Character Design and Balance

Going back to Labyrinth Lord and it's simpler characters made me think about the supposed advancements in character design from D&D 3.0 and forward. This also includes  non D&D systems with detailed character design systems where the variance in character power (the min-max factor) varies widely based on design choices. Let's do some charts!

The above reflects B/X systems, Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, and most other pre D&D 3.0 designs. As your character goes up in levels, their power goes up on a predictable, fixed rate. A 5th level fighter is pretty similar in powers and fighting ability as most every other 5th level fighter in a B/X style system, given average hit point rolls (that and gear determine character power). As a result, the balance curve is tighter.

Note that this chart only compares characters of the same class, the differences in balance between classes, such as mage and fighter, is still wildly different and follows D&D's asymmetrical system of balancing the glass cannon spellcasters versus the front-line meat shield martial classes. So we are comparing fighters to fighters, and mages to mages here. Let's turn the clock forward to newer games and look at systems with a wider variety of character design choices:

The next chart is character design as we expect systems with a lot of character customization. You can pick feats to enhance your combat power, you can make all sorts of other tweaks and design decisions to favor a weapon or power, and there is a wide latitude in choices of character design. This chart also reflects games with a wide difference in choices where a great character design can blow out the game's difficulty curve. This is also what we by default expect as well - since we want our choices to matter, and we expect good choices to be rewarded well.

The yellow area reflects abilities, feats, class powers, and other abilities outside of the normal hit points, to-hit, and spells from B/X. Pathfinder and the D&D games 3.0 and up have this "extra added" group of abilities normally found in character creation and  bonus class abilities (like a Pathfinder mage's force missiles or D&D 5's infinite-use cantrips). In short, the yellow area covers all the possible customization and extra powers that differ from B/X characters.

Above the red line are optimal designs, while below it are less-optimal - and this definition can vary depending on the referee and how the group plays. If you play all combat, then good designs will focus on combat. If you play mostly social, then good designs will be social-focused. Balanced social/combat games will see balanced social/combat character designs push above the line.

There is also a baseline difficulty adjustment that should be mentioned as well, since a B/X level one character is the weakest, a D&D 3.5 level one is a little stronger, and so on up to Pathfinder - at least among the fantasy game versions I am used to. D&D 4 and D&D 5 are a little more difficult to compare since hit-points and damages are scaled up.

But this covers these games well and a high-level view of character design expectations. I say expect here because this is often how a game looks when you first play it. You see hundreds of options and your first assumption is they are all good. As you play, you naturally discover the good from the bad, the feats and characters design choices that make your character excel, and the chart shifts a little to the actual chart below:

Character designs have a tendency to min-max towards the greatest effectiveness. As a result, the game's balance trends towards that area in green, because everyone wants the game to be exciting and fun, with encounters that challenge well-designed characters. As a designer, you want to narrow the range for balancing content, because there will be less variance in monster strength and encounter design.

Balancing All This

If I am a game designer, I want that green area to be as tight as possible (while still feeling good). You don't want too much difference between an average character and an optimized one, because you don't want min-max'ed "best" character designs blowing out average encounters. You want them doing well and feeling good about their choices, but you don't want them pushing everything over with ease.

Less than optimized characters? I don't really care about them and they can fall off the balance curve if they are terribly designed. You want some of this "lots of terrible designs" thing going on so you can create that 'system mastery' feeling in your game where you try repeated designs and discover what works best and what gets you towards that red line of average expected competence and character power. I remember somewhere where the designers of D&D 3.0 said they included less-than optimal choices in character design just to fill out a range of good choices and bad choices, just like deck building in Magic the Gathering. The silly non-historical double-ended greatswords and warhammers come to mind...

Now, if every character design choice is equal? You are back to the B/X chart and none of this matters. I am sort of reminded of D&D 5's system, where if you want to be a certain type of fighter you pick the ability you are expected to take, such as the Fighting Styles and Class Archetypes in that system. The entire character design system in D&D 5 is a lot tighter than games like Pathfinder, with less choices but more focused in both balance and the abilities you are expected to take given how you want your character to perform. The envelope is tighter in D&D 5, but there are still bad choices given what you want to do (taking an archery fighting style as a fighter and never using a bow, for example).

Why This Matters

As a player? I want to design and min-max, and that is a big part of the fun for me. I also want the game to be balanced and have the fights not be too easy or too hard.

As a referee? I want to be able to predict player power to balance encounters and not have the game either be too easy or result in a total party wipe. I also do not want "design as distraction" where players experience choice paralysis or the entire design system takes over the game.

Both players and referees want balance and to avoid the extremes of too easy or too hard. I like the encounter balancing systems of the newer rules, but for me as a referee, I never really had a problem balancing a B/X experience either - although I know that opinion is outside the current view of things.

To me, in a B/X experience, balance was more of a player-focused concern - they knew what they could fight (based on experience), and they were the ones who had to judge if they should open that next door. My secret "good DM" promise to players was not to put any monsters on the current level that would wipe them all out in the blink of an eye (something again, I learned through experience and the simple and mostly predictable nature of B/X combats plus limited monster lists). No ancient red dragons above dungeon level 7, please. Keep hit dice equal to dungeon level and player level, and use quantity and encounter composition to match party strength. Got it.

If I screwed up encounter balance and things started to go very badly? GM fiat time. Make some monsters weaker, have some run away, give the players an out, or make the monsters hold back a little out of caution. Fudging rolls was usually a last resort for me, and if I did, it was usually on monster to-hits while the players made a hasty retreat to lick their wounds and regroup.

Player Skill versus Design Skill

There are times when I want to take character design skill out of a game and just have a system that rewards creative play and player ingenuity. If your level 5 fighter is just like every other, then how you play them will make a big difference in your success or failure. Of course, there is the factor of random chance, but part of playing an old-school B/X game also involves a bit of risk mitigation and understanding random chances and trying to control odds.

I have had games where the character designs felt like they took over the game, and the players were focused on getting a numerical advantage through character design. I have seen games where a character's design and numerical advantage acted as a disincentive to attempting actions outside of their area of expertise. It is like am archery-focused fighter way above the range-combat power curve hesitating to get into melee combat because their character is only average at melee fighting.

A good referee will force characters outside of their comfort zones, but I found game systems with heavily min-max'ed character design systems make doing that a lot harder. I have had players disengage rather than be forced to fight outside of their numerical comfort zones. I don't blame the players though, I blame the game for putting them in that mindset. Some games tend to punish you hard for that risk-taking and out-of-the-box play, such as D&D 4 and the amount of optimizing needed to keep up with the content's ever-increasing challenge level (at least when we played, it changed several times as new monster manuals and revisions came out).

System Forgiveness and Flexibility

D&D 5 for us tends to be a very forgiving system. There is a lot of healing, character death is more difficult, there are many options and infinite-use spells for casters, and the game feels more like D&D 4's sort of MMO-inspired experience that is more player-friendly and focused. Characters are also mechanically complex with a lot of design options given the type of character you want to play. The game is also more story-focused like a modern narrative game, and as a result tends to reward "story based play" rather than the old-school "slay and loot" style.

B/X systems, for us, are a lot simpler, the characters are fast to design and die often, and the entire system is a lot less forgiving of bad luck or mistakes. They can approach the difficulty level of today's "rage games" in some insta-death adventures, and I find my players are a lot more crafty when they have less options and character advantages to fall back on. With less mechanical abilities, my great players are always trying to come up with creative ways to manipulate the situation to their advantage despite not having the "rules tools" to do so.

I have also seen less experienced players in old-school games "freeze up" because they don't think they can do much outside of "cast the spell" or "roll an attack." This is one of the hardest skills to pick up in systems that ;eave a lot up to interpretation, knowing that you as a player are free to come up with anything you can imagine you could do, and also that you are the referee should encourage and support those crazy plans and actions through fair judgments using the dice and/or ability scores to determine the chances to succeed or fail.

D&D 5 moved back from the "cover everything" sort of rules design where there are detailed rules for every action and leaves a lot up to players and referees. B/X systems are already there and I feel as a whole that moving back to more interpretive systems where less is more is a good thing. I don't need rules for everything, just guidelines on general things and me and my group  can take it from there.

My Current Feelings

I like what they did in D&D 5 to tighten up that character design curve. I don't like the double-scale hit-points and complexity of characters, though I can see why they did that in regards to player-friendliness. As a player, I like the character design choices because they let me specialize (at the cost of complexity though).

I like B/X a lot, because the numerical and design model is simple and the choices stark and unforgiving. It is like a pure form of chess to me, where the danger level is high and the rules unforgiving and completely straightforward without a high degree of complexity. I like the glass-cannon and simple nature of B/X casters, and even their power level compared to martial characters. That asymmetrical balance, especially if you severely limit 15-minute adventuring days through good refereeing, and this really appeals to me.

I like B/X resource management a lot, with casters worrying about an ever-dwindling supply of magic, the party's resources being drained, and that whole elevation of risk as the dungeon crawl goes on. B/X does this for me, as a player I love the discussions among the players about "should we tackle the next room?" There is a very strong risk and reward cycle going on here for me, and there are no distractions with factoring in numerical superiority through character designs into that calculus of character life and death.

