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Jun 24, 2012 -- 10:09PM, nexusvalhees wrote:

 Seriously screw little jonny, and screw dur shinyshield.

 Your response sounds one dimensional to me... the use of the term hero isnt necessarily an alignment thing. The heroic element can be a question of scale rather than refering to a code of ethics.

OK on your  "hard mode" is it hard for that wizard/codzilla too? or just hard because you didnt win the game by chosing the right class. Or is hard mode only fake hard because fluke die rolls are really what you are battling against.

Jun 24, 2012 -- 10:56PM, Reyemile wrote:

I think the point is, you can't base game balance on the assumption of a lawful good party that will risk its members lives to save whichever innocent villager has been kidnapped this week. It's a style of play, but an extremely narrow one.

And it's just one example.  For any flaw or imbalance you might find in a game, you can probably find a style of play for which it will never be an issue.  In fact, you can probably find a style of play that works /really well/ in that game, because of that issue.  

One of several impossible goals of 5e is to provide a D&D for all play styles.  It seems the working model for doing this is to create a huge number of different games under the D&D label, each one of which works best with a given play style.  That way each style is 'supported,' all you have to do is uncover the right combination of modules and DM rulings to make it work.  

An alternative would be a robustly-balanced game that doesn't break under any particularly style of play.  

There are advantages to each.  

The advantage to a single, balanced game is obviously consistency - players could go from DM to DM without re-learning the game, being a DM wouldn't require much design talent or 'system mastery,' organized and casual play would be a snap.  

The advantage to customized imbalance is that it could be used by the DM to customize his rule set to 'encourage' the kind of play he wants at his table.  So if you /want/ 5-minute workdays (and the hillarity that ensues when players accustomed to them face time preassure or other 'gotchyas'), you pick modules and make ruling that give that style of play the biggest mechanical 'rewards.'  You could customize the rules to make combat the only way to go, or to make it a last resort.  You could customize it to favor players who are glib or to make their lives misearable.  

Jun 24, 2012 -- 11:18AM, Titanium_Dragon wrote:

Jun 24, 2012 -- 11:13AM, Daganev wrote:

Jun 24, 2012 -- 11:08AM, Reyemile wrote:

Jun 24, 2012 -- 11:01AM, Daganev wrote:

Jun 24, 2012 -- 10:56AM, Reyemile wrote:

Jun 24, 2012 -- 10:48AM, Daganev wrote:

It really doesn't matter why they camp so often, the adventure is always continuning. 

Okay, here is the point of disagreement between us, then.

This does matter to me. Because if my fighter is ready and raring to charge into the dungeon, but instead is stuck waiting for the Wiz to finish his nap, I tend to feel marginalized and unimportant.

Then leave the wizard behind, and force her to catch up with you, like that kid in Indiana Jones.


You are conflating issues.

Issue 1.  Either DM doesn't like, or versimiltude finds it strange, that the party is resting for 12 hours every 15 minutes. 

Issue 2. Some member of the party doesn't want to rest when other members of the party do.

These issues are not even related, and have completely seperate solutions to the problem. 

But both of those issues stem from the same root cause: an imbalanced system. The casters 1) had more power than the fighter when they had a full load of spells, 2) had a resource mechanic not balanced with the fighter, leaving the wizards with the potential to exhaust themselves into uselessness, and 3) had the capability to negate the majority of downsides of camping regularly with simple, low-level spells.

Both issue 1 and issue 2 stem from an imabalanced system, and both issue 1 and issue 2 cause the game to revolve around casters and marginalize non-casters.

Since I have played the game for years, and never encountered this situation until I played 4e, the problem can not be caused by imbalanced classes.

It is generally agreed that 4e has balanced classes, but it suffers the most from 15 minute work days.

Actually, you're wrong. It is generally agreed that editions -prior to- 4th edition suffered the most from it. In 4th edition, the 15 minute workday was actually quite rare - characters were powerful enough even if they had no dailies left at all to continue on in an adventure. The only times people really retreated from adventures was when someone ran out of healing surges.

Compare to 3rd edition, where the issue was rampant. Teleport made escaping from the middle of any adventure trivial, as did spells like Rope Trick, and players used these all the time to pop in and out. Moreover, as some characters were entirely dependent upon dailies, and those characters were by far the most powerful ones, and the ones who could pop in and out.

Issue 1 is a problem caused by players wanting maximum power for every single potential fight.  It is caused by players rejecting the idea that sometimes you continue even when tired because "the show must go on."  This is solved by forcing them to continue on with random encounters.  Soon the players learn that they will not always be at maximum power, even if they want to be.

There is, of course, another solution: make it so it doesn't work. Maybe daily powers are x per level rather than x per day, for instance.

Issue 2 is a problem caused by the group of players not communicating well with eachother.  If one player is feeling left out, then communication needs to happen between the DM and the players, or one player and others, and they need to resolve it like adults.   This can only be solved by understanding the dynamics of the group, and working together.

The real problem here was that in really unbalanced systems (prior to 4th) you had some characters who were entirely daily dependent, and others who could only do anything at all even remotely approximating usefulness once the casters were empty.

Sorry, but even if it's possible for me to be wrong about my own experiences, you can't know that.

I never had the 5 minute work day while playing 2e or 3e.  I DID have it while playing 4e.

Whatever you think the cause of the problem is, or whichever eddition had the problem more frequenetly than the others, the fact is, nothing unique to 2e or 3e is the CAUSE of the problem.   If it were, then I would never have experienced it in 4e either.

So yeah.. No you are wrong.