3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?

[Darth Ultron]

That's fine but you have to make it SUPER clear to players that stuff like that is permitted, as by the rules it's not, and blaming people for not trying to do things outside the rules if they didn't know breaking the rules was an option is unfair.

Please note, I'm not saying you haven't made it clear to your players as I have no idea, just than in general it should be made explicitly clear to people if actions outside the rules/mechanics can work.

Right, this is very true...and really most players don't ''get it'' until they see it in game play.

But WHY are so many players like that? After all, the Rules are full of rules about ''doing things outside of the published rules". And yet the players that know the rules so well, just skip those parts, and can't even easily grasp the concept.

Take the skill Slight of Hand. Too many player think it's ONLY ''pick pockets'', and somehow don't read the part of the skill that says "Whenever you attempt an act of legerdemain or manual trickery"

So, afaict, all that GMs complaining about Teleport "breaking the game" are doing is pointing out their own inadequacies.

Teleport has the same amount of narrative power as walking somewhere, but they are - at times - suited for different stories. When the GM has hung "the plot" on one story / one set of actions, but not the other, that's their failure.

This is DM problem, not a game problem. It's not even a rule problem. The rules are clear that A)The DM can make anything they want in the game and B)the game world must scale up with the players.

Though this is a big part of where 3X drops the ball. After the rules say several times that games should/must use only the rules, they say the DM can do anything and the game must scale up with the players. And.....that's it. The rules don't elaborate or say anything else or give any examples.

I guess the 3X game writers assumed everyone playing the game would be a 2E D&D gamer and understand the two concepts so well that they did not need to be put out in plain text. It's a very odd omission.

[Lans]

Look at teleport. Look at the Fighter. Tell me with a straight face those are equal amounts of narrative power.

Well one of those is an ability that can be done by any sort of creature and the other is a character that can do said ability



Narrative power is not the only choice when it comes to balance. There is also screen time which high tier casters also have options for but i want to bring up because it doesn't get talked about much

[Hackulator]

Right, this is very true...and really most players don't ''get it'' until they see it in game play.

But WHY are so many players like that? After all, the Rules are full of rules about ''doing things outside of the published rules". And yet the players that know the rules so well, just skip those parts, and can't even easily grasp the concept.

Take the skill Slight of Hand. Too many player think it's ONLY ''pick pockets'', and somehow don't read the part of the skill that says "Whenever you attempt an act of legerdemain or manual trickery"

Things are designed with specifically defined capabilities. Anything outside those specific definitions is entirely up to the DM, which is implicit in the rules if not explicitly stated in the sections about rule 0. Therefore, without the DM telling you you can do those things, there's no reason to think you can. If you're with a new group, even if the DM tells you that you still really can't have any idea what the scale of things you are allowed to do is until you see it in action. Nobody wants to come up with what they think is a super cool idea only to be told "nope that will never work" or, in some cases even worse in the way you run (though please note I'm not saying I disagree with your decision to not tell people if something might work, only that it does have a downside like all things), for them to attempt something which never had any chance of working and waste their action/screw the party/die because they tried to step outside of the rules in a way you don't think was reasonable.

[Erloas]

Teleport doesn't really have any narrative power. It limits the narrative options but doesn't add anything. With teleport there are a lot of situations that are no longer a story. But what it brings to the world is just a change in speed. "We get from point a to b in 6 second" doesn't change the narrative over that same trip taking 3 days or a month. "We have to get to 3 different points within 3 hours" or 3 days doesn't actually change the narrative, it simply changes are arbitrary passing of time.

Much the way "fast travel" in computer games work. The story of getting to a place is in itself a story, but once you've already been there then can fast travel around the journey part of the story is gone but nothing new is gained (in terms of story, gameplay is just sped up)

[Darth Ultron]

Things are designed with specifically defined capabilities. Anything outside those specific definitions is entirely up to the DM, which is implicit in the rules if not explicitly stated in the sections about rule 0. Therefore, without the DM telling you you can do those things, there's no reason to think you can. If you're with a new group, even if the DM tells you that you still really can't have any idea what the scale of things you are allowed to do is until you see it in action. Nobody wants to come up with what they think is a super cool idea only to be told "nope that will never work" or, in some cases even worse in the way you run (though please note I'm not saying I disagree with your decision to not tell people if something might work, only that it does have a downside like all things), for them to attempt something which never had any chance of working and waste their action/screw the party/die because they tried to step outside of the rules in a way you don't think was reasonable.

Your answer is a good example. You make "entirely up to the DM" sound like an odd thing when really the whole game world/ game play is entirely up to the DM.

It's an odd view:

Player: "I roll a d20 to hit the monster using THE rules and you DM HAVE to let it happen because THE rules say so."

Vs.

Player: "Well, if I even suggest anything not 'in the rules' the DM might say no, so I won't even try".

And, again, the rules do tell you you can attempt to do things the rules don't cover. Ability Checks: Sometimes a character tries to do something to which no specific skill really applies. In these cases, you make an ability check. An ability check is a roll of 1d20 plus the appropriate ability modifier.

Example: Got the gnome wants to distract a guard by telling some jokes. A quick look through the rules shows no rules for this action. This is where a charisma ability check would come in:

Easy way: the DM just has the player make a charisma ability check. Easy.

Bit more:The DM does an opposed wisdom check by the guard vs the charisma check...or maybe sets the DC = guards wisdom.

And sure, you might be in a game like this:

Player: "Hey, DM, my character will tell some jokes to distract the guard!"

DM: "No, absolutely not! Never Ever going to happen. Your character just sits in the corner and does nothing."

And...ok, if that happens...you might want to look for another DM.

[MeimuHakurei]

Teleport doesn't really have any narrative power. It limits the narrative options but doesn't add anything. With teleport there are a lot of situations that are no longer a story. But what it brings to the world is just a change in speed. "We get from point a to b in 6 second" doesn't change the narrative over that same trip taking 3 days or a month. "We have to get to 3 different points within 3 hours" or 3 days doesn't actually change the narrative, it simply changes are arbitrary passing of time.

Much the way "fast travel" in computer games work. The story of getting to a place is in itself a story, but once you've already been there then can fast travel around the journey part of the story is gone but nothing new is gained (in terms of story, gameplay is just sped up)

You're forgetting that walking somewhere means you can encounter raiders, ravines, forest fires, tidal waves, mountain passes, giant tribes, avalanches and a number of other things that can impede your ability to reach point B, including being lethal to the party so they don't get there at all. Teleport just lets you immediately arrive there, with no chance of any of these things hindering you.

[upho]

This is an interesting question, and could well be worth its own thread. Allow me to tell an anecdotal story.

/Fun stories about Armus cut for brevity./

Narrative power, without power power. That's the Armus way.

Yep, but assuming Armus wasn't an unusually well educated spellcaster (or maybe something rogue-ish), I have to object! Because if so, I suspect that meta-game knowledge that you, the player, happened to have was the primary source of his narrative power in many cases, or maybe even in most cases. For example, practically regardless of which class you happen to play, it's fairly easy for an experienced player to make their PC stand out as a tactical genius or master negotiator in a party of PC's played by less experienced people. Likewise, the probability that a 7th level non-caster has enough skill ranks in Spellcraft (and/or Know planes?) to have even just some rudimentary basic knowledge of how high level plane-shift magics work isn't exactly high, not to mention knowledge of any specific components which may be required/useful for such magics...

What can we take away from this?

That player power - including such things as improvisational acting skills which would've impressed Sanford Meisner himself - can compensate for a PC's lack of mechanical power in many games?

That all the narrative power of a PC isn't (and shouldn't be) necessarily primarily dependent on the rules?

Unfortunately, I don't think this says anything about the balance problems when it comes to the narrative power derived from the mechanics in most games, but simply that such balance issues can be worsened or mitigated by other factors. I mean, if the mechanics provided by the rules had instead been the primary source of Armus' narrative power, I'd wager it would've been considerable less impressive, and the same would likely be true if Armus had happened to have a very different personality. Imagine how successful he would've been if had happened to have a personality, mindset and tactical ineptitude similar to say Quertus, your mechanically far more powerful wizard.

