Does power limit creativity and cunning?

[Mooncrow]

There are people who if they have an easy solution won't look for a more complex, interesting, or harder one.

They are most people.

Some people will look for interesting/hard solutions even if they have a fireball in their pocket.


As the GM, it is your job to make sure that no matter what the party has, it can't solve the problem with something it has in it's pocket unless the problem is intended to be trivial.

Thus, the situation is moot unless the GM is already failing at their job.

Yes, the DM should not let the party trivialize encounters with a single ability - if that's what you're trying to say, then sure.  But if you're trying to say that every encounter should be a scramble to find new abilities as the DM intentionally counteracts the plans the players have in place, well no.  In fact, Hell No.  That's just stupid DM dickery. 

Smart players prepare for contingencies - counteracting that with the DM's power of Gets to Look at Character Sheets is the opposite of being a good DM. 

[ariasderros]

Sometimes DM does stand for Dick Move though.

But yes, I am thinking that was just poorly worded.

[SneeR]

I think that people may be thinking of this from the wrong perspective.

I'll start with some basics:
-too much power compared to a unchanging baseline (like CR) requires no creativity to win
-too little power (as BB said) makes it near impossible to operate within the rules and exact creative solutions

I believe, however, that power is not what we should look at. What I think we should consider is how open-ended an ability.

Think of it:
Why is Wildshape so powerful? Turning into an animal and healing a bit when you change back is not going to break the game at first glance. Well, we all know that the ability breaks the game when you go dumpster-diving for dinosaurs and shit because you have access to every animal. The ability is almost completely open-ended. Polymorph is even more open--even more broken.

To which you might say, "Well, SneeR, you just made the point that Power=>Creativity." However, I say nay. What I say is that open-endedness is often associated with power, and therefore one might think that the above is true

What are some items that give rise to extremely creative plans? The most open-ended, of course:
Immovable rod
Portable hole
Universal solvent
sovereign glue
dust of dryness
eversmoking bottle
decanter of endless water
hat of disguise
ring gates
pearl of power
bag of tricks

All of these items open up a wealth of possibilities, yet do not openly break the game. Therefore we can say that power is not the only thing that allows for creativity. Open-endedness, the ability to do only as much as you can think up, is what leads to creativity.

tl;dr
To answer the OP, too much power will limit creativity; when one solution always works, why use others? However, I think power is the wrong think to look at. Open-endedness is what lends to creativity.

[Bozwevial]

You left out Quaal's feather token: Tree.

If you can't think of a use for an instant tree, you quite simply aren't playing the right game.

[Mooncrow]

I kind of thought we had kind of established that in general, power = options.  So yeah, the more options from a given ability, the more powerful it is in the context of this discussion.  And certainly that is true at all points on the spectrum, not just at the "game breaking" end of it. 

[SneeR]

I kind of thought we had kind of established that in general, power = options.  So yeah, the more options from a given ability, the more powerful it is in the context of this discussion.  And certainly that is true at all points on the spectrum, not just at the "game breaking" end of it.

Power is not equal to options. An example of a power that would be too powerful to allow for creativity without providing options would be shivering touch. Too powerful for its level against many opponents. It gives only one option: hit them somehow.
Therefore, power=/=options.

Sure, you could get creative with how to deliver a shivering touch, but the shivering touch isn't what's giving you options.

[Mooncrow]

Does it make the point clearer if I reverse the syntax to options = power?  Put it however you want: "The more powerful you are, the more situations you can handle" or "The more situations you can handle, the more powerful you are".  Either way, it doesn't matter. 

Shivering Touch is just a tool in the box, it objectively does increase your available options.  Whether it increases your options past what's good for your level is an different, albeit related, discussion. 

[veekie]

Even Polymorphing need not necessarily provide straight power while retaining flexibility. If they applied modifiers instead of ability replacements, etc, it could give a great deal of flexibility(even any mundane animal could be useful, flight, climbing, swimming, extra senses, etc), without straight out power from dumpster diving winning combinations.

[Basket Burner]

I think that people may be thinking of this from the wrong perspective.

I'll start with some basics:
-too much power compared to a unchanging baseline (like CR) requires no creativity to win
-too little power (as BB said) makes it near impossible to operate within the rules and exact creative solutions

I believe, however, that power is not what we should look at. What I think we should consider is how open-ended an ability.

It is power that's a factor though. What is a Monk? A miserable little pile of secrets heap of class features that sucks with all of them.

What is a Bard? A character with a range of class features that has exactly one good one and a bunch of mediocre to poor ones.

What is a Wizard? A character with a range of class features, some of which suck but a wide range of which have the power to back them up.

Even with open ended abilities, it's still the ability to do something that matters. It can be something from a wide range of somethings, but if it were pick some broad result that in the grand scheme of things doesn't matter no one would bother as it isn't worth the time.

