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Xae posted:A ton of balance in games designed by idiots is dependent on the GM.
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Mar 10, 2018 19:38
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I didn't know that "encounter design impacts game balance" was a controversial statement.
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Mar 10, 2018 19:48
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Xae posted:I didn't know that "encounter design impacts game balance" was a controversial statement. It's not that, it's that "encounter design is haaaaard" is a terrible excuse. 4E gets brought up a lot but... seriously, it fixed the multiple encounters thing because now people had about as many resources per person to deal with issues - so a Fighter is going roughly as strong as a Wizard at the same point in the adventuring 'day'. And it's not even the only system that 'fixes' this issue, but bad design apologists like to pretend it's some insurmountable obstacle that D&D could never possibly get past.
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Mar 10, 2018 20:09
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Xae posted:I didn't know that "encounter design impacts game balance" was a controversial statement.
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Mar 10, 2018 20:11
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homullus posted:Glad you're learning things, but of course that's not what you claimed anyway. The better-designed the game, the less it matters to game balance whether there are casters or martials in the party in a given encounter. In a good game, the GM doesn't need to carefully ration rests at varying rates to challenge the wizard/throw a bone to the fighter. Can you tell me what game system you play where GMs don't impact game balance. I would like to read about it.
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Mar 10, 2018 20:18
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Do you read words or just make up new things to respond to?
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Mar 10, 2018 20:22
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Xae posted:Can you tell me what game system you play where GMs don't impact game balance. I would like to read about it. Gloomhaven, the current best dungeon crawler game in existence.
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Mar 10, 2018 20:22
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:Reminder that the 3.5 Knight actually did have an mmo style aggro mechanic. My issue with mark-like mechanics in table top is independent of system or version. They are all lame hacks for a lack of a proper “get in the way to protect the party” mechanic. There are many ways to implement such a thing. AoOs were the initial lame attempt that failed because the cost of eating an attack to charge the caster wasn’t much of a deterrent and AoO trip/grapple wasn’t very reliable. The various intercepts were better but way too situational and limited, not to mention requiring feat taxes.
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Mar 10, 2018 20:26
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Marks represent certain class's unique combat training that allows them to exploit openings with speed and precision that other characters do not have, and in doing so force the enemy to not give those openings unless they want to get slammed with a hammer to the back of the dome. They aren't like an MMO taunt or whatever.
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Mar 10, 2018 20:28
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And even if they were like an MMO taunt or whatever how is that any sillier than the gentlemen's agreement that monsters will engage a metal wall while an artillery piece in a bathrobe stands ten feet further back?
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Mar 10, 2018 20:32
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Paolomania posted:My issue with mark-like mechanics in table top is independent of system or version. They are all lame hacks for a lack of a proper “get in the way to protect the party” mechanic. There are many ways to implement such a thing. AoOs were the initial lame attempt that failed because the cost of eating an attack to charge the caster wasn’t much of a deterrent and AoO trip/grapple wasn’t very reliable. The various intercepts were better but way too situational and limited, not to mention requiring feat taxes. Do you know where the term ‘marking’ comes from, and in what context it is used in the real world?
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Mar 10, 2018 20:33
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Xae posted:And the balance issues don't become super blatant until fairly high level. This isn't even true though. One of the more popular houserules for balancing 3.X characters was to stop level growth at 6 out of 20, which is hardly "fairly high level." If a game requires the GM to step in to ensure it works without going off the rails, it's not well designed. That's not really a very controversial statement either, and yet.
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Mar 10, 2018 20:43
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Kai Tave posted:This isn't even true though. One of the more popular houserules for balancing 3.X characters was to stop level growth at 6 out of 20, which is hardly "fairly high level." I was replying to something about 5e though?
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Mar 10, 2018 20:45
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Xae posted:I was replying to something about 5e though? In that case the latter part of my statement still applies.
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Mar 10, 2018 20:49
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Zurui posted:No, but I'm saying that it might have been better received. I mean, this is basically how Tome of Battle is written. Everyone hated book of nine swords, it was called "the book of weaboo fighting magic" constantly and banned in many games despite most of it being no worse, often much less worse, than similar caster powers. The entire reason for that was giving martials something to do. Nuns with Guns posted:Did anyone actually care about Greyhawk? I mean, clearly not because it's still in the pile of abandoned settings for 5e and nobody ever complains about that. I never had any deep attachments to the Forgotten Realms, but I don't see how "rewriting the Forgotten Realms lore.... again" makes 4e not-D&D. I actually never heard the term "Greyhawk" until 4e. I mean, I must have done, but I was never cognizant it was meant to be a setting in 3.5 until everyone bitched that it was gone in 4e. quote:Come to think of it, The Tome of Magic never drew as much heat for its scaled-down casters. Sure, you'd get people who would rightly call the Truenamer a hot mess, or be disappointed by the Shadowcaster, but the Binder got a lot of love. Nobody ever went on huge rants about what a break from tradition the classes were, or how ridiculous and unrealistic their powers were. Any negativity was heavily directed at the lack of playtesting, and even that was a lot more muted. I wonder why... The Binder was cool, to be fair. 4e's binder is very very bad but such is life.