Or in other words, imagine if you wanted to play the rather dumb and impulsive stereotypical Int 7 barbarian with anger management issues, and your GM tells you "No, you have to play him like a tactical genius regardless of his Int score, otherwise he won't have enough narrative power."

[Crake]

Or in other words, imagine if you wanted to play the rather dumb and impulsive stereotypical Int 7 barbarian with anger management issues, and your GM tells you "No, you have to play him like a tactical genius regardless of his Int score, otherwise he won't have enough narrative power."

A player choosing to play that kind of a character is willfully giving up a portion of their narrative power. You could play a 7 int sorcerer with anger management issues and still have next to no narrative power in such a circumstance.

I'm trying to think about what class feature or spell might actually have, in itself, the ability to mechanically direct the narrative, as opposed to say, progressing the existing narrative. Teleport for example simply progresses the narrative, rather than directing it. Even planar binding merely provides you with more canon fodder to progress the narrative rather than direct it. Ultimately, no matter what, when it comes down to it, narrative power is in the hands of the players, because it's the player's decisions on how to progress that can direct the narrative, and it's the mechanical powers that allow that narrative to progress.

Obviously, metagaming can become an issue, but generally speaking, knowing the intricasies of a subject as opposed to having a general clue are two vastly different things. For example, armus taking samples from a variety of different dimensions is a nifty thought, and has little to no metagaming behind it. He knows they came from different dimensions, and taking samples of them is something anyone could come up with. Actually converting that into a practical use is something beyond the character of course, but he outsourced that to a wizard. Then the example where armus sat on the far side of the negotiations while all his friends sat next to the NPC, was again, absolutely 0 metagamging. And the final example was an example where the player paid attention to the stories characters had, and using his leverage as the party leader, and the wealth or narrative power he had accumulated over time, enforced the outcome he wanted.

There was absolutely no metagaming there at all, just clever thinking that anyone could have come up with. I mean, think about it. The PLAYER came up with those ideas, and the PLAYER has absolutely no ranks in spellcraft, the PLAYER has no idea how to construct a spell, or craft a magical item, but the idea that pieces could be useful is certainly an idea that anyone could come up with.

It would be like harvesting troll blood, thinking it could be useful for healing potions, you know trolls regenerate, and you know healing potions heal you, you can make the link and maybe you're right. After all, Armus might have given the samples to the wizard and the wizard might have said "Sorry, I need XYZ samples for this to work".

[upho]

I mean teleport is exactly as much narrative power as walking somewhere. The time it takes and whether that matters is a function of the DMs choices about controlling said narrative.

The wizard getting teleport doesn't take any narrative power away from the fighter.

Teleport has the same amount of narrative power as walking somewhere, but they are - at times - suited for different stories. When the GM has hung "the plot" on one story / one set of actions, but not the other, that's their failure.

This is DM problem, not a game problem. It's not even a rule problem.

Teleport doesn't really have any narrative power. It limits the narrative options but doesn't add anything. With teleport there are a lot of situations that are no longer a story. But what it brings to the world is just a change in speed. "We get from point a to b in 6 second" doesn't change the narrative over that same trip taking 3 days or a month. "We have to get to 3 different points within 3 hours" or 3 days doesn't actually change the narrative, it simply changes are arbitrary passing of time.

Much the way "fast travel" in computer games work. The story of getting to a place is in itself a story, but once you've already been there then can fast travel around the journey part of the story is gone but nothing new is gained (in terms of story, gameplay is just sped up)

Guys, are you actually serious now? Because I can't actually remember more than a rare few of the tons of teleports used in actual games which I've run or played in that didn't have narrative power, and typically quite a lot of narrative power. The ability to go from A to B in 6 seconds rather than say two months or even just a few hours can often be a complete game-changer, and in turn also a complete "story-changer". And it's definitely not the same thing as your typical "fast travel" in computer games, unless perhaps if you only have players with remarkably little creativity or tactical and problem-solving skills. On top of that, it often provides a ton of additional alternative solutions to more complex problems which otherwise would've been too risky, resource intense or simply impossible.

Two very simple examples:

1. The party failed to stop the evil cultists from summoning a big badass demon, and know they won't be able to stop it from gobbing down the entire population of the nearby village within an hour. The wizard instantly gets the high level demon-hunter cleric and her apprentice from their temple two weeks of normal traveling distance away, and suddenly the party has a decent chance of stopping the demon.
2. The friendly king's castle is under siege by an army of thousands of orcs, and they've breached the walls and will most likely break into the keep and slaughter the royal family in minutes. The wizard instantly teleports the entire royal family and their most valuable possessions to an allied queen's palace in a neighboring kingdom, taking the opportunity to impress on the queen the importance of her immediately rallying her army to help fight against the orcs.

Can somebody please explain to me how the teleports in either example does not translate into increased narrative power, and give some examples of other things that do translate into increased narrative power?

And perhaps Erloas would care to explain how these examples are "Much the way "fast travel" in computer games work".

A player choosing to play that kind of a character is willfully giving up a portion of their narrative power. You could play a 7 int sorcerer with anger management issues and still have next to no narrative power in such a circumstance.

And?

(Also keep in mind this was merely an example, and the opposite would serve just as well. Like say a player being told or feeling compelled to play his Int 26+ wizard star student of the "War Mage Academy" as a tactically inept coward in order to reduce his narrative power).

I'm trying to think about what class feature or spell might actually have, in itself, the ability to mechanically direct the narrative, as opposed to say, progressing the existing narrative. Teleport for example simply progresses the narrative, rather than directing it. Even planar binding merely provides you with more canon fodder to progress the narrative rather than direct it. Ultimately, no matter what, when it comes down to it, narrative power is in the hands of the players, because it's the player's decisions on how to progress that can direct the narrative, and it's the mechanical powers that allow that narrative to progress.

But deciding the "how" IS narrative power, aside from the fact that all mechanical PC abilities increase the possibility to "direct the narrative", if often only in some very small or more general sense. Spells happen to be abilities which stand out in this regard. I mean, they can do things like involve beings from multiple planes in what the GM expected would be conflict confined to the material plane, in most cases without the need of any related GM fiat or special permissions whatsoever.

Obviously, metagaming can become an issue, but generally speaking, knowing the intricasies of a subject as opposed to having a general clue are two vastly different things. For example, armus taking samples from a variety of different dimensions is a nifty thought, and has little to no metagaming behind it. He knows they came from different dimensions, and taking samples of them is something anyone could come up with. Actually converting that into a practical use is something beyond the character of course, but he outsourced that to a wizard. Then the example where armus sat on the far side of the negotiations while all his friends sat next to the NPC, was again, absolutely 0 metagamging. And the final example was an example where the player paid attention to the stories characters had, and using his leverage as the party leader, and the wealth or narrative power he had accumulated over time, enforced the outcome he wanted.

Sure, but meta or not, the important point here is that all of these things could just as well or better be accomplished through the game mechanics, especially through the use of spells.

There was absolutely no metagaming there at all, just clever thinking that anyone could have come up with. I mean, think about it. The PLAYER came up with those ideas, and the PLAYER has absolutely no ranks in spellcraft, the PLAYER has no idea how to construct a spell, or craft a magical item, but the idea that pieces could be useful is certainly an idea that anyone could come up with.

It would be like harvesting troll blood, thinking it could be useful for healing potions, you know trolls regenerate, and you know healing potions heal you, you can make the link and maybe you're right. After all, Armus might have given the samples to the wizard and the wizard might have said "Sorry, I need XYZ samples for this to work".

Are you saying that the player cannot possibly have played a high level wizard in some previous game, or never bothered to read up on some spells? And if dirt and gold coins would serve, why not the PCs themselves?

And perhaps more importantly, if the components actually weren't needed according to the rules of the spell(s) used, then the components also enabled said spell(s) purely because the GM allowed them to.

[Mechalich]

Can somebody please explain to me how the teleports in either example does not translate into increased narrative power, and give some examples of other things that do translate into increased narrative power?

