Discussion:Useless Overpowered and Parody Crap Abroad

Useless Overpowered and Parody Crap Abroad

=== 75.68.198.17 00:42, 6 December 2009 (MST) === Unfortuneately, I was completely disgusted by what I've seen on this site as I am a somewhat new user and have used it only a few times. Yes, In the times I used it before I did run across good ideas and more than a few dumb ones. Yes, there is an extremely large amount of resourceful information on the site that has helped me numerous amounts of time in one site dive, but to tell the truth, I keep running across a giant number of useless, (sometimes hilarious) information that hinders most peoples actual goal for this site: To seek out new ideas that will continue to be used and reused by all players and DMs in times to come. Granted, yes there are beer and pretzel players abroad, and yes I am being a hardass about the situation, but it irks me to no end when I run across Bag of Beanie Weenies when I'm searching for magical items to spice up gameplay or completely and insanely overpowered class/race builds that never should enter existence due to fact that abuses gameplay structure. Does anyone else feel this way or is it just me? D&D Wiki has been good to me so far, but I'm hoping change is in the future or this site may become a giant amalgamation of parodies.

I say that there are some groups that enjoy stupid and useless stuff mostly because they are funny.--209.97.85.48 13:34, 5 March 2016 (MST)

Suppoko (talk) 07:38, 9 June 2016 (MDT)

I agree with you for the most part MANY aspects of the wiki are players that feel things in the printed materials are boring/weak/slow or what have you and have decided to make the class they always wanted to play. A large number of them don't take into account balance issues nor do they compare them to the power levels of the base classes so things get out of hand quickly. There are however some good additions here that fit well or even some that with some tweaks are good.You just have to sift through the mud to find the gold at the bottom. Just keep at it and help improve the pages for the benefit of the community as a whole. good luck

Jwguy (talk) 07:45, 9 June 2016 (MDT)

Honestly, I kind of get this. While balance is definitely hard to gauge in some cases, and not everyone always agrees on what is and isn't balanced even after extensive argument and testing periods, we still have a lot of silly and unattended nonsense populating our tables.

I respect parody, and I respect the ability to deviate, but I think, perhaps, that we ought to take a look at our DPL tables and see having them exclude pages with improving templates, april fools, and otherwise notable pages, kind of like how we did with 3.5e Flaws. Nothing in that main box, besides violent racism, which I am currently working on with the creator, is broken in terms of balance, in my opinion.

Anything that is, goes below it into one of the clearly marked categories. --Jwguy (talk) 07:45, 9 June 2016 (MDT)

Marasmusine (talk) 08:42, 9 June 2016 (MDT)

I am in favour of not having April Fools articles mixed in with the genpop in the lists. I agree that hinders players and DMs looking for pages they can actually use (and I'm tired of seeing Hershey Squirt when browsing 5e spells.) Marasmusine (talk) 08:42, 9 June 2016 (MDT)

Green Dragon (talk) 10:05, 9 June 2016 (MDT)

If you see the really overpowered pages please mark them with {{needsbalance}} as soon as possible.

In the defence of April Fools pages, there really are not that many pages in this category. Maybe people notice them more often since they are made to be catchy. The other problem is that often they are not playable. If we want to split them up like 3.5e Flaws thats fine, but then someone has to get on it. --Green Dragon (talk) 10:05, 9 June 2016 (MDT)

Suppoko (talk) 20:20, 9 June 2016 (MDT)

The problem comes in with who considers something to be OP, like me, I think I'm more a min/max power gamer and I consider the 5e dragon knight to be OP as heck but it appears I'm the only one. Is there a standard to measure against?

