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Ratter
2018-03-20, 12:20 PM
Now, I know the mods will think I am trying to start an edition war. I AM NOT. This is me simply asking for Pros and Cons of each edition because I have only ever played 5th and want to know if I should get into Pathfinder/2e/AD&D. Examples of Pro Con is a more balanced game as well as a more homebrewable and simple game, but lots of complexity is gone for 5e. Thank you. (:

Lord_Drayakir
2018-03-20, 01:31 PM
I can only speak from personal experience:
AD&D 2E:
Pros: It has that perfect mix of high and low fantasy to be entertaining. The classes are mechanically very distinct from one another, but still work well. Lots of setting options.
Cons: SUBSYSTEMS. And poorly organized tables.

3E/3.5:
Pros: Unified mechanics.
Cons: Spellcaster supremacy, ivory tower game design.

PF:
Pros: It's free.
Cons: Spellcaster supremacy, ivory tower game design, developers are brain-dead mongrels who should be tarred and feathered, and run out of town.

4E:
Pros: Very good combat system - probably the best one out of all the D&D, very well balanced between the classes.
Cons: Is essentially a war-game not an RPG

Ratter
2018-03-20, 01:39 PM
I can only speak from personal experience:

PF:
Pros: It's free.
Cons: Spellcaster supremacy, ivory tower game design, developers are brain-dead mongrels who should be tarred and feathered, and run out of town.

What? Can you please elaborate?

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-20, 02:44 PM
AD&D 2E:
Pros: It has that perfect mix of high and low fantasy to be entertaining. The classes are mechanically very distinct from one another, but still work well. Lots of setting options.
Cons: SUBSYSTEMS. And poorly organized tables.

We can probably put down 1e as being mostly the same, just without all the simplifications and subsystems (although most 2e subsystems work in 1e).

Under Cons, we should probably put down that it's also balanced over the campaign, and retains elements of players having a pool of characters (because I believe the original idea was you might have a 9th level fighter who only really appears in domain level play, a 4th level fighter, a 2nd level magic user you play when there's enough fighters to justify it, and a bunch of random first levels you pull out when nobody else is suitable, most groups didn't play like that even back in 0e).


3E/3.5:
Pros: Unified mechanics.
Cons: Spellcaster supremacy, ivory tower game design.

Now ivory tower game design isn't totally terrible (the idea that not every option has to be a valid choice for every character is good), but yeah it's generally bad.


PF:
Pros: It's free.
Cons: Spellcaster supremacy, ivory tower game design, developers are brain-dead mongrels who should be tarred and feathered, and run out of town.

Are these the developers who declared they wouldn't do points based psionics because it would apparently be unbalanced compared to slot based magic? If so then yeah, they ain't got a living brain cell between them.


4E:
Pros: Very good combat system - probably the best one out of all the D&D, very well balanced between the classes.
Cons: Is essentially a war-game not an RPG

Now this is a bit unfair. It's a roleplaying game, just an incredibly combat focused one (but how's that different to post-3e D&D?)

For more completeness:

BD&D(also known as B/X or BECMI or RC)
Pros: simple to pick up, characters completely defined by stats and class (and equipment), strong focus on archetypes
Cons: Descending AC and all that implies, archetype-based classes can be confusing (my class is elf?), like four different versions of the rules

Also, a couple of retroclones and spinoffs that I think are interesting:

Basic Fantasy (http://www.basicfantasy.org/)
Pros: it's B/X without that annoying descending AC or race/class seperation, plus it's like 100% free! Plus includes a bunch of free 'playtest' classes.
Cons: well, still pretty bare bones in allowable concepts, but you can now play dwarven thieves!

Low Fantasy Gaming:
Pros: Low fantasy focus while keeping recognisable D&D rules, free, intended for sandbox play
Cons: arbitary level 12 cap, magic is still powerful even with the limitations, intended for sandbox play

Lamentations of the Flame Princess:
Pros: cool title, core rules are free, BD&D-inspired rules with ascending AC, attempt to balance the various classes (only fighters gain a scaling attack bonus)
Cons: clerics are a bit underwhelming, archetype-focused classes, artwork is a case of love it or hate it, wizards the only ones to scale damage with level.

Scripten
2018-03-20, 02:56 PM
Perhaps a third "Notes" category should be added for items that aren't necessarily pros or cons, but might be good to know anyway?

Warlawk
2018-03-20, 03:16 PM
This is just a quick first impressions kind of post for me, I've been playing since red box basic D&D and played each edition as they came out.

D&D, 1E, 2E
Pros: Nostalgia
Cons: Many. These systems are outdated, arbitrary and difficult to use. I haven't played them since they were the only thing available, so I'm honestly so rusty that I'm not going to dig the books off my shelf to go into more specifics. I played them, it was a blast, I would never touch them or recommend them now.

3.x/PF (never played PF)
Pros: Very detailed system, rewards system mastery, a staggering variety of resources and character options
Cons: A staggering variety of resources and character options to the point of being overwhelming and the system threatens to (and sometimes does) collapse under its own weight. There is a rule for everything and likely many various circumstance modifiers to go with said rule, it can bog things down. Relies strongly on the DM to force Role vs Roll play (rolling diplomacy and expecting results vs actually saying what your character says). Many trap options for characters (Ivory Tower Game design). The system is built with an expectation of characters having at least X value in magic items at each level (Monty Haul/Christmas tree effect). Spellcaster supremacy.

4E (Limited play on this edition, 4 short campaigns IIRC)
Pros: Very smooth combat system, fairly streamlined system overall.
Cons: Leaves the roleplay essentially untouched by rules, not even offering examples of how to handle most non-combat activities that are not directly covered by the existing skills. All classes follow the same system, leaving many with a feeling of blandness or homogenization.

5E is what you're familiar with and I would say it's the best edition yet. Unless you have some specific desire to learn a specific edition for ... reasons? I would say stick with 5e. My RPG group is a bunch of grognards, the newest of us has been playing since 1e and all are quite content with 5e and have no desire to use an older edition.

Knaight
2018-03-20, 03:57 PM
A lot of what goes in pro or con is a matter of taste (as is shown by "more simple" and "less complex" appearing in both categories in the example). With that said, there are some distinguishing characteristics. Most notably:

Pre 1e D&D

Deliberately vague rules.
Extensive use of specific subsystems.
Implicit general rules tied to attribute checks.
Really poorly written.
Low power growth with level.*


1e AD&D

Design for tournament play.
More extensive use of specific subsystems.
General spirit of standardization.
Really poorly written.


2e

Basically 1e in most respects for core mechanics.
A lot of added mechanics (kits, etc.)
High point for number of settings, amount of setting material.


3e/3.5/Pathfinder

Unified core mechanic.
Extensive standardization.
Deliberate minimization of DM decision making.
High point for complexity.
High point for complication.
Extensive use of class specific subsystems.
Introduction of Fort/Ref/Will save system.
Extreme power growth with level.
Many distinct level based growth formulas.
Introduction of and heavy use of feats.


4e

Unified core mechanic.
Unified resource system.
High power growth with level.
High combat focus.
Very high battlemap focus.
Deliberate minimization of DM decision making.
Minimization of level based growth formulas.
Extremely focused on powers.


5e

Unified core mechanic.
Introduction of attribute save system.
Introduction of Proficiency.
Deliberate reintroduction of greater DM decision making.
Extensive use of class specific subsystems.
Minimization of level based growth formulas.


Including a few notable games that are basically D&D:

Adventurer Conqueror King

Basically 1e/2e.
Extensive domain management rules.
Quite well written.


13th Age

Largely combat focused.
Very faction focused.
A great many different level based growth formulas.
Relatively simple.



*By D&D standards. By general industry standards it's still very high.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-20, 05:06 PM
I'm going to say it right now, if you don't want to dive into meaningless complexity you can skip all pre-WotC editions except for B/X and 0e (of which I've only played B/X).

If you're wiling to dive into meaningless complexity you'll find an interesting mixture of high and low fantasy, powerful PC wizards with attempted hard limits on their power (those spell memorisation rules are not adventure friendly, and forget abstracting your bat guano and sulphur into a neat 'component pouch'), a focus on archetypes (level limits by race anybody), and exploration focused gameplay. The downside is that B/X still gives lots of that while being a simpler system with more focus on just rolling an ability check or just improvising the entire thing.

I mean I haven't played 1e, but my experiences of 2e are much closer toward only two people knowing the rules (the GM and myself) because nobody else wanted to dive into the rulebooks. 2e is the only edition of D&D I own pdfs for, because the settings, but B/X or a retroclone is still much easier to get people into.

Note that out of the 'old editions', the winners are 3.X (for having the most in-depth character building system) and B/X (which seems to have half the retroclones because it's what so many people played), with 1e and 0e a bit behind because they define 'old school' to many people.

I'd also like to make a point, 2e and before are exploration focused games, tracking resources and time is considered vital to a great game and things tend to last in increments of set time periods (e.g. 1d4 turns, where a turn is ten minutes). This makes keeping track of how long things last relatively easy, as a 'turn' lets you a certain amount of exploring. 4e and 5e are combat focused (arguably encounter focused, but like 80% of character abilities are designed for combat) games, where your character's abilities are focused around combat and the idea is that your important resources (hp and spell slots) are drained over the course of several encounters until you die or more often rest. In 5e the idea is that you die of the goblins wearing you down so that you aren't at full capacity when fighting their ogre friend, in B/X the idea is that you died of gangrene because the Cleric didn't have the time to prepare Cure Disease this week.


Note that even retroclones that remove some of the strongest limitations, like my preferred Lamentations of the Flame Princess, still tend to keep some of them. For example in LotFP allows wizards to wield whatever weapons and wear whatever armour they want, but the rules prohibit a wizard from carrying too much from casting spells (making you decide between carrying a sword, wearing chain armour, having ammunition for your ranged weapon, and carrying treasure). Casting spells no longer takes 10 minutes per spell level prepared, but does take a number of hours equal to the highest level spell being prepared (although the new edition is changing this and LotFP seems to be moving further from B/X). This to me actually improves the exploration gameplay, allowing previously restricted characters to contribute more while requiring records to be kept and spell components to be rationed.

EDIT: oh, I forgot to mention, the 2e DMG has a rather interesting layout. It follows the PhB, which can make rules much easier to look up in-game if you know what PhB topic this is (all equipment rules in the equipment section, no need to go to the worldbuilding section for what might be available in your world), but makes it less nice to read cover to cover to get an overview. Also AFAIK much less advice than the 1e book. Although a good index solves almost all looking up issues, some publishers just refuse to include them (but enough about why I refuse to update to Mongoose Traveller 2e*). Oh, 5e's index can also go on the list of 'worst indexes ever' because it feels like whenever I want to look something up, like jumping, I go to it in the index and then have to go to another index entry and guess which of the page ranges includes my desired topic.

* seriously, the reason given is that 'once you know where the rules are the index is wasted space'. But I don't own just one system, and when switching the index comes in handy if I suddenly need to look up the falling, toxin, medical help, or debt collection rules. I'm also not running Anima: Beyond Fantasy until I can find a decent fan-made index, and due to it being Rolemaster inspired it seems to take all the 'good' bits of D&D3.X and turn them up to 11.

erikun
2018-03-20, 09:33 PM
AD&D2e

It has a TON of different campaign settings. Sure, later editions have a lot in the form or Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, etc. but 2nd edition has basically all of those along with Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, and so on. Eberron and the unnamed 4th edition settings among the few introduced after 2nd ed. Plus, you can mostly run 1st editions settings and content in 2nd edition, and both Planescape and Spelljammer are incredibly large in what they can potentially contain.

2nd edition also has probably the best multiclass options for a starting character. You could easily roll a Fighter/Thief/Mage next to a Cleric, all at 1st level, and things would work out well between them. They might not survive, mind you, but one isn't going to be horribly overleveled or overpowered compared to the other. At least, not at first.

The disadvantages for 2nd edition are quite numerous. Older D&D seems to be more a core set of stats and rolls, with a bunch of subsystems used to resolve various situations. 2nd edition feels like much the same, just with a bunch of those subsystems being the official rules. As such, there is a lot of inconsistency between them (compare a bend bars check vs a Thief skill vs using a proficiency) which makes it hard to predict or even understand how some systems would work. You could reasonably assume a character is competent in one situation, only to find out that they are terrible because they're lacking a proficiency, or because the roll requires an attack roll rather than an attribute roll, and so on. There are also a lot of bizarre mechanics, such as how multiclassing or dual classing works. Hint: most demihumans don't single-class for a reason.

Perhaps it was just from me starting as a teenager, but it also felt like there wasn't much guidance in AD&D2e on how to really start or run a campaign. Later editions are much clearer in pointing out what to throw at the party, in forms of challenges and rewards. Most of my early attempts at 2nd edition pretty much only relied on kobolds/goblins/orcs just because I wasn't sure what else would instantly kill a low level party by accident.

I'll also note that the system seems to assume that the DM has a full understanding of the rules. This can be good (it means a prepared DM can run the game even if the players don't understand the rules) but it also means the DM needs to understand how things work very well. It also means they can't unload stuff onto the players as well as they can with later editions.

Pre-AD&D2e

I've not played these, but my impressions: AD&D1e is fairly similar to AD&D2e. There are less systems, meaning you don't have rules to (for example) something like crafting armor but then don't have to deal with the bizarre rules for crafting armor present in AD&D2e. Some of the things are a bit different (there are more tables than in AD&D2e) but a lot of it has similarity to AD&D2e. For the most part 2nd edition was considered a "revision" of 1st edition, making certain subsystems official and changing a few things around. So the two are fairly compatible, even if not fully. There's also less angels and demons in 2nd edition, since that's when the RPG moral panic was happening in the U.S.

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, Expert Set, Companion Set, Master Rules, and Immortals Rules (collectively known as BECMI) is not something I've played. From what I understand, it's similar to AD&D but it just uses the "core rules" of character attributes, classes, levels, d20+bonuses to attack, and so on, and every else is an optional accessory. So while AD&D might have a bunch of strange official rules for mounted aerial combat and magical item crafting, BECMI instead has those rules (and probably others) and it's up to the DM to decide which ones to use. As such, I'd assume it puts even more pressure on the DM than AD&D2e does, altough it gives them more freedom in how they want their game to work. Note that BECMI came out at the same time as AD&D1e and AD&D2e were being released, so it isn't a "pre-Advanced" Dungeons & Dragons. Rather, BECMI is more like the version to let you choose which options you wanted while AD&D had official mechanics for each version.

Original D&D, or OD&D, is something I haven't even looked into, so no real opinion there.

D&D3e, D&D3.5e

There are lots of options for player characters. Lots and lots of options. Lots of lots of class build options, which makes character building perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the game. Monsters have a CR system which helps determine how tough they are, to make building them easier and throwing them at the PCs much easier. There are a lot of fun and strange PC class options to play with, tons of spells, and lots of feats with odd uses.

Unfortunately, most of those options weren't balanced well. If at all. Monk v Druid is a bit of a joke, but it's a highlight of the problems with the system: it seems that the developers just made sure that classes could perform the role they had in mind, and didn't check what else the class could do in the available system. Skills are borked. Feat requirements are borked. Prestige class requirements are borked. Multiclassing is borked. The system can easily require devoting ten character levels just for a presige class entry, meaning you could be spending half or two-thirds of a character's career just attempting to gain entry into the character concept... as opposed to actually playing the character concept.

I've found that the spellcaster dominance and martial invalidity to get overstated quite frequently. In a typical game, you typically won't find a wizard who just happens to have all the right spells and then sleeps for 20 hours after every combat; that just isn't viable. And a Fighter or Barbarian with a 2H weapon + Cleave is generally quite useful. You still have inconsistencies like the Monk (who is still terrible) and mid- to high-level spellcasters get so many spells it's silly, but the second seems to happen with most other editions.

D&D4e

The plus side: It's a nice board game. The minus side: It's a nice board game.

Everything is so restrictive that it honestly feels like playing a board game, when you aren't just ignoring the rules and roleplaying. Trying to provide consistent mechanics for everything means that everything done in combat tends to just boil down to a set number of outcomes. So throwing a table at an enemy might do some damage and knock them prone, but you can't lasso something and, say, disable their attacking arm or pull their shield away. Skills seem less restrictive although I don't recall any time I used them outside a standard "role for this skill" situation. And you can end up in a strange situation where the game system basically tells you that you're done for the day - all editions can hit you with the "you're out of spells and low on HP" situation, but D&D4e was the first time I found that we needed to rest because a character was a full health but out of healing surges, and no amount of healing spells or healing potions available would help them out (because they all do nothing with no healing surges available).

The skill challenge system was also fairly bad.

On the plus side, D&D4e did have an interesting bunch of enemies and enemy creation was very good.

D&D5e

I haven't played this too much, but overall, it has been quite good. So far, it's been a good mix of AD&D2e and D&D3e without the bad parts. There is a good variety between classes, but it isn't overpowered and spells aren't broken like in 3rd edition. Skills aren't the skill point mess of 3rd edition or the confusing nonweapon proficiencies from 2nd edition, they are the much better presentation in how 4th edition handled them. You have some nice combat options which give classes a lot of different appeal (a good point from D&D4e) but it didn't fall into 4th edition's trap of trying to turn fights into a tactical wargame.

I've heard that multiclassing isn't a good or interesting as previous editions, though. (Nobody in my group has tried, yet.) And I'm not sure how things work on the DM's end, since I haven't picked up those books to look through them. The PHB is still the standard D&D mess but fairly functional. My biggest criticisms against D&D5e would probably be against other systems, rather than other D&D editions, because it is certainly something I've preferred much more than even early D&D3e and D&D4e games. However, I haven't really played the system very long and will admit that there's probably problems which simply haven't come up or have been overlooked at this point.

Sir_Leorik
2018-03-21, 03:02 AM
I wrote my view on a different thread in the 3.X subforum (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22934706&postcount=18). Hopefully these two threads can be merged.

Ratter
2018-03-21, 07:43 AM
5E is what you're familiar with and I would say it's the best edition yet. Unless you have some specific desire to learn a specific edition for ... reasons? I would say stick with 5e. My RPG group is a bunch of grognards, the newest of us has been playing since 1e and all are quite content with 5e and have no desire to use an older edition.

Some people look at some of my DMing and have said "this would be way better in _ edition," so I wanted to see what they meant

Ratter
2018-03-21, 07:45 AM
I wrote my view on a different thread in the 3.X subforum (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22934706&postcount=18). Hopefully these two threads can be merged.
I made that forum but was told to put it here

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-21, 11:41 AM
3.5 is very number heavy. Lots of modifiers, lots of math. You get a +5 from this, but a -2 from that, and a +3 for wearing a very shiny hat. Kinda feels like the game mechanics were meant to be played in a video game, where the computer would keep track of all the math for you. But here in the real world, you need your character sheet, your dice, your scientific calculator, your protractor... =)

Talk about harsh. 3.X never required more than a basic calculator, although the buff play in high-op got ridiculous. However, despite the view you might get from forums, 3.X was actually rarely played at high op. It is these days, because not interested in high-op buff stacking tend to go for other games, but that wasn't true back in the day.

For your average 3.X game the problem came not from all the maths, but from noncasters being limited in options. If you're willing to live with the balance problems you can play 3.X that's no more mathsy during play than 5e is.


4e walks, talks, and acts like an MMO. They started the idea of characters having certain things they can do At Will, other things they can do before they need to rest, and things they can only do daily. Which makes sense for casting spells and such, but they did it to Fighters and the like as well. So you can swing your sword all day, but you can only trip someone a few times, and you can only charge across the battlefield once a day.

Have you ever played an MMO? Because IME few use that model. 4e is closer to a squad-based tactics game, although more XCOM than Final Fantasy Tactics, everybody has their default moves and bigger abilities with cooldowns (in 4e's case generally 'until short rest' and 'until long rest').

Note that 4e also assumes that 'martial' characters aren't completely mundane. These additional powers are you tapping into reserves of strength to do the impossible touch the untouchable row row fight the power, although the nature of those powers means that it doesn't quite work out in practice.

Oh, and before people bring it up, 4e characters are samey in the way 5e casters are samey. You've got X special abilities you can use a certain number of times a day, but everybody's list is different (at least theoretically), and you get additional abilities alter the way you play. So while a Fighter might have a selection of multi-hit powers and trips the Wizard is putting enemies to sleep and blinding them while the Cleric is handing out buffs. At least in theory.

Then the PhB3 gave a bit of lovely playing with that system. The psionic classes either use power points to enhance at-wills instead of encounter powers (most of them), or have each power give two effects it can be activated for (the monk). Plus I just prefer the Runepriest to the Cleric for the stance system and melee focus, although I understand it's not as versatile.


5e kept with the spirit of that idea, giving casters certain spells they can cast all day long, other spells they can cast a few times, so on and so forth. But they smoothed out the rough edges, and got away from feeling like you're just button mashing an MMO.

Definitely recommend 5e

Uh... casters essentially work as Pathfinder Sorcerers, nothing like 4e AEDU characters. Well except for high level Warlocks. Plus 5e is a lot rougher, 4e was smooth and fitted together perfectly, people just weren't thrilled as much by it as they were by other editions because it removed a lot of clutter while adding in new things.

Again, 4e is not like an MMO. It's like XCOM, you need to position your characters correctly and make good use of your abilities to get past the enemies. In XCOM I don't make my assaults fire their shotguns twice as soon as the enemy appears, I push them up via cover until I can rush them right next to the enemy and unleash a pair of shotgun blasts. In 4e I don't pull out a sleep spell immediately, because otherwise I might not have it in a later battle where I need it, and I generally don't waste my encounters on minions when they could take down a normal enemy just out of reach.

Everything in 4e was dedicated towards giving tactical squad-level fantasy combat with some other stuff around it. 5e is a lot looser, dedicating most of a character's abilities towards combat then chickening out.


I'd honestly recommend just picking up a B/X retroclone over 5e. Basic Fantasy has some more specific class options available as extras if you aren't satisfied with Cleric/Fighter/Magic-User/Thief(/Dwarf/Elf/Halfling), B/X retroclones are generally simpler than 5e while providing just as many things for characters to do, and classes tend to be simpler.

Why do we need abilities at every level!? Hey, remember when levels mainly gave you attack bonuses, saving throw increases, and hp? Oh, and spells if you were a caster. That was nice and simple to keep track of, compared to these proficiencies, activated abilities (I can take an additional action once a short rest? I can heal myself as well? And autosucceed on saving throws?), passive abilities, subclasses, there's like twenty of the things for a freaking fighter! The guy who's supposed to be 'nothing particularly special'!

Back in my day your class was elf and you liked it.

I feel like 2D8HP. Get off my lawn you darn whippersnapper abilities! Please note that Anonymouswizard is 23 years old and should probably note be feeling these things.

But yeah, Basic Fantasy is probably the best B/X retroclone to pick up, it removes most of the things people find weird and has a bunch of optional classes.

5e's biggest problem is that it had to bring back all the sacred cows from the non 4e editions and remove some of the great things about 4e or change them beyond recognition (remember healing surges? Those things that restored a set decent amount of your hp, and tougher characters got more off? Hope you like them being replaced with a bunch of dice you roll to hope you get a decent amount of hp back!). Remember that Fortitude, Reflex, and Will were static numbers and that the attacker would always roll the dice? Saves are back! Remember how 4e made hp unrelated to meat and allowed inspired characters to regain hp? Apparently that was too fun. It looked like it had a decent thing going on where your class would be your archetype, say a Fighter or a Magic-User, and then the classes of 3.X+ would be subclasses which took added additional abilities to your core archetype ones. We wouldn't get classes that hilariously varied in breadth of concept. Except apparently Bards and Druids can't be subclasses of another class, despite that fact that they are significantly more niche concepts than Wizards or Clerics.