Teleportation actually goes further, it does not just provide narrative power, it is narrative deforming. Functionally, there are fantasy worlds without instantaneous travel methods, and there are fantasy worlds with them, and if you take the verisimilitude of your fantasy at all seriously then these two worlds have very different structures. An excellent example can be found in the Wheel of Time series, in which teleportation magic (Travelling) comes online in a mass way around book six and drastically changes how all important events play out subsequently. To the credit of the authors, Jordan and Sanderson managed to integrate this at least partially, and included huge armies teleporting from halfway across the planet, cannons firing through portals from caves completely without natural egress, and using the telportation magic as a direct weapon in the narrative.

But these sorts of problems are not game balance problems, they are issues of setting structure and verisimilitude. The game balance issue, in the context of D&D, is that one subset of classes gets teleportation, and others do not, which means that only those characters have the ability to alter the narrative in this way. However, if you take the setting issues seriously, then widespread teleportation becomes a requirement for adventuring and a party without access to teleportation is going to face huge barriers interacting with the world. This can also be seen in the Wheel of Time, as late in the narrative certain portions of the cast, Mat Cauthon most notably, end up without access to a character able to Travel on their behalf and are functionally stranded until they encounter one which the narrative is eventually obligated to provide.

Now, D&D does provide an in-place mechanism via scrolls and other items such that abilities required by the narrative can generally be acquired for a one-off purpose without too much difficulty, but the absence of abilities can be much more pervasive. For instance, low-level spells have long overridden essentially all survival challenges in D&D rendering the entire category of 'man vs. nature' stories almost completely superfluous (Dark Sun, in attempting to restore such options, outright bans a huge suite of spells and effects), but only for certain classes. This sort of blatant narrative imbalance can be seen in the world of D&D novels. Novels about warriors, such as the various Drizzt works, often involve long, complex overland journeys with many encounters along the war. Novels about spellcasters, such as the various Elminster works, tend to ignore these and allow the major characters to teleport across multiple kingdoms in a single day. Despite ostensibly taking place in the same world, they occupy completely different narrative universes. Case in point: Salvatore once wrote about how Drizzt had a profound religious experience by touching a unicorn, a symbol of the goddess Meleikki he worships. Elminster, on regular occasions, talks directly to not one, but multiple, deities.

[martixy]

the woefully abyssal gap between the highest and lowest levels of optimization

It's a feature, not a bug.

That is all.

But honestly, I have not found any other system that allows me to reasonably do the shenanigans I want to do, in as structured a way I want them done. It is legit the only system I feel I can express most of the zany and absurd character concepts I enjoy in.

[Cosi]

Define "improve the overall experience".

Well, in this particular context, I would probably say something like "reduce the power discrepancy between characters".

So glad you went there. But let me go there anyway. 4e is what happens when you prioritize "balance" over "cool" and "fun".

There are, broadly, two theories of why 4e is bland and bad. Or at least two I've seen on this forum. One says "4e is bland and bad because if you make things balanced they become bland and bad". The other says "4e is bland and bad because the designers who made it weren't especially competent and designing good RPGs is hard". And we could go back and forth over exactly how balanced 4e is, and exactly what an apples-to-apples 3e-to-4e comparison is, but I think there's something much simpler we can do. We can look at skill challenges.

Skill Challenges were the big mechanical innovation of 4e. They aren't a revision of a 3e mechanic, they're a new thing added in 4e to cover a previously unfilled niche. And they suck. The core mechanic of skill challenges (counting party failures) discourages dynamic play and involving the whole party. Since those are the explicit goals of the system, it is one of the few mechanics that can be called an objective failure (not to mention all the ways it is a subjective failure like "being incredibly boring" and "creating tension between players and characters"). And despite revising it more often and more quickly than almost any other RPG mechanic (contenders being "D&D 3e polymorph rules", "Shadowrun hacking rules", and "GURPS unarmed combat rules"), they never fixed that.

I think that provides pretty convincing evidence that the problem with 4e wasn't that prioritizing game balance makes your game terrible, but that the people who made the game did a terrible job. The place where they were working unconstrained by comparison to previous editions is one of the worst designed and worst balanced parts of the game.

If what people like includes inherently unbalanced abilities (since you mentioned MtG, cards like Wheel of Fortune and the ironically-named Balance), then yes, it'll be worse.

Those abilities aren't inherently imbalanced. They're undercosted relative to the modern design paradigm, but symmetric wheels and asymmetric (ironically, in Balance's case) wraths are entirely balance-able effects.

The wizard getting teleport doesn't take any narrative power away from the fighter. And since the fighter and the wizard are presumably working together (they're a party right?), the wizard gaining teleport helps the party as a whole, not just the wizard, unless the wizard is intentionally trying to steal the spotlight and going off without the party to do everything himself.

Spotlight time is finite. Any problem the Wizard solves is a problem the Fighter doesn't solve. That's not "intentionally trying to steal the spotlight", that's a simple fact. The Fighter has no way of getting the spotlight. And the notion that the Wizard getting an ability increases the Fighter's narrative power is getting dangerously close to "because your character sucks, you get to tell the rest of the party what do to", which is an absolutely terrible paradigm.

If what people like includes the ability to balance for different table dynamics, or balance for different levels of player skill, then, yes, it'll be worse.

Imbalance is actually good for 3.5, though - it supports a lot of playstyles. You can go off the deep end into full-caster all-magical party stuff, or you can do a grim-n-gritty low-level campaign where the best full caster the PCs ever get is a Healer, and everyone else is Fighters and Rogues.

I agree that supporting a wide variety of power levels is good. But there is a mechanism for doing that. It's called character level. You can tell they're related because they are called the exact same thing. Twenty levels is perfectly sufficient to support all the different power levels you want (consider: can you pick twenty-one different fantasy characters that are all at different power levels?). All having different characters of the same level be at different power levels does is reduce the amount of meaning level has. It's bad in the exact same way and for the exact same reason that variable XP tables were a bad idea in AD&D.

The point is that you complain about D&D to the extent that I have seen you in other posts claim that buying D&D books is tantamount to burning money

That's quite impressive, because I haven't said that. I've said that replacing rules you pay for with rules you make up is burning money, because making up rules is free. And that's true. But D&D books have lots of rules you don't have to throw out. I've never had any particular problem with the initiative rules, or the appraise rules, or 99% of the spells, or 99% of the monsters, or so on and so forth. Once again, you are conflating "this has problems" with "this is totally worthless".

If you complained about your computer not being perfect but it was by your own admission the best damn computer in the entire world then your complaints about it would seem ridiculous.

No they wouldn't. Consider the first computers, which were the size of entire rooms and had less power than my smartphone. They were top of the line, and they solved previously-insoluble problems. Was it ridiculous to say "this is too large" or "I'd like to have a graphical interface for this"? I would argue that it is obviously not, and that saying it is would be tantamount to arguing we should never attempt to make progress in anything. Even today there are properties I would like my computer to have which even the most expensive possible computers do not have. Using a computer that exists while still wanting those thing isn't ridiculous, its a realistic acknowledgement that there's a large range between "usable" and "perfect".

If you cannot point to a single product of the same type as D&D which you consider superior

Except I can. I can point to "D&D, but with Warblades instead of Fighters". That is a thing which exists, and I would consider it superior to D&D. So not only is your argument absurd, it's false. So pick a different argument.

Teleport doesn't really have any narrative power. It limits the narrative options but doesn't add anything.

It adds the ability to say "we go to place X" with certainty and without being jerked around. If you think that's nothing, I think that reflects rather poorly on your DMing style.

[Morty]

A game that offered 3E's range of power levels and power sources on purpose, rather than as a result of ineptitude and a "quantity over quality" approach to releasing material, might be a truly fantastic one. We'll have to see if one ever appears, I guess.

[Erloas]

You're forgetting that walking somewhere means you can encounter raiders, ravines, forest fires, tidal waves, mountain passes, giant tribes, avalanches and a number of other things that can impede your ability to reach point B, including being lethal to the party so they don't get there at all. Teleport just lets you immediately arrive there, with no chance of any of these things hindering you.

No, that's exactly what I was saying. Teleport removes those options in the narrative but it doesn't add anything in return. The trip could add to the narrative or not, but if there is no trip there is no option to make it part of the narrative.