---

--Kydo (talk) 16:31, 10 June 2016 (MDT)

Regarding the overabundance of OP content, this comes from several factors:

• We have a fairly small community of active users, who cannot possibly browse and review every single page on this site.
• Even if we notice something is broken, we may not necessarily have the desire to give it the attention it deserves to actually improve by applying a template. A template that just says "needsbalance:this is imbalanced" is not very useful to a user who may not understand why it is imbalanced, or what to do about it. Giving a page the concern it needs to grow takes actual effort and time, and the more complex the material is, the harder it gets.
• We have a great many unregistered, infrequent, or temporary users, who post maybe one or two things and disappear. The cumulative effect is a massive pile of incomplete, poorly thought-out material produced by people who were just toying around with the website, and not actually interested in producing anything meaningful or participating in the community. It isn't malicious, it's just people trying on a hat.
• Many users, particularly newer ones, have no idea what templates are, or how to use them, or even what templates are available to their use. They don't realize that they could mark their unfinished content as a stub, or as WIP, or that they can request a review, or even that this community has a policy regarding content balance!

I do agree with April Fools content being sorted out, but that also relies on people:

• Realizing that a page contains comedic/parody content
• Knowing what templates are and how to use them
• Knowing that there is an april fools template
• Caring enough to find that knowledge and/or act on it

As for whether a standard exists? Why yes! There are several methods! First, there's precedent. Precedent is the total cumulative effect of previously existing content. In this regard, we treat the core material as examples representing the designers' intent. This is things like "a simple weapon that deals 1d8 or more damage is a little OP" or "Fighting classes tend to have HD d12, support classes get a d8, and casters get a d6". But precedent can only go so far. The developers did not, and could never have, invented a meaningful representation of EVERYTHING EVER IMAGINABLE, so there are gaps. When we make new content, we are generally trying to explore those gaps and figure out what could, or should, go there. This is where developer guidelines come in. In both the PHB and DMG, as well as in several documents available from their site, the developers have laid out very clear guidelines to follow regarding what to do when exploring these gray areas. In particular, PHB p.8 describes the Three Pillars of Adventure, which are, (For 5e at least) apparently the driving philosophies behind game balance. The DMG references that section in 4 different places that I've noticed when mentioning guidelines or balance. The implication is that a character needs to function in all three areas on a mechanical level, and that negligence of the pillars leads directly to imbalanced designs in this engine. There's also challenge comparison tests. This is stuff like building two characters, one with your original content, and another using the next-most-similar version of it from the core material, then comparing their effectiveness. The same thing can be done through various sorts of Same Game Tests, where you throw your content up against level-appropriate challenges to see how it handles them. Even just looking at raw numbers without dice rolls can be informative, like comparing the features of a class at a given level to equivalent CR monsters, which that class would likely wind up facing.

EDIT:

Actually, I was just thinking about it- what if we just included the stub template at the top of new pages in their preload, with a comment stating that the template shouldn't be removed until the page is complete? This would immediately introduce new users to templates in an informal, easily accessible way, provide them with probably the most useful template right off the bat, and show new users that this community does have some clear standards for quality- specifically, that we desire complete material. Another idea may be to add a link to the Help:Improving, Reviewing, and Removing Templates page in those templates, so that anyone who sees one, (like a new user who just posted their first piece of incomplete content) can immediately access information on all of the other important templates, including how and when to use them. --Kydo (talk) 16:41, 10 June 2016 (MDT)

SgtLion (talk) 08:43, 29 July 2016 (MDT)

It's a late point, but allow me to note that I pushed for getting a review template on every new page in their preload, I think it applies to a few 3.5e categories, and it sort of works, except now there are hundreds on thousands of pages with a review template still on them. So yes, we have a list of all the pages not properly looked over by our core userbase; Sadly our core userbase is too small to deal with all of them.

Languedoc (talk) 5:49, 26 December 2016 (MDT)

Well I had to really search to find this page and I'm a super new user. Since I have no idea whats going on I'll just make some suggestions i think would've helped me Having a page dedicated to a tutorial on how to use this website, in using templates or editing syntax in general, having an irc people can join and talk on in person, or even a discord/skype group so we can just ask questions to eachother and get info. I'd like to see everything tagged thats clarly unbalanced on purpose, or put into an entire different section, maybe even things that are specifically adapting other source materials like the estus flask (which to me is a crowning example of something well balanced and adjusted to DnD)or maybe even using a whole new website with built-in templates and sorting features you dont need to frankenstein code together to use

--Kydo (talk) 09:43, 28 December 2016 (MST)

Howdy Langeudoc! We actually have added several of these things since this discussion began several months ago! If you look in the sidebar, you'll likely notice a link to our Help:Portal. Contained therein is an entire page about Help:Editing! If you have any difficulties understanding any aspect of those pages, feel free to bring it up in the talk pages! I see I've been slacking on my duties as a greeter. I'm supposed to be giving new members a greeting message that links them to that stuff. Sorry for my laziness.