Seriously, if you gave me 5e with hit dice replaced by healing surges and just the Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard/Sorcerer classes with the other classes being turned into subclasses I'd be happy. No longer having to explain why Barbarian is a class, just asking which rough archetype they want then focusing in on if they want their knight to be divinely inspired, or having dabbled in the arcane, or whatever. You could even have subclasses that were accessible to more than one class, so you could play a Swashbuckler Rogue or Swashbuckler Fighter.

Rhedyn
2018-03-21, 12:07 PM
1e and before: didn't play

2e: look at the rules and thought it was OK. More lethal than any of the other editions. Magic was more dangerous (none of that Polymorph, haste spam)

3e: Where I started, ran campaigns deep into epics, used deity ranks. All was good until we ran age of worms with people who knew how to build. Pretty much dead after that.

Pathfinder: solid system. Decently balanced. Very easy to make trash characters if you tried to build a concept rather than around your class. Too burdensome on GMs to run.

4e: We're about to start a campaign in this. System looks fine. Hilariously bad marketing, content release schedule, and the use of meta language first with narrative language buried is what makes it seem like a boared game. Overall looks cool.

5e: Literally unplayable. Terrible balance. Overpowered casters. PCs are basically unkillable or can't fight the encounter. Our group does like one encounter a day, so the 6 encounter balance assumption means this game can't work with our group. Not only that but our builds tend to trivialize normal encounters such that only boss fights actually drain resources.
Combine this with a DM gut feeling based skill system, a complete lack of social or exploration mechanics that matter (aka don't depend on how the DM feels that day) and spells that are either boring or broken or both and we get a game basically designed from the ground up to be an anathema for our group. I've had 5 Campaigns fail with this system. One was revived by switching it to Pathfinder. Not once has this system given me a satisfying campaign. The best it's even done was give a good session.


We mainly play Savage Worlds now and are about to start a 4e game. I really like PF but even Paizo is getting sick of keeping all those rules straight.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-21, 12:57 PM
5e: Literally unplayable. Terrible balance. Overpowered casters. PCs are basically unkillable or can't fight the encounter. Our group does like one encounter a day, so the 6 encounter balance assumption means this game can't work with our group. Not only that but our builds tend to trivialize normal encounters such that only boss fights actually drain resources.
Combine this with a DM gut feeling based skill system, a complete lack of social or exploration mechanics that matter (aka don't depend on how the DM feels that day) and spells that are either boring or broken or both and we get a game basically designed from the ground up to be an anathema for our group. I've had 5 Campaigns fail with this system. One was revived by switching it to Pathfinder. Not once has this system given me a satisfying campaign. The best it's even done was give a good session.

I think I'd agree with most of that.

The problem with 5e in my experience is that you can have two encounters with the same XP budget, one can be easy because it's a lone enemy without many abilities, the other can be impossible because the entire encounter is made up of opponents resistant to nonmagical damage (which forms the basis behind the class choice for my current character). We literally once waltzed up to a boss monster and took him down in two turns without taking any damage due to having bonus action attacks on our warriors.

5e is built around the idea that most encounters won't meaningfully drain resources beyond hit dice and maybe a spell slot or two. Unlike 3.X where the idea was that an 'average' encounter would drain about a quarter of your resources, or many other games where the rule is 'if you kill all the PCs it was probably too many enemies'. There's plenty of monsters with resistance to nonmagical damage even at low levels but magical weapons aren't assumed, meaning that most of the party can be out of luck if the encounter is based around them. Most of the time I've just ended up wishing we were playing a simpler system that didn't assume we were having X encounters a day that can't generate a failure state.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-03-21, 01:25 PM
I think I'd agree with most of that.

The problem with 5e in my experience is that you can have two encounters with the same XP budget, one can be easy because it's a lone enemy without many abilities, the other can be impossible because the entire encounter is made up of opponents resistant to nonmagical damage (which forms the basis behind the class choice for my current character). We literally once waltzed up to a boss monster and took him down in two turns without taking any damage due to having bonus action attacks on our warriors.

5e is built around the idea that most encounters won't meaningfully drain resources beyond hit dice and maybe a spell slot or two. Unlike 3.X where the idea was that an 'average' encounter would drain about a quarter of your resources, or many other games where the rule is 'if you kill all the PCs it was probably too many enemies'. There's plenty of monsters with resistance to nonmagical damage even at low levels but magical weapons aren't assumed, meaning that most of the party can be out of luck if the encounter is based around them. Most of the time I've just ended up wishing we were playing a simpler system that didn't assume we were having X encounters a day that can't generate a failure state.

And I completely disagree with the quote. I've played 5e now for several years with multiple groups, most of whom were new. Even a game where you only fight one per day can work...but has to be built for that. Any game that deviates strongly from the design assumptions will work poorly, although some are more tolerant than others. If you play Call of Cthulhu as a D&D clone (all combat all the time), it's going to be rough at best.

5e's much more forgiving of deviations from the assumptions than 4e was, much more approachable and less borked mechanically than 3e was (and infinitely better balanced and less breakable by characters), and much more cohesive than 2e was (from what I've seen of it). It does require a certain philosophical bent that's unfamiliar. You can't play 3e style in 5e and have the system at its best, that's for sure.

Rhedyn
2018-03-21, 01:33 PM
Why have specific number encounter pacing as design assumption?

JNAProductions
2018-03-21, 01:49 PM
Why have specific number encounter pacing as design assumption?

The alternative is to have every encounter be completely discrete, which is SOMEWHAT what 4E did, though it did have Dailies.

Which isn't wrong, by any means, but what alternative would you suggest to that?

exelsisxax
2018-03-21, 01:55 PM
The alternative is to have every encounter be completely discrete, which is SOMEWHAT what 4E did, though it did have Dailies.

Which isn't wrong, by any means, but what alternative would you suggest to that?

"You enter the dragon's lair. Dragon. DRAGON. Cleric, make a DC 5 wisdom check"
"i got a 14"
"Your common, uncommon, and supernatural sense all indicate that this is a stupid idea and you shouldn't try to fight a dragon"
"I think we can take it. It's still the first encounter"

Assumptions that don't include a failed attempt at 'balance' would my vote.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-03-21, 02:12 PM
"You enter the dragon's lair. Dragon. DRAGON. Cleric, make a DC 5 wisdom check"
"i got a 14"
"Your common, uncommon, and supernatural sense all indicate that this is a stupid idea and you shouldn't try to fight a dragon"
"I think we can take it. It's still the first encounter"

Assumptions that don't include a failed attempt at 'balance' would my vote.

All systems include assumptions about "balance." It's just that they're balancing different things. D&D has always made system math assumptions, some were just poorer than others. Otherwise you have unintentional TPKs.

The early editions just had no coherent mathematical grounding at all, so things were broken in every direction. Nostalgia lets us overlook that, and most groups found their own balance point.

Pelle
2018-03-21, 02:18 PM
Talk about harsh. 3.X never required more than a basic calculator, although the buff play in high-op got ridiculous. However, despite the view you might get from forums, 3.X was actually rarely played at high op. It is these days, because not interested in high-op buff stacking tend to go for other games, but that wasn't true back in the day.

For your average 3.X game the problem came not from all the maths, but from noncasters being limited in options. If you're willing to live with the balance problems you can play 3.X that's no more mathsy during play than 5e is.


Not sure if you disagree or not, but it's not the math per ce that is the issue with 3.5 (which is just + and -), but it's keeping track of which modifiers to apply for the current situation.

An example from my session last night, the level 9 orc fighter was enlarged and hasted in a fight. Not sure if you call that high-op, the group is relatively casual. We had to keep track of situational modifiers from haste, enlarge, sunlight, power attack, charging, flanking, and there could easily be many more. It's not difficult, it's just a hassle. Advantage/disadvantage is a relief to me at least.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-03-21, 02:23 PM
Not sure if you disagree or not, but it's not the math per ce that is the issue with 3.5 (which is just + and -), but it's keeping track of which modifiers to apply for the current situation.

An example from my session last night, the level 9 orc fighter was enlarged and hasted in a fight. Not sure if you call that high-op, the group is relatively casual. We had to keep track of situational modifiers from haste, enlarge, sunlight, power attack, charging, flanking, and there could easily be many more. It's not difficult, it's just a hassle. Advantage/disadvantage is a relief to me at least.

I very much agree. Situational modifiers are the big reason why I don't want to play 3e/PF, and especially don't want to DM it. The mental overhead is too large for me these days.

Rhedyn
2018-03-21, 03:10 PM
The mental overhead is too large for me these days.
This I can agree on.

Our group found a compromise in Savage Worlds. Without classes or HP, the game is inherently simpler. With exploding damage dice, it's a lot easier to make players feel threatened and without HP combat goes quicker when one good hit is all you need.

We're hoping 4e can be lighter on the mental overhead while still providing the class framework certain players enjoy and the robust mechanics our group demands for a game to function with us.
5e can't really handle the one encounter day all that well and that's the narrative pacing our group likes. When we don't like the combat and the other rules are fairly scant (as in pure role-playing and DM rule of cool is system independent), it's just not the system for our group.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-21, 03:42 PM
And I completely disagree with the quote. I've played 5e now for several years with multiple groups, most of whom were new. Even a game where you only fight one per day can work...but has to be built for that. Any game that deviates strongly from the design assumptions will work poorly, although some are more tolerant than others. If you play Call of Cthulhu as a D&D clone (all combat all the time), it's going to be rough at best.

Sorry that I didn't make this clear, I have several views which clash with core assumptions of 5e. One of these is a belief that there should be no 'worthless' encounters in a game, every fight, puzzle, social interaction, or otherwise should be able to change the state of the game beyond 'the fight is no longer happening'. This means all combats need stakes, whether that's characters dying or the opponents getting away with the Ankle of Vecna. 5e assumes that you should generally be able to have 5 fights in an adventuring day without significant risk of character death.

My solution when running is simple, I don't run 5e.


5e's much more forgiving of deviations from the assumptions than 4e was, much more approachable and less borked mechanically than 3e was (and infinitely better balanced and less breakable by characters), and much more cohesive than 2e was (from what I've seen of it). It does require a certain philosophical bent that's unfamiliar. You can't play 3e style in 5e and have the system at its best, that's for sure.

A certain philosophical bent that's unfamiliar? Look, I've played many games, I know how they differ and that some are better than others for certain styles, and 5e isn't really anything new. It's got a couple of decent ideas (Advantage/Disadvantage is the main one), but everything it does I've seen another system do better, except maybe for having a large number of classes with additional subclasses.

5e's biggest problem is that among the systems I own there's nothing it's best at, and not a lot it's second best at. I can almost always pick out a more suitable system (my current group would very much prefer basic fantasy, because nobody wants to deal with abilities).

Excession
2018-03-21, 04:46 PM
We're hoping 4e can be lighter on the mental overhead while still providing the class framework certain players enjoy and the robust mechanics our group demands for a game to function with us.

I think it can do that, with a little care. There are still a lot of feats, powers, and enemies that are overly fiddly, complex, uselessly weak, or all three at once. Avoiding feats that provide overly situational bonuses, and powers that have a paragraph of special stuff attached to them helps there. On the up side, because powers are written using rules first, it's easy to see how complex they are. How well they actually work in combat, given other party members and terrian etc. is harder without experience though.

Using enemies exclusively from the later monster manuals too, Monster Vault is great, and the Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale is a masterpiece. You can also learn to make your own monsters fairly easily.

The degree of system mastery required to avoid trap options is a Con for 4e, I think. While it's hard to make a truely useless character, it's easy to make someone solidly mediocre, bland, and who doesn't keep up with other characters as you level. Each book added a huge load of extra feats in particular, and most of them are rubbish.

Ratter
2018-03-21, 05:02 PM
Sorry that I didn't make this clear, I have several views which clash with core assumptions of 5e. One of these is a belief that there should be no 'worthless' encounters in a game, every fight, puzzle, social interaction, or otherwise should be able to change the state of the game beyond 'the fight is no longer happening'. This means all combats need stakes, whether that's characters dying or the opponents getting away with the Ankle of Vecna. 5e assumes that you should generally be able to have 5 fights in an adventuring day without significant risk of character death.

My solution when running is simple, I don't run 5e.



A certain philosophical bent that's unfamiliar? Look, I've played many games, I know how they differ and that some are better than others for certain styles, and 5e isn't really anything new. It's got a couple of decent ideas (Advantage/Disadvantage is the main one), but everything it does I've seen another system do better, except maybe for having a large number of classes with additional subclasses.

5e's biggest problem is that among the systems I own there's nothing it's best at, and not a lot it's second best at. I can almost always pick out a more suitable system (my current group would very much prefer basic fantasy, because nobody wants to deal with abilities).

I liked 5e for the following reasons: a) as a DM, encounter building and playing multiple monsters was easy
b) It wasnt that unbalanced, and from what everyone is telling me about 3.5e, its classes arent nearly as unbalanced
c) It was easy to prepare stuff that could make every individual party member feel special

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-21, 05:40 PM
I liked 5e for the following reasons: a) as a DM, encounter building and playing multiple monsters was easy
b) It wasnt that unbalanced, and from what everyone is telling me about 3.5e, its classes arent nearly as unbalanced
c) It was easy to prepare stuff that could make every individual party member feel special

Oh, I should mention that I have a benefit of an existing RPG collection that tends towards more specialised games. There are good things about 5e, just not enough to make it my first choice for anything (even for European Heroic Fantasy I'd run Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Basic Fantasy first).

We all have our preferences, mine just run incredibly against 5e (because you do not need both so many classes and subclasses).

Knaight
2018-03-21, 07:01 PM
Why have specific number encounter pacing as design assumption?

Because you're designing a game with a resource management focus, where the individual conflict isn't one fight but instead one dungeon.

It's not a design that I'm particularly interested in, but that doesn't make it a bad design, let alone virtually unplayable. There are certain games it won't work for, much the same way that the rest of the design assumptions restrict it to some purposes and not others. The level system favors games with rapid power growth and larger than life characters, and thus it won't work too well for grounded games about more average people. The class system favors games which feature particularly heavy use of particular archetypes, and gets in the way of games which don't use said archetypes. The high fantasy setting makes the game poorly suited for other genres, including low fantasy.

Every single one of these design decisions makes it a game I'm less likely to play, and less likely to like. None of them make for poor design.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-03-21, 07:18 PM
Every single one of these design decisions makes it a game I'm less likely to play, and less likely to like. None of them make for poor design.

That's a quote I can get behind even if I don't agree with the conclusion about the game. Those are decisions I happen to like. None of them make for good design either, at least not necessarily. A particular set of design assumptions (which every game makes) can be well implemented or poorly implemented. The assumptions themselves are neutral.

I'm unlikely to want to play a game with a heavy focus on logistics or "grounded" characters. Gritty fiction where the protagonists struggle for every crumb just doesn't interest me, and neither does bean-counting. That doesn't make those systems bad. It makes them unsuitable for my purposes, but not for someone else's.


This is a bit off-topic, but someone or something that's consistently second-best is actually amazingly good. There's a school competition where I live called Science Olympiad. Schools compete in a bunch of events, and the teams are ranked by the place they took in each event. The top team gets 1 point, the 2nd gets 2, etc. The final winner of the tournament is the team with the lowest overall score. There are often 20-25 teams that compete.

If you have 12 events (not uncommon), then a team that always scores 2nd place has a score of 24. If you have a team that places 1st in 4 events, and 3rd in every other event, they'd have an overall score of 28. And if you have a team that scores 1st in every event but one, and 20th in that last event, they'll score an overall of 31, losing badly.

Being second-best at the whole range of relevant things is much better than being first for some things and back of the pack for the rest.

That's what I see the beauty of 5e is (compared to other editions of D&D especially). It's good (if not great) at most things it tries to do, and it's worst parts are merely adequate. If you aren't a RPG aficionado who has a specialized system for every occasion, and like heroic adventuring fantasy, 5e is a good choice. For the thousands or more people who might play a bit but aren't spending their days on these forums or otherwise immersed in RPGs, 5e is a great "one system." It's easy to pick up and play, easy to explain, has enough crunch/options to satisfy a portion of the players while being light enough (relatively here) to be playable to many of the rest. It's no revolution and certainly not perfect. It's the Honda Civic of the RPG world. Not fancy, but it does what it sets out to do very well in my opinion.

Mechalich
2018-03-21, 07:32 PM
5e's biggest problem is that it is insufficiently supported. All games have mechanical merits and flaws that have a greater or lesser impact dependent upon style of play. That's fine, it fact it's generally a positive thing - though it becomes a problem when you switch editions and up producing a game built around an entirely different style of play - which is what happened at the 3e - 4e transition point.

The primary issue with 5e isn't mechanical - it has problems yes, and they may be greater on balance than 3.5e's problems but they aren't completely unmanageable - the problem is that for what is supposed to be the flagship RPG with the largest market share, 5e lacks content. Paizo has quarters where they've pushed out more Pathfinder content than the totality of WotC's 5e run. Now, this issue is minimized in that many tables who run 5e have played D&D for a long time and are quite content to import and reuse fluff materials from the far more voluminous 2e and 3e runs, but 5e in a vacuum, against the expectations for Dungeons and Dragons, is simply embarrassing.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-03-21, 07:35 PM
5e's biggest problem is that it is insufficiently supported. All games have mechanical merits and flaws that have a greater or lesser impact dependent upon style of play. That's fine, it fact it's generally a positive thing - though it becomes a problem when you switch editions and up producing a game built around an entirely different style of play - which is what happened at the 3e - 4e transition point.

The primary issue with 5e isn't mechanical - it has problems yes, and they may be greater on balance than 3.5e's problems but they aren't completely unmanageable - the problem is that for what is supposed to be the flagship RPG with the largest market share, 5e lacks content. Paizo has quarters where they've pushed out more Pathfinder content than the totality of WotC's 5e run. Now, this issue is minimized in that many tables who run 5e have played D&D for a long time and are quite content to import and reuse fluff materials from the far more voluminous 2e and 3e runs, but 5e in a vacuum, against the expectations for Dungeons and Dragons, is simply embarrassing.

I know I come across as a 5e fanboy, but I strongly don't agree with this. Volume of content is a negative in my book. More splats to know, lower aggregate quality, higher chance of trap options. I make 99% of my content other than the base rules. 5e is great for that--easy to extend and build new stuff for. Having lots of new stuff is a transparent money grab that divides the player base into the haves and the have-nots. It also promotes the idea that DMs are "bad" if they have a restricted set of content availability in a campaign.

Rhedyn
2018-03-21, 08:02 PM
It's the Honda Civic of the RPG world. Not fancy, but it does what it sets out to do very well in my opinion.Eh the Honda Civic of D&D should be the longest lasting one. Which that would make AD&D the current Honda Civic with it's 12 year run before 2e. (I am a Honda Civic driver so I took issue to this). 2e would then be a Toyota Corolla, 3e would be a Ford Truck with all the different customization options, 4e would be an Iphone, and 5e is a Jeep Wrangler because it seems very versatile but if you don't drive it right it will tip over.

2D8HP
2018-03-21, 08:37 PM
Whitebox + supplements (most importantly Greyhawk) AKA "0e"

Pros: Most fun game I've played EVER!
Cons: You're trying to figure out how to play by reading the rules?

HAHAHAHAHA

HA!

Folklore or go home.

(Seriously, the Oracle of Delphi was less opaque)



1977 "bluebook" Basic rules

Pros: 48 pages of sublime concentrated D&D.
You may crave more, but it's all you need.

Really.
Cons: Some pitiful needy folk want more options (make them wear the DM hat!).


1977 to 1979 AD&D AKA "1e
Pros: More options, and the writing is a bit more clear, but still charming.
Cons: Only a little bit more clear, and trying to follow all the RAW is too hard.


1985's Unearthed Arcana
Pros: More options
Cons: Foul balance destroying HELLSPAWN OPTIONS!

FLEE BEFORE YOU'RE DOOMED!

DOOMED I SAY!


2e AD&D:
Pros: Less opaque.
Cons: I never played it.


1991/1994 "Blackbox"/Classic/Rules Cyclopedia
Pros: Easiest to learn from reading the rules version of D&D EVER!
Cons: That we're not playing it right NOW!


"3e D&D"
Pros: Actually a pretty good game.
Cons: I payed full price for those books damn it!

YOU MADE IT OBSOLETE SO SOON!

DAMN YOU WIZARDS!

DAMN YOU TO HELL!


3.5
Pros: Lots of nice friendly people play it.
Cons: Steep learning curve
there's ...... just ...... so ...... much!

AND YOU OWE ME A REFUND WIZARDS OF THE COAST, I HAD JUST BOUGHT THE 3e BOOKS!


*rant, rave, mumble, fume*

4e D&D:
Pros: Want some cheap barely used books? A few people really like it.
Cons: Too few people. Good luck finding a table.


5e:
Pros: Lots of nice friendly people play it. The most significant rules are free.

FREE!

Some simple classes are available that are fun to play.

Launching arrows at Dragons that sit on giant piles of treasure again!

Cons: Players want to use all the myriad not free rules/options.

SWEET SILKY LOLTH, I'M NOT LEARNING ALL THAT TO DM!


Can I interest you in a game of King Arthur Pendragon?

1337 b4k4
2018-03-21, 09:31 PM
Not much love here for BECMI/RC D&D so here's a handful of pros:

1) Fast char gen

2) A changing game system as you level up like the domain management, mass combat and immortal rules. Playing the game at level 20 isn't supposed to look like level 1 with all the numbers scaled up.

3) Per-side initiative EVERY ROUND instead of individual initiative. This changes up how combat feels so much from later editions of D&D. Because initiative is per side, it makes it easier for the players to cooperate and work as a team including doing things like setting up multi person attack sequences without having to start messing with held or readied actions. And having it happen every round can make battles a lot more tense. When the players are low on health and they've whittled the enemy down but they're in a precarious situation, that initiative role to find out if they get to act before the monsters is something they'll all hold their breath on.

4) XP for GP. Monsters give XP for being killed, but you get a lot more XP for getting the treasure. It vastly changes how players look at an encounter, as suddenly trying to talk your way out without bloodshed becomes a much more lucrative proposal, especially when a lucky crit from a 1HD monster is still dangerous as heck.

5) Single axis alignment. 99% of all alignment arguments are over the good / evil axis. BECMI doesn't have that, just law / chaos.

Mechalich
2018-03-21, 09:31 PM
I know I come across as a 5e fanboy, but I strongly don't agree with this. Volume of content is a negative in my book. More splats to know, lower aggregate quality, higher chance of trap options. I make 99% of my content other than the base rules. 5e is great for that--easy to extend and build new stuff for. Having lots of new stuff is a transparent money grab that divides the player base into the haves and the have-nots. It also promotes the idea that DMs are "bad" if they have a restricted set of content availability in a campaign.

If your game is a toolkit designed to aid hobbyists in having fun RPG experiences and you aren't actually in it for the money, then yes, having vast content volume has downsides. You argument has merit with regard to FATE or other systems that are primarily selling a mechanic. However, if you are selling a game then content volume is essential. Content volume is how you make money, keep interest, foster an avid community, and grow the hobby.

D&D is or was the most important player in the TTRPG space. It sells a specific kind of fantasy game - where you played adventurers who explored tactical combat zones called dungeons - that was so popular and influential it created the most common paradigm regarding how all RPGs function (the dungeon is a central element of pretty much every type of digital RPG, even open-world games can't escape it). Part of the D&D experience was giant piles of options of both crunch and fluff. Different editions stressed different aspects: 2e AD&D was the height of fluff, to the pint of producing books like Faces of Evil: The Fiends that had effectively zero mechanical content; 3.X editions were the height of crunch, with options spewing in every direction. 5e does neither.

5e is an interesting mechanic - though by no means a great one, at best it's an average structural setup that benefits from nomenclatural familiarity with the player base - but a lousy game. WotC has basically abandoned actually trying to make it a thing. There are maybe a dozen people actively employed working on 5e's official products, which is only a few steps up from Onyx Path's nostalgia publishing racket.

Mechanically 5e may suit the needs of many tables better than 3e or other non-D&D systems. It's that's all you care about, that's fine, but that is by no means all there is to care about.