Not directly related but not directly quoting the other statement
"This story element is completely changed because of teleport" isn't really changed. If teleport is an option than your "time critical event" *has* to be very soon, if not it can be longer in the future, but the narrative didn't really change. "The sacrifice happens at midnight 200 miles away" versus "The sacrifice happens at midnight on the next full moon 60 miles away" are essentially the same narrative. The difference is that as a DM the option to make the trip part of the narrative versus the narrative being entirely at the destination has been removed. It hasn't really changed anything, just removed options.

[Hackulator]

Your answer is a good example. You make "entirely up to the DM" sound like an odd thing when really the whole game world/ game play is entirely up to the DM.

It's an odd view:

Player: "I roll a d20 to hit the monster using THE rules and you DM HAVE to let it happen because THE rules say so."

Vs.

Player: "Well, if I even suggest anything not 'in the rules' the DM might say no, so I won't even try".

And, again, the rules do tell you you can attempt to do things the rules don't cover. Ability Checks: Sometimes a character tries to do something to which no specific skill really applies. In these cases, you make an ability check. An ability check is a roll of 1d20 plus the appropriate ability modifier.

Example: Got the gnome wants to distract a guard by telling some jokes. A quick look through the rules shows no rules for this action. This is where a charisma ability check would come in:

Easy way: the DM just has the player make a charisma ability check. Easy.

Bit more:The DM does an opposed wisdom check by the guard vs the charisma check...or maybe sets the DC = guards wisdom.

And sure, you might be in a game like this:

Player: "Hey, DM, my character will tell some jokes to distract the guard!"

DM: "No, absolutely not! Never Ever going to happen. Your character just sits in the corner and does nothing."

And...ok, if that happens...you might want to look for another DM.

Clearly that would be perform: comedy.

Regardless, when something is being made up, it is entirely up to the DM. When the baseline rules are being used, the DM is choosing to do so but to say the way it works is entirely up to them would be inaccurate, so I stand by my statement.

If your DM regularly doesn't let you hit things with hit rolls, well, that's also a problem game.

As for your example, I more meant if you decided the idea with swinging at the goblins wouldn't work, but you didn't tell them (as you said you don't answer the question will this work) and so they swung around and didn't knock the goblins off and were then just hanging on a rope there having done nothing in full view of three angry goblins, never having had a chance to succeed in the first place. While I admit that in a single instance this might be quite funny, it could easily get annoying especially if it let to character death.

[Cosi]

No, that's exactly what I was saying. Teleport removes those options in the narrative but it doesn't add anything in return.

Yes it does. It adds the ability to go places that are far away quickly. Go read The Chronicles of Amber or Creatures of Light and Darkness and tell me that travel magic doesn't have narrative impact.

"This story element is completely changed because of teleport" isn't really changed.

I literally cannot comprehend how you could seriously claim that "having X" and "not having X" do not represent different things to a degree that would make going from one to the other a change. That's simply nonsensical. A story is defined by the things that happen in it. If different things happen, you have a different story. If teleport isn't narrative power, nothing is.

If teleport is an option than your "time critical event" *has* to be very soon,

No it doesn't. It could be at an unknown location, or somewhere fortified, or at multiple locations.

The difference is that as a DM the option to make the trip part of the narrative versus the narrative being entirely at the destination has been removed. It hasn't really changed anything, just removed options.

Yes, the difference is that the DM has an option. With teleport, the players have an option. Which means that having teleport increases the narrative power of the players.

[Quertus]

When it comes to spreading narrative power: that is the biggest reason for something like ritual casting and converting some iconic non combat spells into rituals. One of the few things I actually think 4e had a good idea about.

Why do people keep crediting 4e for this, when such rituals existed in 3e?

The DM can also make an impact with a few choice houserules - banning Natural Spell and removing Druid companions does a lot to curb their power in low-to-mid-op campaigns, as does limiting Wizard spell access and making all clerics cloistered without access to DMM and Divine Power.

Just gotta ask, how would this help the party where the Wizard is constantly outshined by the Fighter and Monk?

(And is "outshined" really a word? My autocorrect thinks so...)

I guess the 3X game writers assumed everyone playing the game would be a 2E D&D gamer and understand the two concepts so well that they did not need to be put out in plain text. It's a very odd omission.

Yeah, humans are horrible at explanation, and putting words to their assumptions. As such, just as 3.5 has a "reference 3.0 for anything undefined", 3.0 should have a "reference 2e for anything undefined" (the definition of "true Beholder" comes to mind).

Narrative power is not the only choice when it comes to balance. There is also screen time which high tier casters also have options for but i want to bring up because it doesn't get talked about much

This sounds important, but it's likely to get lost in this flood. Maybe we'll circle back to this...

Yep, but assuming Armus wasn't an unusually well educated spellcaster (or maybe something rogue-ish), I have to object! Because if so, I suspect that meta-game knowledge that you, the player, happened to have was the primary source of his narrative power in many cases, or maybe even in most cases. For example, practically regardless of which class you happen to play, it's fairly easy for an experienced player to make their PC stand out as a tactical genius or master negotiator in a party of PC's played by less experienced people. Likewise, the probability that a 7th level non-caster has enough skill ranks in Spellcraft (and/or Know planes?) to have even just some rudimentary basic knowledge of how high level plane-shift magics work isn't exactly high, not to mention knowledge of any specific components which may be required/useful for such magics...

1) Armus was both a prodigy, and had an unparalleled education.

2) many of the players had probably been playing longer than I had - they weren't "less experienced people". Remember the impetus for me creating Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named? Yeah, 1st level Armus, bound as a Drow prisoner, was more effective in the first combat that his 7th level "rescuers" (Armus killed one high-priestess (aided by her own stupidity), and drove off the second, while the party randomly deployed against "whatever was closest").

3) yes, "directing the narrative" is often "player skill".

That player power - including such things as improvisational acting skills which would've impressed Sanford Meisner himself - can compensate for a PC's lack of mechanical power in many games?

Sounds like you've almost got it. Rather, you should be saying that mechanical power can compensate for lack of player skill in some games. Because "directing the narrative" is first and foremost player choices, player skill.

That all the narrative power of a PC isn't (and shouldn't be) necessarily primarily dependent on the rules?

Again, almost there.

Unfortunately, I don't think this says anything about the balance problems when it comes to the narrative power derived from the mechanics in most games,

Other than that such things do not or should not exist?

but simply that such balance issues can be worsened or mitigated by other factors. I mean, if the mechanics provided by the rules had instead been the primary source of Armus' narrative power,

Yeah, no, lost it again. "Narrative power" is generally independent of power power.

I'd wager it would've been considerable less impressive, and the same would likely be true if Armus had happened to have a very different personality. Imagine how successful he would've been if had happened to have a personality, mindset and tactical ineptitude similar to say Quertus, your mechanically far more powerful wizard.

I mean, that's kinda the point of the story, yeah.

Or, at least, that was my point in making the characters, and in talking about them here, and what I expect people to take away from them in this context. But I left it open-ended, in case anyone saw things that I didn't.

I'm trying to think about what class feature or spell might actually have, in itself, the ability to mechanically direct the narrative, as opposed to say, progressing the existing narrative. Teleport for example simply progresses the narrative, rather than directing it. Even planar binding merely provides you with more canon fodder to progress the narrative rather than direct it.

Planar Binding can be used to create the next BBEG?

Ultimately, no matter what, when it comes down to it, narrative power is in the hands of the players, because it's the player's decisions on how to progress that can direct the narrative, and it's the mechanical powers that allow that narrative to progress.

+1 this.

Obviously, metagaming can become an issue, but generally speaking, knowing the intricasies of a subject as opposed to having a general clue are two vastly different things. For example, armus taking samples from a variety of different dimensions is a nifty thought, and has little to no metagaming behind it. He knows they came from different dimensions, and taking samples of them is something anyone could come up with. Actually converting that into a practical use is something beyond the character of course, but he outsourced that to a wizard. Then the example where armus sat on the far side of the negotiations while all his friends sat next to the NPC, was again, absolutely 0 metagamging. And the final example was an example where the player paid attention to the stories characters had, and using his leverage as the party leader, and the wealth or narrative power he had accumulated over time, enforced the outcome he wanted.

There was absolutely no metagaming there at all, just clever thinking that anyone could have come up with.

Thank you for explaining that.