There used to be a chat room, but it got dropped for a lot of reasons. I have considered starting one, but there isn't enough consistent community traffic to support it again yet, and it would really just be an alternative to the forum format we already have, where discussions will simply be lost and forgotten.

Pages which are adapting intellectual property must be marked with the {{Copyright Disclaimer}}. If you find any which are not properly marked, please apply the template to them.

There simply should not be content that is intentionally imbalanced. If something is imbalanced, then it is incomplete, and should be corrected or removed. (The exception is if it is actually a work of comedy.)

Actually, there isn't any Frankenstein coding happening here. It's just regular wiki markup. I'm not sure how we could make a program that can somehow interpret whether a page is "balanced" or "complete". That, I think, would be a true Frankenstein's monster. The templates we have here, while encouraged, are only a bare minimum. People can change them and expand upon them in individual pages. It's all just text. Having an unfeeling and unthinking program that just arbitrarily slaps templates on pages based on some contrived requirements would just make a mess.

Oportet (talk) 11:16, 28 December 2016 (MST)

Bit off-topic, but I'm looking for clarification on Kydo's comment of intentionally imbalanced content. I'm working on revamping a variant rule for playing as a monster (WIP page here) and, after discussion on the talk page, made the decision to throw out balance. I put a design disclaimer on the page to warn readers. Is that okay, or should it be revamped?

And while I'm here, when I was running homebrew content for a game I was DM'ing, one of my players tried to submit a character with an April Fool's class. Thankfully, the template was applied and clearly visible, so I was able to quickly explain why they needed to choose another class. The player turned out to be the kind that tries to argue proficiency in saving throws stacks with skill proficiency, so I'm pretty sure he was actively seeking out game-breaking material. I can't say whether splitting April Fool's content off will help avoid these situations, but I can say that the April Fool's template works.

BTW, when I was first editing, the first editing guide I saw was the one linked at the bottom of the edit window (this one). Compared to D&D Wiki's editing guide, it's not very helpful. Plus it looks misleadingly official; I didn't even assume there was another editing guide until I got a post on my talk page. Is it possible to change that link?

--Kydo (talk) 12:10, 28 December 2016 (MST)

That works fine. A design disclaimer specifies you're working on a different standard. When I say imbalanced, I mean dysfunctional in its own playstyle when compared against the standards set therein. For example, if I made a race for 5e, intended to be played in a totally normal game, and gave that race a trait of "immunity to everything" with the intent of completely defying any standards whatsoever, that's not worthwhile in my mind. I don't think the wiki should be home to heaps of content made by people who want to somehow legitimize an arbitrary power fantasy. I know it kind of is at the moment, but I don't think it should be that way, mainly because I don't see how sharing such material would be beneficial. Aside from the person who made it, who will use it?

I agree. All of our templates work well when they are used. It's just the application part we're struggling on. (That's changing fast though. Very cool, the way things have been improving around here)

What the heck?? How did you get linked to mediawiki? I don't even know where that link is! I've never even gone to that page! Back when I first started, our metapages had a link to a 6-years out-of-date version of the Wikipedia wiki markup page. I think we've improved a lot since then!

EDIT: OH< I SEE IT!!! Yeah, I totally never even noticed that little link next to the cancel link. I've been using this site for years! I agree it should be changed, but I don't know how to edit that one. I'm assuming it's controlled by a CSS document somewhere, but I have no idea how to even begin looking for it. We should point it out to a bureaucrat.

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