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Mar 10, 2018 20:54
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Mors Rattus posted:Do you know where the term ‘marking’ comes from, and in what context it is used in the real world? I am not making a verisimilitude argument. I am making a mechanics argument. I don’t like the mechanic. Reactions and AoOs are other ways a player can express their defensive focus. I believe there are other unexplored mechanics to allow a player to express this. Just because marking is a solution does not mean it is the best solution.
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Mar 10, 2018 20:54
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Ferrinus posted:It's very easy to take 3e, 3.5e, Pathfinder, 5e, or whatever other D&D chassis you want and fix the LFQW problem: give fighters and rogues increasing amounts of per-day abilities that are comparable in power to spells of the same level. You don't have to touch existing casters at all - just make everyone quadratic. thank you i swear to god everyone seems to think the way to fix 3.5 is to remove all the powerful and fun parts. nobody wants to play that game. 4E isn't that game. d20 Modern is that game and it loving sucks.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:00
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Kai Tave posted:In that case the latter part of my statement still applies. I guess it depends on what you expect a GM to do. If the party is crutching hard one one or two abilities I don't see a problem with the GM throwing a few encounters at the party where those abilities don't work or aren't effective at all. I don't really see that as a problem. It doesn't matter if that abilities are sneaking in to always get a surprise or spells or summons or whatever. That is part of what I mean by encounter design. There are some pretty big balance problems in 5e, but they aren't some insurmountable problem. If players are just using hypnotic pattern, or whatever the flavor of the month is, having some charm immune creatures shakes things up. To me that isn't going off the rails, that is part of GMing. Would it be great if they waved a magic wand and fixed all the balance issues, yes. But I don't think anyone has a perfect system yet. Chill la Chill posted:Gloomhaven, the current best dungeon crawler game in existence. Thanks, I'll have to check it out. A couple of friends have been wanting to restart out Table Top group and this may avoid some of the issues with "No, you GM this time!" and scheduling conflicts.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:01
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spectralent posted:The Binder was cool, to be fair. Oh, yeah, the binder was awesome. I just thought it was interesting that people had no real issue with with the constant attempts to reinvent spellcasters in 3e, but any attempts to give martial class interesting stick hitting stunts gets read as an attempt to turn them into wizards (swordsage's explicit supernatural tricks notwithstanding).
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Mar 10, 2018 21:02
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Xae posted:Thanks, I'll have to check it out. A couple of friends have been wanting to restart out Table Top group and this may avoid some of the issues with "No, you GM this time!" and scheduling conflicts. Gloomhaven definitely fills that niche, and has some of the best tactical combat to boot. It definitely isn't a roleplaying game though, barring road/city events (which are 90% "do you want to feed the starving puppy or kick it?" choices).
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Mar 10, 2018 21:04
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Xae posted:I guess it depends on what you expect a GM to do. This is really disingenuous; limiting the powers of casters is not just as easy as throwing in the right monsters and even if you tried to do that the encounter rules themselves are hot garbage that - just like 3.X - require a pretty significant investment to start churning out regularly good results with. So that's what people talk about when they slam a game like 3.5 or 5E for this poo poo. It's not because the issues literally stop the game from functioning, it's that the issues exist at all because they really really don't have to anymore.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:08
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Xae posted:That is part of what I mean by encounter design. There are some pretty big balance problems in 5e, but they aren't some insurmountable problem. If players are just using hypnotic pattern, or whatever the flavor of the month is, having some charm immune creatures shakes things up. I don't think anybody disagreeing with you failed to understand what you meant by "encounter design." Many of us have seen that point of view before, and sadly, no amount of explaining ever seems to help people with that perspective. I hope someday you play -- or better still, GM -- a game in which the GM never needs to ask herself "how do I stop the casters this time?"