After all, Armus might have given the samples to the wizard and the wizard might have said "Sorry, I need XYZ samples for this to work".

That was a risk.

Guys, are you actually serious now? Because I can't actually remember more than a rare few of the tons of teleports used in actual games which I've run or played in that didn't have narrative power, and typically quite a lot of narrative power. The ability to go from A to B in 6 seconds rather than say two months or even just a few hours can often be a complete game-changer, and in turn also a complete "story-changer". And it's definitely not the same thing as your typical "fast travel" in computer games, unless perhaps if you only have players with remarkably little creativity or tactical and problem-solving skills. On top of that, it often provides a ton of additional alternative solutions to more complex problems which otherwise would've been too risky, resource intense or simply impossible.

Two very simple examples:

1. The party failed to stop the evil cultists from summoning a big badass demon, and know they won't be able to stop it from gobbing down the entire population of the nearby village within an hour. The wizard instantly gets the high level demon-hunter cleric and her apprentice from their temple two weeks of normal traveling distance away, and suddenly the party has a decent chance of stopping the demon.
2. The friendly king's castle is under siege by an army of thousands of orcs, and they've breached the walls and will most likely break into the keep and slaughter the royal family in minutes. The wizard instantly teleports the entire royal family and their most valuable possessions to an allied queen's palace in a neighboring kingdom, taking the opportunity to impress on the queen the importance of her immediately rallying her army to help fight against the orcs.

Can somebody please explain to me how the teleports in either example does not translate into increased narrative power, and give some examples of other things that do translate into increased narrative power?

Totes serious.

----- example 1 -----

Sure. The party walks several minutes to the demon slayer's home, and convinces him to come save the town. Same narrative power.

Oh, that contradicts established facts? The party sends a raven to the demon slayer, who teleports in to save the town.

Still won't work? The party walks for several months to the high level Wizard's home, explains the situation to him. He uses Teleport Through Time to arrive at the demon slayer's home in time to save the town. Let alone if the party builds a TARDIS themselves.

Or even "the party was smart and informed, knew that a demon was likely, and already had the demon hunter in the area beforehand".

The narrative power here is the ability to convince the demon slayer moreso than one particular technique of getting him to town on time.

Or even, "the party convinces the town that it is hopeless, they are lost, and convinces them to mass-suicide before the demon gets there." Bonus points if the party uses the mass suicide to fuel a ritual.

Because, of course, this is D&D, and nobody ever flees.

----- example 2 -----

The party disguises themselves as orcs, uses bluff, and takes the Royal family "prisoner". Then they walk to the neighboring kingdom, killing any orcs that ask "where are you taking them?" and don't accept "Corrisant" as an answer, and convince the Queen that she needs to help.

The party disguises the royal family as orcs, who take the party prisoner. Then they walk to the neighboring kingdom, and convince the Queen that she needs to help.

The party disguises everyone as orcs, then they walk to the neighboring kingdom, and convince the Queen that she needs to help.

The party turns everyone into ravens, who fly to the neighboring kingdom, and convince the Queen that she needs to help.

Everyone hops out the window into giant eagles, who carry everyone to the neighboring kingdom, where they convince the Queen that she needs to help.

In the weeks leading up to the invasion, the party infiltrated the orcs, and turned many key players, who were waiting for the signal. The players trigger the castle "loudspeakers" to yell "game over, man, game over!", at which point many of the orcs turn on their "comrads", routing the orc forces.

The party uses PaO to play "the floor is lava" with the invading orc army. Then they send a raven to the Queen, saying "never mind, we got this". And set to making babies as quickly as possible, so that the castle will once again have sufficient population that scrolls of PaO are available for sale. Bonus points if they use the death of the castle plus invading army to fuel a ritual. Bonus bonus points if said ritual creates a Philosopher's Stone.

----- note -----

Note that, in both examples, I've called you out on your in media res epimethian parties, with examples of "here's stuff the party could have done before now to have affected the narrative at this point".

----- what gives narrative power -----

Well,

Ultimately, no matter what, when it comes down to it, narrative power is in the hands of the players, because it's the player's decisions on how to progress that can direct the narrative, and it's the mechanical powers that allow that narrative to progress.

Narrative power is primarily player choices, and player skill.

There are, however, things that a GM can do to remove narrative power, like demanding that no solution but the McGuffin will possibly work. I've played under several GMs like that, one of whom nearly ruined one of my favorite characters (a character who I don't talk about much, in part because he's not D&D).

Makes me wonder how many characters who didn't have his stable background of good times under other GMs I may have considered "unfun" simply because of the GM.

Or in other words, imagine if you wanted to play the rather dumb and impulsive stereotypical Int 7 barbarian with anger management issues, and your GM tells you "No, you have to play him like a tactical genius regardless of his Int score, otherwise he won't have enough narrative power."

A player choosing to play that kind of a character is willfully giving up a portion of their narrative power. You could play a 7 int sorcerer with anger management issues and still have next to no narrative power in such a circumstance.

(Also keep in mind this was merely an example, and the opposite would serve just as well. Like say a player being told or feeling compelled to play his Int 26+ wizard star student of the "War Mage Academy" as a tactically inept coward in order to reduce his narrative power).

I'm all about this. Only, the player shouldn't have to be told. That's a lack of player skill right there. I made my "tactically inept more powerful than the gods" character, who is slightly underwhelming, and my "well-trained Commoner (with items)", who is a bit OP at times, without being told that I need to balance narrative power. I didn't need to be told not to make a "more powerful than the gods tactical genius", or a "tactically inept Commoner" (although I did make a sentient potted plant, as my ultimate demonstration that fun and balance are not inherently related).

Sure, but meta or not, the important point here is that all of these things could just as well or better be accomplished through the game mechanics, especially through the use of spells.

Citation, please.

How would a spell have allowed Armus to control the flow of a "diplomatic" meeting, and establish himself as the party leader?

How would a spell have allowed Armus to negotiate a PC agreeing to part with an artifact?

How would a spell have gotten party members to unknown alternate prime material worlds?

Are you saying that the player cannot possibly have played a high level wizard in some previous game, or never bothered to read up on some spells? And if dirt and gold coins would serve, why not the PCs themselves?

Some of the PCs were returned as corpses, some not at all. Collecting the samples ahead of time allowed Armus to say least inform their next of kin.

And perhaps more importantly, if the components actually weren't needed according to the rules of the spell(s) used, then the components also enabled said spell(s) purely because the GM allowed them to.

It was a gamble, subject to GM whim. Armus presented the laundry list of components he had collected to the NPC Wizard, and I crossed my fingers. There were several other packrats in the party. To paraphrase Cosi, they were "low-level" packrats, solving low level challenges ("I toss the table leg I looted onto the fire", "I use the 'manikin' and 'volumous cloak' I looted to set up a decoy'"), even at high level, whereas Armus was a "high-level" packrat, solving high-level challenges ("How do we return everyone to their planes of origin?"), even at low level.

Teleportation actually goes further, it does not just provide narrative power, it is narrative deforming. Functionally, there are fantasy worlds without instantaneous travel methods, and there are fantasy worlds with them, and if you take the verisimilitude of your fantasy at all seriously then these two worlds have very different structures.

This can also be seen in the Wheel of Time, as late in the narrative certain portions of the cast, Mat Cauthon most notably, end up without access to a character able to Travel on their behalf and are functionally stranded until they encounter one which the narrative is eventually obligated to provide.

Now, D&D does provide an in-place mechanism via scrolls and other items such that abilities required by the narrative can generally be acquired for a one-off purpose without too much difficulty,

So, even if I asked you to explain how Mat had less narrative power, it wouldn't matter, because that's not an issue in D&D? That's what I'm supposed to take away here?

This sort of blatant narrative imbalance can be seen in the world of D&D novels. Novels about warriors, such as the various Drizzt works, often involve long, complex overland journeys with many encounters along the war. Novels about spellcasters, such as the various Elminster works, tend to ignore these and allow the major characters to teleport across multiple kingdoms in a single day. Despite ostensibly taking place in the same world, they occupy completely different narrative universes. Case in point: Salvatore once wrote about how Drizzt had a profound religious experience by touching a unicorn, a symbol of the goddess Meleikki he worships. Elminster, on regular occasions, talks directly to not one, but multiple, deities.

