The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: beejazzMy larger point is that attrition is how all those small tactical challenges fit into a larger strategic framework, not that all things work by way of attrition. Attrition is just a great way to maintain a wide array of outcomes for those tactical engagements between 1: You are fine and dandy and 2: You are dead. Moreover, the strategic framework modifies how and when people can approach various tactical challenges. You may want to tackle or avoid a given challenge based on how fresh or run-down your resources currently are. Conversely, without the attrition, it's pretty much pitting your level vs theirs regardless of when or how you have approached the rest of the dungeon.

Attrition isn't the only way to do a D&D-style game (with the leveling and what not) nor is it the only way to do a dungeon crawl, but it's the core of D&D's particular formula. Straying too far from it is risky from a branding perspective.

Fair enough, I'll agree with that.  I guess my larger point was that so long as we're drastically messing with scaling, I'd rather mess with the HP scaling than the attack/defence scaling.  There's still be attrition in a game with minimal scaling for HP, and in fact the importance of attrition for things like healing spells, healing potions, wands of cure and the like would be greatly heightened.

I'd still argue that attrition forms only a part of D&D "dungeon crawl formula" if you look at things historically and consider the TSR days as strongly (or more so) than the Wizards days, though.  The inherent deadliness of early editions - the plethora of save-or-die effects, vampires that drained levels like nobody's business, the fact that additional hit points became severely limited after around 10th level in early editions, level caps, the sometimes extreme xp requirements for gaining levels - speaks to this.

To be clear, I wasn't actually arguing for 1-2 hp/level as some kind of ideal, I was just using it as an example that low-level creatures could still be dangerous to high-level characters with scaling attack/defence so long as hp scaling was toned down.  My personal preference would probably be somewhere in-between the bloated hit point totals of 3.X and the severe days of yore.

Quote from: beejazzI actually just mistyped that one. But yeah, the larger point I was after was that older D&D wasn't so much about the individual fights as it was about the aggregate. There would be loops and ambushes (or wandering monsters) from unexpected directions, in addition to the cases where the party is expected to self-select challenges. In a risk-based (as opposed to attrition-based) framework, these sorts of challenges can either kill PCs or feel like a waste of time, with less wiggle room in between. And this can be even worse than a strictly risk and encounter based formula in a framework where the party can select their encounters.

Fair enough!  I'd still claim that on average D&D has been a mixture of risk and attrition, but "risk" is the wrong word, really.  The deadliness of earlier editions isn't just about creating a sense of risk, it's to encourage problem-solving and creativity and planning.

Quote from: beejazzTerrain and equipment sure, but piling class or monster levels on a thing still seems like something else in practice. Baseline orcs either stay relevant or don't. Giving them class levels makes them not baseline orcs, so saying that you can give them class levels seems about as relevant as saying the party can fight a giant squid instead.

I see your point.  It doesn't feel quite the same, but I get what you're saying.  I guess to me the best solution is where "baseline" - i.e. Orcs who happen to be 1st level warriors as opposed to some other character class - can stay relevant while also providing opportunities to upgrade creatures easily.

On traps and other high-risk elements, they do follow a different paradigm from the standard combat system. Monsters you sometimes engage and sometimes avoid or bypass. Traps you basically want to avoid at all costs. And yeah, some monsters were more like traps on legs than things that could be fit into the standard combat paradigm.

Risk vs attrition might not be the most appropriate words, but I think you understand what I'm getting at. Maybe I should've left it at whiff orcs and ping orcs.

I think you brought up some goods points.  Fighting the "ping" orcs offer a pretty predictable outcome - you're going to lose X amount of your hp, which is going to make later encounters harder and put a strain on your resources, and so the ping orcs function really well as a minor challenge in a sequence of variable challenges.  Fighting the "whiff" orcs is inherently unpredictable and kind of scary, because you might be fine or you might end up dead or severely wounded.  Arguably this makes them a more interesting encounter on their own, but less useful as part of a series of encounters.  It poses an interesting design decision.  I'd say the ping approach is much more in line with recent editions of D&D, while the whiff approach smacks more of the old school to me.