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Mar 10, 2018 21:16
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:thank you I guess one of the reasons why people are so unwilling to do this is because people don't want any wuxia and want everything that a fighter does to be completely possible in real life. That idea is admittedly dumb as nails and makes no sense but people are very against it for some reason.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:19
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As I already said it was tried with a set of 3.5 homebrew, which just showed that the 3.5 system curls up and dies even harder if you try to bring everyone up to the wizard's level.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:23
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homullus posted:I don't think anybody disagreeing with you failed to understand what you meant by "encounter design." Many of us have seen that point of view before, and sadly, no amount of explaining ever seems to help people with that perspective. I hope someday you play -- or better still, GM -- a game in which the GM never needs to ask herself "how do I stop the casters this time?" Exactly this. The minute you have to take steps to scale around basic class abilities by going outside the mechanics for resisting them, you have hit a pain point in the game design, not a GM scaling issue.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:26
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Sampatrick posted:I guess one of the reasons why people are so unwilling to do this is because people don't want any wuxia and want everything that a fighter does to be completely possible in real life. The thing is that they don't even want that - they want martials to be limited only to what they imagine an untrained nobody is capable of. When you see a trained UFC dude knock someone out in three seconds (unarmed!) or a guy in full plate doing aerobics, that becomes "unrealistic.' That thing you just saw in real life is less believable than if a wizard did it.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:27
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Countblanc posted:Gloomhaven definitely fills that niche, and has some of the best tactical combat to boot. It definitely isn't a roleplaying game though, barring road/city events (which are 90% "do you want to feed the starving puppy or kick it?" choices). It is a roleplaying game in the same way D&D is a roleplaying game wrt dungeon crawling and killing stuff. I could reinvent the wheel but this panel pretty much covers anything I'd reply with here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERc0-mp75oY where they talk about D&D as a roleplaying game, the first ~10-15 min. They lay down framework if you want to start from the beginning, but the sweet spot starts ~10 min in. e: I love listening to this again in the background. If grognards.txt or game design starts up again, they should host this video as well as some of their other basic game design videos Chill la Chill fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 21:34
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Lol at Pathfinder 2e turning this thread back to 2008 again. It's true. All edition wars really are just the 4e edition war all over again!
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Mar 10, 2018 21:37
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moths posted:The thing is that they don't even want that - they want martials to be limited only to what they imagine an untrained nobody is capable of. Let us never forget the classic "tested by strapping a mouse to your wrist" defense.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:38
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Paolomania posted:I am not making a verisimilitude argument. I am making a mechanics argument. I don’t like the mechanic. Reactions and AoOs are other ways a player can express their defensive focus. I believe there are other unexplored mechanics to allow a player to express this. Just because marking is a solution does not mean it is the best solution. Marking is functionally an AoO for hitting someone that isn't you.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:43
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One of the issues with 3.X and 5E both is that a game ought to be transparent and they often aren't. They present a big wad of stuff, tell you "oh this is all fine," and then leave it up to you to untangle it and figure out all the ways it's actually janky as hell and then you have to fix it yourself. Nobody here thinks that a GM shouldn't be allowed to adjust the difficulty dial on a game up or down if they want, but the problem with these games is they get in the way of doing that with a bunch of, yes, badly designed mechanics. Gradenko_2000 has infinitely more patience than I do to delve into the nuts and bolts of why 5E's encounter design math is bad and outright misleading, 3.X's isn't much better, and this applies to both sides of the table. One doesn't have to be a degenerate min maxer to go "hey a druid with a bear companion would be pretty fun" and then inadvertently discover that whoops, you just invalidated the Fighter. So now the GM has to pull triple duty as not only the guy running the game but also the guy fixing the game and the guy trying to find some way to finesse the player side social contract so Bob the Fighter Player doesn't feel like a 5th wheel while at the same time allowing Dan the Druid to continue playing his character without feeling like he's getting punitively nerfed over an innocent decision and oh yeah, don't forget Clerics and Wizards and whatever else, and maybe you shouldn't play a Monk, yeah I know it sounds cool but trust me.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:43
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Chill la Chill posted:It is a roleplaying game in the same way D&D is a roleplaying game wrt dungeon crawling and killing stuff. I could reinvent the wheel but this panel pretty much covers anything I'd reply with here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERc0-mp75oY where they talk about D&D as a roleplaying game, the first ~10-15 min. They lay down framework if you want to start from the beginning, but the sweet spot starts ~10 min in. lmao I got to the 22m mark and they even recommend Descent as a better game. I bet if they do this panel again next year at Magfest, they might change that to Gloomhaven.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:46
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Seems there's only one way to see if Pathfinder 2 is good or bad. Someone start a goon playtest
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Mar 10, 2018 21:46
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moths posted:The thing is that they don't even want that - they want martials to be limited only to what they imagine an untrained nobody is capable of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAzI1UvlQqw I like this video as an example. Guys in firefighting bunker gear, modern military armor, and full plate run the same obstacle course.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:52