I would like to think that if Drizzt were 250th level, and the chosen of the conclave of gods, too, that he, too, would talk to gods on a regular basis. Just saying.

Whereas, did you notice how Elminster didn't go around talking to gods when he was a 1st level Rogue, or even a low-level idiot Wizard dieing to a Beholder?

The stories talk about the interesting parts of those characters lives. Elminster's life wasn't very interesting for the first 20 levels or so.

[Ignimortis]

I agree that supporting a wide variety of power levels is good. But there is a mechanism for doing that. It's called character level. You can tell they're related because they are called the exact same thing. Twenty levels is perfectly sufficient to support all the different power levels you want (consider: can you pick twenty-one different fantasy characters that are all at different power levels?). All having different characters of the same level be at different power levels does is reduce the amount of meaning level has. It's bad in the exact same way and for the exact same reason that variable XP tables were a bad idea in AD&D.

Eh. The variance in power still exists between, say, a level 1 Warblade and a level 1 Fighter. It's also stylistically different to use different classes rather than using levels (and thus hit dice) for lesser power/breadth differences.

If we, for example, merge Warrior (the NPC one), Fighter, and Warblade into one class, then I won't have a way to differentiate between someone who is incredible with a sword and does impossible things with their mastery of weapons (Warblade 9) and someone who is merely faster and stronger than normal people but doesn't really do anything special (Fighter 9) and a really tough and experienced mook who can smash good (Warrior 9). Besides, piling on character levels also increases Hit Dice and skills and all that, which means that having someone be better than someone else will automatically increase the first person's hit points and skill capabilities and BAB and all that, while all I might need is special abilities that exemplify the difference.

Just gotta ask, how would this help the party where the Wizard is constantly outshined by the Fighter and Monk?

(And is "outshined" really a word? My autocorrect thinks so...)

I'm not sure how, outside of specifically playing the wizard rather unimpressively, this could happen, but I guess you could give the wizard some better spells as a DM, or allow him to research spells as per guidelines in some book, I can't recall which. To be honest, I'm not sure how you fix this on a houserule level, because Wizards literally get things they need to work from the same book they're printed in, usually.

Of course, if you banned Conjuration as a Wizard, then you might have some problems, but there are so many excellent spells even outside that school that I can't imagine being outshone by the Fighter and the Monk if you're not just Fireballing stuff all the time.

[MeimuHakurei]

@Quertus: In general, most of what you say regarding table stories with your Wizard and Commoner are more outliers you deliberately play in a way that makes them perform above/below the expected level and I can assure you many people won't or can't play a character like Quertus or Armus, respectively. Most tables usually assume a similar level of competence among the players and that none of them deliberately play suboptimal characters/personalities. Which is to say that these players don't exist, but that you generally take that the Wizard won't be tactically inept unless proven otherwise.

And for the example of Forgotten Realms, Drizzt is 16th level (in the 3e adaptation) and hardly an example of a low level character (tbf Elminster is 26th level, but the jump from Level 16 to epic isn't that big narratively).

Finally, just because it's possible for a teleportation spell to not significantly impact the narrative doesn't mean that this ability in general isn't impactful, simply because you shouldn't look at the lowest common denominator as its user (and even then, it's still narratively meaningful if you misfire your teleport into solid rock and get pasted as a result).

[Doctor Awkward]

3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?

In the overall sense, no, not really.

So long as you and your group recognize what and where those imbalances are, the fact that 3.5 as a system is capable of supporting a wide variety of optimization and varying levels of play is one of it's greatest strengths.

EDIT: I should rephrase a little.
So long as everyone in your group agrees on what and where those imbalances are. There probably isn't an objectively way to answer that question. The important thing is that everyone at the table is having fun with how the games are being run.

[Cosi]

If we, for example, merge Warrior (the NPC one), Fighter, and Warblade into one class, then I won't have a way to differentiate between someone who is incredible with a sword and does impossible things with their mastery of weapons (Warblade 9) and someone who is merely faster and stronger than normal people but doesn't really do anything special (Fighter 9) and a really tough and experienced mook who can smash good (Warrior 9).

I don't understand why you would want to make those distinctions, especially not the Warblade/Fighter one. There's justification for having NPC classes or monster progressions that are numerically appropriate for their level, but not full characters either in terms of tactical depth or story impact, but those aren't supposed to be equal to PCs at all, so it's sort of irrelevant.

But the distinction you're making between the Warblade and the Fighter is that one of them is good and the other one is not. That's exactly the distinction you're supposed to make by having one character have more class levels than the other one. And if it's not and you can imagine how a Fighter could be balanced with an equal-level Warblade, your argument is baseless.

Basically, you still haven't explained why we would want to be able to make equal-level characters at different power levels, just reiterated that you would in fact like to do that. How does simply having the "Fighter" be a Warblade of whatever level people aren't expected to be super human at not do everything you want while also allowing "level" and "CR" to be useful terms that convey meaningful information?

Besides, piling on character levels also increases Hit Dice and skills and all that, which means that having someone be better than someone else will automatically increase the first person's hit points and skill capabilities and BAB and all that, while all I might need is special abilities that exemplify the difference.

Yes, that is how a level system works. If you don't like that, you can play something that doesn't use a level system. And that's fine. Not everything wants or needs a level system. But D&D is going to use one, and that means it's going to have the knock-on effects of having one as well.

[Darth Ultron]

Two very simple examples:

1. The party failed to stop the evil cultists from summoning a big badass demon, and know they won't be able to stop it from gobbing down the entire population of the nearby village within an hour. The wizard instantly gets the high level demon-hunter cleric and her apprentice from their temple two weeks of normal traveling distance away, and suddenly the party has a decent chance of stopping the demon.
2. The friendly king's castle is under siege by an army of thousands of orcs, and they've breached the walls and will most likely break into the keep and slaughter the royal family in minutes. The wizard instantly teleports the entire royal family and their most valuable possessions to an allied queen's palace in a neighboring kingdom, taking the opportunity to impress on the queen the importance of her immediately rallying her army to help fight against the orcs.

Can somebody please explain to me how the teleports in either example does not translate into increased narrative power, and give some examples of other things that do translate into increased narrative power?

So by ''increased narrative power" you are just talking about doing ''an action in the game"? I think you might be putting teleport a bit too high up on a pedestal. Teleport is a useful, powerful and even game changing ability...but it does not alter the game reality or anything.

Example 1: Er, ok, so the wizards ''power" here is what? They teleported and got the Macguffin to save the village in less then an hour? Er....so what? If the wizard was ''so great, why did he not stop the cultists in the first place? Or, really, why does the wizard not just ''teleport'' the demon into a volcano or something?

Like say that no characters have teleport....so the characters take four weeks to go get the Macguffin and come back...and then kill the demon. Ok...and, so what?

Example 2: Er, ok, so the wizard saves the family and that is powerful? So..what if the non telporting characters do something like ''sneak in and then sneak the family out" then that counts as just as powerful, right?

And both of the above examples have the same DM problem: the Dm just sits back and lets the teleport happen with a ''oh my hands are tied, I can't do anything" mindset....when this is not true.

Regardless, when something is being made up, it is entirely up to the DM. When the baseline rules are being used, the DM is choosing to do so but to say the way it works is entirely up to them would be inaccurate, so I stand by my statement.

Of course everything in the game is made up. Even if a player thinks they are ''safe" in Baseline Perfect Rule Land Gameplay....er, the DM is still making everything up.

A lot of players don't really grasp this concept: the DM makes everything in the game up.

As for your example, I more meant if you decided the idea with swinging at the goblins wouldn't work, but you didn't tell them (as you said you don't answer the question will this work) and so they swung around and didn't knock the goblins off and were then just hanging on a rope there having done nothing in full view of three angry goblins, never having had a chance to succeed in the first place. While I admit that in a single instance this might be quite funny, it could easily get annoying especially if it let to character death.

This again falls in line with ''you might not want to game with this DM":

Player:"I try my cool idea in the game!"

Dm:"OK!"

Player:"What happens?"

Dm:"Nothing. You loose and never had a chance to succeed in the first place! Haha!"