Now Shivering Touch is overcentralizing and bad for the meta based on that. It's still something that can be dealt with and countered though and in any world where it existed you better believe every single dragon will be using their considerable intellects and resources to find a counter. Of course it also works well on anything big which includes many non dragons. That brings us back to the overcentralizing part. Clearly it'd make for a better meta to ban the handful of things that overcentralize, then leave everything else alone. Which comes down to TO material, Shivering Touch, Binding and a few others.

Once they're gone then it's simply a matter of having the ability to follow through on your predictions, aka power.

[Unbeliever]

I think the only real problem, and the motivation for this thread and the intuitions behind it, are what BB refers to "overcentralization" in the above post.  If an option is "too" good it will tend to crowd out other options, and that's bad. 

From a game design perspective, I'm comfortable labeling those as mistakes, legacies that should have been excised, or abilities with unintended consequences. 

The other power problem I could see is that some options are better supported than others.  Which may lead to the same classes, archetypes, etc. showing up at the table all the time.  I think that just forces a different kind of creativity -- largely at the character building stage which is part of what keeps me coming back to 3E D&D.  Can we build a good Soulknife?  How do I build something that looks and feels like a Monk/Fighter/whatever and doesn't suck?  And so on.  A variation of this is what I believe is intended by the tiers system -- just make sure everyone is on the same page so that someone can play the vanilla Paladin without difficulty. 

Finally, I have to agree with BB's notion that some degree of power is necessary to make tactics viable.  If you can't ever hit the enemy's AC, for example, very few creative and interesting tactics or ideas may be available to you.  They're just invincible.  Likewise, really weak and especially really vulnerable characters tend to overcentralization as well.  They will tend to adopt very safe tactics, or ones that exploit the rules in various ways, b/c they lack other, more usual means, to act. 

[Basket Burner]

I think the only real problem, and the motivation for this thread and the intuitions behind it, are what BB refers to "overcentralization" in the above post.  If an option is "too" good it will tend to crowd out other options, and that's bad. 

It's more that everything is about that one thing or few things but same end result.

The other power problem I could see is that some options are better supported than others.  Which may lead to the same classes, archetypes, etc. showing up at the table all the time.  I think that just forces a different kind of creativity -- largely at the character building stage which is part of what keeps me coming back to 3E D&D.  Can we build a good Soulknife?  How do I build something that looks and feels like a Monk/Fighter/whatever and doesn't suck?  And so on.  A variation of this is what I believe is intended by the tiers system -- just make sure everyone is on the same page so that someone can play the vanilla Paladin without difficulty. 

D&D doesn't have a true tier system. I'll be elaborating on this in a new thread once I've done all the research I need to in order to understand everything that happened there and why.

Finally, I have to agree with BB's notion that some degree of power is necessary to make tactics viable.  If you can't ever hit the enemy's AC, for example, very few creative and interesting tactics or ideas may be available to you.  They're just invincible.  Likewise, really weak and especially really vulnerable characters tend to overcentralization as well.  They will tend to adopt very safe tactics, or ones that exploit the rules in various ways, b/c they lack other, more usual means, to act.

I'm not sure if I'd call it exploiting the rules but weak characters do tend to be overcentralized just because there are so few things that they can do. How many different chargers and trippers can you make? Truly different, not just cosmetically different. In their case it isn't that those things are better than the alternatives, it's that it's their only viable means of doing anything.

[Unbeliever]

Finally, I have to agree with BB's notion that some degree of power is necessary to make tactics viable.  If you can't ever hit the enemy's AC, for example, very few creative and interesting tactics or ideas may be available to you.  They're just invincible.  Likewise, really weak and especially really vulnerable characters tend to overcentralization as well.  They will tend to adopt very safe tactics, or ones that exploit the rules in various ways, b/c they lack other, more usual means, to act.

I'm not sure if I'd call it exploiting the rules but weak characters do tend to be overcentralized just because there are so few things that they can do. How many different chargers and trippers can you make? Truly different, not just cosmetically different. In their case it isn't that those things are better than the alternatives, it's that it's their only viable means of doing anything.

I actually meant characters much much weaker and more vulnerable than chargers and other melee types.  And, my feelings on those characters are outliers in this community, which I really should include in my sig or something. 

The characters I mean are ones that have 6 hit points or something.  Or, save DCs on their powers that are much lower than their enemies' mods.  Then, you are going to look for ways that sort of sidestep the usual mechanics of the game.  E.g., sniping from behind tower shields to break line of effect, using effects that don't require saves, and so on.  This sort of thing is actually more obvious in my experience with White Wolf games, where you'd frequently be so outclassed that your only option was something that probably shouldn't work, given the scenario, but did by the (often wonky) rules. 

[Basket Burner]

I actually meant characters much much weaker and more vulnerable than chargers and other melee types.  And, my feelings on those characters are outliers in this community, which I really should include in my sig or something. 

Those guys are quite squishy as it is, so wow.