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Slimnoid posted:5e is poo poo, but Pathfinder is just poo poo covered in chocolate sauce to make it seem like ice cream rather than the offal it actually is. I've been playing 5e lately due to being in a casual group that isn't really aware of rpgs much beyond "current dnd edition or pathfinder," and 5e is definitely poo poo but I'm finding it to be more playable poo poo than 3.X/PF, if only because the lack of poo poo like skill points and replacing fiddly +/-1s with advantage, etc at least make it somewhat streamlined poo poo, so the game and chargen/progression downtime poo poo have been going at a smoother pace than 3.X. Overall it's slightly shittier in some ways and slighty less lovely in others, but the reduced bookkeeping makes it get in the way of "friends bullshitting and roleplaying at the game" less than 3.X imo, and "enjoy playing even a lovely system with friends because the name recognition of D&D/PF is what gets them willing to try it at all" is all either system's really good for anyway.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:52
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spectralent posted:Marking is functionally an AoO for hitting someone that isn't you. It's also proactive in a way AoO isn't.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:53
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Sampatrick posted:I guess one of the reasons why people are so unwilling to do this is because people don't want any wuxia and want everything that a fighter does to be completely possible in real life. That idea is admittedly dumb as nails and makes no sense but people are very against it for some reason. No but you see casters can't do anything that's impossible in real life either, therefore
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Mar 10, 2018 21:58
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Xae posted:If the party is crutching hard one one or two abilities I don't see a problem with the GM throwing a few encounters at the party where those abilities don't work or aren't effective at all. I don't really see that as a problem. I played a 3.5 game in college where the Wizard player had read some guides and knew that loading up his character with save-or-lose effects, difficult-to-resist corner cases, and threat-obviating utilities was the way to go. It only took a few levels for the DM to start noticing that the Wizard was breaking encounters over his knee, so every encounter from there on in became an exercise of "What can I throw at them that's most resistant to whatever he did last fight?" After that, the game balance was a constant arms race between the DM and the Wizard, with the former poring through monster lists to find ones with the right combinations of immunities and resistances, and the Wizard poring through spell lists to find ones that bypasses those immunities and resistances in new ways Now, would a Truly Good DM have found a better solution to this all, potentially taking the Wizard player aside and saying "Hey, I know your class has a lot of really cool and powerful effects that you want to use, but why don't we look at some spell lists together to figure out ones that fit your character, let you feel like a total badass, but don't completely wipe out f the average group of monsters in a way that requires all this rapid mutual escalation"? Yeah, probably. But that's the thing: other than that issue, he was quite a good DM. The setting was fun, the characters and set pieces were exciting, and even the combat encounters were great in the rare instances where they hit an equilibrium between overpowered spells and overpowered monsters. A system that requires a DM to master that additional skill of delicate negotiation and on-the-fly player-based balance, in addition to all the ones that our DM was regularly displaying... is maybe a flawed and burdensome system!
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Mar 10, 2018 22:14
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Running a game shouldn't be so much homework. This is what I believe.
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Mar 10, 2018 22:17
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As far as perspectives on balance go, three things come up I've talked about in other threads in the past. 1) Balance isn't just about ceilings - it's about floors, too. Wizard has basically NO ceiling to their power in 3.x; if you want to do it, and you know how, you can find a way to do it, regardless of what "it" is. But they also have an extremely low floor, maybe the lowest in the game; a wizard who DOESN'T know the "how" is going to be substantially weaker, potentially even neigh useless. What makes the wizard powerful in 3.x really isn't intuitive in the slightest; most people who play it wanna just chuck fireballs, and why not? That's how D&D wizards work in all media about them! But of course, that ends up being one of the worst ways to play one. It's hard to believe wizards are OP when everyone you know who's played one has sucked at it. 2) Balance expectations aren't always flat. There's a lot of people who will go "what? Wizards aren't overpowered at all" not because they aren't, but because their expectations FOR the wizard include them being just plain better and more powerful then others. This is where you see a lot of "the wizard isn't overpowered, all they can do is cast their spells!" A lot of this is in made up class "niches." It's also where you get 5e's "We have three pillars of gameplay, and fighters only ever interact with one, but that's ok, they're Real Good at it!" So in a good part of this, you have to fight the fact that, for a lot of people, wizards are supposed to be a little OP. Their spells are supposed to be super powerful. Their daily limits toooooottally balance them, look - the book even says! 3) Wizard vs Fighter is an absolutely terrible comparison. Yes, on the narrative scale, wizards and fighters ARE truly on opposite ends of the spectrum - but very, very few people actually pay attention to how the game works and acts narratively. Instead, you want to approach it from the perspective of class niches. Remember number 2! People expect the wizard to to stand behind the fighter and throw spells to end the fight; telling them that will only help cement in that This Is Right. Instead, you wanna compare fighter to druid / cleric and ROGUE to wizard. It's easier to claim that the wizard ending the fight in one spell is no big deal, because "that's what wizards do," but it's harder to claim that it's totally fair that a cleric should be a cleric and a fighter. It's likewise a lot harder to argue when the wizard actually does just poo poo all over the rogue and what the rogue is supposed to be good at.
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