Mendicant
2018-03-21, 09:47 PM
The biggest pro IMO for 3rd edition and its various forms and iterations is that the combination of the OGL/SRD, the unified mechanic, its immense library, its longevity and its arrival just as the internet was really picking up speed combined to make it the most thoroughly hacked and explored edition. It's open-source software to a degree few systems are.

It's hard to specify other pros and cons because there are so many alternate rulesets and plugins that it feels kind of foolhardy to make any assumptions about which game somebody is actually describing.

Nifft
2018-03-22, 01:11 AM
It seems to me that every edition of D&D has been:

1 - A unification & systematization of the previous edition's diverse mechanics; and

2 - A reaction to some of the most visible problems of the previous edition.

------

AD&D 2e was a reaction to AD&D 1e. To-Hit tables are confusing? Roll them all up into THAC0, which is simpler but lost a bit of nuance here & there. Weapon attack bonus vs. AC type is confusing? Give each armor an AC bonus / penalty vs. damage types, not per-weapon attack modifiers. Players disagree about what a PC should be able to do? Have a table of non-weapon proficiencies. 1e Rangers got a weird mix of Wizard & Druid spells, so 2e Rangers only get Druid spells. Bards were popular in fiction, so they made the Bard a base class instead of being a prestige class (as they were in 1e).

3.0e multiclassing was a reaction to the weird dual-class abuses available in 2e, and the massive benefits of multi-classing which made Half-Elves mechanically superior Humans. Look how awful Half-Elves were in 3.x, that's the result of over-nerfing based on how overwhelmingly good they were in 2e. Also, 2e NWP were weird? Here, have skills instead. 2e Clerics got bonus spells? Here, everybody gets bonus spells.

3.5e was a reaction to 3.0e. Heal/Harm/Haste, new Maneuver subsystems to bring martial PCs closer to caster PCs, a trend towards costing caster levels to get into PrCs (though too many full-casting PrCs already existed), at-will magic classes, interrupt effects, systematic overhaul of magic items, (too-little-too-late) attempt at overhauling polymorph spells, gave Ranger and Paladins a few specific spells since their 3.0e casting was far too weak, etc.

4e was a reaction to (perceived) flaws in 3.x. 4e Fighters became awesome, and tactical battlefield effects made minis-based combat very interesting. Wizards were... nerfed I guess, but as a 4e Wizard player, my PC was incredibly effective. It's just that there was never a time when the Fighter was deadweight relative to my PC. 4e also did a thing where they tried to make non-combat encounters inclusive, but they screwed up the math, so non-combat encounters were still focused almost exclusively on the (few) PCs who had one of the more relevant skills. Good intention, bad implementation.

5e was a reaction to 4e, and removed the tactical minis layer almost entirely. 5e was also a reaction to PF / 3.x: there were no more Prestige Classes*, either, and self-healing on a 4e-esque "short rest" is possible. The 4e concept of "Tiers of Play" is still there, but it's more implicit. Perhaps the most significant change is that unlike 4e / PF / 3.x / 2e, in 5e there is no need for a single magic item. There's no more expected wealth-by-level, no more "your weapon must be +4 or go home" monsters, no more need to be a walking xmas tree laden with loot.

*) ... except that one web PrC which just quietly exists and doesn't seem to generate much excitement.


I expect 5.5e to incorporate some innovations that were not already stolen from 4e and PF / PF2.

I expect 6e to feature detailed, tactical map-based combat as a legitimately optional element.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-22, 07:45 AM
This is a bit off-topic, but someone or something that's consistently second-best is actually amazingly good. There's a school competition where I live called Science Olympiad. Schools compete in a bunch of events, and the teams are ranked by the place they took in each event. The top team gets 1 point, the 2nd gets 2, etc. The final winner of the tournament is the team with the lowest overall score. There are often 20-25 teams that compete.

If you have 12 events (not uncommon), then a team that always scores 2nd place has a score of 24. If you have a team that places 1st in 4 events, and 3rd in every other event, they'd have an overall score of 28. And if you have a team that scores 1st in every event but one, and 20th in that last event, they'll score an overall of 31, losing badly.

Being second-best at the whole range of relevant things is much better than being first for some things and back of the pack for the rest.

That's what I see the beauty of 5e is (compared to other editions of D&D especially). It's good (if not great) at most things it tries to do, and it's worst parts are merely adequate. If you aren't a RPG aficionado who has a specialized system for every occasion, and like heroic adventuring fantasy, 5e is a good choice. For the thousands or more people who might play a bit but aren't spending their days on these forums or otherwise immersed in RPGs, 5e is a great "one system." It's easy to pick up and play, easy to explain, has enough crunch/options to satisfy a portion of the players while being light enough (relatively here) to be playable to many of the rest. It's no revolution and certainly not perfect. It's the Honda Civic of the RPG world. Not fancy, but it does what it sets out to do very well in my opinion.


You see, we have massive differences of opinion.

To me 5e is hopelessly average at a lot. Character creation is theoretically deep, but it pales in comparison to over half my shelf (and I had a small collection even before the cull). It manages to possibly hit Savage Worlds levels. Then the mechanics are rules heavy, but missing a lot of things. This isn't like Fate where I can pull out the contest or conflict rules to represent a trial (as appropriate to the game's tone, of course), the only real generic rules are 'roll 1d20+stat modifier+potentially proficiency bonus'.

Then there are places where it's just bad. 5e is the most tacked on version of roleplaying mechanics I've seen, to the point where I've not been in a game where they come up. In Fate you should be looking for invokes and compels on your Aspects all the time, doing cool things and taking bad stuff so you can do more cool things. In Unknown Armies you have a trio of Triggers you can pull once per session for a major boost for the rest of the scene. Powered by the Apocalypse is one I've not played, but it seems to be focused around picking an archetype.

It's much less second best at everything, and more like not rock bottom at anything. Or well, hopelessly average at many things, bad at quite a few others, and good at just enough that it is the right game occasionally. It's also not bad at enough to make it a bad choice for most pseudomedieval heroic fantasy games, but there are definitely places where it's bad.

5e is like a hammer. There's many situations in which a hammer is useful, but sometimes it'll just cause you problems. Meanwhile sometimes a certain screwdriver (more specific system) is much better for what you need, but if you don't have it you can just hammer in a few nails and hope nothing will go terribly wrong.


I know I come across as a 5e fanboy, but I strongly don't agree with this. Volume of content is a negative in my book. More splats to know, lower aggregate quality, higher chance of trap options. I make 99% of my content other than the base rules. 5e is great for that--easy to extend and build new stuff for. Having lots of new stuff is a transparent money grab that divides the player base into the haves and the have-nots. It also promotes the idea that DMs are "bad" if they have a restricted set of content availability in a campaign.

Except that it's not just splats that are missing (but more subclasses would be cool) but everything. Although I'll agree that many games have it worse than 5e (looking at you Fantasy AGE!).

Part of the annoyance with 5e is just those few things required for a couple of popular D&D settings (Eberron requires more concrete magic item rules and probably an artificer class, Dark Sun requires psionics rules). Oh, and the lack of official setting updates, mainly Eberron, Dark Sun, and Planescape.

Volume of content isn't really a positive or negative unless you either have too much content to reasonably use (my view of 4e) or not enough to do what you're supposed to (5e's problems with Dark Sun). D&D 5e is really on the low end of the scale and should probably push through another nonadventure book a year (it's alright WotC, we won't kill you if it's mainly setting fluff), mainly because a decent number of people would be willing to justify 'Aztec Land Unveiled' and 'More Monsters! Kill Players Better' in the same year (even more if it was both 'More Monsters' and 'Player Stuff', but I think that 5e only has a couple of major holes options wise). Or maybe another book every half year, the point is they could do a bit more on the 'fluff and crunch' side instead of relying on other people.


Not much love here for BECMI/RC D&D so here's a handful of pros:

1) Fast char gen

2) A changing game system as you level up like the domain management, mass combat and immortal rules. Playing the game at level 20 isn't supposed to look like level 1 with all the numbers scaled up.

3) Per-side initiative EVERY ROUND instead of individual initiative. This changes up how combat feels so much from later editions of D&D. Because initiative is per side, it makes it easier for the players to cooperate and work as a team including doing things like setting up multi person attack sequences without having to start messing with held or readied actions. And having it happen every round can make battles a lot more tense. When the players are low on health and they've whittled the enemy down but they're in a precarious situation, that initiative role to find out if they get to act before the monsters is something they'll all hold their breath on.

4) XP for GP. Monsters give XP for being killed, but you get a lot more XP for getting the treasure. It vastly changes how players look at an encounter, as suddenly trying to talk your way out without bloodshed becomes a much more lucrative proposal, especially when a lucky crit from a 1HD monster is still dangerous as heck.

5) Single axis alignment. 99% of all alignment arguments are over the good / evil axis. BECMI doesn't have that, just law / chaos.

Oh, I love B/X (or BECMI), but I'm also going to admit that it has problems. I personally tend to point people towards Basic Fantasy because it doesn't have as many of the less intuitive things (lower AC is better!).

But yeah, I think it's not so much a lack of B/X love (my class is elf, and anybody who says otherwise is playing the wrong edition) but that most people here are used to the badlater editions of D&D, so go over it.

I mean you have both myself and 2D8HP here now, if somebody doesn't like B/X we're doing our job wrong.

I mean, I don't play B/X these days, but that's due to not actually having access to the books anymore. But I've got plentiful access to retroclones (although my favourite makes a fair few changes), and will always pull them out before 5e.

Oh, and probably the biggest problem I've seen with B/X alignment is people assuming lawful=good and chaotic=evil. But eh, I'll just play whatever I want, only picking an alignment if I decide I want to play a Paladin or something (if we ever reach ninth level).

Bohandas
2018-03-22, 08:06 PM
A con of 3e and 3.5e is that monsters are statted in an overly formulaic manner and things are lots of things are tied to hit dice that really have no realistic business being strongly correlated with hit points

Also incorporeal undead are pretty much a showcase of bad and/or counterintuitive rules, lacking ability scores for reasons that only make vague sense and being restricted from passing through thick walls. They are, however, the one place where it makes sense for the undead to be immune to critical hits and sneak attacks; disregarding the folly of critical hits being taken here to exclusively represent a precise strike against a weak point rather than just a powerful blow it doesn't make sense for the undead with a physical structure not to have any weak points; they have a physical structure and it's unrealistic for all points in that structure to be equally strong, even if they were assumed to work in a way akin to the Deadites from The Evil Dead or the zombies from Quake


Oh, and probably the biggest problem I've seen with B/X alignment is people assuming lawful=good and chaotic=evil.

Also an issue with 4e

Nifft
2018-03-22, 11:16 PM
At least some of the designers did seem to think that Lawful was more Good than Chaotic.

By some definitions, Paladins were supposed to be the goodest of good-guys, and they're explicitly Lawful Good.

Hmm, what if Lawful were somehow opposed to Good, and Paladins were special because they unified these ordinarily divergent ethics?

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-23, 02:54 AM
Also an issue with 4e

4e invites itself to have it.

Seriously the alignments are Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, Chaotic Evil. The system allows you to call yourself Good without being Lawful, but not Lawful without being Good. Surely this means that being Lawful is an extra-strong version of Good? (no, 4e just collapsed Alignments, but it's the impression it gives.)

4e probably should have just stuck to three alignments, Good, Neutral, and Evil, and lessened such misunderstandings. Although 4e also had such a desperate desire to push that PCs are Good people fighting bad guys that they made Metallic Dragons nongood.

In B/X it was more interesting. PCs and enemies could inhabit both ends of the Lawful-Chaotic spectrum, goblins were Lawful (in 4e they're Evil). Lawful included both heroic Paladins and evil tyrants, Chaotic included both loveable freelance wealth redistribution artists who rob from the rich and give 50% to the poo and roving murderers under a philosophy of might makes right. You could have legitimate Lawful versus Lawful conflicts, while goblins might be on the same 'side' as you that doesn't mean they are free to raid your caravans.

Now Lawful is obviously going to get type cast as good because it has the Paladins, but that doesn't mean it's all Lawful is about. Let's rise up against the tyrants while celebrating the knights in shining dented probably a bit dirty armour.

VoxRationis
2018-03-23, 03:32 AM
From what I've seen, 2e, for example, is much more "gamey" on the level of character progression and XP gain than later editions, both in terms of the inclusion of slightly arbitrary rules and restrictions and in the idea that choices made during gameplay will affect these things substantially. Later editions (the WotC ones) stick that gamey quality into combat and magical effects. It's notable that the 2e books don't have a codified list of standardized status effects, but the WotC ones do. This is both good and bad. On one hand, it's much easier to keep track of what a particular spell or ability will do in later editions; assuming you haven't simply memorized a particular status effect, you can look it up in one easy-to-find place.
On the other hand, the standardization can sometimes lend a feel to the game a little farther from an immersive fantasy world and a little closer to a MOBA. My favorite example for illustrating what I mean by this is the spell Leomund's Lamentable Belaborment, a 2e wizard spell which had a long casting time and a series of different specialized effects. Such a spell fits poorly into the WotC-era paradigm and was removed. A similar fate befell a number of 3.5 spells as time went on (although some of them had it coming—there was rather too much redundancy in certain areas). In the place of such weird and wonderful magics, you tend to get spells that have similar effects to one another, but tweak certain easily defined parameters, swapping between damage types or having different damages and durations.
In addition, it's a lot easier to find broken combinations when an effect isn't self-contained. If a poison is listed as "inflicting nausea which easily leads to vomiting, adding a +2 bonus on saves against other ingested poisons, as well as a -3 penalty on attack rolls and halving Dexterity and Strength scores for the next 1d4 turns," you only need to worry about it interacting with those few explicitly stated aspects of gameplay. If it's written as "inflicts the poisoned condition, provides disadvantage on Strength- and Dexterity-based checks, and confers resistance to poison," all of those bolded keywords provide ways for a whole host of effects to "plug in" and interact with this effect, so now you need to examine combinations involving all the other game mechanics that involve those keywords.

Glorthindel
2018-03-23, 05:31 AM
[/INDENT]

"3e D&D"
Pros: Actually a pretty good game.
Cons: I payed full price for those books damn it!

YOU MADE IT OBSOLETE SO SOON!

DAMN YOU WIZARDS!

DAMN YOU TO HELL!


3.5
Pros: Lots of nice friendly people play it.
Cons: Steep learning curve
there's ...... just ...... so ...... much!

AND YOU OWE ME A REFUND WIZARDS OF THE COAST, I HAD JUST BOUGHT THE 3e BOOKS!


*rant, rave, mumble, fume*


Its comforting to know I am not the only person who is still mad about this :smallmad:

Ratter
2018-03-23, 08:33 AM
Can I interest you in a game of King Arthur Pendragon?
I like King Arthur lore, but what da fudge is that?

2D8HP
2018-03-23, 09:36 AM
I like King Arthur lore, but what da fudge is that?


Another RPG, first published in 1985.

Here's some links with more info:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendragon_(role-playing_game)


http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/Pendragon


Sorcery & Chivalry (Stormbringer and Pendragon) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?523070-Sorcery-amp-Chivalry-(Stormbringer-and-Pendragon)&highlight=Pendragon)


Pendragon: The Once and Future RPG? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?549975-Pendragon-The-Once-and-Future-RPG)

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-23, 10:18 AM
Another RPG, first published in 1985.

Here's some links with more info:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendragon_(role-playing_game)


http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/Pendragon


Sorcery & Chivalry (Stormbringer and Pendragon) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?523070-Sorcery-amp-Chivalry-(Stormbringer-and-Pendragon)&highlight=Pendragon)


Pendragon: The Once and Future RPG? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?549975-Pendragon-The-Once-and-Future-RPG)

You forgot one. (http://drivethrurpg.com/product/3125/King-Arthur-Pendragon-1st-Edition?term=king+arthur&test_epoch=0&it=1)

Zombimode
2018-03-23, 10:23 AM
In addition, it's a lot easier to find broken combinations when an effect isn't self-contained. If a poison is listed as "inflicting nausea which easily leads to vomiting, adding a +2 bonus on saves against other ingested poisons, as well as a -3 penalty on attack rolls and halving Dexterity and Strength scores for the next 1d4 turns," you only need to worry about it interacting with those few explicitly stated aspects of gameplay. If it's written as "inflicts the poisoned condition, provides disadvantage on Strength- and Dexterity-based checks, and confers resistance to poison," all of those bolded keywords provide ways for a whole host of effects to "plug in" and interact with this effect, so now you need to examine combinations involving all the other game mechanics that involve those keywords.

To me that is a good thing. This allows mechanical creativity and discovering new ways during character creation.

VoxRationis
2018-03-23, 12:14 PM
If by "mechanical creativity," you mean "cheesy combinations achieved by diving through sourcebooks to find abilities that the authors had never even thought about working together," then yes, this is true. The excesses of 3.5 tended to come from a tendency for players to apply admirable amounts of creativity and ingenuity to the mechanical level in disruptive and abusive ways.

Zombimode
2018-03-23, 12:23 PM
If by "mechanical creativity," you mean "cheesy combinations achieved by diving through sourcebooks to find abilities that the authors had never even thought about working together," then yes, this is true. The excesses of 3.5 tended to come from a tendency for players to apply admirable amounts of creativity and ingenuity to the mechanical level in disruptive and abusive ways.

Well, you see, this has simply not been my experience. Yes, the open ended-ness of 3.5 allows for some stupid stuff. But for every "broken" combination, there are many builds that are just fine

In my experience, playes who have vested interesst in a good game, that is: the people you should play the game with, simply won't show up at the table with Pun-Pun.

Being disruptive is always the choice of the player.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-03-23, 12:25 PM
If by "mechanical creativity," you mean "cheesy combinations achieved by diving through sourcebooks to find abilities that the authors had never even thought about working together," then yes, this is true. The excesses of 3.5 tended to come from a tendency for players to apply admirable amounts of creativity and ingenuity to the mechanical level in disruptive and abusive ways.

Agreed. If you then couple that highly interconnected mechanical design with tons and tons of poorly edited splats, you get a combinatorial explosion of brokenness that can't be fixed. It's the game equivalent of spaghetti code--any change to one thing ripples through the rest and breaks it all. It's a minefield. Much better to modularize and flatten the hierarchy of interacting rules. Rules should only interact when they say they do. Easier to learn, easier to play, tremendously more balanceable.

JNAProductions
2018-03-23, 12:28 PM
Well, you see, this has simply not been my experience. Yes, the open ended-ness of 3.5 allows for some stupid stuff. But for every "broken" combination, there are many builds that are just fine

In my experience, playes who have vested interesst in a good game, that is: the people you should play the game with, simply won't show up at the table with Pun-Pun.

Being disruptive is always the choice of the player.

Eh... Let's say I sit down with a couple of new players. Let's call them John, Steve, Sarah, and Lana.

John looks at Barbarian, thinks "AWESOME!" and grabs feats like Weapon Focus (Greataxe) and Power Attack. He'll probably do fine.
Steve looks at Monk, thinks "AWESOME!" and grabs feats like Toughness and Diehard, since he wants to be an unkillable unarmed badass. He'll probably suck. Hard.
Sarah looks at Druid, thinks "AWESOME!" and grabs feats like Natural Spell, since she wants to spend as much time in animal form as possible. She'll probably be the most powerful player.
Lana looks at the classes, thinks "I could be anything," and so decides to be a Bard, since that seems like the most support-focused class. She takes feats like... I dunno Bard feats in core, actually, but probably nothing too important. She'll do okay.

Sarah and Steve won't play well together. Sarah is just too much more powerful, and Steve sucks too hard. Both of them simply picked what seemed cool, but the end result is an unfun play experience for at least one of them.

GungHo
2018-03-23, 12:49 PM
I think the hardest part about AD&D is the reflexive tone. I want a time machine so I can shake them. There's no reason for obfuscating simple concepts through purple prose. I don't think it was an intentional barrier to entry, but once it's established, what you intended doesn't matter.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-23, 01:30 PM
Well, you see, this has simply not been my experience. Yes, the open ended-ness of 3.5 allows for some stupid stuff. But for every "broken" combination, there are many builds that are just fine

In my experience, playes who have vested interesst in a good game, that is: the people you should play the game with, simply won't show up at the table with Pun-Pun.

Being disruptive is always the choice of the player.

3.X's problem is much less the incredibly powerful builds, and more the incredible variety in potential power levels.

Remember that Core has what are generally considered the strongest and weakest classes. Monks and Wizards really don't play well together.

It also has the problem that the designers only really got to a consistent power level and well written classes by the end of the game. In early 3.5 the ability to wield weapons was overvalued compared to the ability to cast spells, leading classes like the Hexblade to suffer from not getting enough spellcasting to be worthwhile.

I mean a party of a Hexblade, a Lurk, a Samurai, and a Druid shouldn't have one party member who can make 2/3rds of the rest redundant.

5e is much closer to a 'late 3e classes only' in balance. Even if wizards are once again much more versatile than Fighters their spell list has been reduced in size and focused more, while martial classes are just plain better at combat. It's not something I like, but it works for many people.

Rhedyn
2018-03-23, 02:09 PM
You know, the way you view the D&D has a lot to do with whether you play anything but D&D and Pathfinder. With OSR games like Dungeon Crawl Classic, Basic Fantasy, and Swords & Wizardry, there is little reason to play the older editions of D&D. You want a more balanced 3.x? Have you played 13th age? 5e may seem like a simpler breathe of fresh air and a modern take on the older editions, if you haven't played any other mid-crunch or rules light system. Simpler then 3e but functional is not praise exclusive to 5e in the entire industry. So what 5e has to offer compared to other editions is far more than what 5e has to offer to the ttRPG industry as a whole.

Knaight
2018-03-23, 02:40 PM
You know, the way you view the D&D has a lot to do with whether you play anything but D&D and Pathfinder. With OSR games like Dungeon Crawl Classic, Basic Fantasy, and Swords & Wizardry, there is little reason to play the older editions of D&D. You want a more balanced 3.x? Have you played 13th age? 5e may seem like a simpler breathe of fresh air and a modern take on the older editions, if you haven't played any other mid-crunch or rules light system. Simpler then 3e but functional is not praise exclusive to 5e in the entire industry. So what 5e has to offer compared to other editions is far more than what 5e has to offer to the ttRPG industry as a whole.

I'd strongly agree with this, with the caveat that we have very different stances on some D&D editions - although "simpler than 3e but functional" is a very different description than you've been giving, so it might just be variability in propensity to hyperbole.

obryn
2018-03-23, 03:05 PM
You know, the way you view the D&D has a lot to do with whether you play anything but D&D and Pathfinder. With OSR games like Dungeon Crawl Classic, Basic Fantasy, and Swords & Wizardry, there is little reason to play the older editions of D&D. You want a more balanced 3.x? Have you played 13th age? 5e may seem like a simpler breathe of fresh air and a modern take on the older editions, if you haven't played any other mid-crunch or rules light system. Simpler then 3e but functional is not praise exclusive to 5e in the entire industry. So what 5e has to offer compared to other editions is far more than what 5e has to offer to the ttRPG industry as a whole.
A quick anecdote. A ways back, ENWorld had a poll and well over half the respondents said that D&D 5e is a rules-light game. Which is just pants-on-head bonkers if you've played anything other than various editions of D&D.

(I do want to note though that unless I'm missing something Basic Fantasy and S&W are simply retro-clones of the older editions. So is Dark Dungeons, though it has a few cool tweaks like the Target 20 system and 1-36 for demihumans. Heck; we can add OSRIC and Gold & Glory to the list for 1e and 2e. DCC is very much its own thing though, and is fantastic.)

Nifft
2018-03-23, 03:08 PM
Eh... Let's say I sit down with a couple of new players. Let's call them John, Steve, Sarah, and Lana.

