Link to Legends & Lore article on Next here.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20130729

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OK my personal rant...Reading all the recent 'The Math Is Wrong' arguments on rpg.net has I think helped me make sense of the new D&D/old D&D divide. Underpinning the bitching about Next having wrong math, rulings vs. rules and various 3.x spherical cow discussions (whether Pathfinder grapple checks for the purple worm are too high), there's a very similar basic attitude; the idea that The Numbers Must Align so that a high level character has a set chance of success on 'level appropriate' actions. So if you're a high-level character, your numbers should auto-protect you from challenges. This also seems to be aligned with the whole RAW argument in that for there to even be numbers that are 'level appropriate' there has to be systems in place to use them.
I contrast that with the older-D&D idea where levels are just a reward for good playing, but not something that is expected to 100% solve any problem you come across.
 An experienced character is a hero and you are rewarded with more durability and a few numerical increases, but there's no expectation that as a 20th level fighter you will be given numbers that explicitly safeguard you against 20th level monsters or traps, or keep the % success rate at an approved 50% or whatever. Instead, you're expected to use your playing ingenuity, magical items and so on, to avoid being dissolved by green slime, turned to stone, level drained by succubi, or whatever, with better armour/saves/hit points as just another weapon in your arsenal.

I think at this point I'm seeing the 'the maths must be right' argument as another expression of the argument that everything has to be RAW, and that the rules should be set up so that PCs have the right set of push-buttons on their character sheet to solve any problem they stumble across.

Discuss.

I play my rpgs with people, not calculators.  If the RPG  provides the experience I like, the math doesn't have to be perfectly balanced.  High level characters shouldn't be de facto invincible, IMO.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;675793Link to Legends & Lore article on Next here.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20130729

...

OK my personal rant...Reading all the recent 'The Math Is Wrong' arguments on rpg.net has I think helped me make sense of the new D&D/old D&D divide. Underpinning the bitching about Next having wrong math, rulings vs. rules and various 3.x spherical cow discussions (whether Pathfinder grapple checks for the purple worm are too high), there's a very similar basic attitude; the idea that The Numbers Must Align so that a high level character has a set chance of success on 'level appropriate' actions. So if you're a high-level character, your numbers should auto-protect you from challenges. This also seems to be aligned with the whole RAW argument in that for there to even be numbers that are 'level appropriate' there has to be systems in place to use them.
I contrast that with the older-D&D idea where levels are just a reward for good playing, but not something that is expected to 100% solve any problem you come across.
 An experienced character is a hero and you are rewarded with more durability and a few numerical increases, but there's no expectation that as a 20th level fighter you will be given numbers that explicitly safeguard you against 20th level monsters or traps, or keep the % success rate at an approved 50% or whatever. Instead, you're expected to use your playing ingenuity, magical items and so on, to avoid being dissolved by green slime, turned to stone, level drained by succubi, or whatever, with better armour/saves/hit points as just another weapon in your arsenal.

I think at this point I'm seeing the 'the maths must be right' argument as another expression of the argument that everything has to be RAW, and that the rules should be set up so that PCs have the right set of push-buttons on their character sheet to solve any problem they stumble across.

Discuss.

Level-appropriate challenges is a very good idea for tournament play or for some types of open gaming tables.  It allows players to judge their ability to compete on pure small unit tactics versus expected threats.  It's moving back to the days of Kampfgruppe and squad leader.  

These games can certainly be fun to play and may be fine for some settings.  But as a general principle of RPGs it breaks my general rules about verisimilitude -- you shouldn't be at all confident about whether or not a given encounter is going to be dangerous or not.  

Smaug wasn't a level appropriate encounter.

also keep in mind that the usual suspect's don't actually play the game, so all they have is to microanalyze the math as if every encounter is in an arena where you always go back to max resources between every encounter

A solid mathematical framework helps me enjoy the game.

QuoteSince the gap doesn't grow too large, you don't have to rely on system mastery—your mastery of how to manipulate the game system—to make an effective character. You can make a better character (character optimization is fun for many gamers) but it isn't an "I win!" card.

This is the crux of the issue for me.

Isn't it a double edged sword though?

You don't want the math to be so out of whack that a 1st level Rogue can beat any trap given x rounds or by spending their skills in a certain way.
Likewise I wouldn't want to see a 10th level PC being totally unafraid of a bunch of a dozen orcs with swords becuase they had mathematically no chance to hit him.

