Dungeons and Devils

[Mardoc]

never tried this before, might be fun

Yep...but, uber, my game is already full. There might well be enough interest for a second one, though, given how fast the first one filled.

how does it work with people in different time zones?

Slowly, I assume .

[pling]

Yes, Pling, you're welcome. When I posted that, I was pretty sure you'd still want in when you came back. Anyway, teaching newcomers is fun. Makes you take a second look at what you're doing and why you're doing it. Looks like we have all levels of experience: people familiar with this system, people familiar with other systems, and newcomers entirely. But really the most important thing is a willingness to tell a story together.

Cool

[uberfish]

I'll just lurk then

[Iainuki]

Since the D&D game that was organized in this thread got started, I took a look at the Pathfinder rules out of curiosity to see if I could follow what was going on. What I saw told me that my friend's summary of their approach, way back when they were first making Pathfinder, was correct: they didn't seem interested in learning from the people who understood the system. Thus, they ended up with a bunch of buffs and nerfs that are random with respect to the underlying balance: they nerfed mithral full plate, the spiked chain, and wild shape, then buffed wizard. What? Pathfinder doesn't tackle any of 3.5's central problems.

I've never seen a community of designers and players as resistant to understanding design and how their own systems work as the D&D community. (This seems to carry over to table-top RPGs in general, since old World of Darkness had similar problems back in the day, but the D&D community is worse even than they were.) People have broken down every single major problem with the system in small words many times, only to hear endless iterations of the Oberoni Fallacy and similar nonsense in response.

[Cyneheard]

Since the D&D game that was organized in this thread got started, I took a look at the Pathfinder rules out of curiosity to see if I could follow what was going on. What I saw told me that my friend's summary of their approach, way back when they were first making Pathfinder, was correct: they didn't seem interested in learning from the people who understood the system. Thus, they ended up with a bunch of buffs and nerfs that are random with respect to the underlying balance: they nerfed mithral full plate, the spiked chain, and wild shape, then buffed wizard. What? Pathfinder doesn't tackle any of 3.5's central problems.

My impressions:
1) It's got a TON of flavor options. This is potentially cool and fun, but not necessarily well-balanced, as you point out. And at some point it becomes complexity for the sake of complexity. I already know base 3.5; is Pathfinder sufficiently improved that I need to relearn almost all of the details to play and design my character (different feat progression, not sure if items are set up the same way, even a new point-buy system, oh, and all the new class and race features)?
2) Yeah, buffing wizard makes 0 sense. D6 HD and an improved arcane school system? Not needed. Lots of spells were blocked because they had too much plot power (I'm looking at you, scry!).
3) WOTC recognized that 3.5 combat classes were underpowered; that's why they created the Tome of Battle (a splatbook that sadly isn't in either the base SRD or in Pathfinder): it gives a lot of encounter powers for its combat types.

The base 3.5 SRD is available here: http://www.d20srd.org

[Mardoc]

Iainuki - I agree that the Pathfinder changes seem to be mostly unrelated to balance - they're focused more on the pieces people found annoying than the ones that were unbalanced.

What's the purpose in balancing the system, though? It's just there to be a backdrop for a story. You almost never pit one class against another, most combats are determined more by the tactical skills and preparation than by class abilities, most of the game happens outside of combat anyway. And, for the most part, balance is handled socially, by objecting to munchkins and adjusting encounters.

I'd rather spend my time thinking up an interesting situations and encounters and such, than spend it trying to balance such a wide variety of options. 4e seems much more balanced, yet also boring, because that balance came with a lot of restrictions on options. Balance might matter more if the game were competitive. But...it's not. The players are all supposed to work together, and the DM isn't really trying to beat them, either. I honestly think that if you're in a situation where balance is front and center, you've already failed as a group.

[BRickAstley]

I'd rather spend my time thinking up an interesting situations and encounters and such, than spend it trying to balance such a wide variety of options. 4e seems much more balanced, yet also boring, because that balance came with a lot of restrictions on options. Balance might matter more if the game were competitive. But...it's not. The players are all supposed to work together, and the DM isn't really trying to beat them, either. I honestly think that if you're in a situation where balance is front and center, you've already failed as a group.