John looks at Barbarian, thinks "AWESOME!" and grabs feats like Weapon Focus (Greataxe) and Power Attack. He'll probably do fine.
Steve looks at Monk, thinks "AWESOME!" and grabs feats like Toughness and Diehard, since he wants to be an unkillable unarmed badass. He'll probably suck. Hard.
Sarah looks at Druid, thinks "AWESOME!" and grabs feats like Natural Spell, since she wants to spend as much time in animal form as possible. She'll probably be the most powerful player.
Lana looks at the classes, thinks "I could be anything," and so decides to be a Bard, since that seems like the most support-focused class. She takes feats like... I dunno Bard feats in core, actually, but probably nothing too important. She'll do okay.

Sarah and Steve won't play well together. Sarah is just too much more powerful, and Steve sucks too hard. Both of them simply picked what seemed cool, but the end result is an unfun play experience for at least one of them.

Yes, this is what happens IRL.

It's not willful malice that puts a Conjuration Wizard in the same party as a multi-class Paladin/Monk, it's just that the books presents both as if they were equivalently valid character concepts.

And to be fair, they are both valid -- but probably not in the same campaign.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-03-23, 03:12 PM
Yes, this is what happens IRL.

It's not willful malice that puts a Conjuration Wizard in the same party as a multi-class Paladin/Monk, it's just that the books presents both as if they were equivalently valid character concepts.


And that's what really irritates me. Not the variance in power, but the accidental variance in power. It's the trap options that make total sense but are horrible in power. It's presenting a bunch of archetypes as on equal footing, and then having them be night and day.

Knaight
2018-03-23, 03:17 PM
A quick anecdote. A ways back, ENWorld had a poll and well over half the respondents said that D&D 5e is a rules-light game. Which is just pants-on-head bonkers if you've played anything other than various editions of D&D.

Rules light, 900+ pages, normal sized font. Pick two. Where "normal sized" can scale up quite nicely.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-23, 03:57 PM
You know, the way you view the D&D has a lot to do with whether you play anything but D&D and Pathfinder. With OSR games like Dungeon Crawl Classic, Basic Fantasy, and Swords & Wizardry, there is little reason to play the older editions of D&D. You want a more balanced 3.x? Have you played 13th age? 5e may seem like a simpler breathe of fresh air and a modern take on the older editions, if you haven't played any other mid-crunch or rules light system. Simpler then 3e but functional is not praise exclusive to 5e in the entire industry. So what 5e has to offer compared to other editions is far more than what 5e has to offer to the ttRPG industry as a whole.


I'd strongly agree with this, with the caveat that we have very different stances on some D&D editions - although "simpler than 3e but functional" is a very different description than you've been giving, so it might just be variability in propensity to hyperbole.

Put me on this train. I own many RPGs, and D&D is the only one I don't want to run (mainly because even as somebody who's opinion of D&D is 'below average' I play so much D&D). Sure, a couple of retroclones I'm interested in running, but only because they provide content that appeals to me.

I must admit, I'm annoyed that I got rid of 4e in a clearout but kept 5e (mainly because I was currently in a game of 5e). 4e knew what it wanted to be and absolutely achieved it, which is something I have a lot of respect for.

5e, to me, is a game that's trying to play catchup with the industry and is doing so poorly. It wants to be rules medium, but doesn't know how to present generic mechanics to be adapted to the situation. It wants to include roleplaying mechanics, but only does so in the most basic way possible. It's chasing trends that are already beginning to die down or settle, which will leave it in an odd position when the new trends come along.


A quick anecdote. A ways back, ENWorld had a poll and well over half the respondents said that D&D 5e is a rules-light game. Which is just pants-on-head bonkers if you've played anything other than various editions of D&D.

(I do want to note though that unless I'm missing something Basic Fantasy and S&W are simply retro-clones of the older editions. So is Dark Dungeons, though it has a few cool tweaks like the Target 20 system and 1-36 for demihumans. Heck; we can add OSRIC and Gold & Glory to the list for 1e and 2e. DCC is very much its own thing though, and is fantastic.)

I've specifically tried to restrict myself to D&D and retroclones because the thread began focused on them. I can talk about other games if you want, how about Anima: Beyond Fantasy? Keltia? Savage Worlds? Fate? GURPS?


Rules light, 900+ pages, normal sized font. Pick two. Where "normal sized" can scale up quite nicely.

I just checked, my copy of Fate is almost as thick as my copy of Anima.

Oh well, must not be rules light then. I'll contact the committee and see if we can classify it as rules medium.

Bohandas
2018-03-24, 10:28 AM
Its comforting to know I am not the only person who is still mad about this :smallmad:

I'm mad about it too. It's part of the reason why I won;t buy Hasbro products

Bohandas
2018-03-24, 10:36 AM
As the others have said...

3.5 is very number heavy. Lots of modifiers, lots of math. You get a +5 from this, but a -2 from that, and a +3 for wearing a very shiny hat. Kinda feels like the game mechanics were meant to be played in a video game, where the computer would keep track of all the math for you. But here in the real world, you need your character sheet, your dice, your scientific calculator, your protractor... =)

On the flip-side of that it definitely does make a hell of a good videogame. Atari's 3e Temple of Elemental Evil game was in my opinion the best D&D videogame ever made, by a wide margin. Better than the Baldur's Gate series and Planescape Torment and even the Gold Box games like Dark Queen of Krynn

Knaight
2018-03-24, 02:41 PM
Put me on this train. I own many RPGs, and D&D is the only one I don't want to run (mainly because even as somebody who's opinion of D&D is 'below average' I play so much D&D). Sure, a couple of retroclones I'm interested in running, but only because they provide content that appeals to me.
This makes three of us (although it's worth noting that the average is visibility weighted, and if you include every crappy D&D knockoff made by Joe Random after they decided that D&D wasn't perfect and they'll just make their own game D&D starts looking really good).

That said, it's functional, and within a very specific niche (resource focused dungeon crawling for most editions, a series of set piece encounters for 4e) it's decently designed, if not particularly focused. I'd still use Torchbearer first even for that very specific niche, and that very specific niche is something that I very, very rarely have any interest in playing, but credit where it's due D&D is good at that.


I just checked, my copy of Fate is almost as thick as my copy of Anima.

Oh well, must not be rules light then. I'll contact the committee and see if we can classify it as rules medium.

Fate's lightness is often overstated - FAE is pretty light, but Fate Core has a fair few mechanics to it. Similarly it's often presented as a super narrative game, while having a pretty conventional skill system with one somewhat narrative mechanic bolted on.

I suspect both of these comes from it being a common introduction to the non-D&D parts of the industry.

Cluedrew
2018-03-24, 03:08 PM
The Pros of Every D&D Edition: The "base line" role-playing game for their respective periods. Which means it will be one of the easier systems to find fellow players, advice or custom content for. Pretty easy to get into conceptually (straightforward setting and design paradigm), that sticks close to its war game roots, if you are already a gamer that will be a plus.

The Cons of Every D&D Edition: Rules-heavy and they have never been able to get quite right. Also they seem to be much more interested in the rules (and beating up random monsters/stealing treasure) than telling stories with those rules. Although not tied to a setting the rules imply some very important (and sometimes strange) things about the setting anyways.

Its not bad, it is even good a some things, but it probably should have stopped being the standard for role-playing games a long time ago.

Sgt_Dubie
2018-03-24, 03:18 PM
Well, here’s my take...

AD&D 2e:
My favourite and I miss it. Mechanics might have been a little clunky, and some people had trouble with THAC0 for some reason... Perhaps it’s just old memories of the good old days, but to me this is D&D. It seemed like for ages whenever the group would get together, pitch in and buy something it was to expand the game. New campaign settings. Optional rules to try.... sure, there were charts to , roll on, rules to argue over until rocks fall and everybody dies... that was part of the fun. I miss critical hit tables and the likes...

Then came 3.0. I had run out and bought the core books. Read them once... they’re still on my bookshelf in near mint condition. Never got a chance to actually use them before 3.5 came out.

3.5... still feels like D&D in flavour, though somehow not quite. Perhaps I just don’t like change. I like how the multiclassing works compared to 2e. I kind of like how skills and feats work. I hate prestige classes. They went way to overboard with it. I also hate how I barely got my collection started and they decided it was time for a new edition...

4e&5e...

Haven’t even read the rules. I’m not buying any more crap that’ll be obsolete before I kill my first goblin and steal his stuff...

Another system I miss (though not at all D&D related) is white wolf’s world of darkness. Sure, you needed a lot of d10s, but, at least to me, felt like the most versatile system and simple to use. Whatever you wanted to do,could be represented by the dice if needed (and on the fly, not many charts to pour through). I suppose it just feels more roleplay oriented to me.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-24, 04:43 PM
On the flip-side of that it definitely does make a hell of a good videogame. Atari's 3e Temple of Elemental Evil game was in my opinion the best D&D videogame ever made, by a wide margin. Better than the Baldur's Gate series and Planescape Torment and even the Gold Box games like Dark Queen of Krynn

I've decided to try playing NWN2. While the attempt to make D&D combat real time is extremely annoying (and I can't even find an option to pause at the beginning of every round) it's still fun and shows that 3.X really does shine when you don't have to calculate the constantly changing buffs.

On the other hand, I'm probably enjoying the toolset far more than the game. The combats so far (still only on Act 1) feel a little generic, a lot of melee enemies with a couple of archers and the occasional mage. I suspect the game will be a lot more fun if they start throwing in more enemies that Fighters, Rogues, and Wizards, fighting a group with a Cleric or Bard would be a lot more interesting and challenging while Barbarians who punish you for not taking them out before they rage or Druids who focus on crowd control would make fights more challenging and fun. One of the things I'm trying to do with the module I'm creating is to have each combat I place be interesting in it's own right.


This makes three of us (although it's worth noting that the average is visibility weighted, and if you include every crappy D&D knockoff made by Joe Random after they decided that D&D wasn't perfect and they'll just make their own game D&D starts looking really good).

That said, it's functional, and within a very specific niche (resource focused dungeon crawling for most editions, a series of set piece encounters for 4e) it's decently designed, if not particularly focused. I'd still use Torchbearer first even for that very specific niche, and that very specific niche is something that I very, very rarely have any interest in playing, but credit where it's due D&D is good at that.

Yeah, it's pretty much the reason I get annoyed when people ask 'how can I do X in D&D'.

I mean, I get the desire not to spend money on another system when you already know D&D, but the times I've seen 'I want to run science fiction with D&D' are annoying, especially when people ask to do it as written.


Fate's lightness is often overstated - FAE is pretty light, but Fate Core has a fair few mechanics to it. Similarly it's often presented as a super narrative game, while having a pretty conventional skill system with one somewhat narrative mechanic bolted on.

I suspect both of these comes from it being a common introduction to the non-D&D parts of the industry.

Oh, I'm agreeing here, I consider Fate rules medium but I know that a lot of that is because it's in about the middle point of crunchiness for systems I'm used to.

I honestly occasionally get the idea that Fate wants to be more narrative but can't manage it. Also, I need to dig out my copy of FAE, might have a chance to run a game soon and it's one of the ones I'm considering.

Bohandas
2018-03-24, 07:57 PM
I've decided to try playing NWN2. While the attempt to make D&D combat real time is extremely annoying (and I can't even find an option to pause at the beginning of every round) it's still fun and shows that 3.X really does shine when you don't have to calculate the constantly changing buffs.

I won't play realtime D&D videogames, not after the Baldur's Gate series was borderline unplayable

Kane0
2018-03-24, 11:12 PM
NWN 1, and spam that spcebar.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-25, 08:55 AM
I won't play realtime D&D videogames, not after the Baldur's Gate series was borderline unplayable

Baldur's Gate wasn't that bad, but yeah playing real time only gets more and more annoying as the games go on. Temple of Elemental Evil got it just right, and I'm annoyed there weren't more D&D games built off of that engine.


NWN 1, and spam that spcebar.

The problem I have with NWN 1 is the limited amount of control you get over your companions. I mean you can play NWN2 like that but the ability to manually cast companion's spells is a lifesaver.

I'm going to see if I can find an autopause mod for NWN 2. The KotOR games had it right, allowing you to set up an autopause for when combat started and at the end of every round, meaning I didn't have to spam the spacebar to effectively issue commands. I believe it was also in the Infinity Engine games, although it's been a while since I've been able to play one without it crashing on autosave (which you can't turn off in PS:T). But I have so much trouble in NWN 2 because but the time I notice something has happened or more enemies have appeared five rounds have already passed.

2D8HP
2018-03-25, 09:55 AM
A quick anecdote. A ways back, ENWorld had a poll and well over half the respondents said that D&D 5e is a rules-light game. Which is just pants-on-head bonkers if you've played anything other than various editions of D&D.....


I like playing "5e" and depending on your definition of "edition" I've played multiple other versions of D&D:

1977 "Bluebook" Basic.

1974 to 1977 oD&D + supplements

1977 to 1979 AD&D ("1e")

and

1981 B/X

plus many more games, and based on my experience calling 5e "rules light" is absurd, there's not much besides GURPS if you're including a huge stack of "Workbooks" that's heavier.

Let's see (some rules I"ve enjoyed or have been impressed by):

1977 D&D "blue book" (my entry into RPG's, and the first rules I use as a DM/GM, which I did before becoming a "player"): - 48 pages

1974 D&D "LBB's", with '75-'76 Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldrich Wizardry, and God's, Demi-Gods & Heroes (first RPG I was a player for, but we used some other books as well, and we didn't use all the rules)
- 350 pages (about)

1994 Classic D&D - 128 pages

2005 Pendragon (the latest edition of the game I have)- 228 pages

5e D&D PHB (the game I've played the most lately) - 316 pages

FATE Accelerated (the game that fits in my backpack best) - 48 pages

As someone who was a bit of a "Rip van Wrinkle"/"Captain America" when I recently got back into gaming I was constantly puzzled to see 5e D&D described as "rules light", etc., and even more so when folks would say "compared to old D&D", as I thought of "old D&D" as the 0e D&D and 1e AD&D, that I played in the very late 1970's and early 80's:

That people in this Forum use a game I never played as a benchmark had to be explained to me:


OK, I admit my eyes glazed over in reading arguments of I'm not sure what in this thread, and I skipped a lot of posts, so maybe someone has addressed this but "rules light compared with previous editions"??!!!??
The 1977 "blue book" rules from the Basic Set was 48 pages, the small-print 1978 PHB was 128 pages, as was the large-print 1994 The Classic Dungeons and Dragons Rules and Adventures Book. The 5e PHB is over 316 freakin' pages.

5e Light?

What monstrosity of an edition is heavy than?


Hahahahahahahaha. You really never looked at 3.5, did you?


To be fair, I should have qualified my post by saying 5e is rules-light compared to some previous editions. My preference would be for the core rules book to be less than 100 pages, and make judicious use of specific, defined, consistent terminology.


I know it's because I'm (relatively) old, and others aren't, but this just grinds my gears!


:annoyed:

I'm so sick of people using 3.5 + splat as a benchmark, it ignores most of the history of RPG's, and I'm really sick, appalled, and disgusted by people only comparing 21st century games and ignoring the games of the 20th century, though I can see why one would want to ignore the 1990's

*shudder*

Bah!

I'd like to try 3.5 or Pathfinder since so many folks find those games fun, but if in comparison 5e is "light", they must be ridiculously heavy!

Cluedrew
2018-03-25, 10:30 AM
On Rules Density: Although I think everyone probably knows this I don't think anyone has addressed it. Which is to say the page count is only proportional to the rules-weight of a game. Besides other physical factors like page & text size, there are pictures, lore, examples and other pieces that contribute to page count but not the rules-weight.

I bring this up because FATE is also a much less dense book than most of the D&D books I have seen. It has little in the way of lore, but it is full of examples and tips on how to extend the game (which they eventually expanded into another book). Compared to that D&D rule-books spend most of their time listing options, using tables all over the place to compress things down even more.


I'd like to try 3.5 or Pathfinder since so many folks find those games fun, but if in comparison 5e is "light", they must be ridiculously heavy!They are approaching the weight where they collapse in on themselves and form gaming black holes. In fact, I think they did and that is part of the reason they are still played today. You can't get out of that black hole once you are caught in it.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-25, 11:18 AM
I know it's because I'm (relatively) old, and others aren't, but this just grinds my gears!


:annoyed:

I'm so sick of people using 3.5 + splat as a benchmark, it ignores most of the history of RPG's, and I'm really sick, appalled, and disgusted by people only comparing 21st century games and ignoring the games of the 20th century, though I can see why one would want to ignore the 1990's

*shudder*

Bah!

I'd like to try 3.5 or Pathfinder since so many folks find those games fun, but if in comparison 5e is "light", they must be ridiculously heavy!

I wasn't gaming until the 21st Century (although I don't have any memories from before about 1997, possibly 1998, it's fuzzy), but I agree with you. In terms of D&D I've played old Red Box BECMI, 3.5, 5e, and 2e (in that order), and 5e really isn't lighter than 2e. It has much better presentation and layout, which makes the rules clearer, but if we can get past how counter intuitive some of the mechanics are core 2e actually isn't that complex. (Once you get past that...)

It's like people tend to assume that most groups assume that all material is available, but that seems to be a primarily D&D thing to me. Once you've played in enough universal systems you come to understand that not all books will be suitable for every game, and fantasy games just don't need the Space and High Tech books. Plus so many groups will just run with core because it's cheaper and nobody's that interested in anything else.


On Rules Density: Although I think everyone probably knows this I don't think anyone has addressed it. Which is to say the page count is only proportional to the rules-weight of a game. Besides other physical factors like page & text size, there are pictures, lore, examples and other pieces that contribute to page count but not the rules-weight.

I bring this up because FATE is also a much less dense book than most of the D&D books I have seen. It has little in the way of lore, but it is full of examples and tips on how to extend the game (which they eventually expanded into another book). Compared to that D&D rule-books spend most of their time listing options, using tables all over the place to compress things down even more.

They are approaching the weight where they collapse in on themselves and form gaming black holes. In fact, I think they did and that is part of the reason they are still played today. You can't get out of that black hole once you are caught in it.

I own books heavier than D&D books. The GURPS 4e basic set is a sight to behold, dense rules and all the examples are generally incredibly short, but the rules are much more clear. The sourcebooks are much less dense, partially due to 4e finally putting almost every rule you'll need in the Basic Set, but still come about as dense as a D&D book.

You could probably strip Fate Core down to 100 pages, give or take maybe twenty depending on how you do it, by cutting out everything that isn't rules text. Call it 150 if you don't want it to be incredibly dry. But I tend to hold the Fate Core book as the supreme example of how to make a rulebook with examples ranging from rather simplistic to in-depth depending on what's required, brief discussion on how to alter the game to your preferences, a guide to making your own special abilities in case what you want isn't in the game, and so on.

Rhedyn
2018-03-25, 11:32 AM
I prefer dense rules over massive fluffy tomes.

Like I wish Fate Core would just say what their mechanics are and not make me wade through mounds of pointless blather to find mechanics.

Florian
2018-03-25, 12:21 PM
I'd like to try 3.5 or Pathfinder since so many folks find those games fun, but if in comparison 5e is "light", they must be ridiculously heavy!

Jein (compound word of yes and no).

The problem here is more with (experienced) gamers than with the system itself. I often play PF with total newbies to the hobby and it more or less play like a straight AD&D 3rd with less need for rulings.
What makes the system seem so "heavy" is that experienced players have already plumbed the depth of the system and went looking for and pushing at boundaries and "cracks in the well" to exploit.

Quertus
2018-03-25, 01:13 PM
I lost a larger post when my phone rebooted, but, for now, let me just say this:

2e D&D

Pro: most fun I've ever had with an RPG. :smallbiggrin:

Con: really hard to find a table these days. :smallfrown:

Anybody got a time machine I can borrow? I'll return it to you yesterday. :smalltongue:

Bohandas
2018-03-25, 02:46 PM
Another system I miss (though not at all D&D related) is white wolf’s world of darkness. Sure, you needed a lot of d10s

No you don't; you just need a random number generator

Sgt_Dubie
2018-03-25, 06:11 PM
No you don't; you just need a random number generator

I suppose... but what is the point of playing a table top game if your not erasing and rewriting character sheets with your worn down #2 pencil and rolling those dice at that critical moment when the fate of the known multiverse comes down to how many pips are showing when those bones stop bouncing...

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-25, 06:40 PM
I suppose... but what is the point of playing a table top game if your not erasing and rewriting character sheets with your worn down #2 pencil and rolling those dice at that critical moment when the fate of the known multiverse comes down to how many pips are showing when those bones stop bouncing...

What's a #2 pencil? Everybody knows that the only way to play is to print sheets out on A4* paper (why do companies always design them to have that extra white space at the top and bottom, it's a waste) and fill them in with a HB pencil. Or if you're one of those weirdos like me with a mechanical pencil using HB leads.

Honestly, I agree on rolling dice feeling much nicer, but sometimes it's just not practical (such as gaming over the internet).

* It's the international standard, I'm getting really annoyed at this being ignored and having to make my own versions of sheets.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-03-25, 08:36 PM
* It's the international standard, I'm getting really annoyed at this being ignored and having to make my own versions of sheets.

Everyone knows that since TTRPGs were invented in the USA, the only appropriate size of page is US Letter and #2 is the only acceptable reference to that hardness of pencil lead (which is really graphite, but...). America doesn't do your *International* <sneer> standards.

Yes, I'm well and thoroughly joking there. Use whatever paper you want. Just don't stick A4 in my US Letter printer (or vice versa)--it never works very well if you do that.

Nifft
2018-03-25, 10:20 PM
Everyone knows that since TTRPGs were invented in the USA, the only appropriate size of page is US Letter and #2 is the only acceptable reference to that hardness of pencil lead (which is really graphite, but...). America doesn't do your *International* <sneer> standards.

Yes, I'm well and thoroughly joking there. Use whatever paper you want. Just don't stick A4 in my US Letter printer (or vice versa)--it never works very well if you do that.

The United States of America are 11 separate nations, and 50 separate states... so by some measures, any American standard is already international.

But yeah, it'd be nice if PDF books could re-flow to fit different paper sizes.

Dimers
2018-03-25, 10:47 PM
Anybody got a time machine I can borrow? I'll return it to you yesterday. :smalltongue:

You didn't bring it back, you jerk! Now how am I supposed to lend it to you?!

Bohandas
2018-03-25, 10:47 PM
I don't get the "nations" part

2D8HP
2018-03-25, 10:58 PM
I don't get the "nations" part



It's from the book:

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which-of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/?utm_term=.0d927df76c04) by Colin Woodard

which reminded me of:

The Nine Nations of North America (http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/07/03/where-do-borders-need-to-be-redrawn/nine-nations-of-north-america-30-years-later),

but what is cited by other books and periodicals more often:
Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion's_Seed) by David Hackett Fischer
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f5/David_Hackett_Fischer_-_Albion%27s_Seed_Four_British_Folkways_in_America. jpeg/220px-David_Hackett_Fischer_-_Albion%27s_Seed_Four_British_Folkways_in_America. jpeg

Which details how four different folkways in the United States got their starts from four different migrations:

East Anglia to Massachusetts:
The Exodus of the English Puritans (Pilgrims influenced the Northeastern United States' corporate and educational culture).

The South of England to Virginia:
Distressed Cavaliers and indentured Servants (Gentry influenced the Southern United States' plantation culture).

North Midlands to the Delaware Valley::
The Friends' Migration (Quakers influenced the Middle Atlantic and Midwestern United States' industrial culture).

Borderlands to the Backcountry:
The Flight from North Britain (Scotch-Irish, or border English, influenced the Western United States' ranch culture and the Southern United States' common agrarian culture).

Recommended
:smile:

RedMage125
2018-03-28, 07:23 AM
I started in 2e and moved away from actual D&D shortly thereafter BECAUSE of the system. 3e brought me back to the brand, and I've stuck with it since.

Pros and Cons of other editions IMO:

2e:
Pros - A great deal of extra rules that can lead to some very in-depth simulationism.
Cons - Those rules are frequently so byzantine that they are a hindrance to actual FUN.