It is a strange sort of realization. When I play a game with less character design options, and less story options, what I find interests me comes out better. There are times when I crave a good story and a great mathematical min-max'ed character, but I don't need them all the time and actually enjoy the lower-level risk-based play B/X excels at - at least for me and my group. I enjoy all of these games for different reasons, and no one is better than the other, and some do things better than others.

My Ideal Dungeon Game

I really like B/X games like Labyrinth Lord though. There is something to that 7 hp level one fighter and his longsword in some spooky abandoned keep fighting spiders and rats that appeals to me - even without all of the character design options of newer games. I can almost play that game in my head. I could play a game like this solo with just a character sheet and an encounter table.

It is that simple yet focused feeling, almost like a dungeon-game version of solitaire. I can't wait for my fighter to get to level two, get a slightly better to-hit, some treasure in his backpack, and maybe he now has 13 hp now. With every level he can go deeper and deeper, and my character really doesn't get all that more complex as he levels up. When he is hurt, he drinks a healing potion (if he has one), or heads back to town. The dungeon may restock when he comes back, and random encounters are always present in the halls, so getting back to where he was will be tricky.

He is still that guy, with a sword, using the wits as me (the player) to keep him alive down there. I don't have any other character design choices to fall back on. That character's story is completely determined by my choices in that dungeon, not by the rules, not by character design, but by my risk-management skills and dealing with runs of good and bad luck.

With simple characters I could run a whole 4 character party myself one one sheet of  paper for record-keeping - no computer programs needed to design characters and level them up. My fighter has chainmail and a sword, my rogue a dagger and leather armor, my mage a magic missile spell and a staff, my cleric chainmail, a shield, a mace, and cure light wounds. Some ability scores and hit points, some saves and to-hit numbers - and we are done. I don't have to reference the class areas of a player's handbook to know what special powers and feats each one can use - it is all here on the sheet.

This is B/X - I know this.

As I have less time for reading through 1,000 of pages of rules and options spanning a library of books and character options, that B/X style simplicity of both play and design is a feature of pen-and-paper games that I feel has real value. Playing old-school simpler games means the difference between playing and not playing, at least to me.

Great Article: Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Strategy #3

Check this out:

http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lja4?Pathfinder-Adventure-Card-Game-Strategy

This is a part three of a strategy guide for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, and it has some interesting discussion of card game mechanics. Part of me sees this and wonders if this isn't a better way of implementing D&D 4's "card based" powers with a deck, hand, and draws for powers during an adventure - mixed in with d20 rolls and other bonuses that change and flow through the game.

With D&D 4, you build your character with a collection of 'card like' powers and those either can be used from turn-to-turn, once per encounter, or once per adventure. With Paizo's game, you build a deck with all sorts of allies, equipment, powers, and other cards that can be used in the situations that come up in the adventure. With D&D 4, your hand is your character, and you have no draws or shuffle mechanic. Paizo's manages to create a deck and shuffle mechanic, with your character's power being the cards they have in their hand.

I will have to admit there is a fun and interesting element of hand strategy and chance with Paizo's handling of card-based powers over the D&D 4 model, and this looks like a next generation of the 'cards as character' mechanic introduced in D&D 4, and advances the idea of 'deck building as character' that I feel D&D 4 never quite achieved.

You Play What Your Friends are Playing

One of the terms popularized during the D&D 3 heyday was "the network effect" - or, you play what your friends are playing. This is one of those "no duh" theories, but there is a lot of truth to this congealing force between players, groups, and what's hot.

There are groups that follow along with similar games, such as Savage Worlds or FATE, and finding a group for those two games is typically more difficult than Pathfinder or D&D 5. The Internet, of course, makes everything easier, and you can find a pick-up group for almost any game and any past version of it somewhere online. But that "walking into the hobby store" moment where you look around on a Saturday and see what people are playing? This is the Network Effect.

It's What's Hot

In a way, it's like having a smartphone that can run the game everyone's talking about versus having a flip phone. You are in, you can talk about the game, and you are a part of that 'water cooler' crowd that can talk about the game. Older versions of the game, or lesser played games? There's less of a discussion, and you may find yourself talking to a smaller and less-interested group.

You buy the game, and that gives you a 'golden ticket' to participate in the social interactions surrounding that game. In a way, it is why you pick up the new version, to be a part of the fun.

There are a couple things to consider, for example, with Tunnels and Trolls the version 5.5 of the game is the one most all of the solo adventures (over the last 20 years) were written to support, and the newer version 8.0 changes things. A lot of people online see 5.5 as the version they still want to play, since the solo adventures are still a huge attraction in playing the game. This may change if 8.0 takes off, but that many years of solo adventures is hard to walk away from in just a rules-compatibility standpoint. There are still holdout crowds like this with other games, such as Shadowrun 4th vs. 5th, and possibly about every version of Traveller ever published.

It's What You See People Playing

We walk into hobby stores, and people are playing D&D 5 and Pathfinder. A lot of people play Magic the Gathering and Warhammer as well, along with games like Warmachine. You see those games, and you want to join in the fun. It is harder to get people interested in a niche or smaller-fanbase game. You have to work harder at it, and there may be some cross-interest (such as old-school D&D groups forming around the current edition players).

I play with some stubborn players with strong opinions about games, and that is cool, but sometimes this limits your options. I have some players that refuse to play Pathfinder because of the complexity, and others that feel D&D 5 isn't for them. Some don't have the money to play some of the games I would like to play with them becuase of the cost to buy books. I think this is about the trickiest part of our hobby, we have a lot of players with strong opinions and it isn't always easy to get people together.

But It Isn't Always So

I ran a group once where it was tough to have the rules keep us together. We 'thought' the rules were the driving force behind keeping the group interested, but in the end, it turns out some of our home-brew ruled games were more compelling than the latest version of the D&D. For some players 'new and shiny' doesn't matter at all, and they are there for the interaction and the fun.

This was a D&D 4 game, and the rules here I feel let everyone down. When a computer program is needed to do things right you take away a lot of player interest and investment in learning the rules. It's part of our struggle with Pathfinder and HeroLab, part of me wants to go back to basics with that game and ignore a shelf worth of expansions, but another part of me says 'investment made' and use everything. Granted, sticking with a smaller set of Pathfinder books probably means a larger player-base as well, so there is that.

When a set of rules goes bust for a group, adjust quickly. This can even happen with the 'newest and latest' so the current version isn't always a sure thing. The latest version gets your foot in the door, but always when you deal with a group of people individual tastes change. Some players care, some champion their favorite version, and others will go along with everybody else thinks. You may have some players more involved with a totally separate genre than what is being played, we had a subset of that group that loved superhero gaming a lot and that resonated with them.

Know Your Group

The hobby is diverse, and the people who play tabletop games are even more so. The best advice is to know your group, and also to play games that you love and your group loves as well. In the best of all worlds, everyone could come together based on our common interests regardless of time and distance. In the real world, there are times when we have to make due with groups that may not play the things we like to play, and we have to make due - because playing something face-to-face is better than sitting at home in front of a computer or television.

You have to put yourself out there to find those people though, so sometimes a couple dull weeks playing at the hobby store is worth finding that group which brings magic to the table and your gaming life. Be a fan of everything, open to new things, and join groups which you may not think you would like, and things may eventually come your way.

Planned Systems vs. DIY Systems

Some pen-and-paper games lay out everything for you and make your choices for your character as you level. You get a level, and the system says you get X and Y powers, ability scores, and hits. These are planned systems, and some good examples of them are:

• d20, Pathfinder, and D&D
• Basic Fantasy and Labyrinth Lord
• Fantasy Age and Dragon Age
• Most class-based systems
• Most MMOs

Some pen-and-paper games are DIY (do it yourself) games, and often these give you a number of "character development points" to use anyway you would like to improve your character. Some examples of this type of game include:

• Savage Worlds
• Legend and Runequest
• GURPS and Champions
• Mongoose's Traveller
• Star Frontiers and many of the TSR Boxed Games
• Most classless systems

And some fall in the middle:

• Fantasy Flight's Star Wars System

Planned systems are great for newcomers, because it is a lot easier to say "you get this and that" when you level instead of spending time sorting through the rules and the book asking the question "is this a good choice" over and over again. Believe us, we have been there, and you practically have to teach every new player the complete set of rules when they first level up with a DIY system. Otherwise, how would they know what is good?

Planned games protect new players from making bad choices, and balance the game based on prebuilt and predictable "endgame" builds.

We prefer DIY systems, because we like making our own choices when we progress characters, and we are more experienced players who know what we want when we build characters. Some planned systems have elements of choice (skill points and multiclassing), but a true DIY system foregoes classes and balances the game around skills and task resolution. Personally, when I level a character, I don't like feeling limited to the choices the game makes for me, especially if that wasn't the direction my character was going in during the last adventure.

If my warlock spent most of the last session socializing and roleplaying, why should he advance in "warlock power" at the end of the night? Shouldn't something reflect his learned ability in socializing and people skills due to this experience?

With a planned system, it is difficult to reflect those experiences and often you end up a better warlock and just as bad as a talker as you started. Warlocks aren't talkers, are they? That's a bard! So do I have to take a bard level now? Great, hand me a lute and paint it black.