[Ranamar]

4e seems much more balanced, yet also boring, because that balance came with a lot of restrictions on options.
...
I honestly think that if you're in a situation where balance is front and center, you've already failed as a group.

Speaking as someone who has managed to make characters that seemed interesting and effective but turned out to be completely overshadowed by other characters in the group, there is a purpose to balance: allowing everyone to feel useful. (My experience was in 2e, but I really did ask myself why I was even bothering.) In 4e, you have to *try* to make a useless character, but, in earlier editions, there are a zillion system-mastery traps, and I've fallen into a lot of them.

To use a classic 3.5e example, a Wizard who slings fireballs and maybe hastes his buddies is not terribly broken and is maybe even a little underwhelming. (I like to sling fireballs...) On the other hand, a wizard that pushes polymorph and buff spells to their limits can climb better than anyone else, find traps, magic doors away, and turn into a monster that fights as well as a fighter... and then when things get really bad pulls out the win buttons, because it turns out those aren't even them. I think that's really degenerate. This only really becomes the case at above L10, for better or worse.
I don't know if Pathfinder handles that, but 4e handled it by removing most of the utility spells the Wizard had and making the ones like Knock take 10 minutes, so it can't steal the lockpicker's (for example) spotlight anyway.

On the other hand, I eventually realized that the virtues I saw in 4e that you decried as boring meant that I really should be playing board games rather than D&D, so I eventually did that.

[Iainuki]

Speaking as someone who has managed to make characters that seemed interesting and effective but turned out to be completely overshadowed by other characters in the group, there is a purpose to balance: allowing everyone to feel useful. (My experience was in 2e, but I really did ask myself why I was even bothering.) In 4e, you have to *try* to make a useless character, but, in earlier editions, there are a zillion system-mastery traps, and I've fallen into a lot of them.

To use a classic 3.5e example, a Wizard who slings fireballs and maybe hastes his buddies is not terribly broken and is maybe even a little underwhelming. (I like to sling fireballs...) On the other hand, a wizard that pushes polymorph and buff spells to their limits can climb better than anyone else, find traps, magic doors away, and turn into a monster that fights as well as a fighter... and then when things get really bad pulls out the win buttons, because it turns out those aren't even them. I think that's really degenerate. This only really becomes the case at above L10, for better or worse.

Ranamar hits the big reason that balance among classes is important: all the players should feel useful. The worst aspect of this in 3e is that while full casters have spells and rogues have skills for handling traps, solving puzzles, finding information, convincing people, and so on, classes like fighter can't contribute out of combat. That's in addition to the imbalance in combat.

That's only an aspect of the problem. The Monster Manual has a system of challenge ratings and encounter levels for estimating how difficult a given set of monsters will be for a party of a given level. Here's the problem: past level 3 or so, these CRs are scaled to the full casters. If you assemble a party of all non-casters without any rogues (rogue being the one good core non-caster class), they will find the encounters far more difficult than the EL would suggest. What is a 5th-level party without casters going to do to a greater barghest (blink and invisibility sphere at will, charm monster and crushing despair 1/day), large air elemental (DR 5/---, Flyby Attack with a flight speed of 100'), rast (paralyzing gaze, Con-damaging blood drain attack), troll (regeneration 5, rend for big damage), wraith (incorporeal, Con-draining touch), six-headed hydra (fast healing 16, six bites for big damage) or ochre jelly (splits when hit with piercing or slashing weapons)? They'll win, eventually, after taking lots of damage. How hard would a similar party of full casters find those same encounters? And the gap between a party of full casters and a party without any casters keeps growing with level.

There's also a problem with balance among monsters, some probably introduced deliberately (dragons are under-CRed given their powers) and others unintentional (big melee brutes like giants tend to be over-CRed). This tends to be easier for a DM to handle by spot-nerfing or buffing, but the dispersion makes the DM's job harder.

[spellman]

On the other hand, I eventually realized that the virtues I saw in 4e that you decried as boring meant that I really should be playing board games rather than D&D, so I eventually did that.

Munchkin time!