This is a followup post to Against the Funnel of Game Balance - Old School Fun
In that post, I laid out how the impact of character death shaped the style of play and how expectations of character death was very much shaped by other parts of the system. In other words, choice of game system is a strong factor in whether game balance should be a factor or not. I drew the lines up between TSR-era games, such as B/X and OSR retroclones, and WotC-style games like pathfinder and 3rd and 4th edition of D&D. But I didn't really cover 5th edition D&D.
So where does the current edition of D&D fall on this spectrum of Old School Fun --> Game Balance Fun-nel?
In this, as in so many other ways for this edition, it falls sort of in the bland middle - It doesn't do either style particularly well, but honours both enough that both types of players can enjoy it.
The first point to make is that it is different from 3e and 4e in this regard. In making this observation, I do not look to the stated rules (recall, 3e did not explicitly encourage game balance, but other parts of the game created a culture demanding it) but for how people are using it - Let's start with the major factor - The mini-game of character creation and planning:
One of the things that showed me that the culture had shifted focus away from the mini-game of adventure-as-character-actualisation in 5e was looking at the character optimization guides online.
Your classical 3e guides were assumed a culmination at level 20 as the pinnacle of the fully realised character.
5e guides as a rule depart from this, arguing "what is the point of building towards level 20 when the vast majority of gametime will be spent between levels 1-10?" They've brought a renewed focus on the experience of adventure gameplay at the table as opposed to the adventures as a means to the ultimate actualisation of your character concept.
Nonetheless, we can see 5e as a solid "in the middle" kind between TSR and WotC style game evidenced by the fact that we do still have character build and optimization guides. For those who enjoy this, it remains an option. The difference is that you can still opt to just roll a character in 20 minutes and play, and level up with a minimum of decision points, without ending up with a character that the charoppers will leave in the dust.
In 3e, this was not possible. In 4e, you wouldn't necessarily be left behind, but the breadth of choice and the fact you had to choose also did not encourage disregarding this mini-game (there is a reason the online character builder was so popular - in 4e, it was a lot of work).
The gains, demands even (feat chains - looking at you 3e), to be earned from optimization and planning ahead have radically decreased in 5e. The options to go simple have been placed more at the forefront of the game. In other words, it is easier to make 5e the kind of game you want.
The actual rules for encounter balance are a bit shit. In the comments to the first post, +Wright Johnson hit the nail on the head I think in his analysis of 5e game balance in actual play:
On the combat front, XP for killing is still the baseline - The DMG offers some alternative options that seem to have some usage - But it's fairly diffuse stuff, with no good discussion of how to use XP awards as incentives to set the campaign style. It's the 5e DMG in a nutshell - It does a great job of covering all bases, but not really in sufficient detail, or with crisp precision, for it to be the best option.
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In the interest of the full overview, I do think it is worth noting that some measure of challenge rating and game balance has existed in the game from the beginning. The math may not have been properly attempted until 3e (or actually working until 4e), but ideas about estimating how deadly an encounter is, and whether this is desirable or not, has been part of the game from the outset.
In fact, I think the designers of 4e put forward the best argument for why challenge ratings are worthwhile:
The basic premise being that there is a certain sweet spot in combat, where combat is not too easy nor plain impossible - that is just plain more fun. Being able to consistently challenge your players meaningfully in combat is more exciting than a run of too-easy encounters followed by a run-from-the-TPK encounter. Being able to determine in which ballpark that sweet spot lies goes a long way towards making combat encounters more fun and exciting.
So having a challenge rating for guesstimating this sweet spot can be useful - Whether it is the DM being experienced enough to just eyeball it, or the complex encounter building system of 4e.
It was never the "challenge rating" systems that my original post argued against, but rather what they were used for. The 3e DMG, before the designers realised that the game system as a whole implied the need for a social contract on game balance (which the challenge rating and encounter building systems were the means to enforce), actually states that around 5% of all encounters should be out of the PCs league.
In that post, I laid out how the impact of character death shaped the style of play and how expectations of character death was very much shaped by other parts of the system. In other words, choice of game system is a strong factor in whether game balance should be a factor or not. I drew the lines up between TSR-era games, such as B/X and OSR retroclones, and WotC-style games like pathfinder and 3rd and 4th edition of D&D. But I didn't really cover 5th edition D&D.
So where does the current edition of D&D fall on this spectrum of Old School Fun --> Game Balance Fun-nel?