3e:
Pros - Unified system of mechanics across how PCs/NPCs/monsters are created means everything makes sense; all abilities progress along the same lines; TONS of options for PCs
Cons - TONS of options for PCs means a glut of rules to go through, which can be rough on DMs; some options are WILDLY unbalanced

4e:
Pros - Total Balance between classes across all levels of play; a dream to DM (so easy, seriously); introduction of minions/solos/elites/action points makes for very cinematic combat
Cons - There's no such thing as a short combat; the universal mechanics between classes sometimes makes wildly different classes (fighter, cleric, wizard) feel very similar.*

PF:
Pros - Basically everything that was great about 3e, with some good ideas from 4e pulled in; Better balanced in Core than 3e; is FREE (if you have an internet connection)
Cons - Still a ton of rules to slog through; 3e veterans frequently get confused between rules that changed; Some options make me wonder if the devs aren't out of their minds

5e:
Pros - Combines a lot of what was great about 3e with the design goals from 4e with 2e's more liberal approach to rules; very fun to play, while still being easier to DM than 3e
Cons - As a DM, balancing magic item distribution is difficult, unless you are going with a "[almost] no magic items" option; Still has a few bugs

*Note that I do not recognize the common complaint about 4e, that it "felt more like a wargame or video game". I've never had that problem, nor have any of my players when I DMed. Making it continue to FEEL like D&D requires only a DM who understands that the "understated" mechanics for out of combat things was intended to encourage free-form roleplay, and players who have an open mind about what they expect going in.

Bohandas
2018-03-28, 11:40 AM
It's from the book:

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which-of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/?utm_term=.0d927df76c04) by Colin Woodard

which reminded me of:

The Nine Nations of North America (http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/07/03/where-do-borders-need-to-be-redrawn/nine-nations-of-north-america-30-years-later),

but what is cited by other books and periodicals more often:
Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion's_Seed) by David Hackett Fischer
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f5/David_Hackett_Fischer_-_Albion%27s_Seed_Four_British_Folkways_in_America. jpeg/220px-David_Hackett_Fischer_-_Albion%27s_Seed_Four_British_Folkways_in_America. jpeg

Which details how four different folkways in the United States got their starts from four different migrations:

East Anglia to Massachusetts:
The Exodus of the English Puritans (Pilgrims influenced the Northeastern United States' corporate and educational culture).

The South of England to Virginia:
Distressed Cavaliers and indentured Servants (Gentry influenced the Southern United States' plantation culture).

North Midlands to the Delaware Valley::
The Friends' Migration (Quakers influenced the Middle Atlantic and Midwestern United States' industrial culture).

Borderlands to the Backcountry:
The Flight from North Britain (Scotch-Irish, or border English, influenced the Western United States' ranch culture and the Southern United States' common agrarian culture).

Recommended
:smile:

That's even more metaphorical than the way "states" is used (as at least America's states are still government entities); to the point of a total disconnect. Why not just say "cultures"

Bohandas
2018-03-28, 11:43 AM
NWN 1, and spam that spcebar.

Being able to pause doesn't make a game turn-based

Nifft
2018-03-28, 11:49 AM
That's even more metaphorical than the way "states" is used (as at least America's states are still government entities); to the point of a total disconnect. Why not just say "cultures"

Presumably because the words mean different things.

For example: this forum has a culture, yet this forum is not a nation.

The words "culture" and "nation" are related, but their meanings are not identical.

2D8HP
2018-03-28, 11:51 AM
That's even more metaphorical than the way "states" is used (as at least America's states are still government entities); to the point of a total disconnect. Why not just say "cultures"


They probably didn't think they'd sell as many books.

But the book the other books cite as a reference used the word "folkways".

Bohandas
2018-03-28, 12:16 PM
Presumably because the words mean different things.

For example: this forum has a culture, yet this forum is not a nation.


True, because it doesn't have borders or it's own military or sovereignty over an area of land

Nifft
2018-03-28, 12:21 PM
True, because it doesn't have borders or it's own military

It's not a state, yup.

But back to my point, it's also not a nation.

Corsair14
2018-03-28, 12:37 PM
2nd- campaign worlds are diverse and impressive. Multiclassing is perfect with no suddenly gaining new abilities(that other characters had to study/practice years before hitting level 1) in the middle of a dungeon. Combat isn't bad and its a pretty easy game to DM. Weapons made sense with bigger weapons having a slower speed which was reflected in modifiers to initiative. I would modify this to weapon speeds taking effect after the 1st round. A spear is slow but you are going to probably get a shot off first, then you get to the spear disadvantage. The kit system was brilliant without being over powered and added uniqueness to characters. Proficiency system was perfect. Characters should not be able to do everything. My preferred system. Rules might as well be free since its all out there for download somewhere.

3rd- great character options, feat system was pretty cool. I liked that you had to work up to the advanced archetypes. Proficiency system was pretty good and made intelligence not be a dump stat.
cons- suffered from spontaneous multi-classing and proliferation of source books.

4th- WotCs attempt to gain WoW players. Failed miserably and brought Pathfinder to the forefront. Did not enjoy playing the few games I did play of this edition.

5th- Limited character options compared to prior editions. Proficiency system is dismally bad with every character able to do pretty much anything. Horrible multi-classing system. It is fairly simple to DM over 3rd/PF and 2nd edition material ports over pretty well. Major lack of campaign worlds.

All in all 4th was horrible. I would put 3rd and 5th as a tie with 3rd better for players and 5th better for DMs. 2nd continues to reign supreme on all my important points.

Lord_Drayakir
2018-03-28, 03:56 PM
Sorry, somebody asked me why I was harsh on the Pathfinder devs? Sorry, I forgot to monitor. Now granted, this is only one dev, but Pathfinder in general suffers from the fact that they are trying to simultaneously be realistic and High Fantasy. I got a bunch more screenshots of SKR being a blithering idiot.

https://i.imgur.com/k0D0KpB.jpg

Dimers
2018-03-28, 10:26 PM
Rules might as well be free since its all out there for download somewhere.

The rules are, in fact, freely and legally accessible here (http://www.purpleworm.org/rules/), for the core game and quite a bit more. None of the artwork, tho.

Desiani
2018-03-30, 10:02 AM
Sorry, somebody asked me why I was harsh on the Pathfinder devs? Sorry, I forgot to monitor. Now granted, this is only one dev, but Pathfinder in general suffers from the fact that they are trying to simultaneously be realistic and High Fantasy. I got a bunch more screenshots of SKR being a blithering idiot.

https://i.imgur.com/k0D0KpB.jpg


Can you elaborate more? A few people have said Paizo is a bonkers company and I'm struggling to figure out reason for those assertions.

Also your link is a bit hard to read

Lord_Drayakir
2018-03-30, 10:46 AM
To clarify then - the reason they are moronic is because they are trying to simultaneously try to keep things "realistic," but at the same time have a very high-magic kind of game. Therefore, there is a massive power disparity. Now, this can be easily addressed, and has in fact been fixed by competent DMs. However, when these more competent people complain to the idiot Paizo devs, the Paizo devs ignore them, or start repeating ad-nauseam that "it's not realistic for a fighter to do this superhuman stuff" but at the same time, claim that magic is fine as it is (when it clearly isn't).

There's some other stuff, like the wonderfully broken summoner, the even more broken synergist summoner, the CMB/CMD curve, crafting rules, and a bunch of other stuff that I could go into more detail.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-30, 12:16 PM
I prefer dense rules over massive fluffy tomes.

Like I wish Fate Core would just say what their mechanics are and not make me wade through mounds of pointless blather to find mechanics.

Coming back here, obviously YMMV. While I find GURPS works very well, I consider a lot of rules-heavy books to be very dry. Good dense books have great crunch and great fluff, ideally worked together. But at the end of the day I'll take a lighter tome, it's a personal choice.


Everyone knows that since TTRPGs were invented in the USA, the only appropriate size of page is US Letter and #2 is the only acceptable reference to that hardness of pencil lead (which is really graphite, but...). America doesn't do your *International* <sneer> standards.

Yes, I'm well and thoroughly joking there. Use whatever paper you want. Just don't stick A4 in my US Letter printer (or vice versa)--it never works very well if you do that.

It's a mixture of the wasted space annoying me (I could generally get at another 2-3 lines in a skill table, which is highly important in some systems), and the fact that most of the world uses A4, but because America uses a different size even some non American RPGs will forgot the A4 sheet. It's even worse with translations of European games, where the original sheet was probably in the paper size I use, but because it was translated by an American company the sheet I can understand is US Letter.


Sorry, somebody asked me why I was harsh on the Pathfinder devs? Sorry, I forgot to monitor. Now granted, this is only one dev, but Pathfinder in general suffers from the fact that they are trying to simultaneously be realistic and High Fantasy. I got a bunch more screenshots of SKR being a blithering idiot.

https://i.imgur.com/k0D0KpB.jpg

:smallfurious:

He's actively arguing that 'because magic' is a good reason to leave mundane/martial characters in the dust? I might understand that if martials had a reasonable way to limit magic users, but Pathfinder puts all anti-magic in the hands of spellcasters.

Heck, his suggestion that any abilities that are beyond the theoretical limits of human ability are labeled magical or supernatural sounds cool. Give Gunslingers Instant Reload (Ex) or Instant Reload (Su) at say level 10, allowing them to reload a firearm without using any actions (not 'as a free action', without using any action at all). So your gunslinger reloads pistols unnaturally fast, but it stops within an antimagic field.

He decides to remove cool options from some classes instead of giving cool options to similar classes. Imagine if Fighters got the ability to roll an additional damage die and drop the lowest on every hit? Nice boost to keep them in line with firearms damage. While spellcasters get to do all the cool things 'because magic' my gunslinger getting to reload his flintlock pistol or musket faster than the eye can see is bad because the fighter can't.

He stinks of somebody who can't take criticism, who believes 'because magic' and 'because nonmagic' solves all issues of doing cool stuff (not even balance, just being able to do cool things). He also ignores the points people make and insists on using other boundaries just to prove that they points are untrue. He in fact ignores the actual point to insist that the game doesn't have a specific line in it.

Because you can bet that a wizard with a 'rapid reload' spell that allows them to reload firearms for free would be considered okay.

Heck, I'd love a game that is what high level D&D should be. Exalted is the closest I've found, but it's not it. A game of superpowered warriors and superpowered wizards adventuring in a world they're both too big and too small for.

I mean, you very much be both realistic and high fantasy, but not if you're as high magic as D&D is.

At least in the Fantasy AGE fandom the arguments are generally about combat length. The game begins relatively human scale with slightly inflated Health, and the biggest problem is over Health scaling, and the writers never try to pretend that it's meant to be realistic (they try to pretend it's not similar to D&D, but that's nothing compared to the fandom).

Delta
2018-03-30, 12:54 PM
Sorry, somebody asked me why I was harsh on the Pathfinder devs? Sorry, I forgot to monitor. Now granted, this is only one dev, but Pathfinder in general suffers from the fact that they are trying to simultaneously be realistic and High Fantasy. I got a bunch more screenshots of SKR being a blithering idiot.

https://i.imgur.com/k0D0KpB.jpg

Wow, there's some truly terrible stuff there. Honestly, if someone ever wants a game to "accurately model what a human being is capable of" and ends up using Pathfinder for that, I feel like this someone has taken at least one or two wrong turns through the RPG system library on the way.

Personally, I can't add too much to the discussion, the only stuff I've ever played is a bit of 3.5 and 4, rather low level both. I'm not a particular fan of 3.5 and everything that came from it, I liked 4e to be honest for what it was trying to do, but I can see why it failed.

Rhedyn
2018-03-30, 01:01 PM
I liked 4e to be honest for what it was trying to do, but I can see why it failed.

It only failed if you don't want to play it anymore. Seems like a pretty complete game to me.

ttRPGs in general don't make much money so I don't value RPGs by their financial success. My favorite RPG, Savage Worlds, has many setting books written by 3rd party groups that make those books in their spare time away from their full time jobs.

Delta
2018-03-30, 01:14 PM
It only failed if you don't want to play it anymore. Seems like a pretty complete game to me.

ttRPGs in general don't make much money so I don't value RPGs by their financial success. My favorite RPG, Savage Worlds, has many setting books written by 3rd party groups that make those books in their spare time away from their full time jobs.

I meant failed in the economical sense. Compared to what 3.5 and now Pathfinder bring in and the success of 5e as far as I can tell, 4e was a failure.

I actually still run it every once in a while, it's a fun game to have a few characters run through some encounters, smash monsters and grab lots of loot on the way. I'll never use it for epic campaigns of world domination and empire conquering or for games of political intrigue and personal drama, but I feel that what it does, it does well (and better than 3.5/PF, in my opinion)

Nifft
2018-03-30, 02:35 PM
I meant failed in the economical sense. Compared to what 3.5 and now Pathfinder bring in and the success of 5e as far as I can tell, 4e was a failure.

From what I could see, 4e failed in two very economically relevant ways:

1 - WotC initially advertised 4e in a way that many people found insulting. This resulted in significant ill-will towards 4e before it was even available.

2 - WotC sold 4e books and rented 4e software. The software was very cheap compared to the books, and the software provided access to all content in the books. Therefore, people stopped buying the books. WotC had been counting on book sales for their revenue stream.


The game itself wasn't bad. I kinda wish 5e would steal a few more concepts from 4e.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-30, 05:05 PM
1 - WotC initially advertised 4e in a way that many people found insulting. This resulted in significant ill-will towards 4e before it was even available.

2 - WotC sold 4e books and rented 4e software. The software was very cheap compared to the books, and the software provided access to all content in the books. Therefore, people stopped buying the books. WotC had been counting on book sales for their revenue stream.

Yeah, the first one is probably why '4e is like an MMO' is still so prevalent (it's really not, if we're comparing just to WoW then 3.5 plays more like one, especially with Tome of Battle, while 4e is balanced more like one). I honestly never got into the 4e software, but I can see why it might drive down sales and that might explain why D&D Beyond charges so much for it's content (and still isn't the bookmarked pdf quite a few people would pay print price for and even more would pay half print price for). Seriously, there are people who have bought the 5e books three times at full price.

Actually, it also explain's 5e's initial marketing. 'We're going to make it the D&D you want' and all that, although if that was the goal I'm completely disappointed it's not a streamlined version of B/X with a core mechanic (yes, I actually do think races as classes works well). I've since switched to retroclones and am building the D&D I want myself.

I'm also not certain that people liked the 'expanding core' idea. I certainly hated it even though I liked both the Primal and Psionic classes.

'Core' was also defined as all books with 'Player's Handbook', 'Dungeon Master's Guide', or 'Monster Manual' in the title. This is very different to earlier editions where core consisted of 2/3 books (1 for late era BD&D, although it was a poor introduction, 2e's MM situation was weird but I love my Monstrous Manual pdf), and most of it's competitors where 'core' meant one book. 5e has essentially gone back to the three book core without encouraging players to buy the DM books (although that's where they stuck half the stuff players want). 4e's situation meant that the 'basic' material for the game grew immensely with each new year, which caused those of use trying to get into it later to feel left behind.

Then again, I've ranted against multi book cores on this forum before. My reasoning is essentially 'you should have a very good reason' and the only game where I gladly shelled out for the second core book is GURPS 4e which is about 60% lists of options (read: essentially the entire first book), 38% rules, and 2% contents and index. In my mind D&D is not consistently justifying seperating the DMG and Monster Manual, and I'm suspicious of the PhB being separate.

People call a game with three corebooks over 200 pages each rules light? They'd weep at the number of RPGs I own that manage to fit everything within 300 pages. Games which I'll occasionally accuse of being rules-heavy, because while I like 250 pages of rules and character options, nearly 40 pages on the topic of magic means almost nothing if the game doesn't have it's genre down.

I feel like praising a game I think worked here, so please ignore the rest of this post if you want to focus on D&D. Victoriana wants to be a very down to earth steampunk fantasy game, where the problems of Victorian Britain exist in a world with nonhuman races. Or very roughly doing to steampunk what Shadowrun did to cyberpunk, down to having some of the punk. The book provides both a high level setting in ~50 pages, ~100 pages on building your character (yeah, this could have been split into a couple of chapters, but it just about works as one), ~40 pages of basic and situational rules, ~50 pages of magical and engineering character options (along with more fluff), and about 50 pages of GM rules and information.

It fits together to make a package that works as well as 5e D&D and provides as many options, if more focused on the mundane. Want to bankroll the party? Play an upper class character (£20 of equipment, a per adventure income of 6s), pick independent income at the highest level (an extra per adventure income of £4, unlike standard upper class income the GM can't take it away if you embarrass your family), grab a city flat or country villa the party can use as a base, maybe a coach to cart everybody around in, and say a Servant or Stalwart Friends. You've spent almost all your build points on possessions and maybe some people you know, but get £4.6 per adventure to spend as you wish (or save if there's nothing you need it for). Not a bad amount of free adventuring cash to be honest, especially as you likely picked social skills and accounting back when assigning skill points and went Eldren for that +2 Charisma, and although you're unlikely to equip the party with it (who should have bought their important equipment at character creation!) you can probably cover all travel costs and skill have enough left for a new pair of boots and 240 loves of bread (okay, maybe 120). That not your style? Well there are magicians and street rats, but you can also play railway engineers, Bobbies, university professors, thugs, fixers, businessmen, sailors, army officers, cooks, and even wyvern riders.

Because fantasy is supposed to be amazing. Leave the boring classes behind, come to deep point based systems.

Delta
2018-03-30, 07:22 PM
From what I could see, 4e failed in two very economically relevant ways:

1 - WotC initially advertised 4e in a way that many people found insulting. This resulted in significant ill-will towards 4e before it was even available.

2 - WotC sold 4e books and rented 4e software. The software was very cheap compared to the books, and the software provided access to all content in the books. Therefore, people stopped buying the books. WotC had been counting on book sales for their revenue stream.

Yeah, the character builder was really a problem, and I was never a big D&D player, but from what I gathered beforehand and what I had seen from 3.5, I always felt like they tried to sell it as "This is a game for everyone! You can play anything with this system!", and then came 4e which was clearly not a "game for everyone", it was a game with a very clear focus and scope. Now personally, I liked that very much, since again I was never a big D&D player, I always thought the notion to use D&D to run anything but "dungeon delve" style games felt kind of pointless to me, but I can understand that for someone for whom 3.5 had been the standard system to run everything with, 4e must've been a big disappointment.

Bohandas
2018-03-31, 11:42 AM
4e also had that weird half-assed alignment system. If they wanted to drop alignment they should have dropped it and if they wanted to keep it they should have kept it. Instead they randomly dropped a couple of specific alignments but kept the system thereby acheiving the worst of both worlds.

Delta
2018-03-31, 12:04 PM
4e also had that weird half-assed alignment system. If they wanted to drop alignment they should have dropped it and if they wanted to keep it they should have kept it. Instead they randomly dropped a couple of specific alignments but kept the system thereby acheiving the worst of both worlds.

Yeah, I honestly never cared for alignment anyway in any edition so I didn't particularly mind that, I pretty much ignored alignment in 4e for the most part. So yeah, they should've just left that out.

Cosi
2018-03-31, 01:25 PM
The "4e is a video game" meme owes its origins to 4e's decision to eliminate non-combat monster abilities (hence making them video game mobs), and the At-Will/Encounter/Daily paradigm echoing WoW-style cooldowns.


4e also had that weird half-assed alignment system. If they wanted to drop alignment they should have dropped it and if they wanted to keep it they should have kept it. Instead they randomly dropped a couple of specific alignments but kept the system thereby acheiving the worst of both worlds.

Eh. I think it is pretty much true that in practice, people consider Lawful Good to just be More Good and Chaotic Evil to just be More Evil. Obviously the best solution is still to drop alignment (or at least, the words "Good" and "Evil"), but as far as I goes I don't think that is one of the admittedly many things you can and should hold against 4e.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-31, 02:45 PM
The 4e merging of alignments is weird.

The problem isn't the loss of Chaotic Good (which is covered by Good) or Lawful Evil (which is covered by Evil), but rather the loss of Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral. Unaligned is a really bad attempt at covering for them, because it lumps three rather different alignments together, labelling them 'not important'.

Yeah yeah, Alignment in 4e is a bit more like in LotFP where it refers to who's side in the great cosmological conflict you're on, but in that case the fact we have four 'sides' on two 'teams' is a bit weird. It would have made a bit more sense to go with 'good/neutral/evil' or 'law/chaos/evil', but Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil are too iconic and they can brag about getting rid of Chaotic Neutral.


One thing that that annoyed me was the assumption that all PCs are Good and thus Good foes are useless. Leaving aside that the average PC is probably neutral (or neutral leaning good) inter-good conflict is interesting. That is why we had both Chaotic Good and Lawful Good, because it illustrates the disagreement and conflict on how to be good. But no, good is all one big happy family, so Metallic Dragons are now Unaligned. But evil is divided, because we need all the evil foes.

Nifft
2018-03-31, 03:19 PM
The "4e is a video game" meme owes its origins to 4e's decision to eliminate non-combat monster abilities (hence making them video game mobs), and the At-Will/Encounter/Daily paradigm echoing WoW-style cooldowns. That's not accurate.

3.5e had recharge magic (in UA), Binder vestiges had 5-turn cooldowns, Dragon Shaman had a 1d4 turn cooldown -- those much more directly matched WoW-style cooldowns, and those preceded 4e. Nobody really called them videogamey, because they weren't, and neither was 4e.

People used "too videogamey" as a low-content derision signal, not because there was anything genuinely videogamey.

4e would be a terrible video game, because PCs get interrupt abilities. Face-to-face it's easy to non-verbally signal that you're using an interrupt, or to undo an action that was interrupted; making a computer interface that can handle that sort of interaction would be difficult, and hasn't been attempted so far as I can tell.

Later 3.5e also has a lot of interrupt abilities, so it would not be a good fit for a computer game. (ToEE was 3.0e, which lacked interrupts, and worked fine as a regular turn-based game.)



Eh. I think it is pretty much true that in practice, people consider Lawful Good to just be More Good and Chaotic Evil to just be More Evil. Obviously the best solution is still to drop alignment (or at least, the words "Good" and "Evil"), but as far as I goes I don't think that is one of the admittedly many things you can and should hold against 4e. It was true in the Baldur's Gate series: the more Chaotic or Evil you were, the more demonic your Bhaalspawn abilities were.

Lawful Good was the goodest good in that setting.

Quertus
2018-03-31, 03:46 PM
4e would be a terrible video game, because PCs get interrupt abilities. Face-to-face it's easy to non-verbally signal that you're using an interrupt, or to undo an action that was interrupted; making a computer interface that can handle that sort of interaction would be difficult, and hasn't been attempted so far as I can tell.

Counter Spell? Cccccccombo breaker? Heck, a jab in most fighting games. Video games seem rife with interrupts to me.

But I don't know how 4e interrupts work to be sure.

Bohandas
2018-04-01, 01:19 AM
It was true in the Baldur's Gate series: the more Chaotic or Evil you were, the more demonic your Bhaalspawn abilities were.

Lawful Good was the goodest good in that setting.

I think it was more a function of Bhaal having been chaotic evil

Nifft
2018-04-01, 01:55 AM
Counter Spell? Cccccccombo breaker? Heck, a jab in most fighting games. Video games seem rife with interrupts to me.

But I don't know how 4e interrupts work to be sure. Noooooooope. 3e counterspelling is easy compared to interrupt abilities from 3.5e or 4e or 5e. Sorry.


I think it was more a function of Bhaal having been chaotic evil If that were the reason, then a Lawful Good character should have gotten fewer or no powers, instead of getting different powers.

They did get powers. Different powers.

Florian
2018-04-01, 02:00 AM
Noooooooope. 3e counterspelling is easy compared to interrupt abilities from 3.5e or 4e or 5e. Sorry.

It´s turn-based combat, so it would be easy to implement. Anytime you could use an interrupt ability, the game pauses, and "interrupt ?" interface pops up above the relevant combat participant with an X for no, or the buttons for the interrupt ability. I've played a game like this, but I really can´t remember the name.