[zlefin]

@Quertus
what are you referencing for a 3rd ed source having converted iconic spells to a ritual form?

[Gnaeus]

Remember the impetus for me creating Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named?

In the name is all that is holy I wish that I could forget Quertus, your signature academia mage, for whom your account is named. Nobody cares about your character. Whom you trot out again and again to make the same ridiculous points about how you can choose to play ineptly. If I could inject my brain with bleach and permanently remove any references to Quertus, your signature academia mage, for whom your account is named, I would. My life is worse for every reference to Quertus your sig...............

[upho]

Teleportation actually goes further, it does not just provide narrative power, it is narrative deforming.

Well, I wouldn't perhaps go as far as saying this is the default. But yes, poofaporting comes with profound implicit demands not only on the setting in order for it to preserve any resemblance of verisimilitude, but also on the GM's skill to run the game. I'm not the slightest surprised to hear many GM's complain about it, as it's arguably the spell more than any other which marks the paradigm shift from the "muggle methods are usually sufficient" kind of game to the "magic 3D-chess with wizards" kind of game.

And even though I personally find poofaporting fun also as a GM precisely because of the nigh infinite new possible ways of "directing the narrative" it enables and the player creativity it encourages, I've also clearly noticed the costs of including the spell. Most notably the vastly increased general complexity of many challenges and the resulting additional GM prep work poofaporting comes with.

An excellent example can be found in the Wheel of Time series, in which teleportation magic (Travelling) comes online in a mass way around book six and drastically changes how all important events play out subsequently. To the credit of the authors, Jordan and Sanderson managed to integrate this at least partially, and included huge armies teleporting from halfway across the planet, cannons firing through portals from caves completely without natural egress, and using the telportation magic as a direct weapon in the narrative.

Yeah. I was actually pleasantly surprised with how the WoT handled it. They actually got at least half as far as some of the 3.5/PF1 PCs I've seen in their creative use and seemingly ruthless exploitation of poofaport advantages. And I remember smiling when I read about the stunt with the cannons, as I thought the quite astounding similarities to the various "scry 'n' die/fry" shenanigans the I've witnessed in the game were simply hilarious. I think it's an unusually great example of the sort of whole new vistas of possibilities which poofaporting (and similar spells) opens up for in the hands of creative PCs and players.

The game balance issue, in the context of D&D, is that one subset of classes gets teleportation, and others do not, which means that only those characters have the ability to alter the narrative in this way. However, if you take the setting issues seriously, then widespread teleportation becomes a requirement for adventuring and a party without access to teleportation is going to face huge barriers interacting with the world. This can also be seen in the Wheel of Time, as late in the narrative certain portions of the cast, Mat Cauthon most notably, end up without access to a character able to Travel on their behalf and are functionally stranded until they encounter one which the narrative is eventually obligated to provide.

This.

Now, D&D does provide an in-place mechanism via scrolls and other items such that abilities required by the narrative can generally be acquired for a one-off purpose without too much difficulty, but the absence of abilities can be much more pervasive.

Indeed. And anyone who recognizes that there are people who love the higher level "magic 3D-chess with wizards" kind of game and that the system should be able to cater to those people, should also recognize that in order to make that game less ridiculously imbalanced, the mechanical tools available to non-casters must be improved enough they can at least enter the same league of narrative power as those available to casters. IOW, unlike in the books, the game must be able to simultaneously include both Drizzt and Elminster main protagonists.

[Quertus]

1) Well, in this particular context, I would probably say something like "reduce the power discrepancy between characters".

2) Spotlight time is finite. Any problem the Wizard solves is a problem the Fighter doesn't solve. That's not "intentionally trying to steal the spotlight", that's a simple fact. The Fighter has no way of getting the spotlight. And the notion that the Wizard getting an ability increases the Fighter's narrative power is getting dangerously close to "because your character sucks, you get to tell the rest of the party what do to", which is an absolutely terrible paradigm.

3) I agree that supporting a wide variety of power levels is good. But there is a mechanism for doing that. It's called character level. You can tell they're related because they are called the exact same thing. Twenty levels is perfectly sufficient to support all the different power levels you want (consider: can you pick twenty-one different fantasy characters that are all at different power levels?). All having different characters of the same level be at different power levels does is reduce the amount of meaning level has. It's bad in the exact same way and for the exact same reason that variable XP tables were a bad idea in AD&D.

Numbered for convenience.

1) balance is not a synonym for fun. Forcing balance limits the types of fun you can have. However, I'll give you a pass, as "Thor and the Sentient Potted Plant" could be implemented as "Level 20 and Level 1" under your proposed metrics.

2) You've largely lost me here. Here's what I hear: "because the Wizard takes 10 seconds of spotlight time teleporting us there, rather than the Survivalist, Orc-hating Ranger having the spotlight for 10 sessions as we trek through Orc country, clearly Teleport is bad for spotlight sharing.

Or, IMO worse, we lost suspension of disbelief as the GM is forced to find things each of us to do as we spend 10 sessions in what should obviously be Ranger spotlight time.

So, what did you actually mean for me to hear here?

3) It's little Timmy's first time playing D&D. Little Timmy's character clearly needs a boost for him to contribute. Do you really believe that the correct answer to balance the party is to give him more levels, and keep letting him level faster than anyone else, in order to maintain contribution balance?

I'm not sure how, outside of specifically playing the wizard rather unimpressively, this could happen, but I guess you could give the wizard some better spells as a DM, or allow him to research spells as per guidelines in some book, I can't recall which. To be honest, I'm not sure how you fix this on a houserule level, because Wizards literally get things they need to work from the same book they're printed in, usually.

Of course, if you banned Conjuration as a Wizard, then you might have some problems, but there are so many excellent spells even outside that school that I can't imagine being outshone by the Fighter and the Monk if you're not just Fireballing stuff all the time.

Player > build > class. And character personality is greater than them all in determining how effective a character is. I've seen it numerous times, although, obviously, I prefer talking about one specific example.

So, should I take your answer to be, "no, nerfing the Wizard class will not help balance in this type of case, where something higher on the food chain than 'build' is the primary determiner of character contribution"?

@Quertus: In general, most of what you say regarding table stories with your Wizard and Commoner are more outliers you deliberately play in a way that makes them perform above/below the expected level

Yes, demonstrating the limits and boundaries of what can be accomplished does, by definition, involve discussing outliers. Thank you for noticing.

and I can assure you many people won't or can't play a character like Quertus or Armus, respectively

Also sadly true.

People who claim to care about balance should carefully consider why they won't play a balanced character in the style of Quertus.

. Most tables usually assume a similar level of competence among the players

That seems a foolish assumption, IME.

and that none of them deliberately play suboptimal characters/personalities.

Thus "the Determinator".

Which is to say that these players don't exist, but that you generally take that the Wizard won't be tactically inept unless proven otherwise.

So, I'm too senile to remember my point, but I'm guessing that it was something like, "there are numerous dials to turn in the quest for balance, from player skill (which you usually cannot change much) to WBL to character level to optimization level to base class to character personality. And this is a good thing.".

What was your point?

And for the example of Forgotten Realms, Drizzt is 16th level (in the 3e adaptation) and hardly an example of a low level character (tbf Elminster is 26th level, but the jump from Level 16 to epic isn't that big narratively).

OK, grognards, what level was the first appearance of stats for Drizzt?

My point was, Drizzt spent at least a trilogy with some fairly minimal gear, and then went back for a prequel trilogy. So 6 books at lower(ish) level, and how many total now to get to 16th? Whereas Elminster "got to the good parts", and skyrocketed up to epic chosen of the gods in, what, the first four chapters* of his first book?

But, yeah, thanks to these examples, we can see that high-level FR characters can look forward to divine epiphanies / being noticed by the gods, whereas epic level characters can look forward to actually hobnobbing with the gods.

* Brilliantly titled "Fighter", "Thief", "Cleric", and "Mage", or some such, IIRC.

Finally, just because it's possible for a teleportation spell to not significantly impact the narrative doesn't mean that this ability in general isn't impactful, simply because you shouldn't look at the lowest common denominator as its user (and even then, it's still narratively meaningful if you misfire your teleport into solid rock and get pasted as a result).

