[D&D]Balance killed my game
Patrice:
Thing is, Callan, my issue doesn't lay so much upon the challenges being not deadly enough as it lays upon the options being too limited. One damn stupid thing D&D designers didn't quite get (yes, I dare :) is that providing endless lists of powers don't actually provide more tactical choices. It's just providing more color upon an existing limited framework of powers (okay maybe they've got that after all and just want to sell power-filled books or whatever, I dunno). If I raise the challenge level, I'll just outright kill my PCs without providing more possibilities for Stepping on Up and Challenge. That won't give us the belief in how our tactical skills allowed us to win.
I love your use of random generators and the massaging part, it's a great way to twist the game. Or maybe to play it as another game entirely. It'll deserve a thread of its own someday :).
Ayyavazi:
Hey Patrice and Callan,
So, I like 4th edition. But don't worry. I'm amused by the aids comparison. It is so accurate its scary. And Patrice, I don't care that you dare call the designers stupid. They can be. They have a very focused brilliance, and when made aware of the other 99% of design, I think their brains shut down. But this topic isn't about bashing designers.
No tactics or skill? Really? How much have you compared and contrasted the power lists for classes within their element? That is, within their role of Defender, Striker, Leader, and Controller. Yes, the difference between classes with the same role is certainly a matter of flavor, and the choices amount to the same basic framework. But the little differences in tactics define the class. For example, a cleric has a balance of melee attack powers and ranged attack powers. The warlord has melee attack powers and ranged attack powers in the form of granting attacks to allies, which is just different enough to change the way a group would handle a given fight.
Likewise, within the individual power use, the powers are subtly different. There is a lot of overlap to be sure, and you are right that the level of difficulty keeps pace almost the entire time. But here's where the real strategy comes in: choosing powers as a group and thinking as a group about how to use them and when. Some powers move monsters around, others take advantage of that movement. Some powers afflict an enemy with a status, others take advantage of it. The challenge in 4th is not individual achievement, but group achievement through group tactics, all the way from character creation up through actual play.
Another instance is in the limit to use of your abilities. You only get to use encounter powers once each encounter, and dailies once each in game day. So, as the game day wears on, dailies thin out and characters have to rely on their bread and better to see them through. And if they are trying to rest to get them back, give them a hard time occasionally. Interrupt their sleep, give them no good location, give them a story that has to be completed in the next six hours of in game time. So, when do the players use their dailies? Do you coordinate, or just wait for something tough to show up and blow 'em all at the same time? And what about encounters?
I have more but have to go.
Callan S.:
Quote from: Patrice on July 23, 2009, 03:35:37 PM
Thing is, Callan, my issue doesn't lay so much upon the challenges being not deadly enough as it lays upon the options being too limited. One damn stupid thing D&D designers didn't quite get (yes, I dare :) is that providing endless lists of powers don't actually provide more tactical choices. It's just providing more color upon an existing limited framework of powers (okay maybe they've got that after all and just want to sell power-filled books or whatever, I dunno). If I raise the challenge level, I'll just outright kill my PCs without providing more possibilities for Stepping on Up and Challenge. That won't give us the belief in how our tactical skills allowed us to win.
Okay, here's another way the D&D virus adapts - it's not about the tactics, it's about the guts! Just choosing to face up to the odds is step on up! Of course, the design gives you a whole lot of 'choices' which don't add up to much (A +2 to hit is going to affect things...10% of the time...so 10% of the time you step on up...), so it doesn't quite make sense as to why all that's there if its about guts of facing the odds. But at the same time you can't say it doesn't have gutsy gamism!
Observe the meme mutate and adapt!
Ya gotta nail it in a more fundimental way than that.
Mind you, in another thread of mine I proposed making a program that generated 100 random rules and someone said groups could find a way in such a game. I was gobsmacked! If a hundred, genuinely random rules isn't by general consensus considered crap, can anything be considered crap?
Quote
I love your use of random generators and the massaging part, it's a great way to twist the game. Or maybe to play it as another game entirely.
Nay! The monster tables are optional! Massaging their results does not mean I ceased to play the game as they are optional results! *sarcasm upon myself intended, even as I did this and as a group we enjoyed it for several levels*
contracycle:
In a way D&D seems to me inversely gamist. The toughest, riskiest, seat-of-your-pants conflict happens at 1st-3rd level. Advancing an armourless mage to cast Sleep on a bunch of goblins is both risky and decisive. Trading sword blows with anyone when you have say 10-14 hp is inherently risky. By 10th level, not so much. They've got +3 sword and stuff and you have 100hp. If you roll 10d6 for fireball and lightning bolt, it is more likely to fall on the mean than if you rolled 6d6. Things get steadily more aggregated, less decisive, more attritional as you level. And then you take that and add a challenge rating system that scales opposition, and you end up with a largely pointless treadmill. All that really changes as you level is the special effects; if anything the combat itself becomes more and more grind-like, with less and less opportunity for a single action, or even dumb luck, to change the course of events.
Patrice:
Contracycle, I think you may be referring to former editions of the game here. What I've noticed with D&D4 is rather "it's too hard to grasp and too easy to master". The first sessions were slaughterhouses, mayhem, sheer player killing madness. But as soon as the players got the idea, with all the elements Ayyavazi is referencing (teamplay, synergic use of powers and abilities, timing of limited use powers), the game lost its interest. From a distance, it seems they match into strategy thinking, but they don't. When we got back into level 1 with this knowledge, the adventure wasn't a match anymore.
Your reactions, Ayyavazi and Callan, as well as the fact I've just stressed, make me think that, as Jasper pointed it, the game is maybe Gamist brand after all, but with dials set at such a low level that it loses its interest for more committed gamers. When you tell me, Callan, (and that's basically what Ayyavazi is also telling) that good tactics grant me 10% to shine and change the challenge facts, I lose all interest in it. Especially since this good tactics is a standard use of your powers, as easy to put in motion as if it had dropped straight from the book.
So, as I wonder why I lose interest I've come to think that the game prevents Gotchas! and doesn't rely upon combo logics. It's not just a matter of scope, it's the level of detailed thinking involved to refrain players (DM included) from anything able to swing more than this 10% change in the challenge. That's why I've called this thread "Balance killed my game". I think the Guild Wars engine (will you allow me to compare Tabletop RPG and video games engines?) is a good example of what renders the opposite choice in design: thousands of options that DO matter, much alike M:TG. It combines personal options and team options with full efficiency, even giving way to whatever cunning players will find to tweak it. D&D4 is a pretense of that, but the real thing doesn't even fall close to combination use, it actually forbids it (I have yet to check what the hybrid classes will open, though).
Granted then, it's probably just a matter of scale. I don't call a 10% change a change, others do. Mind, it's a matter of scale in Efficiency (Forge meaning).
One more thing, I'm not trying to tell the whole game sucks at all. There are a few brilliant ideas inside and if you take the whole tactical choice thing as a way to "style" your character and team, you sure have a lot to play with. What turns me off is that these choices eventually matter so little in the task resolution that, as far as my Gamist needs (habits?) are concerned, they're pointless.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page