With a DIY system, I put some skill points in a social skill reflecting what I did that night, and I am done. How did I get those XPs? Shouldn't those reflect my experiences? My warlock powers don't increase because I didn't use them, but who cares? If this campaign is all about talking, I am all setup for the next game with a little better oratory skills under my belt for next time, and I am happy. If next time we have a swashbuckling adventure I may pick up a sword skill or two.

Does it matter I am not progressing along a game designer's pre-planned class advancement track? Something the company spends countless hours balancing and tweaking to get "one" advancement experience perfect? No, it doesn't. My "advancement track" is the adventures I go on, and if I end up more of a glib, sword swinging practitioner of dark magic than a pure 100% power-level don-nothing-else factory-stamped-out warlock I don't care. My guy is my guy, and the adventures he went on made up the skills and powers he collected along the way.

DIY systems focus on organic advancement and balance the game on skill rolls and task difficulty.

DIY systems don't really have predicable "endgame" character builds, you just become very good at doing the things you do the most. You may end up the world's best talker, but if that is what you enjoy having your character do at the table, that is a good thing since your character advancement reflects what you are doing when you play.

Planned systems also tend to have these "pre-balanced" endgames, where the fighter will always have X attacks at Y to-hit, and be able to do Z damage a turn. Since the game designer "planned" this out, relative character power between classes is easy to calculate, and the "end game" monsters are easier to balance, Well, they should be, but a lot of planned systems typically don't take a lot of factors and exploits into consideration at the higher end (conditions, initiative, and turn denial powers) and things fall out of balance easily.

This is why a lot of competitive multiplayer online games are (or end up being) planned systems. You saw this in World of Warcraft's evolution, a lot of DIY systems were dropped to put characters in predictable, damage-and-healing-output-known envelopes. PVP and PVE balance in these games equals challenge and fun - at the cost of letting you level up your character how you choose to play.

D&D 4 was like this for us, at the high end the game fell apart for us because of the amount of stuns and other powers that rendered foes unable to act during a turn, and also our characters felt like they were getting competitively weaker versus the monsters they faced. The end-game tactics broke down into: go first, deny the enemy his turn, load it up with conditions, and beat on it with "whatever power you have" until it succumbs. The game wanted to be battle chess (which it was for us at low levels), but the high-end game did not work - at least for us.

With a DIY system, the endgame can be calculated if you do a little math, but the end-result is typically a flatter power level. The numbers usually don't get way out of balance, as the system is usually balanced around task resolution. Better skills can lead to a higher DPS and damage output in a DIY system, since you are hitting more and you may have access to special combat moves and abilities you purchased with your points. The Star Wars RPG by Fantasy Flight does a good job with talents and making those unlock higher levels of combat power, so there can be a calculated "end game build" with a DIY system - it just takes a little more design and forethought.

What character advancement system you like is of course, up to you. There are times when "I don't want to think" and I appreciate the simplicity of a planned system. I still like Fantasy AGE a lot, and I feel it is a great, stepped and balanced design that does a better job at planned advancement than most d20 based games. It is a more modern design with a hybrid "choice plus planned advancement" that I like, and it is a fun and simple model and great for new players. One problem with this model is that if the game designer doesn't think of a role, it is not viable - such as Dragon Age vs. Fantasy Age and the rogue archer issue.

We still like DIY advancement systems for our games, since it fits our play style better. We run wide and diverse games, and they don't always fit into the box of a planned class box that easily. For us, what happens at the table that night is how the characters advance, and if the players want to go sword swinging and combat one night, they can reward themselves with those skills at the end of the night and get a little better. If all we do is roleplay and socialize with NPCs, that is what is rewarded at the end of the night. It fits how we play and gives us a better sense of satisfaction when players figure out rewards, and it also reflects how we play and what happens around our table a little better than a planned system could ever account for.

No Clerics? No Problem?

What do the above two games have in common?

No divine magical power sources or cleric classes. They keep to a holy-less trinity of fighter-rogue-mage where the only source of otherworldly power is the mage. No clerics, no gods, no paladins, no praying for power, and no second column of magical power exists in these worlds - it is just the mage.

The duality of mage vs. cleric seems like a staple in fantasy, right? Well, Tolkien's well-known world of Middle Earth just had wizards as the "magic users" as well, and the beings that could be considered "gods" weren't your typical D&D high-fantasy style gods who gave everyone who prayed to them cure light wounds. The holy-less trinity defines these stories as well, as magic was practiced by mages.

And speaking of no-clerics, then there is Game of Thrones as well...

D&D has always had this injection of spiritualism, even in the original 1974 edition of the game had fighter, mage, and cleric as the trinity classes (thieves/rogues being added later in the first Greyhawk supplement). MMOs are rife with divine power sources, like World of Warcraft and other games. There is always this "occult versus the divine" conflict going on in the more D&D style of fantasy, feeling like Westernized religious values being placed on top of Tolkien-style fantasy to create a conflict of power sources.

And D&D's history with divine beings has been notoriously messy, at least in our experience. The old Deities and Demigods book made gods monsters out of the Monster Manual. They were superheroes and super-characters in D&D 3.5, and finally MMO horrendously under-powered end-game raid bosses in D&D 4. Thankfully Pathfinder and D&D 5 (and games like Basic Fantasy or Labyrinth Lord) leave the monster stat blocks for gods at home and makes the gods stat-less beings, making them something like "Q" in the old Star Trek: The Next Generation lore - there to affect outcomes and make snarky remarks, but as monsters or characters on the tabletop? No way, and no thank you.

Seriously, the injection of "gods as monsters" thing has messed up so many of our campaigns that it leaves a bad taste in our mouths when we play these versions of the game. Whenever the "gods got involved" in our past games the players rolled their eyes, wondered when it was going to end, and wished for the times of searching a dresser drawer full of silver pieces and a giant spider guarding the horde. When a game goes "big divine" it becomes "all about the gods" and the focus shifts away from the heroes and onto a divine soap opera worthy of Greek tragedy. For us, at least, and we prefer the heroes to be the focus of the game, and leave the divine super-characters to the background.

If the Forgotten Realms had that supposed problem of high-level NPCs "messing up" adventures, in our experience and our games it was "super-character gods." Give us a high-level NPC any day, because at least those can be ignored, walked away from, or made enemies of and smacked upside the head every once and a while to keep them in line. Making Elminster a recurring enemy to insult and mess with is fun, while having various gods show up again to stop the party in the real world is not.

But removing the cleric and divine power source entirely? It feels like heresy in high fantasy RPGs nowadays, but there is a simplicity and elegance in the world structure once you remove the "power for worship" access to magic. Power is not gained through faith, but in the three historical forces of humankind: might, deception, or knowledge. Removing faith from that mix creates a darker world, where access to magic is controlled by the mage, and there is no "faith versus knowledge" conflict.

"Faith versus knowledge" can also be summarized as "religion versus science" and you can see why this conflict feels natural to us, but in high fantasy this conflict is typically hand-waved off because we need the magic user to be able to adventure with the cleric and the band of merry men. In many high fantasy game worlds and MMOs you will see the "holy church of X" sitting right beside the "mage college of Y" and no problems whatsoever between them. Does it bother the church that those faithless mages have power equal to their followers? Does the mage college feel threatened by the mass of worshipers who only need to pray for power and not need knowledge?

You take that conflict out and the world feels a little strange, but then again we can't have the cleric and the mage fighting in the dungeon because it would slow up play and start real-world fights when the mage doesn't get a heal, right? Ah, dungeon crawling and the sacrifices we make for party-based play.

Take out clerics and divine power sources, and the problem is removed. Hand-wave the divine-arcane conflict off and it is gone as well, but something feels interesting when mages are the only ones who hold the keys to power. It does feel more Tolkien, and magic feels more arcane and special.

What is the lesson here? I guess it is "know your game" and understand the basic assumptions a game makes changes the world. Don't always be so beholden to the typical tropes of high-fantasy and MMO gaming, and games where divine magic is removed create interesting world models of power and how people acquire the same. What you play is your preference, but be open to games which may take you out of your comfort zone and experience "the power of magic" in a new light.

Tunnels and Trolls: Magic Weapons

Magic weapons in Tunnels and Trolls Deluxe don't typically add more than a couple adds to the weapon, you could have a longsword forged by a master swordsmith and get +2 adds to 5d6. High quality steel would add another +1. Balancing it would add another +1, and forging it in a volcano would add another +1.

5d6 + 5 is what you would end up with should you make a 'great' weapon such as that, about 16% more powerful than a normal longsword, or in D&D terms, on the same power level of a +1 sword. It doesn't go much higher than that, really, you could probably get this up to +10 with a heavier weapon, elven steel, a super-master smith, and all sorts of other incredibly rare materials and forging, which comes out to a +2 weapon in D&D terms of power level.

Consider warriors add +1d6 per level to their combat adds (+4 per level by our own house-rule), and you will quickly find levels are vastly more important than weapon quality.

The 10d6 Longsword? Doesn't Exist

There are no rules (I have found) for artificially amping-up a weapon's dice with extra damage, like a longsword that does 10d6 damage. I am sure possibly weapons like this may exist in modules as one-offs or house-ruled weapons, possibly, but by the base rules the "+damage dice" magic weapons aren't in there.

So let's say "this is cannon" and go with the idea there are no MMO-style 300dps damage artificially elevated to that of a tank gun weapons in this world. You know them, they are the ones you find in MMOs like World of Warcraft where a paper cut  from the epic Thunderfury sword would blow a level one peasant's arm off.