What I was trying to get at is that with the ping orcs, it seems to be players'd more likely to just kinda charge in, take a few hits, and move on, because while the orcs are going to chip away at your hp it's going to be by a pretty manageable amount.  With the whiff orcs, because things might go south if you get unlucky, you're forced to think really carefully about how you engage, like maybe trying to lure the orcs away one by one or sniping a few from afar or charming an owlbear and sicking it on them.

For D&D, I like a mix of ping orcs and traps/trap monsters. Orcs are the bread and butter. Medusas, undead, and the like are the mad gamble. Also the specific availability of healing has a lot to do with how meaningful attrition can actually get. If a short rest between fights refreshes everything (extreme example, I know) then individual fights are limited to that fine/dead dichotomy I mentioned before.

For not-D&D I'll tend to do things much differently, of course. In homebrew, I'm cool with the whiff/kill orcs, the between fight hp healing (where there are also harder to heal wounds), the larger attack/defense scaling mitigated by an active defense mechanic, and so on. But I'm explicitly designing a game where a fight has to be able to stand alone because I very frequently run something more mystery-ish, often with a single fight in the middle to end of the session.

Different mechanics for different kinds of games and all that.

I think you can easily combine "Wiff" and "Ping" enemies in a single dungeon. Variety is the spice of life after all.

Some times its fun to just walk in and slaughter a room full of bandits, while other times it's fun to trick the two heads of the Ettin into hating one another and thus by pass the threat.

Good dungeons have both elements and more.

However, I think the idea of the bypassing challenges is often a more advanced skill because people are so accustomed to video games where you can only do what the designers intend for you to do (which is often just fighting).

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I suppose if I were designing D&D Next, here are the questions I would ask myself:

- What kind of campaigns will this game easily support in the core game?
- How powerful are 20th level characters (in generalities)?
- How Powerful are 1st level characters (in generalities)?
- How often should an optimized level 20 character accomplish a very difficult task?
- At 20th level, what is to the total bonus an optimized character can have?
- How often should a level 1 character accomplish a very difficult task?
- At 1st level, what is the minimum bonus a character should have?

Once you answer all these questions, you have the core of the game finished.


The mechanical questions are the easiest to answer, especially if we assume we are going for a bounded accuracy type system where DC are the same for every character, rather than a scaling list of DC ala 4E and 3.5.

Let's say that you want a 20th level character to accomplish a difficult task 75% of the time and a level 1 character 25% of the time.

Without modifiers, the 20th level character should be failing on a roll of 5 or lower, while a 1st level character would fail on a roll of 15 or lower.

Without modifiers, the range of success would be between 6 and 16.

Let's say that you want to cap modifiers at +15 for 20th level characters.

So a DC 20 would become a difficult task for a 20th level character (i.e. the highest possible number you can roll and still fail when adding your modifiers).

If a Level 1 Character needs to roll a 16 to succeed, then he needs a +4 to defeat a DC of 20.  


So a character should start off with a +4 to perform tasks and at the end of the game be capped at a +15.

Over the course of a character's career he needs to be given +11 points to make sure he can succeed 75% of the time at a difficult task at level 20 (i.e. 15-4 = 11).

Then you just have to work out how often a character gets a new modifier point based on how likely you think they should be able to accomplish a difficult task.

Quote from: Elemental ElfThe mechanical questions are the easiest to answer, especially if we assume we are going for a bounded accuracy type system where DC are the same for every character, rather than a scaling list of DC ala 4E and 3.5.

This isn't really how I saw skill DCs as functioning, in 3.5 at least.  It's not that the DCs scaled, it's that tough things were always tough to do and easy things were always easy.  Picking a crude lock is easy and picking a master lock is hard; there was no rule that high level characters had to encounter only high level locks, or that low level characters can only encounter low level ones.  The DCs were always the same for every character.  It's just that there was a wide range of challenges characters could take on, and only the very skillful could tackle the toughest challenges.  When Mearls says, for example, that "we can say that breaking down an iron-banded wooden door is a DC 17 check, and that can live in the game no matter what level the players are," I completely agree... but that's how it always was, at least in 3.X/Pathfinder.  Wooden doors didn't suddenly become harder to break down when characters levelled.  It makes me wonder what kind of whacky games people were playing; nothing that I ever read in any 3.X/Pathfinder rulebook suggested you should arbitrarily change the DCs of tasks as players levelled.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: Elemental ElfThe mechanical questions are the easiest to answer, especially if we assume we are going for a bounded accuracy type system where DC are the same for every character, rather than a scaling list of DC ala 4E and 3.5.