(Lost the context, may come back for it)

Basically, you still haven't explained why we would want to be able to make equal-level characters at different power levels, just reiterated that you would in fact like to do that.

Well, a few of the reasons I might do such thing include:

* To make it easier to balance low-level and high-level players;

* Top five those who enjoy optimization a lower baseline to work from;

* To allow people bragging rights, like "I completed 'World's Largest Dungeon' (efficient runs from level 1-20, btw) with a Fighter";

* To inform people that mechanical balance is not what this game is about.

Also,

* To do so transparently, so that idiots who don't get there concept of balance don't complain about you "letting them win" by not fielding the most powerful Determinator you can.

I wouldn't play someone with Quertus' power and Armus' tactical genius at any but yours or Tippy's tables, and maybe not even there.

@Quertus
what are you referencing for a 3rd ed source having converted iconic spells to a ritual form?

IIRC, Unearthed Arcana is where I first saw the concept.

[Quertus]

In the name is all that is holy I wish that I could forget Quertus, your signature academia mage, for whom your account is named. Nobody cares about your character. Whom you trot out again and again to make the same ridiculous points about how you can choose to play ineptly. If I could inject my brain with bleach and permanently remove any references to Quertus, your signature academia mage, for whom your account is named, I would. My life is worse for every reference to Quertus your sig...............

Lol!

And if I could Mindrape the world, so that I never again heard "nerf the Wizard, for balance", when its long been established that player > build > class (and I've personally established that character trumps them all), I would.

But here we are.

[Morty]

Eh. The variance in power still exists between, say, a level 1 Warblade and a level 1 Fighter. It's also stylistically different to use different classes rather than using levels (and thus hit dice) for lesser power/breadth differences.

If we, for example, merge Warrior (the NPC one), Fighter, and Warblade into one class, then I won't have a way to differentiate between someone who is incredible with a sword and does impossible things with their mastery of weapons (Warblade 9) and someone who is merely faster and stronger than normal people but doesn't really do anything special (Fighter 9) and a really tough and experienced mook who can smash good (Warrior 9). Besides, piling on character levels also increases Hit Dice and skills and all that, which means that having someone be better than someone else will automatically increase the first person's hit points and skill capabilities and BAB and all that, while all I might need is special abilities that exemplify the difference.

Unless you don't happen to have Tome of Battle, in which case you're stuck with the worse version.

[Cosi]

You've largely lost me here. Here's what I hear: "because the Wizard takes 10 seconds of spotlight time teleporting us there, rather than the Survivalist, Orc-hating Ranger having the spotlight for 10 sessions as we trek through Orc country, clearly Teleport is bad for spotlight sharing.

My point is that Crake is setting up a false dichotomy. There's a finite amount of time, and problems only get solved one way. If the Wizard has abilities that let him solve problems and the Fighter doesn't, the Wizard is going to solve more problems and get more spotlight time than the Fighter.

It's little Timmy's first time playing D&D. Little Timmy's character clearly needs a boost for him to contribute. Do you really believe that the correct answer to balance the party is to give him more levels, and keep letting him level faster than anyone else, in order to maintain contribution balance?

What happens when Timmy wants to play one of the classes that isn't overpowered? What if he really wants to play a Fighter or a Warmage, compounding his lack of skill with a weak class?

The game should have some flexibility for ad hoc balancing, but baking it into the class as a whole is problematic. Plus, it's easier to do that balancing if the classes start from a point of overall balance where behavior is clearly understood. My personal preference is to define a reference set of encounter parameters (X level Y enemies over Z rounds), balance people's contributions in that encounter, and give people distinct resource management systems and ability types so tweaking the parameters makes the encounter more or less favorable for some character or other. So you make the fight last longer if the guy with at-will abilities is under-performing, or add more enemies if the guy with BFC abilities is under-performing, or whatever. But it's vastly easier to make those adjustments without breaking things if the game starts out balanced.

The better the system is to begin with, the easier it is to modify in a way that produces whatever results you want.

To make it easier to balance low-level and high-level players;

I don't understand why you would want to do that.

Top five those who enjoy optimization a lower baseline to work from;

I don't understand what that's supposed to mean.

To allow people bragging rights, like "I completed 'World's Largest Dungeon' (efficient runs from level 1-20, btw) with a Fighter";

You could do that just as well with a level handicap.

IIRC, Unearthed Arcana is where I first saw the concept.

Epic Spellcasting is another (sort-of) example. It's not converting spells into rituals, and it's broken as hell, but the basic idea of "parallel spellcasting system for big flashy effects" is there.

[upho]

1) Armus was both a prodigy, and had an unparalleled education.

Which was reflected in his prodigal number of starting skill points and a fittingly extremely high Int and Cha scores along with no low ability scores, as well as the unparalleled number of skill points he had amassed in numerous skills in wildly different areas by 7th level?

So... Would that be maybe max ranks in several Knowledge skills, including more esoteric ones such as planes and arcana, along with max ranks in Spellcraft and I assume Diplomacy, Intimidate, Gather Information, Listen, Search and Spot, plus a few ranks in some basic physical stuff like Climb, Balance and Swim, all of them treated as class skills of course, and many of them further boosted by magic items?

2) many of the players had probably been playing longer than I had - they weren't "less experienced people". Remember the impetus for me creating Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named? Yeah, 1st level Armus, bound as a Drow prisoner, was more effective in the first combat that his 7th level "rescuers" (Armus killed one high-priestess (aided by her own stupidity), and drove off the second, while the party randomly deployed against "whatever was closest").

1. How many of those supposedly more experienced players would you say would've been capable of playing a PC of equivalent narrative power without mechanical support?
2. So which one is correct:

a) your GM had no grasp of the rules or of the most basic combat tactics,
b) your GM was intentionally ignoring the actual mechanical power of the so called drow "high-priestess" in order to let Armus kill her,
c) your GM decided she had a brain aneurysm at that precise moment so she could act impressively stupid in order to let Armus kill her,
d) Armus was made vastly mechanically superior to any other 1st level PCs in the game,
e) you're the world's greatest tactical genius when it comes to 3.5 combat (but you're not very good at any similar kind of tabletop combat),
f) your group actually plays freeform D&D because you all love the settings but hate all the rules,
g) your GM secretly plays freeform, while you and the other players believe your mechanical abilities and die rolls actually matter
h) you just dreamed the whole thing and it never happened in an actual game

3) yes, "directing the narrative" is often "player skill".

OK. While I of course have no problems whatsoever distinguishing between the sources of power (player skill and PC abilities) I still don't see any meaningful difference between "directing the narrative" and "power power". Neither do I see why either source would be inherently more connected to either supposed type of result.

Sounds like you've almost got it. Rather, you should be saying that mechanical power can compensate for lack of player skill in some games.

Totally agree here, but I fail to see how this is relevant.

Because "directing the narrative" is first and foremost player choices, player skill.

"Narrative power" is generally independent of power power.

Absolutely not. It's becoming abundantly clear that both you and Crake are having great difficulties clearly defining what you call "Narrative power" and "power power" and the differences between these concepts when it comes to their impact on the game. And I think I have a pretty good idea of why, because there simply is no functional or qualitative difference between the two in the way you claim. Instead, you're confusing what you at best describe as some kind of highly arbitrary relative amounts of power ("narrative" being greater than "power") with sources of power, and it appears you fail to understand that any kind of effect a PC has on the game, regardless of source, is per definition having an impact on the "narrative" (and therefore also has "narrative power" in this context).

I mean, that's kinda the point of the story, yeah.

I mean, the source of the power (or lack thereof) being completely irrelevant for the power's actual effects on the game was kinda my point, yeah.

Again, the only kind of power you have been discussing is just plain power, nothing more and nothing less, regardless of source and regardless of amount.

Now this is not to say there's no such thing as qualitative differences between types of power, and simply by comparing say the spells teleportation and fireball tells us this is clearly the case. But that's a different discussion you're obviously not having.

Or, at least, that was my point in making the characters, and in talking about them here, and what I expect people to take away from them in this context.

Really, what does this actually have to do with the balance of the game itself? You know, that thing which isn't tied to specific "player skill" or "subject to GM whim"?