Warning: EPIC LEVEL WEAPONS MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO EVERYONE ELSE'S HEALTH.

No, you may not clean my sword, and I will be more careful next time I brush by someone with my magic quarterstaff. I will pay to clean up the inn, and I didn't realize there was a crowd there tonight.

But seriously, let's say there are no "juiced" magic weapons in this world, and the great weapons are only a couple adds here and there. Where does that leave us?

The Innate Power of the Warrior

Here's where we go all Conan on everybody. With warriors, it doesn't really matter what weapon they use, you could pick up a spoon and maul a crowd of evil snake cultists with the utensil. A two-handed sword would help, but the spoon will do until I defeat someone with a better weapon.

Or maybe I will stay "metal" and keep using the spoon in spite.

You kick butt with ordinary weapons. You don't really need to be dolled-up with a load of specialized gear, like pretty magic armor, entitlement weapons, and all sorts of gear meant to keep you grinding away for something incrementally better. There is no gear game, and your warrior's power is not directly gear dependent. You need some armor and some weapon, but putting your gear on some progression track that has you going from level 1 gray items to level 105 orange items doesn't happen.

Your warrior's innate power is what makes them kick butt. It is a situation much like the wizard, with a wizard, you may want a wand, but a whole lot of magic gear, mana storing robes, and other magical trinketry and paper-doll items are not needed to make your wizard a butt kicker. Your wizard's innate power makes them who they are.

Rejecting the MMO Item Game

So then, what incentive is there to go out and get treasure? There aren't a plethora of magic items scattered out there in the world, but there is always the lure of wealth and a better life. There isn't a "gear game" so adventuring life in T&T is a bit different. You adventure to increase your own personal power. You get money to live better and maybe fix your gear and sleep in a better bed tonight. It makes me want to play the cash-finding game in T&T a little tighter, since naturally if money is the biggest 'loot game' in town, then referees will want to be careful about handing out piles of coins.

You aren't going out to find green bracers that give you +1 STA and +1 STR, or a ring that increases your fire resistance by 2%. While those are very cool things to find in an MMO, and finding them gives you a certain sort of fun, that's not this game.

In this game, money should be a little tighter and harder to come by. The world should be a little darker. Power is gained from increasing your stats and growing in personal power. You are not going to buy your way to success, or "doll up" with magic items to make up for personal power you don't have. Who you are and how you build yourself up matters more than trinkets and gear.

Itemization: Videogames vs. Pen-and-Paper

I still like the videogame-style item games, like Diablo and other games where finding loot and upgrading is a part of the game. I feel videogames do this better though, as we haven't really found a pen-and-paper game that does itemization as well as MMOs or rogue-like games. In D&D, there are a lot of cool items, but wizards outrank fighters in fun and character power by a long-shot, so the fighter gear game (at least for us) is moot. It's tough to say (because we love D&D), but for us, video games (with balanced classes and gear choices) do itemization better for fantasy gaming.

You a Better Hero Because of You

But having a game without the 'gear game' is interesting, and focusing purely on your stats and having the world limited to normal weapons and armor only is a fascinating take on fantasy gaming. T&T is different in this way, and it keeps to the 'savage barbarian' model of play where the difference between the defeated and the victors comes down to how much of a bad ass you are. There is no magic sword that can make up for a personal power deficit or trinkets to collect because you need the stat bonuses, it is just all you.

Nothing else is between you and being a hero, and you can't buy your way to greater power. What everyone else uses is what you use, and the big difference is you are the hero.

The MMO Magic Item Economy and Mjölnir

The MMO-style magic-item economy has all but ruined fantasy gaming for us. D&D 4 was this high point of this insanity, where if you did not keep up with the natural 'progression' of magic items your character could not fight monsters rated at their level effectively.

Add to the fact random magic items were mostly useless for most builds, which required specific items and combinations to play effectively 'at level.'

It got so bad the game's designers suggested - in the rules - players come up with a list of magic items their characters wanted to find, and the referee should use that to award magic items from.

This was a fantasy game living in a fantasy land of insanity.

In the old days, if you found that +1 magic sword, you were set for life. It hit the check-boxes:

• Gave you a +1 to-hit and damage, check
• Could hit 'creatures only hit by silver or magic weapons', check
• Was cool, check

The invention of the +2 sword started the insanity to +3, +4, the theoretical +5 maximum best sword, and then in the 3.5-era Epic Level Handbook, went all  the way up to +20.

Well, since they have +2 swords, we need +2 armors! And the lists of magic items blew up. The game was never the same, and AD&D made a mess of the magic item charts with percentage charts of incremental and really worthless upgrades, sure a +2 sword was "even better" but it really only gave a 5% to-hit chance bonus over a +1 sword and 12% or-so extra damage given a d8 damage.

Mjölnir is not a +5 Hammer

+2 swords were epic-sounding, but they weren't superhero-level gear like Mjölnir. Even a +5 hammer didn't come close to the Mjölnir we saw in Marvel Super Heroes, and we sat there feeling D&D characters lived in a world with really weak magic weapons that really at most with +5 had a +25% chance to hit and did 50% more damage than a normal melee weapon. Big deal, but that was the best you could do in D&D.

Mjölnir in Marvel Super Heroes could take out a truck or the Hulk, your choice. Or both.

Mjölnir in an MMO is this insanely damaging 300 DPS weapon that still feels like that gray weapon you started the game with because the world scales with you and you will never truly feel epic. You can splat a level-1 with it, but really, every day you spend out there grinding it doesn't really feel epic because the game assumes you need it to keep up with the content. Sounds like D&D 4 to us, and that's what they did with every item in the game, with forced upgrades in every equipment slot. Though in D&D 4, things maxed out to a +6, and it still didn't feel like the Mjölnir we know and love.

You will find a lot of high-level magic weapons in D&D with extra powers, like lightning bolts or other spells because the plus-damage thing really doesn't make them into the weapons we expect them to be on the silver screen.

Fixed Damage Modifiers are King

But there was a reason for that +2 sword after all, despite the minor 5 to 10% upgrade. The fixed damage modifier.

In D&D 3.5 the fighter's multi-attack leveled the playing field, and the concept of multiplying stacks of fixed-damage bonuses across multi-attacks created the MMO "damage per turn" thing we have going on today in Pathfinder and D&D 5 (done in different ways). The base damage die of your weapon in D&D matters a lot less than the amount of fixed +damage modifiers you can get - because those multiply and stack up fast.

I would rather have a +2 dagger that does a d4 than a +1 swortsword that does a d6. The average damage for the dagger is 2.5 + 2 or 5 points of damage, and the sword does 3.5 + 1 or 5 points of damage. Sure I could roll higher with the sword, but that +2 is guaranteed damage every turn, multiplied across multiple attacks. With five attacks, that +2 is 10 guaranteed points of damage versus the "higher damaging" but less enchanted shortsword with 5 points of guaranteed damage - across five attacks.

You see this on five attacks per turn or five attacks across five turns. Guaranteed damage is king.

This adds up when you stack strength-enhancing magic items and high ability scores for greater fixed-damage adders, and all of a sudden you are adding +5 for STR, +3 for a weapon and you have 8 points of guaranteed damage in an attack. Always go for the higher "plus" and the dice is secondary, especially if you consider multiple attacks per turn (or multiple turns of attacks). Eight points of guaranteed damage across five turns or attacks is 40 points of damage. It adds up.

We are back in the Farmville-style world of spreadsheet games and MMO "dps" numbers, and never feeling like we have a Mjölnir and could smack some sense into the Hulk (or a truck) with our weapon. We still have a problem with the D&D and Pathfinder concept of magic weapons and the implementation of them feels more like a numbers game than it does something living up to our idea of epic fantasy.

The Rules Do Not Allow Epic Greatness

Throw Thor in there, and the gamer in me feels like it breaks down and GM-fiat is needed to say, "well, Thor's +5 hammer can bust right through that 10-foot thick castle wall!" And the player with their +4 spear can't even poke through a locked heavy wooden door. If this was a comic book, the player with that +4 spear could hold it in front of them and run straight through several doors leaving a trail of splinters and kindling in their wake.

No, not working. The rules do not allow for what we expect to happen, especially for epic weapons and the superheroes we want to be (and expect the rules to handle).

Low-Powered High Fantasy

Warriors in the D&D games have always felt less than epic to us, like they were the classes meant to play the spreadsheet part of the game with numbers and modifiers.

Or just...play a wizard in D&D. That is where you will get that superhero experience of larger-than-life powers. This has always been a problem for us, and spells feel like their movie counterparts where the weapons and armor of warriors do not.

One exception is Tunnels and Trolls, where the damage from warriors is so high you could say "you do 200 points of damage in this turn with your spear, and since I said each door had 20 hits, you can slice through 10 doors as you move this turn. Enjoy yourself and try not to destroy the furniture." It's one damage roll for the turn, use it any way you want. 

You could do that in D&D too, but the game goes all simulation-ist with object strength and AC values - so pure mayhem in D&D is discouraged under a wet blanket of simulation. If you are fighting a truck, I am going to need rules for trucks now. In T&T, I say the truck has 100 hits, and you flatten it in one blow. Even with a normal hammer because T&T discourages the MMO magic item economy and you fight with mostly normal weapons. So yes, you could be awesome enough in T&T to take a ball-peen hammer and flatten a truck to a pile of crushed debris in one blow.