Nifft
2018-04-01, 02:16 AM
It´s turn-based combat, so it would be easy to implement. Anytime you could use an interrupt ability, the game pauses, and "interrupt ?" interface pops up above the relevant combat participant with an X for no, or the buttons for the interrupt ability. I've played a game like this, but I really can´t remember the name.

No, you see, a Counterspell interrupt is a thing that is fully specified on your turn, and then everyone else is allowed to take their turns without your input needed.

3.5e / 4e / 5e interrupts require that every player (all of them) accept every enemy action before the enemy action can resolve.

That's fine in face-to-face communication, because non-verbal cues are a thing that exist.

It's never been done in a computer game, and that's for good reasons.

Cosi
2018-04-01, 02:20 AM
3.5e had recharge magic (in UA), Binder vestiges had 5-turn cooldowns, Dragon Shaman had a 1d4 turn cooldown -- those much more directly matched WoW-style cooldowns, and those preceded 4e. Nobody really called them videogamey, because they weren't, and neither was 4e.

It also had Vancian Magic, Binding, Psionics, Crusaders, and Shadowcasters (also other things). 4e wasn't WoW because it did have recharge timers. It was WoW because it didn't have other stuff.

Also, you forgot to respond to the other (frankly, more important) thing that made 4e a video game -- the (explicit and intentional) change from monsters that had abilities that interacted with the world to mobs that didn't.

Cluedrew
2018-04-01, 07:26 AM
I don't get why people say 4e is a video game. It is a table top war game, like Warhammar, War Machine/Hordes, Dust: Tactics or umpteen others I can't name off the top of my head. It is a war game with more mutable flavour text.


I think it is pretty much true that in practice, people consider Lawful Good to just be More Good and Chaotic Evil to just be More Evil.I wish they wouldn't do that. It cuts out some of the more interesting points about the whole alignment system. There is good stuff in the alignments system. They might not actually be worth looking for under all the simplistic and contradictory material that has built up around it (and let's be fair, it in no small part grew from).

Goaty14
2018-04-01, 08:08 AM
I don't get why people say 4e is a video game. It is a table top war game, like Warhammar, War Machine/Hordes, Dust: Tactics or umpteen others I can't name off the top of my head. It is a war game with more mutable flavour text.

From what I've heard, 4e was supposed to supplement an application that ran 4e, because it had a lot of mechanics that were probably best done by a computer.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?326233-WotC-s-D-amp-D-Virtual-Table-Cancelled

Nifft
2018-04-01, 09:56 AM
It also had Vancian Magic, Binding, Psionics, Crusaders, and Shadowcasters (also other things). 4e wasn't WoW because it did have recharge timers. It was WoW because it didn't have other stuff. 4e had encounter powers (no timer but the narrative), Daily powers ("timer" identical to Vancian magic), and At-Will untimed powers. I don't play WoW, but none of those are similar to a timed-in-seconds recharge.

4e also had Ritual magic which wasn't on a timer.


In contrast, 3.5e had three-round cooldowns (invisible Monk), two-round cooldowns (tactical feats), five-round cooldowns (Binder powers), random cooldowns (Dragon Shaman), etc.

3.5e was a better fit for the timed-in-seconds description of WoW cooldowns than 4e.

Therefore the reason people call 4e "WoW" cannot be timer cooldowns.


Also, you forgot to respond to the other (frankly, more important) thing that made 4e a video game -- the (explicit and intentional) change from monsters that had abilities that interacted with the world to mobs that didn't. I'm not sure what you mean.

When a 4e dragon breathed fire, that fire "interacted with the world" just as well as the fire from a 3.5e dragon's breath.

The big difference was that there were abilities (PC and monster) which allowed you to shove opponents around tactically, and force them to interact with interesting battlefield elements. Things like Bull Rush existed in 3.5e, but those were often overlooked.


I guess the other thing you're doing is using "mob" (a video-game term) for 4e antagonists instead of "monster"? But that's just begging the question.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-01, 10:03 AM
4e made the decision to move non-combat monster abilities "off sheet", leaving them up to the needs of the fiction rather than tying them to the combat capacity. This is not the same as removing them, it's just a different model of what the game covers.

In one way it's less video game like than the "must have an explicit power button for this" that some people seem to be pushing. But to each their own.

Rhedyn
2018-04-01, 11:27 AM
4e made the decision to move non-combat monster abilities "off sheet", leaving them up to the needs of the fiction rather than tying them to the combat capacity. This is not the same as removing them, it's just a different model of what the game covers.

In one way it's less video game like than the "must have an explicit power button for this" that some people seem to be pushing. But to each their own. Strongly disagree.

As a GM, if the monster isn't statted with the ability or given it by the general rules, it doesn't have it.

One of the reasons I hate 5e is the lack of skills and non-combat stats for monsters.

Things like 3.5's Beholder reproductive practices is something I need in my RPG.

JNAProductions
2018-04-01, 11:35 AM
Strongly disagree.

As a GM, if the monster isn't statted with the ability or given it by the general rules, it doesn't have it.

One of the reasons I hate 5e is the lack of skills and non-combat stats for monsters.

Things like 3.5's Beholder reproductive practices is something I need in my RPG.

Seems like a very limited point of view. The whole POINT of a TTRPG is that not everything needs to be programmed in.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-01, 11:46 AM
Seems like a very limited point of view. The whole POINT of a TTRPG is that not everything needs to be programmed in.

In my experience, requiring "statted in" abilities and patterns strain verisimilitude and produce narrative friction in a way that more free form ones can avoid. It restricts the range of possibilities and makes coherent settings all look the same. It also makes the DM totally reliant on the publishers to make new content.

Rhedyn
2018-04-01, 01:56 PM
Seems like a very limited point of view. The whole POINT of a TTRPG is that not everything needs to be programmed in. The point of TTRPGS is that they are easy to program and processor can fix errors on site rather than needing to wait for a patch.

Flaws are still flaws though. It doesn't matter if the GM can fix it for the developer.

JNAProductions
2018-04-01, 01:59 PM
The point of TTRPGS is that they are easy to program and processor can fix errors on site rather than needing to wait for a patch.

Flaws are still flaws though. It doesn't matter if the GM can fix it for the developer.

Not including content you want is not a flaw-or at least, not a UNIVERSAL flaw. It might make the game bad for you, but it certainly doesn't make a game objectively bad.

Besides which, you could fill half a rulebook on all the abilities that, say, a Pit Fiend WOULD have, and could probably fill an entire one or more with abilities it COULD have.

Quertus
2018-04-01, 02:08 PM
It´s turn-based combat, so it would be easy to implement. Anytime you could use an interrupt ability, the game pauses, and "interrupt ?" interface pops up above the relevant combat participant with an X for no, or the buttons for the interrupt ability. I've played a game like this, but I really can´t remember the name.


No, you see, a Counterspell interrupt is a thing that is fully specified on your turn, and then everyone else is allowed to take their turns without your input needed.

3.5e / 4e / 5e interrupts require that every player (all of them) accept every enemy action before the enemy action can resolve.

That's fine in face-to-face communication, because non-verbal cues are a thing that exist.

It's never been done in a computer game, and that's for good reasons.


Counter Spell?

That's MTG, two blue: counter target spell.

There are multiple MTG video games which implement exactly this interface, allowing a player to counter spells, Giant Growth or Test of Faith in response to a Lightning Bolt, etc.

This is not only conceivably possible, it's a solved problem.

EDIT: rather than pop up a modal dialog box, the most recent one I've played instead gives you a certain amount of time to chime in with, "wait a minute", at which point time stops while you formulate a more thorough response. IIRC, the first one I played used modal dialog boxes, but, like professional chess, gave you a "total time waiting on you" clock / time limit to each player.

EDIT #2: **** referencing other people, I've written interrupt code. That's easy stuff. You want a real coding challenge? Try implementing 2e retcon magic, where their Alternate Reality / Fate of One / whatever could allow you to reroll dice from last round. Now that's a real coding challenge!

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-01, 02:28 PM
Not including content you want is not a flaw-or at least, not a UNIVERSAL flaw. It might make the game bad for you, but it certainly doesn't make a game objectively bad.

Besides which, you could fill half a rulebook on all the abilities that, say, a Pit Fiend WOULD have, and could probably fill an entire one or more with abilities it COULD have.

And requiring that all abilities must be "on sheet" means one of two things--

1) every pit fiend (or any other creature) is identical to every other pit fiend. No such thing as individuals with different ideas, personalities, capabilities, etc. That shatters verisimilitude into infinitesimal fragments for me, as well as reducing replay value.
2) You have to have a published variant for each individual. Reduces things to a leader + clone armies. Also shatters verisimilitude and reduces replay, as well as bloating books.

At least in D&D, published rules are suggestions only (at least for the DM). There is no expectation that you will use all of them or that you will only use the rules and examples published. I don't know where this idea came from, but it's certainly not in the rules. In fact it's explicitly decried by the rules.

Cosi
2018-04-01, 02:48 PM
4e had encounter powers (no timer but the narrative), Daily powers ("timer" identical to Vancian magic), and At-Will untimed powers. I don't play WoW, but none of those are similar to a timed-in-seconds recharge.

No, but they fit the "short, medium, long" cooldowns of WoW. It's not a perfect analogy, but it doesn't have to be. Because it is an analogy.


I'm not sure what you mean.

When a 4e dragon breathed fire, that fire "interacted with the world" just as well as the fire from a 3.5e dragon's breath.

In 3e, Dragons get non-combat abilities. For example, in addition to breathing fire, a Red Dragon might also get locate object, suggestion, and spellcasting. All those things allow it to interact directly with the broader world outside combat. In 4e, it just gets the fire breath that it uses to kill things in combat. This change was a result of one of the 4e devs having the "insight" that monsters only exist in combat and therefore don't need non-combat abilities.


4e made the decision to move non-combat monster abilities "off sheet", leaving them up to the needs of the fiction rather than tying them to the combat capacity. This is not the same as removing them, it's just a different model of what the game covers.

Yes, it is the same as removing them. You can tell, because instead of being there, they are not there. This is a state of affairs that people who speak, read, and understand english words recognize as "them being removed".

Insofar as those abilities still exist, they are homebrewed by DM discretion. If this counts as those abilities existing, then 3e is perfectly balanced because DMs could homebrew new content. You're just applying the Oberoni Fallacy to worldbuilding instead of balance.


In one way it's less video game like than the "must have an explicit power button for this" that some people seem to be pushing. But to each their own.

That's not "like a videogame", that is "like a game at all". The whole point of having abilities to to make it explicit what things you can and can't do. If things just arbitrarily have whatever abilities the DM wants, you are just playing Calvinball (well, the DM is playing Calvinball -- you still need abilities to do things).


1) every pit fiend (or any other creature) is identical to every other pit fiend. No such thing as individuals with different ideas, personalities, capabilities, etc. That shatters verisimilitude into infinitesimal fragments for me, as well as reducing replay value.

Wat?

I refuse to believe you actually think that "ideas" and "personalities" work that way. Having abilities doesn't require you to use them in any particular way. As far as capabilities go, yes all default Pit Fiends have the same default abilities. So do all default Humans and all default Elves. If you want a Pit Fiend with custom abilities, there are avenues to do that (reassigning its feats and skills, giving it items, giving it class levels). But if you take away those abilities, it's impossible to have any idea about what Pit Fiends can do, because every Pit Fiend has "whatever abilities the DM made up this time". You've completely destroyed the ability of players to interact with or understand the world as a coherent thing.


At least in D&D, published rules are suggestions only (at least for the DM). There is no expectation that you will use all of them or that you will only use the rules and examples published. I don't know where this idea came from, but it's certainly not in the rules. In fact it's explicitly decried by the rules.

I think you are misunderstanding. I'm not saying you can't write up custom stats for Pit Fiends. I'm saying that you have to judge a product by the things that are actually in that product. Such as rules for Pit Fiends doing the things the game says it does. Otherwise you've been sold a bill of goods. If you accept this as a valid defense of 4e, you have given up the ability to criticize any RPG ever, because it is always possible for you to simply write better rules.

Quertus
2018-04-01, 03:33 PM
1) every pit fiend (or any other creature) is identical to every other pit fiend. No such thing as individuals with different ideas, personalities, capabilities, etc. That shatters verisimilitude into infinitesimal fragments for me, as well as reducing replay value.

Actually... any lawful outsider showing any individuality is clearly contaminated, and should submit itself for recycling. :smallamused:

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-01, 03:39 PM
Actually... any lawful outsider showing any individuality is clearly contaminated, and should submit itself for recycling. :smallamused:

Heh.

I can see it for modrons, but other than that there *is no default*. Even dogs have significantly different capability between individuals. Humans are even more diverse. And demons, for whom systematic hierarchy and organization is physically painful, can't be locked into small, nearly arranged boxes.

Nifft
2018-04-01, 03:41 PM
No, but they fit the "short, medium, long" cooldowns of WoW. It's not a perfect analogy, but it doesn't have to be. Because it is an analogy. If "short cooldown" in WoW actually means "no cooldown at all because you can use it twice in a row", then you might have a point, but I suspect it doesn't mean that, and you don't actually have a valid analogy.

Let's do some research: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Cooldown

Just skimming that page, I see that WoW has two types of cooldown: a global cooldown timer shared across some stuff ("common" stuff maybe?) and some separate per-effect cooldown timers for special stuff.

Again, from skimming, I see cooldowns like:
- 1 sec
- 1.5 sec
- 6 sec
- 8 sec
- 13 sec
- 15 sec
- 20 sec
- 24 sec
- 25 sec
- 30 sec
- 45 sec
- 1 min
- 1.5 min
- 2 min
- 3 min
- 4 min
- 5 min

It looks like there's no meaningful division into standard Short / Medium / Long types.

4e is not like WoW. The people who say that are casting baseless aspersions, not making a rational comparison.

It's fine to hate 4e. I personally don't play it anymore. But it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that 4e is closer to a video game than 2e or 3.0e, which were actually made into video games.



In 3e, Dragons get non-combat abilities. For example, in addition to breathing fire, a Red Dragon might also get locate object, suggestion, and spellcasting. All those things allow it to interact directly with the broader world outside combat. In 4e, it just gets the fire breath that it uses to kill things in combat. This change was a result of one of the 4e devs having the "insight" that monsters only exist in combat and therefore don't need non-combat abilities.

I dug out a random 4e monster book and skimmed for any sort of environmental effect that wasn't in a combat stat-block.

Found this within 3 pages.



https://i.imgur.com/Zu4sa4u.png



Your specific example -- detect object -- is likewise available to monsters through the Ritual system:


https://i.imgur.com/I8DqNXg.png


... yeah I have no idea why they felt the need to change the name to Detect Object, but whatever.

As you saw above, monsters can use Rituals. Thus, if the monster needs this, it's available in the first PHB.

Cosi
2018-04-01, 03:49 PM
It looks like there's no meaningful division into standard Short / Medium / Long types.

Really? Because I see a very obvious division into "~1 second", "less than a minute", and "several minutes". Again, it is not a one-to-one mapping. But it is absolutely there, and to a much greater degree than e.g. Truenamers with their "use it a couple times for free, then it starts getting harder" setup.


Your specific example -- detect object -- is likewise available to monsters through the Ritual system:

At a fixed gold cost, which is really dramatically different from a SLA. Also, you skipped suggestion and Sorcerer Spellcasting. Do I need to go over the entire Sorcerer Spell List to convince you that a game that intentionally cut down on the list of non-combat things people can do has less non-combat things people can do?

JNAProductions
2018-04-01, 04:07 PM
And the Binder, DFA, Dragon Shaman, etc. cooldowns are... What, exactly?

In addition, Phoenix was not saying you're going to PLAY every single Pit Fiend as an identical clone, but that their ABILITIES are all identical. Either you fill an entire book with every possible Pit Fiend variant, or the DM has leeway.

Nifft
2018-04-01, 04:21 PM
Really? Because I see a very obvious division into "~1 second", "less than a minute", and "several minutes". Again, it is not a one-to-one mapping. But it is absolutely there, and to a much greater degree than e.g. Truenamers with their "use it a couple times for free, then it starts getting harder" setup.

Look at 3.5e, where you have effects like "turn invisible for 6 seconds, with an 18 second cooldown". That reads like it could be a description of a WoW ability.

4e abilities were either unlimited (no cooldown at all), or specified in terms of encounters which are a narrative demarcation (not a timed cooldown), or specified in terms of uses per day. If you spend an action point in 4e, you can use one at-will power twice in a row, with no cooldown. If you get a bonus action from an ally's power, you can use that same at-will power thrice in a row. WoW 1-second cooldowns are not at all similar.

Your "analogy" is a terrible fit.

People called 4e "video gamey" because they didn't like 4e, not because it was actually "video gamey". There is no rational justification behind that particular edition war insult.


At a fixed gold cost, which is really dramatically different from a SLA. Also, you skipped suggestion and Sorcerer Spellcasting. Do I need to go over the entire Sorcerer Spell List to convince you that a game that intentionally cut down on the list of non-combat things people can do has less non-combat things people can do?

Oh no, where could this creature ever find several gold pieces?


https://i.imgur.com/ctCJy5B.jpg

But seriously, you asserted that 4e monsters had no non-combat "world interaction" abilities, and I've shown you evidence that they do in fact have such abilities.

Regarding suggestion and "the whole Sorcerer list": matching 3.5e powers 1-for-1 was not the goalpost.

I've demonstrated that your objection about "world interaction" is invalid.

Anonymouswizard
2018-04-01, 04:35 PM
No, but they fit the "short, medium, long" cooldowns of WoW. It's not a perfect analogy, but it doesn't have to be. Because it is an analogy.

It's also wrong. Not 'not entirely equivalent, but works as an analogy', but plain wrong.

Cooldowns in WoW are significantly more varied, at least used to be affected by talents (as were casting times, I remember Warlocks could get an instant DoT when I played), and so on and so forth. Any attempt to split it into 'short, medium, and long' is going to be artibary, as Nifft showed the scale is a lot more neat.

Remember that cooldowns in WoW also affected your rotations, as not every ability had the same cooldown, and knowing your cooldowns well enough to plan out how to use your abilities for, say, five minutes without a break bar casting times and universal cooldown becomes important in the later parts of the game.

You know, I'd be surprised if people who make the '4e is WoW' comments have actually played WoW (or 4e). I mean, I kind of get it from the 4 roles thing, but I honestly think that's just good game design. Is a class's point to draw enemy fire, dish out damage, buff allies, or disable enemies? This was actually present back in the 3.X and possibly earlier (depending on how you define it), 4e just made it more explicit and made sure everybody could fulfill their role. I mean, they should probably have included a separate Artillery role or given non Controllers better minion clearing Powers, but that's talking about how the roles work, not the idea of roles itself.


If "short cooldown" in WoW actually means "no cooldown at all because you can use it twice in a row", then you might have a point, but I suspect it doesn't mean that, and you don't actually have a valid analogy.

Back when I played WoW I remember cooldowns fitting into three rough categories, 'universal cooldown only' (to my understanding it's essentially to stop you using bots/macros/whatever to spam abilities hundreds of times a second), 'once per small encounter, several to lots of times per boss', and 'several times a raid', but I've not played in years.

Note that back when I played WoW your use of abilities was limited by your resource (I stopped shortly before Hunters switched from Mana), and at least for casting classes most 'universal cooldown only abilities' either applied effects that couldn't be applied to the same enemy twice or had casting times which stopped you from using any ability for the 2+ seconds before it went off.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-01, 05:14 PM
@Nifft: the attempts to make D&D into a videogame began as soon as there was D&D. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnd_(video_game))

In fact, given when and where this happened, we can say that D&D invented a huge heap of "videogamey" stuff. (There is, in fact, very little in videogames that wasn't taken from earlier types of games.) So accusing a later iteration of D&D of being too much like a videogame (WoW) which was based on a carbon copy (Warcraft) of a carbon copy (Warhammer) of D&D, is just deliciously ironic. (And yes, early Warhammer was just copying Chainmail and D&D.)

Cosi
2018-04-01, 05:17 PM
In addition, Phoenix was not saying you're going to PLAY every single Pit Fiend as an identical clone, but that their ABILITIES are all identical. Either you fill an entire book with every possible Pit Fiend variant, or the DM has leeway.

Yes, but that leeway can exist within the rules, rather than being a blanket opportunity to do whatever the DM wants. Such as things like 3e's rules for templates and advancing monsters with class levels.


But seriously, you asserted that 4e monsters had no non-combat "world interaction" abilities, and I've shown you evidence that they do in fact have such abilities.

No, you've shown that they have the equivalent of 3e's buying caster powers. No one thought that counted as having magical abilities in 3e. But apparently once you remove all the other ways of having magical abilities, it suddenly does.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-01, 05:28 PM
EVERYBODY thought that buying magic stuff counts as access to magic power in 3.x.. This was not given much weight in character comparisons because if everyone has equal access to WBL, it cancels out. On the other hand, every time a GM thought of restricting wealth, magic items etc., someone would point out how this lessens the power of some gear-dependent characters.

Nifft
2018-04-01, 05:31 PM
@Nifft: the attempts to make D&D into a videogame began as soon as there was D&D. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnd_(video_game))

In fact, given when and where this happened, we can say that D&D invented a huge heap of "videogamey" stuff. (There is, in fact, very little in videogames that wasn't taken from earlier types of games.) So accusing a later iteration of D&D of being too much like a videogame (WoW) which was based on a carbon copy (Warcraft) of a carbon copy (Warhammer) of D&D, is just deliciously ironic. (And yes, early Warhammer was just copying Chainmail and D&D.)
Yes, you're absolutely correct.

In fact, one of my favorite D&D-isms that has been subverted into a video-game-ism is the cooldown itself.

AFAICT, the first use of a cooldown mechanic was the oD&D dragon's breath, which recharged after 1d4 turns. D&D had cooldowns first; video games stole that mechanic, too.


No, you've shown that they have the equivalent of 3e's buying caster powers. No one thought that counted as having magical abilities in 3e. But apparently once you remove all the other ways of having magical abilities, it suddenly does.

Your position is now that needing an expensive material component is identical to paying someone else to do the job, and you see no narrative problem in conflating the two.

The more we talk, the more it sounds like the core of your objection is that 4e wasn't 3.5e. That's a valid preference, but it's not really a failing on 4e's part.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-01, 05:33 PM
Yes, but that leeway can exist within the rules, rather than being a blanket opportunity to do whatever the DM wants. Such as things like 3e's rules for templates and advancing monsters with class levels.


I will reiterate. There are no rules for DMs in any edition of D&D. There are suggestions, there are recommendations, but there are no rules. Everything is a blanket opportunity to do whatever the DM wants. That's the essence of Rule 0--the rules serve the DM (and the table), not vice versa. It's why it's rule 0--it preexists and takes priority over all other rules.

This is not to say that DMs should abuse that power. They should not. But trying to refuse responsibility for using your power wisely (by blaming "the rules" or someone else) is blindness. Systems should teach DMs to use that power wisely, not pretend that they don't have this power. Because they do (in D&D). I recognize that this might not be true in all other game systems, but in D&D it is.

And note that 3e's monster system is the exception, not the rule in D&D editions. OD&D, AD&D (both editions), 4e, and 5e all embrace the inherent power and responsibility of a DM or scenario designer to create engaging creatures without shackling them to a class/level/template monstrosity that forces the meta concept of classes and levels down to the fictional layer and makes campaign worlds inherently incoherent, while also chaining DMs to published material and empowering rules lawyers.

Rhedyn
2018-04-01, 08:26 PM
I will reiterate. There are no rules for DMs in any edition of D&D.DMG is what now?

EDIT: What DM buys a rules set that has no rules for themselves?

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-01, 08:46 PM
PhoenixPhyre's terminology is dubious, but the point is solid: D&D rules aren't binding to the GM in the way Cosi implies. The GM can do pretty much anything, the DMG's rules are there so they don't have to do *everything*.