In this, as in so many other ways for this edition, it falls sort of in the bland middle - It doesn't do either style particularly well, but honours both enough that both types of players can enjoy it.
The first point to make is that it is different from 3e and 4e in this regard. In making this observation, I do not look to the stated rules (recall, 3e did not explicitly encourage game balance, but other parts of the game created a culture demanding it) but for how people are using it - Let's start with the major factor - The mini-game of character creation and planning:
One of the things that showed me that the culture had shifted focus away from the mini-game of adventure-as-character-actualisation in 5e was looking at the character optimization guides online.
Your classical 3e guides were assumed a culmination at level 20 as the pinnacle of the fully realised character.
5e guides as a rule depart from this, arguing "what is the point of building towards level 20 when the vast majority of gametime will be spent between levels 1-10?" They've brought a renewed focus on the experience of adventure gameplay at the table as opposed to the adventures as a means to the ultimate actualisation of your character concept.
Nonetheless, we can see 5e as a solid "in the middle" kind between TSR and WotC style game evidenced by the fact that we do still have character build and optimization guides. For those who enjoy this, it remains an option. The difference is that you can still opt to just roll a character in 20 minutes and play, and level up with a minimum of decision points, without ending up with a character that the charoppers will leave in the dust.
In 3e, this was not possible. In 4e, you wouldn't necessarily be left behind, but the breadth of choice and the fact you had to choose also did not encourage disregarding this mini-game (there is a reason the online character builder was so popular - in 4e, it was a lot of work).
The gains, demands even (feat chains - looking at you 3e), to be earned from optimization and planning ahead have radically decreased in 5e. The options to go simple have been placed more at the forefront of the game. In other words, it is easier to make 5e the kind of game you want.
The actual rules for encounter balance are a bit shit. In the comments to the first post, +Wright Johnson hit the nail on the head I think in his analysis of 5e game balance in actual play:
I've found in running 5e that the game is straight-up more enjoyable if you ignore the encounter building guidelines and throw whatever makes sense in the fiction at your players, using CR to ascertain just how scary something is. The increased survivability and bounded accuracy mechanics not only work for "unbalanced" play, but actually work better.
The game generally gives the players plenty of chances to learn from their mistakes before they die horribly, and random treasure is given out on a per-encounter-CR basis, so the players can generally expect increased reward for increased risk. Clever play allows them to mitigate the risk through the advantage/disadvantage mechanic. And if the PCs take the increased risks, they often gain magic items which allow them a chance of triumphing in high-CR encounters they wouldn't have survived otherwise, not to mention the obvious benefit of speedier advancement. It turns "unbalanced" play into a virtuous cycle.
Which is why it's so baffling that the actual rules for encounter building in the DMG throw that virtuous cycle out the window and impose 3e's bonkers "adventuring day" nonsense on top of a system which feels worse when constrained in that way. It's harder for the DM to manage (have you seen the math you're supposed to do?) and less interesting for the players.
On the combat front, XP for killing is still the baseline - The DMG offers some alternative options that seem to have some usage - But it's fairly diffuse stuff, with no good discussion of how to use XP awards as incentives to set the campaign style. It's the 5e DMG in a nutshell - It does a great job of covering all bases, but not really in sufficient detail, or with crisp precision, for it to be the best option.
=============
In the interest of the full overview, I do think it is worth noting that some measure of challenge rating and game balance has existed in the game from the beginning. The math may not have been properly attempted until 3e (or actually working until 4e), but ideas about estimating how deadly an encounter is, and whether this is desirable or not, has been part of the game from the outset.
In fact, I think the designers of 4e put forward the best argument for why challenge ratings are worthwhile:
The basic premise being that there is a certain sweet spot in combat, where combat is not too easy nor plain impossible - that is just plain more fun. Being able to consistently challenge your players meaningfully in combat is more exciting than a run of too-easy encounters followed by a run-from-the-TPK encounter. Being able to determine in which ballpark that sweet spot lies goes a long way towards making combat encounters more fun and exciting.
So having a challenge rating for guesstimating this sweet spot can be useful - Whether it is the DM being experienced enough to just eyeball it, or the complex encounter building system of 4e.
It was never the "challenge rating" systems that my original post argued against, but rather what they were used for. The 3e DMG, before the designers realised that the game system as a whole implied the need for a social contract on game balance (which the challenge rating and encounter building systems were the means to enforce), actually states that around 5% of all encounters should be out of the PCs league.
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