Or two trucks.

Just don't damage the furniture.

Rules Anthropology and System Mastery

One thing that always amazes me about the d20 rules is how the rules feel stuck in anthropology. D&D 3, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, D&D 4, and D&D 5 all rely on the theory of system mastery, which requires a set of rules to have a certain level of in-built complexity. This complexity means players need to learn the game, and it creates a class of  'player experts' who are walking encyclopedias of game knowledge and reference.

Following the theory of system mastery, the game in theory cannot be simple. There needs to be built-in exceptions, tricks, little twists and turns of rules, gotchas, and I-don't-know moments of vague presentation that require a college level of mastery of a particular rules set. The more arcane, the better, because this allows the 'player expert' to become more valuable to a particular group or setting.

Anthropology? You feel like a scientist digging through the history of these games to just be able to play them. They are incompatible with each other, have enough small changes between them that one game is realistically all an average person can play, and some of the assumptions you carried over from previous editions will trip you up. It's why I still like Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy as my go-to D&D games, they stick to the core design, there isn't much to learn, and there isn't much to mess you up.

Self-Taught Experts

That "power of knowledge" is an important thing. It both creates a barrier to entry (noobs suck at the game), and it creates a barrier to exit (why would I give up all this knowledge and power). It gives those who invest the time a certain level of importance in communities, power over others, and value. If the game is widely played, the more value that person has in a community, gaming group, or forum. Also, if the books needed are expensive and voluminous, the investment in the game keeps people from leaving as well. No one wants to have wasted all that money.

You can short-circuit all of this and say, "I don't have the time," and walk out. You can go to a simple rules system. Many modern designs cater to people without the time to learn all this complexity, and these keep today's time and interest-strapped people in the hobby. They are also exit-points for people that are tired of the heavy games, as a group can only really maintain interest in one large game at a time.

Some modern non-d20 games follow the system mastery model as well, such as Fantasy Flight's Star Wars RPG. While the basic mechanic is simple (as presented in the starter sets), once you go all-in with the main rulebooks there are enough gotchas where you need an expert to sort things out. This is similar for Shadowrun, GURPS, and other games where the weight of expansions and rulings have turned a once-simple game into something more complex.

Games do not need to be that complex. Complexity is not depth. A simple game can have wonderful depth without complexity, take chess, for example. This is where great design comes into play. Some designers seem to give up on designing elegant, simple, yet very deep in strategy rules, and go for the arcane, complex, and exception-filled almost spaghetti computer-code level of complexity when depth by the base mechanic cannot be achieved. The depth is obfuscated in the complexity of the rules.

Modern Designs

Some games are by-design simple, and this applies to the OGL retro-clones, Savage Worlds, Legend, AGE System, FATE, and many modern designs. These games have simple rules of thumb, unified mechanics, and a simple set of core rules which are extended to handle anything. If you know how to do one thing in these games, you can assume many other things work similarly and you are on your way. Some players love the elegance of unified design simplicity, while others love system mastery and the power of that complex knowledge.

A lot of indie games embrace simplicity, because it is a lot easier to test and balance a small set of rules-of-thumb than it is an encyclopedia of specific and carefully-balanced rules. I feel the age of huge, complex systems is passing us by, as even D&D 5 has recognized the need to simplify to increase "what can get done" at the table during a session. They streamlined and simplified monster stats, character complexity, and the amount of modifiers and conditions you needed to remember, and players reacted positively to the changes. As a result, the games move faster, players can cycle through more encounters during a session, and a game session can end with a feeling of progress and completion in regards to a story.

Savage Worlds goes in a different direction than D&D 5, with combat meaning less and all actions taking on an equal level of importance in regards to story completion and advancement. Conversions of modules from Pathfinder, OGL games, and D&D 5 to Savage Worlds typically eliminate encounters meant to "level up" the party and focus more on tasks, social encounters, and roleplaying. D&D 5, in comparison, is the more 'video game' and 'XP and loot' type experience, where Savage Worlds is the more the story-based experience.

There Comes a Point...

When you don't have the time to invest in heavy games anymore. It is happening to us, and I have this feeling Bestiary 5 and Ultimate Intrigue will be the last Pathfinder books we will buy for a while. I love the world, I love the mod-able-ness, I love the art, and I love the system, but enough is enough. I can't run this much, and I can't manage this much complexity anymore. If I play, it will be with a subset of books, but even then I question if investing myself in a reduced subset of that complexity will be worth the payout. Learning and mastering a simpler game at this point may give us more bang for the gaming buck.

Even the new Star Wars RPG still feels bloated to us, and we've reduced the game to the base three books. It is the problem with everything being a heavy game, you want to play them all, but one person really can't master and maintain interest in this many large games. They makes these games complex with the theory of system mastery so you won't leave for another game, and then when you collect too many of them, everything in your gaming world collapses under the weight of complexity.

OGL games are cool, and they "get there from here" in terms of providing a dungeon experience for the complexity and time spent learning them. Savage Worlds is also cool and simple, and covers so many genres that it is worth learning because the payout in "fun for time" is very high. D&D 5 is interesting, but we haven't had the time or interest to put into it as much as I'd hoped, plus the OGL games do a good job at the dungeon and loot experience anyways so we haven't had much pressure to jump in.

In our group and for our time, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, and the new Star Wars RPG feel like the losers here. We don't have the time to put into and enjoy them as we would like, and something has to give. When you need to make choices, you typically start throwing the heavy systems overboard first (or you stick with one heavy system and throw out everything else). This isn't to say they aren't deep and fun games, it is just the complexity and time needed to put in to enjoy them fully is very high.

I will probably reorganize my shelves to reflect the new order, and focus on what is right for our group. This is also a consideration when you design a game, do you want it to be so complex that is pushes out other systems, or do you want it to be rules-light and easily accessible? I don't think many games nowadays can compete with the big heavy-hitters out there, so writing a large and complicated game will put you at a disadvantage of competing for attention of players and also being pushed off a shelf due to the heavy nature of your rules.

We do have a lot of large, complicated games sitting in boxes because we don't have the time or mental space to run them (Rifts, GURPS, and others). I feel bad about a couple more being on their way to storage, but really, what can we do? It is best to focus on the games you love, and the ones you have time for, rather than so many you are unhappy you don't have the time and mental effort to play them all.

Level Systems and Escalating Hit Points

I got into this discussion the other day with DarkgarX, so here goes.

He absolutely hates level systems and escalating hit points. He doesn't like these systems because he feels it makes things that should be dangerous, meaningless. Your sense of threat and scale get thrown out the window. Who cares about a gun pointed at your character's head when it only does 1d8 damage to your 60 hit points?

I know, there is the coup de grace (coo-day-grahs) rule, and this should handle it as a GM ruling. But still, he has a point when arrows and bullets are flying, and characters are laughing off damage.

Yes, heroes are supposed to be heroic.

I feel part of this comes from the "max hit points per level" house-rule, and I am cooling towards using that in my future Pathfinder games. I am leaning towards the PFS average HD + CON hit point rule:

HP (1st Level) = Maximum HD roll + Con Modifier

HP (2nd and Higher Levels) = Average HD roll (1/2 rounded up) + CON Modifier

If it is good enough for organized play, it is good enough for me. So a fighter with a +2 CON bonus has the following hit points at the following levels:

1. 10 (max hp for the d10 HD) + 2 = 12
2. 12 + 5.5 (rounded to 6) + 2 = 20
3. 20 + 6 + 2 = 28
4. 28 + 6 + 2 = 36
5. ...and so on, +8 per level, and so on (sans in the optional +1 hp/level favored class bonus)

With maximum HD per level, the level 3 fighter has 36 hit points (and level 4 is 48), so the average hp/level system knocks a level of toughness off low level characters, and by 10th level the difference is 84 hit points to 120 hit points, or about 30% less for a fighter. Is it enough of a difference to matter?

I feel it is. At 84 hit points, taking a d8+2 damage hit is going to matter, because I could lose 8-10% of my hit points in that one strike. Enough of those, and my hero is going down. At 120 hit points, I have about 40 hit points to give, which is on average five or six more d8+2 hits my fighter has to give.

• At average hp/level, it's 12 average d8+2 rolls before my fighter falls at level 10
• At maximum hp/level it's 17 average d8+2 rolls before my fighter falls at level 10

Too many hit points too quickly breaks the game, and the rate they are accumulated feels like the problem here. Do those free five hits for a level 10 fighter break the game? I feel they do. If you figure 10 fights in an adventure, that is 5 x 10 = 50 free d8+2 hits in combat for that fighter for the whole adventure. What was once a balanced game of resource management becomes making sure those free hits get recharged and reset every fight. That is a huge amount of power given away for free because we like a "max hp per level" house-rule.

With less hit points, damage means more. Healers have to pay attention and use healing spells more often to maintain that safety margin - so healers mean more and healing is more powerful. Defenses that could stop attacks mean more. The monsters are more challenging. Fights are closer. The numbers aren't so out-of-control feeling anymore, or not as bad as they used to seem.