This isn't really how I saw skill DCs as functioning, in 3.5 at least.  It's not that the DCs scaled, it's that tough things were always tough to do and easy things were always easy.  Picking a crude lock is easy and picking a master lock is hard; there was no rule that high level characters had to encounter only high level locks, or that low level characters can only encounter low level ones.  The DCs were always the same for every character.  It's just that there was a wide range of challenges characters could take on, and only the very skillful could tackle the toughest challenges.  When Mearls says, for example, that "we can say that breaking down an iron-banded wooden door is a DC 17 check, and that can live in the game no matter what level the players are," I completely agree... but that's how it always was, at least in 3.X/Pathfinder.  Wooden doors didn't suddenly become harder to break down when characters levelled.  It makes me wonder what kind of whacky games people were playing; nothing that I ever read in any 3.X/Pathfinder rulebook suggested you should arbitrarily change the DCs of tasks as players levelled.

Oops, yeah you're right. I should correct myself, the scaling was just for 4E. 3.PF had DC's high enough as to bar low level characters from accomplishing a given task.

The 4E system assumed that you would be delving into increasingly more complex and powerful dungeons, so their scaling DC made sense as "... Of course a Goblin-made door was less sturdy and less resilient than a Gnoll-made one, which is obviously made of inferior materials when compared to an Azer-made fireironrock door, which is incomparable to the double-reinforced Angelic Songtanium gate!"

Should mundane (i.e. non-magical) classes really exist in D&D?

Quote from: Elemental_Elf
Should mundane (i.e. non-magical) classes really exist in D&D?

Should magical classes be an option for PCs in D&D might be a better question, given that at least two of the game's major inspirations (Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings and the pulpish work of Robert E Howard and Fritz Leiber and company) place it firmly in the category of NPC/villain only.

In Lovecraft (another big source for D&D) magic-users are almost always baddies.  There are a few magic-user protagonists in Vance, and even Cudgel learns the odd spell, but mostly they're mundanes.  In Moorcock, though, there are quite a few magic-users, Elric being an obvious one.

Wizards-era D&D is far less interested in D&D's literary forebears, though.  As I said in the other thread, I think 4th edition is emulating video games (specifically/especially World of Warcraft): forgiving health system, cooldowny-type powers, everyone gets their magic stat-boosting loot, cartoonish look, etc.  Everyone and their dog has magic in that stuff.

I heard that maybe Vancian magic might sorta be back maybe kinda though?  So maybe-just-maybe some of the old literary influences might trickle in...

Of course if we look back to D&D's literary roots, the fact that a Dungeon became the main play area is also a bit odd given how few Dungeons were really present in early fantasy literature.

So I think it is safe to assume D&D has moved beyond its own literary roots.

Plus, I think designers would really struggle to make more than a handful of classes if Magic was non present (Fighter, Rogue, magic-less Ranger, Warlord, Barbarian...?).

Regardless, what do you guys think the default magic level should be in the new edition of D&D?

Quote from: Steerpike
Wizards-era D&D is far less interested in D&D's literary forebears, though.

Quote from: Elemental_Elf

Of course if we look back to D&D's literary roots, the fact that a Dungeon became the main play area is also a bit odd given how few Dungeons were really present in early fantasy literature.

So I think it is safe to assume D&D has moved beyond its own literary roots.

I agree entirely with both of these statements and think you're both absolutely right - I just wanted to make the point that it makes just as little sense to ask if all spellcasters should be removed as to ask if all non-magic users should.

Quote from: HippopotamusDundee

Quote from: Steerpike
Wizards-era D&D is far less interested in D&D's literary forebears, though.

Quote from: Elemental_Elf

Of course if we look back to D&D's literary roots, the fact that a Dungeon became the main play area is also a bit odd given how few Dungeons were really present in early fantasy literature.

