as many as you want, but when it comes to gameplay, you gain one bonus skill power.
I'm not going into specifics here.
One other issue with skills is that there's an implication that because it's a d20 roll, a high enough roll should be able to pull off any task. So you get skill monkeys with +50 to diplomacy, expecting to talk the main villain out of their plot. It's a problem with narrative. Players feel entitled to their skills, because it's part of their build. The point is, that's where the problem lies: you shouldn't have to sacrifice your gameplay for the sake of your narrative. Your narrative should be able to flow without sacrifice.
But I'm rambling a bit more than usual.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
The Problem of Entitlement
Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to think arguments surrounding people being "entitled" are ridiculous. Unfortunately, when it comes to 4th Edition, I think the issue of entitlement really is a strong one.
Look at the off-line character builder. When Wizards of the Coast decided (rightly or wrongly) that they weren't going to offer everyone a permanent access to all the game's rules (up to a certain point) for the cost of a 1 month subscription, they pulled it. And there was backlash. A lot of backlash. People felt entitled to it.
But, even ignoring Wizard's concerns (that range from digital piracy to just how much they're really charging for content), entitlement is what Essentials is all about. Rather, it's about fighting that entitlement. Players feel entitled to artifacts. Players feel entitled to Slidespam builds for wizards. Players feel entitled to this and that.
If you take a look at an Essentials Only game-rarity rules, no pre-essentials classes, etc-you really don't see that. And surprise surprise, there's complaints about how the content sucks. Because it doesn't live up to the pre-existing expectations. And that's intentional: the game can't meet those expectations.
Wizards is releasing a lot less crunch, and a lot more fluff these days. And that's partially because it's easier for them to catch up with that much. But in the current market, I ask all players of the game: If you hadn't been given so much before, would you really think what you're getting now is inadequate?
Look at the off-line character builder. When Wizards of the Coast decided (rightly or wrongly) that they weren't going to offer everyone a permanent access to all the game's rules (up to a certain point) for the cost of a 1 month subscription, they pulled it. And there was backlash. A lot of backlash. People felt entitled to it.
But, even ignoring Wizard's concerns (that range from digital piracy to just how much they're really charging for content), entitlement is what Essentials is all about. Rather, it's about fighting that entitlement. Players feel entitled to artifacts. Players feel entitled to Slidespam builds for wizards. Players feel entitled to this and that.
If you take a look at an Essentials Only game-rarity rules, no pre-essentials classes, etc-you really don't see that. And surprise surprise, there's complaints about how the content sucks. Because it doesn't live up to the pre-existing expectations. And that's intentional: the game can't meet those expectations.
Wizards is releasing a lot less crunch, and a lot more fluff these days. And that's partially because it's easier for them to catch up with that much. But in the current market, I ask all players of the game: If you hadn't been given so much before, would you really think what you're getting now is inadequate?
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Not Exactly Top Tier
So apparently Sly Flourish is a popular site for Dungeon Mastering advice on 4th edition. They realized the same things about solo monsters I did, though taking a bit less of an issue by issue systemic approach to it.
I don't qualify for their top blogs, as I haven't been releasing posts weekly (inspiration is so hard to find~) but it's worth checking out, at http://slyflourish.com
I don't qualify for their top blogs, as I haven't been releasing posts weekly (inspiration is so hard to find~) but it's worth checking out, at http://slyflourish.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)