As a player, is max hp/level a good thing? Sure! Everybody wants to be invincible, and everyone wants the best character the rules allow. But max hp/level is not right. Statistically, average hp/level is closer to the balance the game designers intended; and all of a sudden, all of the game's math starts to make more sense. The danger returns. The calculations for CR start to work out a little better. Those "free hits" every fight dry up, and your margin of victory becomes tighter.

I would even say for the average monster, the same is true. Keeping the hit points of monsters down speeds up fights. It makes damage mean more. It doesn't turn the game into a DPS race where maximizing is the key to victory just because you want to reduce a massive pile of hit points to zero in the quickest amount of time possible. D&D 4 had this problem for us, where even low level fights were this massive hit point grind where the party sat there trying to finish off goblins with 30 or 40 hit points with special powers. Even D&D 5 feels a bit hit point happy for us, and I like the older, d8 scale, 1 HD orc sort of 4 or 5 hit point rabble monster. To compare:

• Pathfinder Orc = 6 hp, 1 HD
• D&D 4 Orc = 1 hp (minion) or 66 hp (4 HD, Orcs start at level 4 in D&D 4)
• D&D 5 Orc = 15 hp (2-ish HD, but HD are not really used for monsters in D&D 5)

You have to factor in the damage scaling Wizards has put into play in D&D editions above 4 in those numbers, since to differentiate the game from D&D 3.5/Pathfinder, characters do more damage in the new versions of the game. Still, I like the Pathfinder Orc the best, a longbow could take one out with a solid hit, and it's another minion down (without needing the D&D 4 minion rules).

Do I like tougher Orcs? Yes, on general I do, but not to the point where the balance and scaling of the game world feels out of whack and like a video-game. To compare, 6 hp in a d4 hit die and 2 hit point commoner world is a tough foe, and a 36 hp level four fighter is as tough as six of those Orcs, or 18 common men. Those numbers feel right to me, not DarkgarX though as he is still saying it's too many hits. That d8 longsword is a powerful weapon, and still dangerous to when used against that level 4 fighter, and deadly to the 6 hp Orc.

In D&D 5, it's gonna take at least two or three hits to dispatch that Orc. In D&D 4, it's going to take a good majority of the game session. The opposite is also true. In Pathfinder, the Orc is the most deadly wielding a d8 longsword. In D&D 4, he is the weakest comparatively to the damage of that weapon listed in the book.

Scaling matters. Keeping your numbers down matters. Less means more. The original AD&D numbers and old-school ratios are good and what original D&D is based on, and I feel changing the number and damage scale hurts the game. Pathfinder is the closest to this original "keep it down" scale (minus the multi-attacks at later levels), and it keeps that low hit point and hit die feeling of danger intact. It is easy to want to succumb to "more is more" and give everyone free hit points - but I feel it breaks the game. Even the post D&D 4 scaling does the same thing in my feeling.

Less hit points mean more danger, and more danger is more excitement and a good thing.

Your 15 Minutes of Adventure Are Up

D&D 3E introduced us to this wonderful concept of the 15-minute adventuring day. It goes something like this:

"Hey guys, I used all my spells in that last encounter. Let's go back to town and rest."

Now, this existed before 3E to be fair, and this issue has really been seen more with D&D than other role playing games. Part of the problem is D&D itself, adventures are designed around a series of encounters with CRs that are supposed to balance play and use up resources at a predictable rate. This does not always work, and I feel CR misleads us in a number of ways:

• Randomness leads to greater or lesser resource usage
• The CR system is too simplistic to deal with the complexity of the game's classes and powers
• Players don't care about balanced fights and "burn down" every encounter

The first one is interesting, and yes, a series of bad rolls will double or use up your entire excursion's resources (spells, potions, powers) and you are stuck. Since the rest of the encounters in the dungeon were carefully balanced around you having some resources to deal with it, it's game over man, time to bug out. One encounter drops your party resources to zero, and if this is a "one time only" dungeon with an objective (like most should be), you have lost. That's it. Bad dice have let the bad guy get away with the princess, and that's the knocks of a story-based game.

Yes, the d20 with its wide variance is partially to blame here, it isn't the best die to use if you want a strong average, but with D&D it's what we got.

Another side note. D&D 4E tried to solve this problem with at-wills and encounter powers. the designers of D&D 4 were trying to solve a lot of problems, and this one they did a pretty good job at (tactical miniatures wise, not role playing wise). They introduced the concept of regenerating powers and healing surges, and that kept the party going into the next part of the story. For story-gaming, D&D 4 had a lot of nice improvements over D&D 1-3 and D&D 5. Mind you, the design of D&D 4 did not lend itself to roleplaying all that well, but as a tactical miniatures game where you played stories, it was interesting (counting the first 3 books or so before everything started going to the lower planes).

The second point is also interesting. In some ways I feel the CR system is overly simplistic and it does not take a lot of factors into account. One the other side, if it did the CR calculation system would be something as complex as calculus to figure out encounter balance. With Pathfinder, I have seen reports that modules designed against earlier versions of the game are now too easy with the power creep introduced in later books, and that encounters need to be toughened up to be a challenge again. Old CR does not equal the new CR, and the rating slips as time goes on.

Burn downs. This I have been waiting to talk about, because every player coming from an MMO knows about this one, and this is how most videogames train players nowadays. When you are in a MMO, in each encounter you 100% burn down all your powers and abilities in order to beat it. It does not matter if it is a hall fight or a boss fight, you keep pressing every button, keep hitting every power as its timer comes up, and maximize your damage output to 100% in every fight. In the old Everquest, this wasn't the case and you had to practice careful resource management through a zone. Past that, most modern MMOs make you burn down as fast as possible in order to get through a fight.

The reason? It's flashy! It's more exciting! It solves players from complaining the dungeon is too hard and filling up your customer service system with too many tickets.

So many videogame and MMO players are trained to burn down.

Now, many players get it when they begin playing pen-and-paper. They get the careful resource management game. The games fight this though, and try to make things easier on players by giving them infinite-use attack cantrips (D&D 5), or multi-shot built-in class attack powers (Pathfinder). D&D 4 had infinite-use at-will powers and auto-recharging encounter powers. Even 3E had a plethora of multi-use wands, scrolls, and other items that let you blast away with rechargable wands of magic missiles and fireball staffs. You see the burn-down starting to creep back in.

Player power has increased dramatically over the last 15 years of D&D to keep up with the MMO arms and expectation race.

Personally? I find burn downs boring and resource management more compelling. I like story-based play (a separate topic entirely), but I appreciate games that force you to make hard choices.

In old-school gaming like Basic Fantasy or Labyrinth Lord, giving a magic user infinite ranged attack cantrips would be unthinkable. Today, shooty and flashy are the new thing and the new norms. In the past, you didn't doll up with magic items and carry around enough rechargable magic items to blow through days of content. If your DM was stingy, you pulled the "go back to town" thing. If he wasn't, you loaded up for bear with enough magic to blow a hole in the side of White Plume Mountain.

In older editions of D&D and today's OGR games, the magic item economy is sparse, and you don't get into it as much. A wand of magic missiles is rare and special. A +1 sword is Excalibur. You survive on your wits and a player's ability to coax room descriptions out of the DM's head to avoid the trap of doom in the next room. Then again, the story in old-school games was a lot like today's 'sandbox" games. Do you survive? What do you do? Old-school games focused on the stories of the characters in that personal survival story, and not the DM's or module writer's story.

I blame Vampire: The Masquerade back in AD&D 2E days for this "module as story" stuff really. Vampire showed us a wonderful roleplaying game focused on personal stories, and AD&D had to follow suite and try to make dungeoning "story gaming" as well. Vampire did story gaming elegantly. AD&D had a lot more trouble making that leap because of the abstraction and resource management, and that theme of "story dungeoning" has stayed with us ever since, even across 3E's magic-card-if-i-cation of the rules.

So this pesky resource management game is getting in the way of completing tonight's story dungeon! Let's punt, take a mulligan, and head back to town to ignore this archaic D&D resource management system and continue on, shall we? If you are going to be in any way realistic about this dungeon master and reset the encounters, make us roll for wilderness encounters, or make us 'lose' the story for taking a break in the middle, then I guess you are a horrible dungeon master who hates well-told stories and famous module designers, right?

I am being sarcastic, but I have had those feelings come up at my table before so they are there.

There is an internal struggle here that I feel D&D has never gotten over. There is a simulation side to old-school D&D with the resource game, and if you have never played an old-school game, I recommend you do to see what I am talking about. It is a different game. Health does not auto-recharge. What you take in is it for possibly 100 rooms. The game is simple and deadly. Characters die frequently. You struggle. There is a mental game going on where you pry descriptions out of the DM, be clever, avoid fights, and survive.

3E and Pathfinder? Stuck in the middle of storytelling and resource management. Deck-building RPGs at heart.

4E and D&D 5E? Storytelling games at their heart and trying hard to shed old-school D&D's resource management game. Heavily MMO-influenced with recharging and infinite-use powers, with D&D 4 being the more MMO game, but D&D 5 shooting for the feel of 2E's story-dungeoning feel.

None of them are bad, and players love each for different reasons. This is not an argument one is better than another. You play what you love. But, you need to understand what each one brings, and where the conflicts are. If I ran D&D 5, I would go for more story than resource management, because that's what that game does best. I would adjust the story if players felt their party needed to take five, and advance the story in a logical way that reflects them having to take a breather. The show would go on. There wouldn't be a 15-minute adventuring day because the story reacts.