So math can be important. I have seem some math problems in my own game as I have playtested it and will adjust those.
My feel was that 1e/2e D&D hit a sweet spot from 5th - 9th level it was there that the balance of risk to reward, the levels, the spells, the blend of the game was at its most rewarding.  
I personally felt some of the math wasn't quite right for 1-2 levels and after 12th its too hard to play without access to lots of magic.
I think some smoothing of the math would have helped.

Now I don't want good math to equal perfect CR challenges or the MMO feel of some creatures no longer being a hazard so my definition of good math might be out of whack with many but I certainly feel having a 2 ton rock dropped on your head if you trigger a certain trap should be deadly whatever level you are as should falling off an 80 foot cliff or drinking a pint of cyanide.

I guess it depends on what you want out of the game.

Personally, no, I don't want a 10th level fighter (or 10th level anyone) to be afraid of a dozen orcs. Not unless they were exceptional orcs.

Look at Conan. He rarely shied away from a fight when vastly outnumbered by men or the like. In the Phoenix on the Sword, he took on 20 opponents and won. (Okay, he didn't expect to win, and didn't have a choice, but he did)

But on the flip side, he had no qualms about fleeing from monsters he knew he couldn't handle, and either come up with an alternate solution, or just keep on running.

And in my experience with thieves, even with a high chance of finding or removing a trap, they are still going to get caught in them some of the time.

It's like the critical hits in rolemaster. They were a good idea on paper, but in my experience with the game, in the long run (and sometimes short run), they hurt the PCs far more than their opponents.

Because the PCs were in every combat, eventually they will hit a bad run of luck. And bad luck with critical or fumble tables means it's magnified.  Save or Die stuff and traps are very much like those, since the stakes are so high.

Or maybe more like Russian Roulette. The odds are in your favor, but you just have to fail once...

The game should punish you for being stupid, but it should protect your character somewhat, from just bad luck.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;675797also keep in mind that the usual suspect's don't actually play the game, so all they have is to microanalyze the math as if every encounter is in an arena where you always go back to max resources between every encounter

This.

In this style of play a wizard apprentice with a grease spell has zero chance of killing a high level wizard. There's no such thing as circumstance, craftiness, surprise, etc. Setting context is irrelevant; only numbers matter.

Goblins and kobolds can never be tricky little sonsabitches who exploit their advantage. Poison tricks, murder holes, bivouac harassment, kiting, small crawl spaces, strategic retreats, etc. none of that really figures into it. High level characters are buffered by numbers as a safety net and the world does not matter.

The two playstyles (one being mostly theoretical, and if played artificially reinforced through metagame rules -- often in organized play) may never meet because of their fundamental disagreement about the game's nature. Discussion across the aisle is essentially pointless.

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;675801A solid mathematical framework helps me enjoy the game.

  Mearls quote: Since the gap doesn't grow too large, you don't have to rely on system  mastery—your mastery of how to manipulate the game system—to make an  effective character. You can make a better character (character  optimization is fun for many gamers) but it isn't an "I win!" card.

This is the crux of the issue for me.

I think people (edit: well, rpg.net) are mostly complaining the math isn't working because its too 'flat', even though the flat-ness is to prevent charop.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;675808I think people (edit: well, rpg.net) are mostly complaining the math isn't working because its too 'flat', even though the flat-ness is to prevent charop.

they are complaining if their high level character doesn't always succeed at near impossible tasks.  Even the best NBA dunkers often have to take several attempts at their dunk in a contest.  It all really comes down to some people wanting to narrate their character actions like a story without the risk of failure.

RPG.net and the SomethingAwful squad are really just pissed that the 5e developers are backing away from the 4e system and trying to woo the 3e crowd.

Quote from: jibbajibba;675802Isn't it a double edged sword though?

You don't want the math to be so out of whack that a 1st level Rogue can beat any trap given x rounds or by spending their skills in a certain way.
Likewise I wouldn't want to see a 10th level PC being totally unafraid of a bunch of a dozen orcs with swords becuase they had mathematically no chance to hit him.

Finding what's 'broken' is pretty tricky though. The same math gets used for lots of different situations.
The 20 orcs might do a decent job on the fighter even if it takes 20s to hit him, since it'll take him a while to kill them all. Also, is it a problem if they could take him down by wrestling him down for a coup de grace instead?