That's also an answer to the question "why buy rules which don't have rules for the GM?" Because they lessen the GM's workload. Neither being complete nor binding is necessary.

Selene Sparks
2018-04-01, 10:41 PM
I will reiterate. There are no rules for DMs in any edition of D&D. There are suggestions, there are recommendations, but there are no rules. Everything is a blanket opportunity to do whatever the DM wants. That's the essence of Rule 0--the rules serve the DM (and the table), not vice versa. It's why it's rule 0--it preexists and takes priority over all other rules. A thousand times no. This is one of the most toxic ideas that I see get regularly thrown around in discussions.

The GM isn't some ineffable superman divinely appointed to rule over a table, they're just another player, just the same as everyone else. They have a larger set of responsibility, and as such have a larger control of the narrative, but this fetishization of GM power is absurd. The whole point of rules is such that we have an objective way to determine how an event should resolve. And opposition to that is frankly insulting. Not just from a design perspective, but from the fact that you are actively denying the player's ability to make informed decisions regarding anything, even the most fundamental decision of deciding whether or not to join your game.

And note that 3e's monster system is the exception, not the rule in D&D editions. OD&D, AD&D (both editions), 4e, and 5e all embrace the inherent power and responsibility of a DM or scenario designer to create engaging creatures without shackling them to a class/level/template monstrosity that forces the meta concept of classes and levels down to the fictional layer and makes campaign worlds inherently incoherent, while also chaining DMs to published material and empowering rules lawyers.Not at all. It's not "chaining the DM," it's making sure everyone is able to observe and interact with the world in a consistent fashion. Because that's what rules do. "The GM makes stuff up" is toxic from a play perspective and it's toxic from a design perspective.

But the way you're talking makes me question your understanding of how 3.5 monsters even work, which is a little concerning. I'm genuinely unsure, for example, how you get the idea of monsters with class levels "forces the meta concepts of classes and levels down into the fictional layer."

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-02, 05:18 AM
Oh boy this discussion got a lot more dim than it had to be.

First: PhoenixPhyre is technically incorrect in saying D&D has no rules for GMs - the very fact that the rules say there is such a thing as a Dungeon Master is a rule for GMs. Similarly PhoenixPhyre is technically incorrect in calling the dungeon master's authority over the rules a "Rule 0". The phrase refers to implicit rules not in explicit rules text, but in every version of D&D I've read the dungeon master's authority over the rules is explicitly spelled out in the text. So it's not Rule 0 , it's rule X on page Y.

So now that I'm done quibling over idiosyncracies of the hobby's vocabulary, let me restate that PP's point about the GM's authority is still correct. No fetishization of GM power is required, again, it's the rules themselves which call the GM as having that level of authority over the game. The rules also state, as PP stated earlier, that the GM shouldn't use that authority to the point of robbing the players' ability to make informed decisions, so on that front Selene Sparks's complaint is misplaced; there isn't actual disagreement between Selene Sparks and PP. The perceived toxicity isn't.

Moving on.

Now, as far as the template rules for d20 rules go, they were pretty solidly in the realm of "game designers making stuff up" and the system is so messy that using it doesn't really lead to better results than the DM making stuff up in the earlier editions of D&D. It is no wonder if PP thinks they lead to useless information bloat, because they do. The system also uses PC-NPC-symmetry in stupid places. The idea that nonplayable monsters and animals should use the same framework of ability scores, feats and class levels is dumb, when the system overall is calibrated for use with humans and humanoids.

Nifft
2018-04-02, 05:50 AM
In some previous editions, I recall seeing the DM's role referred to as the Referee, and that's specifically because the DM was responsible for deciding all interactions between the players and the rules. The DM was expected to act impartially, and to not compete against the other players (who might compete amongst themselves, or who might just compete against the world at large).

Rules are for competitors, and the referee isn't a competitor. The DM can't compete against the other players -- he'd just win. That dynamic legitimately would be toxic, since the DM has so much more power over the nature and outcome of any conflict.

The DM having power isn't toxic. Rather, it's what the DM needs to do his job.

2D8HP
2018-04-02, 06:44 AM
The "rules" are up to each individual table, and always have been.

Dungeons and Dragons, The Underground and Wilderness Adventures, p. 36: "... everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it that way."

AD&D 1e, DMG, p. 9: "..The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play...."


AD&D 2E, DMG, p. 3: "At conventions, in letters, and over the phone, I'm often asked for the instant answer to a fine point of the game rules. More often than not, I come back with a question -- what do you feel is right? And the people asking the question discover that not only can they create an answer, but that their answer is as good as anyone else's. The rules are only guidelines."

D&D 3.5 DMG, p. 6: "Good players will always realize that you have ultimate authority over the game mechanics, even superseding something in a rulebook."


D&D 5e DMG, p. 263:: "...As the Dungeon Master, You aren't limited by the rules in the Player's Handbook, the guidelines in this book, or the selection of monsters in the Monster Manual..."

Rhedyn
2018-04-02, 08:10 AM
Rules vary per table. Great, but it's not a useful feature of the rules.

Take the Glabrezu

In 3.5, it can grant corrupting wishes once per month to humanoids.

In 5e, it doesn't have that ability and me BSing that ability into the game feels stupid. DM to players - "This demon can uhhh grant wishes. The villain used that to uhhh cause the current plague."
Meanwhile in 3.5, I know exactly what spells and demons are being used and can calculate the CR with those things in mind and know when the party is strong enough to beat that quest without a mcguffin.

One of these things is more useful to me. Moving such abilities "off sheet" for monsters just makes those abilities not exist for my style of GMing and if your game requires inferring those kinds of abilities, then I'm likely to just think your game is an incomplete combat sim.

JNAProductions
2018-04-02, 10:18 AM
Rules vary per table. Great, but it's not a useful feature of the rules.

Take the Glabrezu

In 3.5, it can grant corrupting wishes once per month to humanoids.

In 5e, it doesn't have that ability and me BSing that ability into the game feels stupid. DM to players - "This demon can uhhh grant wishes. The villain used that to uhhh cause the current plague."
Meanwhile in 3.5, I know exactly what spells and demons are being used and can calculate the CR with those things in mind and know when the party is strong enough to beat that quest without a mcguffin.

One of these things is more useful to me. Moving such abilities "off sheet" for monsters just makes those abilities not exist for my style of GMing and if your game requires inferring those kinds of abilities, then I'm likely to just think your game is an incomplete combat sim.

Rhedyn, it's totally fine for you to want various extra abilities to be on-sheet. That's your preference, and honestly, I don't object to having them there either. I don't think it's needed, but it's certainly not a bad thing.

But please, do not paint your preference as objective truth. There's nothing wrong with different styles of game.

Rhedyn
2018-04-02, 12:40 PM
Rhedyn, it's totally fine for you to want various extra abilities to be on-sheet. That's your preference, and honestly, I don't object to having them there either. I don't think it's needed, but it's certainly not a bad thing.

But please, do not paint your preference as objective truth. There's nothing wrong with different styles of game.
I disagree with the idea that 5e monsters moved non combat abilities "off-sheet", they just don't have those abilities without DM Fiat.

Furthermore, I disagree with the idea that requiring DM Fiat is "good" or somehow more streamlined.

I disagree that it is even a matter of preference. Fleshed out Monsters don't take up that much more page space and a DM that wants to Fiat change things can still do so. Nothing is gained by axing those abilities.

The preference of a DM to Fiat and enjoy it to varying extents is a matter of preference. Forcing it or requiring it when you don't have to as a developer is just bad.

JNAProductions
2018-04-02, 12:55 PM
I disagree with the idea that 5e monsters moved non combat abilities "off-sheet", they just don't have those abilities without DM Fiat.

Furthermore, I disagree with the idea that requiring DM Fiat is "good" or somehow more streamlined.

I disagree that it is even a matter of preference. Fleshed out Monsters don't take up that much more page space and a DM that wants to Fiat change things can still do so. Nothing is gained by axing those abilities.

The preference of a DM to Fiat and enjoy it to varying extents is a matter of preference. Forcing it or requiring it when you don't have to as a developer is just bad.

I prefer to work with competent DMs who don't have much of an issue adding an ability. It's not much work to add:


Moneky's Paw Wish. Once per long rest, a Pit Fiend can grant a mortal a Wish spell. However, the Pit Fiend always attempts to twist the wish as best they can to drive the mortal into despair and corruption.

Boom, bam, done. Took me less than thirty seconds.

If your DMs aren't willing to put in a few minutes of work to add what other abilities they see fit, they probably aren't that inspired to DM.

2D8HP
2018-04-02, 01:17 PM
.....I disagree with the idea that requiring DM Fiat is "good" or somehow more streamlined.......


I can remember 'round 'bout 1980 wishing for some rules I couldn't find to a situation I wanted to adjudicate, but my back prefers less rules.

I've seen a system that covers a lot, it's GURPS and forests were decimated to cover as much as it does (many of the "Worldbooks" are mighty fine reading, but there's only so much a man can carry!).

Also I thought AD&D was heavy, but have you tried to carry the Pathfinder Corebook?

By Lolth's love child that book hurts my shoulders when it's in my pack!

I can carry the 1977 Dungeons & Dragons Basic rules, the 1994 Classic D&D rules, FATE Accelerated, Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Rules & Magic, and the novels Stormbringer, Swords of Lankhmar, and A Wizard of Earthsea combined for less weight than that Pathfinder tome.

Rules heavy is literal!

I'd rather fiat than back pain.

Rhedyn
2018-04-02, 01:50 PM
I can remember 'round 'bout 1980 wishing for some rules I couldn't find to a situation I wanted to adjudicate, but my back prefers less rules.

I've seen a system that covers a lot, it's GURPS and forests were decimated to cover as much as it does (many of the "Worldbooks" are mighty fine reading, but there's only so much a man can carry!).

Also I thought AD&D was heavy, but have you tried to carry the Pathfinder Corebook?

By Lolth's love child that book hurts my shoulders when it's in my pack!

I can carry the 1977 Dungeons & Dragons Basic rules, the 1994 Classic D&D rules, FATE Accelerated, Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Rules & Magic, and the novels Stormbringer, Swords of Lankhmar, and A Wizard of Earthsea combined for less weight than that Pathfinder tome.

Rules heavy is literal!

I'd rather fiat than back pain.
Right but we're not talking about significant page count difference.

Someone exposed the virtue of moving monster non-combat abilities "off-sheet" and I called that bunk.
The actual pages said monsters take up isn't all the different.
One of my Favorite RPGs, Savage Worlds, a monster would be very lucky to get a whole page of content to just themselves even if they come with an illustration.

This is more about people reading 5e, and plugging in all the parts that are missing, and then claiming that that is a virtue of the system. Maybe monsters are just shallow and that reducing NPCs to just combat stats isn't terribly useful to DMs. If I can make up the non-combat abilities, then I could have made up the combat abilities too.

JNAProductions
2018-04-02, 01:59 PM
D&D is a more combat-focused game. That's true of every edition, 3rd and onwards, and might be true of the earlier ones-I don't know, never played them, don't know much about them.

Because of that, it's more important to give the monsters set combat abilities, or at least provide a solid framework for gauging combat abilities. That's where the balance lies-in the combat. That's not true of EVERY system, but it's true of D&D.

If you prefer more narrative, or political, or social, or whatever in your systems, again, that's totally fine. But don't go and say that "It's a combat-focused game, therefore it's bad", because that's essentially what you're doing.

Which is not to say that you CAN'T have a political D&D game, or a social one, or what-have-you. It's just not what the core system is focused on. You can say that's bad, or you can acknowledge that it's where the focus lies. Do you think FATE is bad for focusing on narrative elements? Is GURPS bad for focusing on realism? If the answer to those is no, why would D&D (of any edition) be bad for focusing on combat?

Hell, that's one of the reasons I think 4E is a fantastic game. It focused pretty much all the rules on a tight, tactical ruleset for combat. I'd agree it's a little lacking elsewhere, but they went out and achieved what they wanted. You can say mostly the same for 5E, but you can't really say that for 3E.

Rhedyn
2018-04-02, 02:20 PM
but you can't really say that for 3E.
What? I'm not entirely sure what 3e was trying to do, but it most certainly did it. Ivory Tower Game Design was accomplished.

My problem with 5e is that it rubs me all the wrong ways 4e did, while not being fleshed out like 4e is. 5e strikes me as far more board game and video game like than even 4e. It's got all these rules for combat. It's very rules heavy for combat, but then anything vaguely non-combat is either handwaved (as in skills) or non-existent (like non-combat monster abilities).
That's not being rules light, it's just being rules incomplete.

Pretending that 5e is more narrative than other edition BECAUSE monster abilities were moved "off-sheet" and therefore DMing is more streamlined and easier is where I call BS.

Oh I'm sure 5e fans will keep defending the lopsided crunch. But that and "a DM can be bad in any system" is just one of the 5e catch phrases.
"There is plenty of non-combat stuff in 4e"
"Building a character isn't that hard in 3e"
"THAC0 is pretty simple once you..."
"The charts really aren't that complicated"
"The dragon is sitting on top of a pile a treasure"

Ect.

Florian
2018-04-02, 02:41 PM
Ect.

I´m a long-time 3E/PF player and I'm still waiting on someone chiming in that he actually uses the PC rules for NPC vs. NPC interaction or runs the whole simulation of a city like the City-state of the Invincible Overlord on said rules, like rolling craft/profession or other types of "associated mechanics" for anything that happens in a city of 30K inhabitants.

I would flat out call it a lie.

Now I understand and accept that having this kind of associated mechanics in a game can help foster immersion and has its own aesthetic, but it is nearly superfluous if you don't need that crutch, like you can create a one-eyed beggar NPC without having to chose the "one eyed", "poor" and "social status: beggar" flaws when creating the stats for it.

That is the same as handling fluff for hard rules. Genies grant wishes? Ok, it´s said, hard fact, done.

Rhedyn
2018-04-02, 02:51 PM
That is the same as handling fluff for hard rules. Genies grant wishes? Ok, it´s said, hard fact, done.
Speaking of genies. 5e actually manages to give them some of combat abilities, buuut they do so in far more words than 3e had too to give the same effect (and 3e genies have skills)

Surely if the DM is meant to just infer these things, then 5e wouldn't have said anything like that about genies.

Though the weak non combat core of 5e prevents it from presenting non-combat abilities in a concise manner.

2D8HP
2018-04-02, 05:39 PM
......Oh I'm sure 5e fans will keep defending the lopsided crunch. But that and "a DM can be bad in any system" is just one of the 5e catch phrases.
"There is plenty of non-combat stuff in 4e"
"Building a character isn't that hard in 3e"
"THAC0 is pretty simple once you..."
"The charts really aren't that complicated"
"The dragon is sitting on top of a pile a treasure"

Ect.


Oh!

That last one was mine!


From the 1977 Holmes "Basic" rules, I miss:.....

.......All that said, if the game features a Dragon sitting on a pile of treasure, in a Dungeon and you play a Wizard with a magic wand, or a warrior in armor, wielding a longbow, just like the picture on the box I picked up in 1978, whatever the edition, I want to play that game!


:smile:

AWESOME!

Vhaidara
2018-04-03, 05:21 AM
Someone exposed the virtue of moving monster non-combat abilities "off-sheet" and I called that bunk.
The actual pages said monsters take up isn't all the different.

Not very true, given that one of the cooler things I've found for 4e was the "MM3 on a business card (http://blogofholding.com/?p=512)". This provides the general statline for monsters based on their level. The rest is yours to fill in. Fighting spiders? Raise the Reflex by 2, lower Fort and Will by 1 each, melee attack does medium damage with ongoing poison and/or a slow, area burst attack 1/encounter for low damage and immobilize save ends.

I wrote that in about 30 seconds, and I've played under DMs who don't even have monsters written in advance, they're capable of building them on the fly. Sometimes to better results than others, but the draw of 4e for me is how EASY it is to make custom monsters. The main place I run is an equivalent to Living Forgotten Realms or Pathfinder Society (but better managed) and I can design pretty much any enemy i want within 5-20 minutes of consideration (20 being solo monsters with a dozen special abilities), whether it's a demon, a Super Mutant, or a Doctor Doom expy (all enemies I've written and used)

Mordaedil
2018-04-03, 05:58 AM
I just like having a massive pile of options and I don't feel Pathfinder, 4th or 5th edition is giving me that. A lot of people talk about it as a negative thing, but I just don't really feel the same.

I do wish all the options were a bit better balanced, but it works at our table just fine.

Anonymouswizard
2018-04-03, 06:21 AM
Not very true, given that one of the cooler things I've found for 4e was the "MM3 on a business card (http://blogofholding.com/?p=512)". This provides the general statline for monsters based on their level. The rest is yours to fill in. Fighting spiders? Raise the Reflex by 2, lower Fort and Will by 1 each, melee attack does medium damage with ongoing poison and/or a slow, area burst attack 1/encounter for low damage and immobilize save ends.

I wrote that in about 30 seconds, and I've played under DMs who don't even have monsters written in advance, they're capable of building them on the fly. Sometimes to better results than others, but the draw of 4e for me is how EASY it is to make custom monsters. The main place I run is an equivalent to Living Forgotten Realms or Pathfinder Society (but better managed) and I can design pretty much any enemy i want within 5-20 minutes of consideration (20 being solo monsters with a dozen special abilities), whether it's a demon, a Super Mutant, or a Doctor Doom expy (all enemies I've written and used)

I'm going to note that this is one of the reasons I like Fate. The narrative part for a monster can be sorted by summarising the monster's qualities, while the rules part is just picking a few skills and deciding if they should be Average or Great or whatever (sure, I'm meant to column, but I generally just pick the peak). The Adversary Toolkit is worth pulling out if I'm preparing a complicated encounter, but I can get a usable enemy with a single Aspect, a Peak Skill, and maybe a stunt or two.

But I'm better at it with Fate than with 4e because I'm much more used to Fate. Fast-creation of adversaries is always amazing.

Rhedyn
2018-04-03, 07:14 AM
Not very true, given that one of the cooler things I've found for 4e was the "MM3 on a business card (http://blogofholding.com/?p=512)". This provides the general statline for monsters based on their level. The rest is yours to fill in. Fighting spiders? Raise the Reflex by 2, lower Fort and Will by 1 each, melee attack does medium damage with ongoing poison and/or a slow, area burst attack 1/encounter for low damage and immobilize save ends.

I wrote that in about 30 seconds, and I've played under DMs who don't even have monsters written in advance, they're capable of building them on the fly. Sometimes to better results than others, but the draw of 4e for me is how EASY it is to make custom monsters. The main place I run is an equivalent to Living Forgotten Realms or Pathfinder Society (but better managed) and I can design pretty much any enemy i want within 5-20 minutes of consideration (20 being solo monsters with a dozen special abilities), whether it's a demon, a Super Mutant, or a Doctor Doom expy (all enemies I've written and used)
That's cool and all, but I've totally done whole ad-hoc sessions in 3.5 and PF going off of the monster creation table.

A lot of what we're taking about is not an either/or thing, it's both or not both.

JNAProductions
2018-04-03, 10:19 AM
I just like having a massive pile of options and I don't feel Pathfinder, 4th or 5th edition is giving me that. A lot of people talk about it as a negative thing, but I just don't really feel the same.

I do wish all the options were a bit better balanced, but it works at our table just fine.

That's okay. I do agree, the vast amount of options is a cool part of 3.5. The issue with them is that a lot of them are horribly unbalanced when compared to each other. A Dragon Shaman might do well in a party with a Monk, not so much with a Psion.


That's cool and all, but I've totally done whole ad-hoc sessions in 3.5 and PF going off of the monster creation table.

A lot of what we're taking about is not an either/or thing, it's both or not both.

So you're saying that a good DM should be able to do ad-hoc rulings and creation? If that's the case, why slam other editions for allowing DMs to do just that?

Rhedyn
2018-04-03, 11:07 AM
So you're saying that a good DM should be able to do ad-hoc rulings and creation? If that's the case, why slam other editions for allowing DMs to do just that? I do not believe development skills are part of good DMing. Solid ad-hoc guidelines can exist next to fleshed out rules, but if the quality of your game depends on the rules developer skills of the DM running it, then maybe you should have just developed that part of your game.

I will "slam" other editions for requiring ad-hoc rulings for the entirety of non-combat monster functionality. And by "slam", I mean I refuse to say it's a good thing about 5e or even a matter of preference. It's just a lack of content.

Kurald Galain
2018-04-03, 11:54 AM
Not very true, given that one of the cooler things I've found for 4e was the "MM3 on a business card (http://blogofholding.com/?p=512)". This provides the general statline for monsters based on their level. The rest is yours to fill in. Fighting spiders? Raise the Reflex by 2, lower Fort and Will by 1 each,
The main issue with that is that raising or lowering stats by one or two points is not something the players will ever notice (because combat is only a couple rounds and this difference is drowned out by the d20 roll). That means that differentiating your monsters is mainly just busywork that has no actual impact on gameplay.

It's actually kind of clever. If a system pretends that a +1 bonus on 1d20 is a really big deal then it can maintain a semblance of differentiation while maintaining a reality of balance (since those +1 bonuses have no discernible impact in practice).

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-03, 12:18 PM
The main issue with that is that raising or lowering stats by one or two points is not something the players will ever notice (because combat is only a couple rounds and this difference is drowned out by the d20 roll). That means that differentiating your monsters is mainly just busywork that has no actual impact on gameplay.

It's actually kind of clever. If a system pretends that a +1 bonus on 1d20 is a really big deal then it can maintain a semblance of differentiation while maintaining a reality of balance (since those +1 bonuses have no discernible impact in practice).

in 4e, those differences really did matter (taken as a whole). Mainly because combat was a lot longer (in rounds) and involved much more forced movement and other tactical repositioning. The difference between a soldier and a brute was decent, between a brute and a skulker was huge, and between either of those and an artillery or a controller was enormous. And those were just small variations on the numerical formulas.

Vhaidara
2018-04-03, 12:29 PM
Yeah, having played and run 4e extensively at this stage, it makes a difference. People notice when aiming for the ogre's Will is the same as his Fort. People target accordingly.

Kurald Galain
2018-04-03, 12:41 PM
The difference between a soldier and a brute was decent, between a brute and a skulker was huge, and between either of those and an artillery or a controller was enormous. And those were just small variations on the numerical formulas.
Do note that all of those differences are substantially more than +1. That proves my point, really.

Also, assuming your party knows about tactics and isn't picking powers entirely at random, having any monster last longer than three rounds should be a rarity. Note also that this is the exact designer intent - monsters are expected to last two or three rounds.

Vhaidara
2018-04-03, 01:09 PM
Do note that all of those differences are substantially more than +1. That proves my point, really.

Also, assuming your party knows about tactics and isn't picking powers entirely at random, having any monster last longer than three rounds should be a rarity. Note also that this is the exact designer intent - monsters are expected to last two or three rounds.

Yes, +2 is so substantially more than +1.

I fail to see the relevance of the number of rounds. What matters is that the numbers to hit different defenses are different, which requires as few as 2 attack rolls against a single defense to reveal. And over those 3 rounds it's not uncommon for monsters to be subject to dozens of attack rolls, be it from multitaps or AoE effects.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-03, 01:12 PM
Yes, +2 is so substantially more than +1.

I fail to see the relevance of the number of rounds. What matters is that the numbers to hit different defenses are different, which requires as few as 2 attack rolls against a single defense to reveal. And over those 3 rounds it's not uncommon for monsters to be subject to dozens of attack rolls, be it from multitaps or AoE effects.

That's my experience as well. Especially since the system math for defenses and attack stats is pretty tight-- +-2 is a large swing (the difference of a multi-level change).

Selene Sparks
2018-04-03, 05:07 PM
So now that I'm done quibling over idiosyncracies of the hobby's vocabulary, let me restate that PP's point about the GM's authority is still correct. No fetishization of GM power is required, again, it's the rules themselves which call the GM as having that level of authority over the game. The rules also state, as PP stated earlier, that the GM shouldn't use that authority to the point of robbing the players' ability to make informed decisions, so on that front Selene Sparks's complaint is misplaced; there isn't actual disagreement between Selene Sparks and PP. The perceived toxicity isn't.It most certainly is not.