In old-school games? Yes, you can bet I would come down like a ton of bricks on a party that wasted its resources in wasteful burn-downs and had to retreat to town. Old school games are the Old Testament of resource management sims. Roll for wilderness encounters to and from the dungeon. Roll for wandering monsters all the way down to the point you left off. The dungeon's residents react and adapt to the last incursion, setting up traps, moving to rooms deeper (or to ones you thought you cleared), clearing out, or calling for reinforcements. You take a 15-minute day, and I will make you regret it for the next 15 days, but that is the old-school dungeon master's job.

The trouble comes when the game's designers try to please everybody, and tell you that the game is good for all types of play. It's cool marketing speak, but it isn't true. Some games do things better than others, and that's okay. Another problem arises when the game's designers put in systems geared to resource management when the game shines in story-based play. I can't blame them, the marketers said 'make it appeal to everybody' so sometimes you get systems in games better ignored than used. It happens, and game design isn't a perfect science.

Know what you like. Know what your players like. Most importantly, know what you expect from a game, and how a game shapes that experience.

You Just Save-or-Died My Story, Not Cool

One of the interesting things about the new D&D 5 edition is we are back to one-shotting players and taking characters out of the game. There are one-shot 'take you out of the game' spells, official podcasts with DM insta-kills, and the old-school feeling of deathtrap dungeons and random PC death is back big time. It is cool to see the old-school feeling back!

Right?

But, um, dude. What about my story?

What do you mean your story?

When I generated my character, there were these tables, and they were all like, hey, wow, you get a random story attached to your character when you spin him up. And I was like, cool, hey, that is pretty nifty, now I can be like those dudes from Lord of the Rings and all.

Then you made me make a save-or-die saving throw and insta-killed my guy.

Dude, not cool.

Hey, don't blame me, old-school is back. This isn't D&D 4, a game that goes out of its way to make sure nobody feels slighted or marginalized at the table, that everyone's contributions are important, and those "ruin the night for one player" moments were written out of the game. Those days are over. This is the return of the real, and we are back to the old way of doing this, so toughen up and get with us old-schoolers, right?

Dude, I liked my story. Why have a story on your guy if the game is telling you to run around and kill our player characters off like some psycho in a slasher flick?

Oh yeah, I forgot this isn't AD&D, or even a retro-clone like Basic Fantasy or Labyrinth Lord. In those games, some of the true old-school classics, your guy was just a couple 3d6 rolls and some hit points, and you didn't even get a story chart to roll on. Heck, you didn't even name your guy until he got to third level and was worth caring about.

Yeah, well. Dude, I grew up playing World of Warcraft, and I am pretty used to the idea that losing my guy warrants a call to customer service. He may be the same hero who saves the world along with 5.5 million other players, but that's my story, and I am entitled to it.

Well, we have to be fair here, would you be that angry if I, as DM, insta-killed your Pathfinder character?

Well, dude, yeah. I put a lot of time into that build!

As I recall, you copied that build from someone else's forum post.

Dude, not cool. Even though someone else came up with it, I punched it into Hero Lab. Plus the paper I used to print it out, and the toner. It's a lot of work.

So let me get this straight. You don't play the old-school games because player death is easy, the characters are too simple, and the story parts are more compelling than the mechanics?

If I am going to spend my Saturday playing a game, I want something out of it, dude. I want my character to be a part of something, to matter, and for my choices to mean something. Just 3d6 in six scores doesn't mean anything to me, I want to design my guy, and have those choices matter. I want there to be some story to play through, and for that story arc to be a part of character design.

What about the concept of 'you make your own story?' You know, where what you do in the face of impossible odds is the compelling narrative, and watching dozens fall before the one true hero rises is a part of the fun?

Dude, the first guy I spin up is the one true hero.

But D&D 5 has save-or-die!

The game also has built-in stories. Where is the fun in having my character get killed before his aunt finds out he is a thief? This is story-based game.

Story-based does not mean 'player protection' from bad decisions. Even story-based games are like that. You walk a tightrope here, if you make great decisions, you may get the satisfaction of advancing your personal story. Fair trade?

Not if it is save or die. Dude, even if I played this for the combat and tabletop side I would be pretty pissed if I failed a save-or-die saving throw. All that work, all those adventures, just game over. It's a pretty rotten thing taking a character off the board with one roll. If I fail, I want it to be because of my bad decisions, not a cheap "you lose, thank you for playing" 50-50 roll.

It's the cheap thrill of Russian roulette with my player character, not cool.

Where this Started

You know, sometime long ago these games used to be about the thrill of working through a simple rules system that was deadly and absolute, and working out a way to survive and profit despite the sheer impossibility of survival. Many characters did not make it, because they were just that, playing pieces in Monopoly where you laughed if one of them fell off a cliff and you chalked it up to "how the game works." They were easy to spin up because they were so disposable, and you weren't supposed to invest yourself in them all that much.

Nowadays, things have changed.

How so?

I agree that if you are playing a story based game, save-of-die sucks. I also think it sucks in a tactical game, because it robs you of your input, and it does feel like a Russian roulette mechanic for cheap tension. In a classic old-school game, I see its place though. Old school isn't about fair, and you stayed away from save-or-die monsters or situations, because you got XP directly from treasure, not the artificial challenge rating of monsters. Somewhere along the line someone introduced the concept of "if it is a good fight, players deserve XP" when that wasn't in the game.

The concept of XP for a good and balanced fight that you will most likely win comes from the admission that the game is mass-market entertainment. I feel it is a dumbing down of the concept, making the game more like a videogame, and putting in an artificial slot-machine constant-feedback reward system that keeps players coming back.

Save-or-die was in old-school games to discourage you from doing a straight-up fight with that medusa. It was better to sneak past her, find a way to deal with her other than combat. If you stole her 1,000 GP brooch, you got 1,000 XP. Any way you got it was fair game.

Nowadays, the medusa is engineered to be a fun encounter 'worth' the XP she is assigned. You get no XP for treasure, so you are forced to fight her for the XP. In a way, it is more bloodthirsty because you are putting a point value on a life (defeated however), rather than a goal or a treasure. This is a concept taken straight from videogames that reinforces the "kill for experience" sort of very basic and almost darkly sinister motivation for the game. Now, 'killing' means 'defeating in any way, knocking out, etc' in many games, but the points are 'owned' by the encounter.

There are also 'story XP' which is a system that attempts to cover story-players as well.

I do feel D&D's reward system has been messed up for a while, ever since AD&D 2nd Edition where they started the story award XP system formally, and also reset monster XP along those levels.

If the game wants to be story based, then remove XP for killing things.

If the game wants to be hack-and-slash, then remove story XP.

Reward Systems

Personally? I like story-based XP systems. I think XP for killing is a bit cold and bloodthirsty, like a genocidal bounty system. I liked the XP for GP thing of old-school play though, in a fun sort of way because it encourages creative play. The goal is to out-think the monsters and grab the loot. You are like this group of Ocean's 11 thieves looting and sneaking your way through dungeons, each person with a special ability (healing, fighting, sneaking, magic) but with only one goal - grabbing the loot the easiest way possible.

If the king wants to pay your party a "story award" of 10,000 GP for rescuing the princess, then pocketing 10,000 XP is also your motivation. The XP are nice, but really everybody, we are here for one reason and one reason only, shiny gold coins.

In this context and the original game's motivation of "XP for treasure" a save-or-die mechanic makes sense. You are a playing piece out to accumulate as many GP as possible. Yes, some monsters and traps are "save or die," but the balance is to not fight them or be stupid enough to step into them. You certainly don't get XP for the artificial reward of "beating" them, so trick, avoid, and circumvent these monsters as best you know how and the tools given to you will allow.

So, save-or-die is in there, but it is something to avoid?

Exactly. It is a different design and motivation for the entire game. Balance issues clear up because there is not an artificial reward tacked onto a creature, so there is no need for a CR system to rate difficulty. An owlbear is an owlbear. Fight it if you think you can, or avoid it if the dungeon designer was smart enough to put another way around. Save-or-die was a disincentive, not a game design mechanic someone needs to balance.

The definition of "railroading" in pen-and-paper games changed too. In the old days, railroading was that a module designer forced you to solve a problem one way, or forced you into a fight you could not avoid. When RPGs went story-based, railroading was forcing you to play the story the module designer's way. In the old definition, railroading was more about giving the players choices in how they wanted to approach a situation. It was about the freedom to approach a problem and allowing for that.

It is partly D&D's problem because of its heritage. D&D by its nature is a "big tent" game that takes inspiration from many fantasy sources. This means the reasons people play the game are just as varied, and the game has to support many types of reward systems. It needs videogame XP for hack-and-slashers. It needs story XP for roleplayers. It got rid of XP for GP, which I think is a mistake.

Understanding Fairness

But yes, understanding reward and motivation are key to understanding why save-or-die mechanics work in some games and not others. It is ultimately about that feeling of unfairness, but to decide if something is unfair, you need to understand both the motivation for play and how the reward system works. Some games have simple motivations, so judging what's fair is easy. Other games are more complicated, and you layer in characters that take hours to design, or story systems on top of bounty systems, and things get more complex.