So I think it is safe to assume D&D has moved beyond its own literary roots.

I agree entirely with both of these statements and think you're both absolutely right - I just wanted to make the point that it makes just as little sense to ask if all spellcasters should be removed as to ask if all non-magic users should.

Very true, however, from a flavorful standpoint, it would make class design easier if mundane classes had some kind of de-facto magic (like Chi) to do cool things. It would also make game balance much, much simpler.

The opposite is true as well.

It's simply hard to make a completely mundane character feels as if he is on par with a character who can kill people with a single word of summon hordes of angels.

Quote from: Elemental_Elf

Quote from: HippopotamusDundee

Quote from: Steerpike
Wizards-era D&D is far less interested in D&D's literary forebears, though.

Quote from: Elemental_Elf

Of course if we look back to D&D's literary roots, the fact that a Dungeon became the main play area is also a bit odd given how few Dungeons were really present in early fantasy literature.

So I think it is safe to assume D&D has moved beyond its own literary roots.

I agree entirely with both of these statements and think you're both absolutely right - I just wanted to make the point that it makes just as little sense to ask if all spellcasters should be removed as to ask if all non-magic users should.

It's simply hard to make a completely mundane character feels as if he is on par with a character who can kill people with a single word of summon hordes of angels.

I'd like to disclaim that I'm not entirely serious with the following suggestion, but what if spells took twice as long to cast (standard actions replace free actions, rounds replace standard actions, etc.) and could not be interrupted without serious risk once begun and furthermore what if regardless of how much or how little the hitpoint system scaled by level as a whole, spellcaster hitpoints scaled either dramatically slower or even not at all.

One sort of balance could then be seen as achieved in that while yes, the wizard can summon a horde of angels, it takes him meaningful amounts of time to do it during which he is unable to defend himself and only a single opening for an attack is needed to kill him (50% or more of the time).

Just a random thought - would this achieve a better balance?

Quote from: Elemental ElfOf course if we look back to D&D's literary roots, the fact that a Dungeon became the main play area is also a bit odd given how few Dungeons were really present in early fantasy literature.

I disagree.  A small handful of examples (the great majority of these are totally subterannean but a couple are highly dungeon-like above-ground structures):

Tolkien: The Troll-Hole.  The Goblin Caves.  The Wood Elf Dungeons.  The dungeons of Dol Guldur.  The Lonely Mountain.  The barrows.  The Mines of Moria.  Cirith Ungol.  The Paths of the Dead.  Angband.  Utumno.  Nargothrond.

Leiber: the rat-infested underground city below Lankhmar.  The subterannean kingdom of Quarmall.  Sunken Simorgyan.  Many weird towers and caves.

Lovecraft: the underground city of the Elder Things. The Underworld of the Dreamlands.  The Ghoul-tunnels beneath Boston.  R'lyeh.  The underground city below Exham Priory.  The tunnels of Red Hook.  The subterannean vaults of the Yith.  The castle of the Outsider.  The Great Pyramid of Giza and the caverns below.  The Martense burrow.  Pretty muchy every other Lovecraft story involves a creepy basement, tomb, tunnel, or subterranean and/or sunken city.

Howard: the Halls of Horror.  The Tower of the Elephant.  The catacombs of Xuchotill.  More ruined fortresses than one can count, frequently monster-infested.

Lewis: Underland and the Dark Castle, Bism, the Sunless Sea, etc.  It has Gnomes/Svirfneblin and Salamanders and a creepy sleeping giant, plus an evil shape-shifting sorceress.

I can't be bothered to look them up but Ashton-Smith's work is replete with tombs, necropolises, forbidden cities, catacombs, and Martian caverns.

Vance doens't have too many dungeons, although there are some weird abandoned museums and palaces and such in The Dying Earth, and a lot of crazy wizards' mansions.

Also the entire Hollow Earth subgenre, i.e. Pelludicar, The Coming Race, Journey to the Center of the Earth, etc.

If you count Lewis Carroll, all of Wonderland takes place underground.  Indeed, the original title to the thing (the hand-made version Dodgson gave to Alice Liddell as a Christmas present) was Alice's Adventures Under Ground.