Home » Ancient Posts » What Has WOTC Learned from the D&D Next Public Playtest?    
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Rachel Ghoul

Ynas: You're right, my bad.

Ynas Midgard

@ Rachel
Actually, the theory categorises the choices players make, not entire games.

cf. "Used properly, the terms apply only to decisions, not to whole persons nor to whole games." (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/3/)

Rachel Ghoul

Randall: You're quite right, but I don't think they're likely to do any of those very smart and obvious things.

Randall

Rachel: I've been playing TSR-style D&D for ages now and martial characters have never become obsolete at higher levels in my games. They have great saves, high hit points, and by high levels usually have some great magic items (not to mention strongholds and armies). Most high level enemy mages in my games are killed by fighters, not by other mages.

Yes, if you play 3.x and don't put most of the restrictions on spells and casting from TSR D&D back on casters, they are too powerful at higher levels, but that's really a problem specific to 3.x. And really only specific to 3.x RAW. If you house-rule TSR-era casting restrictions back in the problem lessens considerably. Just getting rid of "concentration" so spell interruption works more like it did in TSR D&D can do wonders. Fixing magic saves so that they do not get harder as the caster's level increases does even more wonders. Changing troublesome spells like Rope Trick and teleport so they have TSR-era restrictions does even more.

Rachel Ghoul

Gamist-Narrativist-Simulationist. Supposedly all RPGs can be classified along an arc between those three categories, except it's a lot more complicated and stupid than that.

mjulius

Excuse me if it's obvious, but what is 'GNS Theory'?

Rachel Ghoul

Randall: For sure, I just think the planned obsolescence of martial characters is not balance.

Ynas Midgard

"wanting the game to support a wide variety of different play styles is a fairly strong rejection of both 4e and the silly GNS game theory"

Is it? Although I am fairly critical to the GNS theory, the modes of play it describes actually require different systemic approaches. To rephrase it, one can change the trappings of pseudo-medieval Europe to virtually anything, D&D will still be about looting and killing; it is the system that needs to be adapted to create a new type of game experience.

Randall

Rachel: I have no problem with class balance over the campaign instead of all the time. Of course, "balance" in the more modern sense of the term just is not very important to me.

Rachel Ghoul

On the other hand "adventure-scale" balance sounds perfectly cromulent and probably more doable in a traditional D&D format than encounter-based balance ever could have been.

Rachel Ghoul

I have to admit I'm concerned about the notion of "campaign-level balance"– which sounds to me like code for "wizards are one-trick ponies that die in one hit at low levels, until they become completely dominant in the end game, and fighters remain one-trick ponies that die in slightly more hits." I think there's a better solution than that.