Fairness is ultimately judging if a reward is worth the risks, and not feeling cheated should things not work out. In a way, fairness measures how you feel about defeats and successes, and the satisfaction of the proportionality of a reward given a risk.

Bounded Accuracy vs. Simulation

For over 40 years D&D has had an issue with the to-hit system. At first, they had giant AC versus level tables for each class; then they switched to a system where different classes had different to-hit bonuses at maximum level, and they metered out the to-hit increases every level. It meant if you weren't a pure fighter, forget hitting anything at maximum level because all the monsters at max level were balanced for a fighter's attack bonus.

D&D 3 and Pathfinder follow the sort of design theme of great classes (fighters) get +20 at max level, sucky classes (rogues, clerics) get +15 at max level, and really sucky classes (mages) get a +10 at max level. Mind you, if you are fighting an AC 30 monster, great classes will hit at 50% of the time, sucky 25%, and really sucky will be like "5%, why even try?" Of course, mages will be flinging spells, so that 5% never really matters. Feats and proficiency make the difference, and one had to take into account damage output, but the base system is still set in an assumption of some classes are better than others when hitting a target. There is also a multiple attacks thing here with high attack bonuses, so damage output is linked in.

D&D 4 sets everything on a sliding scale, using 1/2 your level plus your ability score DRM to give you your attack bonus. You must have a high ability score, maintain it, and have the recommended magic items for your level to "keep up with the Joneses," aka the monsters. If a monster was 4 or more levels above you, forget it. If a monster was 4 levels below you, you could care less about them. It was a very MMO feeling game that was balanced "on the levels" and had a flat balance.

D&D 5 preserves the flat MMO-style balance, and puts everyone on the same to-hit chart, but makes the maximum bonus a +6 for everybody. Everything else, monsters, magic items, and combat, has been realigned to fit within this new model. This is called "bounded accuracy" and it is the central design premise behind the new D&D, to get those numbers back in control and make everyone feel they can contribute. There are plenty of problems with this, such as the lowest-level monsters being able to hit high-level heroes (in the context of this system), and high-level heroes still having a high miss rate that still feel unsatisfying for many. The system also breaks with mass attacks and does not scale well with larger groups or attacks that add conditions on hit (poison).

Then again, it feels like they have been wrestling with making the abstract AC and level-based to-hit system for 40 years and they still haven't got it right.

Abstract Accuracy

It is difficult to criticize the D&D to-hit system because it is intentionally abstract. You can get into a long argument with other players and fans of differing editions, and all you will be doing is arguing over is if mauve or thistle is more "purple." Because the system is so abstract, the designers need to carefully "code" AC and attack bonuses in with each edition to make the game work. In computer programming speak, D&D's combat system is spaghetti code and a mess of special cases, and it needs to be hand-tuned any time they move to a new edition or they make a new expansion or book for the game. The AC and to-hit numbers have to be directly balanced against the monsters from level 1 to 20, or everything breaks down.

In D&D 4, it did not feel like the later levels were as well-playtested, and things felt like they broke down the higher level you went. There were so many erratas and rules changes over the life of that game it spun your head, along with a second version of the monster manual coming out in Essentials that changed the math again. Every monster manual changed the math, and it hurt the experience for us.

Simulation Games

Contrast this with a more simulation based game with a less abstract system. If my fighter has a 60% chance to hit with a sword, it doesn't matter if I am swinging it at a level 1 goblin or a level 30 dragon, I am still making that piece of metal strike that other shape no matter what that other shape may be, 60% of the time. The effects of what happens will vary greatly upon what I hit and the personal power I have, If I am as strong as a hill giant I will expect to splatter the goblin and hurt the dragon. If I am as strong as a human, I expect the goblin to take a wound, and the dragon to laugh and say he didn't even feel it.

Most of the time. Exceptions and great rolls always exist.

You can give a rogue and a fighter the same to-hit, and work out the differences with powers, techniques, and ability scores. You can do away with abstract levels and subjective armor class values entirely. You can rate armor on protection, and let the dice fall where they may because you created a simulation system where things in your world work a certain way.

Your characters exist within themselves, not in the context of a carefully balanced level system.

Level Systems

Now, level systems are great because they let you change the math and put out a new edition. The only exception was AD&D 2nd Edition, where they cleaned up the original AD&D rules and improved the presentation greatly. They really didn't change the math, but they streamlined it and created the "I don't understand why nobody gets this" THAC0 system, but I guess many had a problem with it. THAC0 (to hit armor class zero) was easy enough to understand, but they should have made AC increasing and flipped those around, and just said to-hit is your base plus target AC, like they did in 3rd Edition.

Negative AC in AD&D sucked, and it was likely nobody ever thought ACs lower than zero were ever needed. Explaining negative AC felt like explaining THAC0 to the uninitiated.

But part of the problem with an abstract system is linking level to to-hit, especially when it starts blowing out your dice range. Having a +20 to hit at 20th level, plus ability DRMs, plus magic item bonuses, plus feat modifiers, plus situational modifiers can get you to a final to-hit bonus of +30 or more easily. On a 1-20 scale, a +30 makes the entire number range of your randomizer meaningless. You are rolling between 31 and 50, and trying to hit an AC of 42.

The mind boggles, the numbers are so high, and the DC and AC numbers are again on that meaningless, super-high if +10 is better than give me another +20 MMO number scale that never ends.

Bounded Accuracy is the New Coke

I am not convinced D&D 5's bounded accuracy does much to solve the problem of D&D's abstract system other than change the numbers again. There were some D&D and Pathfinder mods (E6 most notably) which put a level cap of 6 on the game, and this appears to be where the bounded accuracy idea originated from. E6 is a laudable game modification for D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder, it assumes that 6th level characters are the most powerful in the game world and lets the monsters past that be the world's "boss creatures" and teamwork is needed for beating them.

You throw out the entire upper three-quarters of the game to do so, but it does get that sense of scale and challenge back that D&D loses when a thief levels past the power of an adult red dragon. Where D&D 5 and E6 differ is that in E6 there is a huge world out there more powerful than any single hero could ever be. In D&D 5, every hero can be a level 20 monster some day, yet they still need level 30 monsters out there that are even more powerful than that.

But limiting everyone to the same to-hit chart and capping it at +6 (plus mods)? Really, none of my players really like advancing that slow, and it feels like a grind. Your hit-points go up normally, so you have these hundreds of hit point monster characters walking around with a +3 or a +4 to-hit, and your sense of heroic scale is all skewered. I would prefer the level cap to six to a slow grind to twenty and a +6 when I get there.

Yes, bounded accuracy makes the numbers meaningful again, no question.

But I feel you give up too much. High level characters lose their sense of "being good" and the harsh d20 and its variability stomp all over a modifier range that starts at a +5% to-hit bonus and ends up at a +30% to-hit bonus for epic characters. Even with ability score mods and magic items it doesn't go much higher, and high level characters feel like they are just talented normals. It feels like you are just fooling with the numbers again instead of fixing the problem.

Wonderland

It all feels like D&D's power curve has been messed up since the original box set that level capped you at three, yet the monster lists had 9 or so hit die dragons. Sooner or later, you could level past those dragons, and we entered a strange fantasy land where we needed bigger and bigger challenges to overcome. D&D has always had this "videogame in pen and paper" feeling to me, where of course characters are entitled to incredible amounts of hit points and power, and the sense of scale between normal people and high level characters reaches absurd levels.

D&D 5, despite bounded accuracy, I feel does not address this problem, as the higher levels in that game still entitle characters to massive amounts of hit points and damage output that boggles the mind compared to a first level character. The difference between high-level and low level has not changed, only the dicing model has gotten flatter and everyone can hit each other now.

It still feels like a videogame to me. I feel that a dragon like Smaug out of the Hobbit is beyond the power of any single hero in that world, and any hero could ever be. In D&D and Pathfinder, this isn't the case. I get this World of Warcraft feeling where characters are driven primarily by advancement than story, and personal power is the name of the game. It isn't down, it doesn't feel realistic, and the abstract system keeps you from ever understanding or balancing it because it is so carefully tuned and system-wide teeter-tottering on the sum balance of its parts.

If you disagree with two-handed weapon damage and change it, you break the rest of the game.

Abstractionification

It isn't D&D or Pathfinder that is at fault, I feel, it is the abstraction and the magnitude. Once you abstract one piece, you have to abstract everything, and then the balancing act begins. Level based to-hits and ACs that could mean everything from a high dodge to tank armor along with out-of-control hit points and damage make the entire system feel more like an ever-higher level Facebook game requiring more time and clicks than something that models reality.

If there was a D&D game out there that got it right in terms of comparative power and the weak against the impossible, I would be all over it.

I want games that make me fear the dragon, not know that someday I will out level it. I want games that give me a basis in reality, rather than hand wave it away and apply an arbitrary number to it. This is likely a personal preference thing with me and my players, and I try my best at explaining it, so don't feel bad or get angry if you enjoy these games. These are systems that within their own spheres, work, and they are tuned to work well.

But they don't feel real, they feel like videogames.

But a character with 200 hit points when a normal person has 5? I lose it. I can't relate. That number is meaningless in reality, and really only has a place in electronic gaming to me. Same thing with wildly high to-hits, damage outputs, or world-ending spells. It is an unrelatable world-crushing Superman to the common-man Batman.

It is having it all versus being a hero without.