What if we replace the 20 orcs with 20 dark elves with sleep poison arrows; now if you've upped the chance to hit, the fighter needs to make a tonne of poison saves and will nearly certainly die, so fixing the math for the orcs just broke it for the dark elves.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;675815Finding what's 'broken' is pretty tricky though. The same math gets used for lots of different situations.
The 20 orcs might do a decent job on the fighter even if it takes 20s to hit him, since it'll take him a while to kill them all. Also, is it a problem if they could take him down by wrestling him down for a coup de grace instead?

What if we replace the 20 orcs with 20 dark elves with sleep poison arrows; now if you've upped the chance to hit, the fighter needs to make a tonne of poison saves and will nearly certainly die, so fixing the math for the orcs just broke it for the dark elves.

See I think 20 orcs shoudl always be a problem, but a beatable one.
The figther should emerge having taken a few HPs damage, but been hit.
In my game where defence scales with level, AC absorbs damage, but HPs stay very flat (fighter gets 1 HP per level). The Orcs will get "advantage" from surrounding the fighter and he will get hit maybe 6 or 7 times in taking them all down  and will end up with a handful of HPs. So he wins and is unwounded but its close and a crit or two would leve him in real trouble.
In 3e D&D the typical 20th level fighter could litterally ignore the orcs and read a book  and no threat.
Now 20 Dark elves with sleep arrows should easily take down a 20th level fighter so I don't think the math there is at all broken.

Now I think it is a question of play style without a doubt. I have a pet gripe about the 'goblinoid treadmill' where there is always a level appropriate goblinoid race for your PC to fight, kobold, goblin, orc, hobgoblin, gnoll, bugbear, ogre, ..... and much prefer a more S&S feel where the low level guys fight a couple of orcs and the high level guys take on a squad of them but the level of risk is probably close in both cases.

Quote from: Opaopajr;675806The two playstyles may never meet because of their fundamental disagreement about the game's nature. Discussion across the aisle is essentially pointless.

This.

Quote from: jibbajibba;675827See I think 20 orcs shoudl always be a problem, but a beatable one.
The figther should emerge having taken a few HPs damage, but been hit.
In my game where defence scales with level, AC absorbs damage, but HPs stay very flat (fighter gets 1 HP per level). The Orcs will get "advantage" from surrounding the fighter and he will get hit maybe 6 or 7 times in taking them all down  and will end up with a handful of HPs. So he wins and is unwounded but its close and a crit or two would leve him in real trouble.
In 3e D&D the typical 20th level fighter could litterally ignore the orcs and read a book  and no threat.
Now 20 Dark elves with sleep arrows should easily take down a 20th level fighter so I don't think the math there is at all broken.

That's fair enough I guess. Maybe the dark elves were a bad example, though Partly I see the problem with the math-ing as being that usually it stops at one dice roll without looking at all the surrounding conditions.
A gaming den example: a recent thread there was complaining Mearls' +6 to save for the 17th level fighter is too low, dropping a 50% chance of saving against paralysis to 20%, but then someone else pointed out that the ghoul has to hit first before it triggers a save, so with say +6 to AC as well then in total the fighter's chance of going down from a ghoul drops from (50% x 50% = 25%) at 1st level to about (20% x 20%) = 4% at level 17...
You can see another math-fixing problem there if you were to compare, say, an invisible poison gas trap against the ghouls; if that didn't need an attack roll but had the same DCs as the ghouls, it would still be killing the 17th level fighter 20% of the time. Do you accept that, or make sure a rogue is searching for the trap, or make sure area effects (including spells, probably) always have lower DCs?

QuoteNow I think it is a question of play style without a doubt. I have a pet gripe about the 'goblinoid treadmill' where there is always a level appropriate goblinoid race for your PC to fight, kobold, goblin, orc, hobgoblin, gnoll, bugbear, ogre, ..... and much prefer a more S&S feel where the low level guys fight a couple of orcs and the high level guys take on a squad of them but the level of risk is probably close in both cases.

Yep, tastes vary.
I can sort of understand Mearls' wanting to set 'feel' first before maths, since one set of numbers could mean 10th level characters are only slightly heroic while another makes them semi-demigods.