The characters I mean are ones that have 6 hit points or something.  Or, save DCs on their powers that are much lower than their enemies' mods.  Then, you are going to look for ways that sort of sidestep the usual mechanics of the game.  E.g., sniping from behind tower shields to break line of effect, using effects that don't require saves, and so on.  This sort of thing is actually more obvious in my experience with White Wolf games, where you'd frequently be so outclassed that your only option was something that probably shouldn't work, given the scenario, but did by the (often wonky) rules.

People with entirely incapable characters aren't going to be able to accomplish anything at all, ever. That isn't what I meant by overcentralization though. In say, a low tier only game there's only a handful of potential threats. Chargers, trippers, blasters... not that many things to worry about, but you also can't really do anything to stop those things. Or looking at it from just the PC perspective there's only a handful of characters you could make that'd potentially do anything.

[Rejakor]

I wasn't suggesting real time 'no, fuck you' DM dickery.  That's just a power trip, and another example of the GM failing at their job.

I was stating that if the GM designs encounters he knows the players can solve, especially with a single use of an obvious mechanical ability, then either that was supposed to be trivially easy, or the GM fucked up.  You still have to roll with it in the context of a game, i.e. you don't make it un-happen, but you still made a mistake.  The point of encounters/challenges is that they are challenging, otherwise why have them?

in b4 basket burner - this still means that if you make the challenge too hard, i.e. basically unsolvable, you have ALSO failed as a GM.  As I keep fucking saying to Roy, just because before you optimized the creature with gear, feats, skills, buffs, terrain and tactics it was the same CR as the party, that doesn't mean it's an easy encounter.

EDIT:  Basket Burner (christ that name sounds dumb), I agree that it is possible in DnD to make a character that is incapable of performing nearly any action, or of defeating any kind of encounter.  I've never seen a character like that, though.  What I have seen is a lot of 'weak' characters that through clever play completely outperformed vastly mechanically stronger characters.  And i've seen a lot of literalist GMs who when confronted with a player being clever block that player, or simply ask for a skill check.  There's nothing quite so wretched as watching a GM try to justify a NPC doing something that's not in his best interest or character simply because a player didn't hit a specific diplomacy check DC.  Or watching a GM whose NPC/monster was just outwitted by a player's smart move suddenly go and patrol the room the player concealed themselves in or go 'on guard' in a doorway that clearly wasn't going to be guarded until the player avoided the GM's encounter.

Competent DMs adjust the strength of their encounters to the party, and creativity and cunning is not 'how you build your character's trip attack to have infinite bonuses and never fail'.  In this context, that's actually the opposite of the meaning, as you're optimizing a mechanical solution to the whole problem of 'combat' that means you don't have to be creative to solve the problem at all.  You might initially be creative in adding the numbers together or using a combination of abilities, but it's not creativity in context of the game, just creativity in the context of the game's rules.

[Tiltowait]

Power mandates creativity and cunning.

Strong people make strong friends and also strong enemies. Such power needs to be managed well or it will be lost.

Much as I hesitate to bring the real world into a D&D discussion go have a look at it. The world could effectively kill itself very quickly. Instead international relations are managed very tactfully for the most part. Wars are not waged on a whim, but only after extremely careful consideration.

Mutually assured destruction is a strong motivator.

[Basket Burner]

I'd like to agree with the with great power comes great responsibility sentiment but it comes off as too relative. I do understand what you're getting at though.

[Agrippa]

Power mandates creativity and cunning.

Strong people make strong friends and also strong enemies. Such power needs to be managed well or it will be lost.

Much as I hesitate to bring the real world into a D&D discussion go have a look at it. The world could effectively kill itself very quickly. Instead international relations are managed very tactfully for the most part. Wars are not waged on a whim, but only after extremely careful consideration.

Mutually assured destruction is a strong motivator.

I happen to agree with you on this subject Tiltoawit, at higher ends of power you do have to be careful not to step on other people toes. Otherwise you might end up on the recieving end of the magical equivalent of a nuke to the face. Or one hell of a lethal beating, slashing or stabbing from a more martial type. Now when most old school gamers talk a reasonable upper limit of power there talking mostly about the power scale in Glenn Cook's The Black Company. That might explain a few things.

[Agrippa]

I'm not saying that I agree with the philosophy I brought up in the first post. In fact I don't, I'm just wondering how many people here might believe that more power equals less creativity and therefore less fun. Or as certain old school DMs would say: "up till now we've been playing the movie versions of Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas. Now we're playing Saving Private Ryan. If you embrace that and all it implies not only will you have more fun but you'll quickly figure out ways to stack the odds in your favour."

[Rejakor]

..yeah?  High powered DnD becomes more WWII like.

More cautiously sneaking for fire of rifle fire than 'hewing through legions of orcs and scaring off wights with a torch'.

[Agrippa]

..yeah?  High powered DnD becomes more WWII like.

More cautiously sneaking for fire of rifle fire than 'hewing through legions of orcs and scaring off wights with a torch'.

Yeah, high-powered D&D tends to be more like WWII than just hewing through your enemies with ease. Of course the old school movement tends to believe that high-powered D&D is too superheroic. Some of them think D&D should feel grittier and have a high attrition rate, especially at low levels.