The GM's authority in the rules is as an arbiter. That is, they arbitrate rules disagreements. I don't have any other DMG on my at the moment, but the 3.5 DMG explicitly puts the entire idea of DM authority in those terms. Arbitration is not free reign to do whatever you feel like whenever you feel like, and any claim otherwise that frame the ability to do so is good, are, in fact, fetishizing DM power. That itself is toxic, even without getting into the kind of behavior it encourages, because it sets up the DM as something qualitatively different from a player in a game

Now, as far as the template rules for d20 rules go, they were pretty solidly in the realm of "game designers making stuff up" and the system is so messy that using it doesn't really lead to better results than the DM making stuff up in the earlier editions of D&D. It is no wonder if PP thinks they lead to useless information bloat, because they do. The system also uses PC-NPC-symmetry in stupid places. The idea that nonplayable monsters and animals should use the same framework of ability scores, feats and class levels is dumb, when the system overall is calibrated for use with humans and humanoids.No, it's sensible. If everything uses the same rules, it ensures that everything can interact in the same ways. A bear has skills and abilities such that I can easily tell how it can interact with the broader world. Compare this to 4e, where a bear in a generic mob to the point of the bear you occasionally fight in the forest(but don't do anything else with, because they can't) and the bear that a druid gets as a pet are entirely separate creatures with no relation to one another, to the point where the druid's bear cannot even take actions without the druid. Having an explicit, in-depth system that you already know works is a necessity for monsters, and HD is a perfectly fine one, with the added benefit of how its scaling is directly comparable to the PCs.

Rules are for competitors, and the referee isn't a competitor. The DM can't compete against the other players -- he'd just win. That dynamic legitimately would be toxic, since the DM has so much more power over the nature and outcome of any conflict.No, rules are for a coherent system. I, as a player with agency in the game, should be able to accurately make assessments given sufficient information. If I know my jump score and I know the distance I want to jump, for example, I can reason out my odds of success (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/jump.htm) and make an informed decision. If the rules are "lmake something up," I can't do that, nor can I do that if the DM is just going to decide what the result was without any concern for the die roll. This extends to every part of the game, and is why the game has mechanics at all! If the GM is just deciding whatever outcome for each decision the players make, why are you even bothering to pretend it's D&D? Freeform RP is a perfectly fine thing to do.

The DM having power isn't toxic. Rather, it's what the DM needs to do his job.The DM does need to have the power to run the game. That is, their job is to adjudicate rule disagreements, run the world, and so on, and they have the power to do that. That doesn't extend to "make up whatever I feel like."

Rhedyn, it's totally fine for you to want various extra abilities to be on-sheet. That's your preference, and honestly, I don't object to having them there either. I don't think it's needed, but it's certainly not a bad thing.

But please, do not paint your preference as objective truth. There's nothing wrong with different styles of game.It is a bad thing objectively, because if they're not in the rules, they're not in the rules. If you are forced into regularly making things up on a large scale(such as the out of combat abilities of everything, for example), then the ruleset is incomplete, and that is a problem.

I prefer to work with competent DMs who don't have much of an issue adding an ability. It's not much work to add:



Boom, bam, done. Took me less than thirty seconds.

If your DMs aren't willing to put in a few minutes of work to add what other abilities they see fit, they probably aren't that inspired to DM.And now we're conflating having rules with bad GMing?

And I can't help but notice this is a pretty straightforward example of the Oberoni fallacy. If you have to make stuff up to solve a problem, that by definition means that there is a problem there.

So you're saying that a good DM should be able to do ad-hoc rulings and creation? If that's the case, why slam other editions for allowing DMs to do just that?Because it shoudn't be required. If I'm paying for rules, I actually want real rules. If I want to disregard or alter the rules deliberately, that should be an option, but the whole point of a set of rules is that there are, in fact, rules.

Florian
2018-04-03, 05:20 PM
@Seleny Sparks:

Ah, right, the rulebook can run the game on its own. Capiche.

But sadly, that's pretty much BS and I think only D&D keeps still repeating that nonsense. The GM is always in a dual position of creator/adversary and judge/arbiter of the rules. 3e/4E has unsuccessfully tried to solve that gordian knot by shifting power from the gm to the system, which generally failed.

Knaight
2018-04-03, 05:38 PM
And I can't help but notice this is a pretty straightforward example of the Oberoni fallacy. If you have to make stuff up to solve a problem, that by definition means that there is a problem there.

The "problem" here is that you have to make stuff up at all - you're not changing existing rules, you're applying them such that it requires some creativity of you, while requiring less in the way of looking up material, memorization, or calculation delays. This isn't a problem for a lot of people.

As for why you don't just do freeform, there's a benefit to frameworks to make stuff up in. As an analogy, there's a difference in what can be rapidly made with something like an erector set, and what can be made with a forge, a tool shop, and a pile of bauxite. The second option is less restrictive, but it's also a great deal harder to work within.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-03, 05:42 PM
@Seleny Sparks:

Ah, right, the rulebook can run the game on its own. Capiche.

But sadly, that's pretty much BS and I think only D&D keeps still repeating that nonsense. The GM is always in a dual position of creator/adversary and judge/arbiter of the rules. 3e/4E has unsuccessfully tried to solve that gordian knot by shifting power from the gm to the system, which generally failed.

Whereas 5e accepts facts and embraces the multi faceted rule of the DM and makes it part of the core. There's a reason that the sections of the DMG are called "Master of the world", "Master of the adventure", and "Master of the rules". Everything is explicitly there as suggestions or as examples.

If I wanted a robotic DM, I'd play a computer game. A DM who refuses to adapt and invent is playing the part of a computer, badly.

Rhedyn
2018-04-03, 06:23 PM
Whereas 5e accepts facts and embraces the multi faceted rule of the DM and makes it part of the core. There's a reason that the sections of the DMG are called "Master of the world", "Master of the adventure", and "Master of the rules". Everything is explicitly there as suggestions or as examples.

If I wanted a robotic DM, I'd play a computer game. A DM who refuses to adapt and invent is playing the part of a computer, badly.
Sooo if it is so great then why isn't MORE of 5e up to the DM? Shouldn't spell casting then just be an arcane/religion check and whatever you are trying to do is assigned a DC based on difficulty? You could cut all the spells that way and REALLY allow GOOD DMs to shine.

Also all this HP nonsense? Badwrongfun. Let the DM do his job. If you take damage, make a con check with the DC decided by the DM based on the difficulty of surviving the damage.

You just need to accept the facts that all of this is fine and how GOOD players with GOOD DMs play the game.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-03, 06:31 PM
Sooo if it is so great then why isn't MORE of 5e up to the DM? Shouldn't spell casting then just be an arcane/religion check and whatever you are trying to do is assigned a DC based on difficulty? You could cut all the spells that way and REALLY allow GOOD DMs to shine.

Also all this HP nonsense? Badwrongfun. Let the DM do his job. If you take damage, make a con check with the DC decided by the DM based on the difficulty of surviving the damage.

You just need to accept the facts that all of this is fine and how GOOD players with GOOD DMs play the game.

Note: there are systems like that. It's called free-form. And it's the first style learned by most children. It can work just fine.

There is a balance to be struck between "if it's not written down by the designers it doesn't exist" (in which case you're playing a board game) and "tyrannical whim." The rules as written are suggestions to the DM (strong and good ones, but not complete or binding ones); they're a framework from which the DM should build a coherent package. The exact balance depends on table preferences and personal taste--it's a subjective matter, not an objective one.

"I don't like it" and "it's bad" are not synonyms. Stop pretending that they are.

Selene Sparks
2018-04-03, 06:31 PM
@Seleny Sparks:

Ah, right, the rulebook can run the game on its own. Capiche.It generally helps to argue against what people are actually saying. I'd recommend you try it some time.

But sadly, that's pretty much BS and I think only D&D keeps still repeating that nonsense. The GM is always in a dual position of creator/adversary and judge/arbiter of the rules. 3e/4E has unsuccessfully tried to solve that gordian knot by shifting power from the gm to the system, which generally failed."Generally failed?" In comparison to what and by what metric?

The "problem" here is that you have to make stuff up at all - you're not changing existing rules, you're applying them such that it requires some creativity of you, while requiring less in the way of looking up material, memorization, or calculation delays. This isn't a problem for a lot of people.No, when you're flatly fabricating something up out of nowhere because the rules don't do it(see the Glabrezu wish, for example), you are, in fact, changing the rules if you suddenly give a 5e Glabrezu a Wish effect, because by the rules in 5e, Glabrezu don't have access to Wish.

Now, I can't speak for anyone else, but when I DM 3.5, there aren't calculation delays because I know the system, there are very few delays for looking up, because I know the system and have most things I'll need to referrence prepped ahead of time, and there aren't memorization problems because the rules are actually written in books so if I need to I can check, unlike what would it would be if I were just making stuff up as I went.

Whereas 5e accepts facts and embraces the multi faceted rule of the DM and makes it part of the core. There's a reason that the sections of the DMG are called "Master of the world", "Master of the adventure", and "Master of the rules". Everything is explicitly there as suggestions or as examples. No, 5e doesn't put out a complete system at all. There's a difference between "rules-light" and the self-contradictory mess of nonsense that is the non-combat rules in 5e, and I find the conflation between "rules-light" and "not even really rules" to be grating.

If I wanted a robotic DM, I'd play a computer game. A DM who refuses to adapt and invent is playing the part of a computer, badly.I can't help but notice how you immediately jump from "can't just flatly make up whatever they feel like whenever they feel like" to "refuses to adapt."

Or, in other words, what Rhedyn said.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-03, 06:33 PM
Or, in other words, what Rhedyn said.

The part where he said "if it isn't in the book, it doesn't exist"? That's exactly robotic DMing. It's rejecting the role of content creator, which is and has been a part of the D&D DM's job since the very beginning.

Oh, and the fact that the published stat blocks for Glabrezu do not have a wish SLA is not the same as saying that by RAW glabrezu don't have access to wish. The MM is specifically and explicitly non-exhaustive examples; nothing in there is binding on anyone. In fact, the recommendation in the DMG is to find something close to what you want and alter it to your needs. They're a starting place, not a "this is how they must be used" statement.

Quertus
2018-04-03, 07:50 PM
Games with rules allow characters to function consistently across multiple tables.

Implementing cross-table consistency in systems without rules? It requires the GM to accept all the built-up rules and rulings from all of a character's previous GMs.

The same is true, albeit to a lesser extent, of the player's ability to adequately predict the outcome of any given action, plan without breaking character, or otherwise remain at the immersion level without having to break into a game of twenty questions with the GM.

Rhedyn
2018-04-03, 08:24 PM
Note: there are systems like that. It's called free-form. And it's the first style learned by most children. It can work just fine. Ah so the skill system for 5e is free-form rule-less child-like roleplaying? So you are saying it doesn't exist?

Or are you saying it's a real rules system for skills and non-combat monster abilities but things like spells needs pages and pages of rules to not be an rpg for children?

obryn
2018-04-03, 10:34 PM
It generally helps to argue against what people are actually saying. I'd recommend you try it some time.
"Generally failed?" In comparison to what and by what metric?
No, when you're flatly fabricating something up out of nowhere because the rules don't do it(see the Glabrezu wish, for example), you are, in fact, changing the rules if you suddenly give a 5e Glabrezu a Wish effect, because by the rules in 5e, Glabrezu don't have access to Wish.
Uh. What? Can't you say this Glabrezu has Wish, but that one doesn't?


Now, I can't speak for anyone else, but when I DM 3.5, there aren't calculation delays because I know the system, there are very few delays for looking up, because I know the system and have most things I'll need to referrence prepped ahead of time, and there aren't memorization problems because the rules are actually written in books so if I need to I can check, unlike what would it would be if I were just making stuff up as I went.
No, 5e doesn't put out a complete system at all. There's a difference between "rules-light" and the self-contradictory mess of nonsense that is the non-combat rules in 5e, and I find the conflation between "rules-light" and "not even really rules" to be grating.
I can't help but notice how you immediately jump from "can't just flatly make up whatever they feel like whenever they feel like" to "refuses to adapt."
Um.

D&D has had less detailed skill rules than 5e at many points in its history. And the game has worked.

Other systems have less detailed skill rules than 5e. They also work.

Look, I think 5e is bad, but this is a seriously weird set of criticisms that seem to be coming from a viewpoint that's inconsistent with RPGs - and even D&D itself - historically.


Games with rules allow characters to function consistently across multiple tables.

Implementing cross-table consistency in systems without rules? It requires the GM to accept all the built-up rules and rulings from all of a character's previous GMs.

The same is true, albeit to a lesser extent, of the player's ability to adequately predict the outcome of any given action, plan without breaking character, or otherwise remain at the immersion level without having to break into a game of twenty questions with the GM.
Brother, this whole post fills me with a lot of questions about your questions.

2D8HP
2018-04-03, 10:48 PM
Sooo if it is so great then why isn't MORE of 5e up to the DM? Shouldn't spell casting then just be an arcane/religion check and whatever you are trying to do is assigned a DC based on difficulty? You could cut all the spells that way and REALLY allow GOOD DMs to shine.....


I really don't have a problem with that (but I tend to play the swordsman not the sorcerer).

I highly recommend Stormbringer and the pre and post 4th editions of Pendragon for games with well done but more free form magic systems.

RuneQuest also has an intriguing magic system, and Call of C'thullu has an easy one.

Quertus
2018-04-03, 11:52 PM
Um.

D&D has had less detailed skill rules than 5e at many points in its history. And the game has worked.

Other systems have less detailed skill rules than 5e. They also work.

Look, I think 5e is bad, but this is a seriously weird set of criticisms that seem to be coming from a viewpoint that's inconsistent with RPGs - and even D&D itself - historically.

Do you have the skill proficiency? If no, you fail; if yes, continue.

Make a stat check (roll a d20, try to roll under your stat), with appropriate bonus or penalty. Did you succeed? If so, you succeeded; if not, you failed.

Simple. And functional.

(and then there were rogue skills, which worked functionally the same way (d100, roll under your skill, binary pass / fail), but would seem odd to many modern gamers, as they were unopposed).


Brother, this whole post fills me with a lot of questions about your questions.

Please, tell me more. I love having the opportunity to learn and grow.

Selene Sparks
2018-04-04, 01:07 AM
The part where he said "if it isn't in the book, it doesn't exist"? That's exactly robotic DMing. It's rejecting the role of content creator, which is and has been a part of the D&D DM's job since the very beginning.No, if it's not in the books, where the rules are, it is by definition not in the game, because the game is defined by its rules. And it's not "rejecting the role of content creator," it's saying that being a content creator isn't my job. It's the game designer's job. In fact, it is literally their only job. If I so desire to modify the system, create new content, and so on, I should be able to, but it shouldn't be a necessity to play the game, because I am paying for a finished product and if I wanted to just flatly make everything up, I don't need a system for that by definition.

Oh, and the fact that the published stat blocks for Glabrezu do not have a wish SLA is not the same as saying that by RAW glabrezu don't have access to wish.Yes it does. That is exactly what it means. The rules as they are written do not grant the glabrezu the ability to grant wishes. If you so desire to have the glabrezu have its most iconic and most important ability, you have to homebrew it.

The MM is specifically and explicitly non-exhaustive examples; nothing in there is binding on anyone. In fact, the recommendation in the DMG is to find something close to what you want and alter it to your needs. They're a starting place, not a "this is how they must be used" statement."Make stuff up" isn't a functional ruleset by definition. If the rules aren't usable as-is, the rules are simply useless.

Uh. What? Can't you say this Glabrezu has Wish, but that one doesn't?Because the rules as they are written do not grant the glabrezu the ability to grant wishes. I shouldn't be forced into homebrewing.

Um.

D&D has had less detailed skill rules than 5e at many points in its history. And the game has worked.One, no it hasn't. The NWP crap at least had a clearly established pass/failure system, and what it took to pass was knowable. Again, the 5e "rules" for skills aren't, in fact, rules. They're "the GM makes something up, assigns an arbitrary number with no grounding in the rules at all, and then you roll to try to beat that" at best. At worst, they're unparsable, self-contradictory gibberish. Seriously, there is no benchmark for what skills should be, so the text is completely useless.

Other systems have less detailed skill rules than 5e. They also work.No they don't, because the 5e skills literally don't work. Go reread the section on hiding for me. Really read it, line by line, stick to the text, and try to figure out exactly how it's supposed to work.

Spoiler alert: You can't tell me how it works, because the text is self-contradictory and borders on word salad. Seriously, it's late now, but if you can't read it yourself, I can walk you through it line by line tomorrow.

Look, I think 5e is bad, but this is a seriously weird set of criticisms that seem to be coming from a viewpoint that's inconsistent with RPGs - and even D&D itself - historically.No, it's not, but even if that were the case, so what? Not only is it strictly worse than 3.X skill rules(a previous edition of the very game we're talking about from almost 20 years ago), just because stuff was awful in the past doesn't mean its awfulness now is acceptable.

Nifft
2018-04-04, 01:20 AM
No, if it's not in the books, where the rules are, it is by definition not in the game, because the game is defined by its rules.

5e MM p.6 contains the following rule:

https://i.imgur.com/ukq7rdA.png


The 3.5e SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm) contains this text instead:


Adding Special Abilities

You can add any sort of spell-like, supernatural, or extraordinary ability to a creature. As with a class level, you should determine how much, or how little, this ability adds to the creature’s existing repertoire. A suite of abilities that work together should be treated as a single modifier for this purpose. If the ability (or combination of abilities) significantly increases the monster’s combat effectiveness, increase its CR by 2. Minor abilities increase the creature’s CR by 1, and truly trivial abilities may not increase CR at all. If the special abilities a monster gains are not tied to a class or Hit Die increase, this CR increase stacks.

A significant special attack is one that stands a good chance of incapacitating or crippling a character in one round. A significant special quality is one that seriously diminishes the monster’s vulnerability to common attacks. Do not add this factor twice if a monster has both special attacks and special qualities.

Make sure to "scale" your evaluation of these abilities by the monster’s current CR.

Florian
2018-04-04, 01:37 AM
"Generally failed?" In comparison to what and by what metric?

In the metric that trying to anchor as much as possible in the overall system itself, it will lead to "a one true way of playing D&D", else the whole underlying math breaks down. And what were seeing for ages now in discussions, especially common on this board, is discussion on pure character or class mechanics, devoid of the overall game mechanics that fall on the gm side of things.
Now the whole classes and class mechanics were designed around the system based framework, that again was based around the idea of how the gameplay should look like, two things that are commonly rejected by the player base. That alone makes it into a grandiose failure.

4E was a straight continuation of 3E and actually pushed hard for the "one true way" by codifying the gameplay even more. It always strikes me as funny that WotC actually did what the internet community demanded of them, fixed a lot of things that stem from the rules transparency problem and it got rejected even more because of that.

By the way, that's also the problem with Quertus stance of "only one RAW" and "a common, shared D&D multiverse for all tables" because that automatically annuls groups house ruling towards their style or creating setting-based rules or use any kind of rulings consistently.

So overall, this is toxic to the extreme.

Nifft
2018-04-04, 01:39 AM
4E was a straight continuation of 3E and actually pushed hard for the "one true way" by codifying the gameplay even more. It always strikes me as funny that WotC actually did what the internet community demanded of them, fixed a lot of things that stem from the rules transparency problem and it got rejected even more because of that.

That might be why 4e is so strongly disliked.

It gave people exactly what they were demanding, and it turned out that wasn't at all what they really wanted.

Mordaedil
2018-04-04, 01:55 AM
No, if it's not in the books, where the rules are, it is by definition not in the game, because the game is defined by its rules. And it's not "rejecting the role of content creator," it's saying that being a content creator isn't my job. It's the game designer's job. In fact, it is literally their only job. If I so desire to modify the system, create new content, and so on, I should be able to, but it shouldn't be a necessity to play the game, because I am paying for a finished product and if I wanted to just flatly make everything up, I don't need a system for that by definition.
Nearly all of the rulebooks encourage creation and invention by players. 3rd edition has a specific section for creating your own prestige classee, base classes and allowing wizards and sorcerers to research their own spells, complete with guidelines on how you create them and may attempt to balance them.

Kurald Galain
2018-04-04, 03:05 AM
Whereas 5e accepts facts and embraces the multi faceted rule of the DM and makes it part of the core. There's a reason that the sections of the DMG are called "Master of the world", "Master of the adventure", and "Master of the rules". Everything is explicitly there as suggestions or as examples.
An oft-overlooked quote by our very own Giant is "In short, I want tools to use in the game, not a blank check to do what I want. I can already do what I want."

In the minds of many people, the issue with 5E (and for that matter, every part of 4E that isn't combat) is that it fails to provide the tools they want to use in the game.


Especially since the system math for defenses and attack stats is pretty tight-- +-2 is a large swing (the difference of a multi-level change).
That only means that "a multi-level change" is actually much smaller than you realize :smallbiggrin:

Rhedyn
2018-04-04, 07:15 AM
Nearly all of the rulebooks encourage creation and invention by players. 3rd edition has a specific section for creating your own prestige classee, base classes and allowing wizards and sorcerers to research their own spells, complete with guidelines on how you create them and may attempt to balance them.
Content creation tools are still tools and having them is good.

Not having content or tools and expecting the DM to fill in the blanks is not a feature.

You can extol the excellence of lower page counts, but I'm here to tell you that flesh out non-combat monster abilities and a fleshed out skill system would could have added negligible pages. Case in point, 1e and 2e D&D had both and less pages than 5e. Granted some of 1e's skill mechanics were the common house rules of "roll under" or the purview of only the thief, but I still consider that more fleshed out than 5e because the pass/fail mechanism are codified in the rules rather than the DM's mind.
In the complete absence of skill rules, the DM decides if what you want to do is doable not a random DC, and I personally consider no system better than what 5e did and it takes zero pages to make.

Anonymouswizard
2018-04-04, 08:08 AM
Ah so the skill system for 5e is free-form rule-less child-like roleplaying? So you are saying it doesn't exist?

Or are you saying it's a real rules system for skills and non-combat monster abilities but things like spells needs pages and pages of rules to not be an rpg for children?

5e's skill system is weird.

I've seen games with lighter skills systems than 5e, but those are generally ones that specifically don't care about your skills. 'Roll an ability check I suppose' and that sort of thing. I've seen games with heavier skills systems than 5e. I've seen broader ones and more detailed ones.

The problem with 5e's skill system isn't what's there, but it's that it feels like the designers didn't care. It feels tacked on. If you told me the designers of 5e wanted to resolve everything with straight ability checks I wouldn't bat an eyelid, skills feel like they exist because D&D has skills as a 'core part' of characters (since 3e, arguably since 2e). They just feel so glossed over in comparison to games with similarly light skill systems, I'm not quite sure why.

Kurald Galain
2018-04-04, 08:18 AM
5e's skill system is weird.

I've seen games with lighter skills systems than 5e, but those are generally ones that specifically don't care about your skills. 'Roll an ability check I suppose' and that sort of thing. I've seen games with heavier skills systems than 5e. I've seen broader ones and more detailed ones.

The problem with 5e's skill system isn't what's there, but it's that it feels like the designers didn't care. It feels tacked on. If you told me the designers of 5e wanted to resolve everything with straight ability checks I wouldn't bat an eyelid, skills feel like they exist because D&D has skills as a 'core part' of characters (since 3e, arguably since 2e). They just feel so glossed over in comparison to games with similarly light skill systems, I'm not quite sure why.

That's a fair point. The design of 4E and 5E is basically that they don't want a skill system, but must have something that they can call a skill system to placate the fans. So they put together the absolute bare minimum lip service as an afterthought, take as little lines as possible in the rulebooks, and call it a day.

To be fair, this has more-or-less worked for both of them; so we can conclude that many roleplayers really don't care about having skills in the first place.

Ratter
2018-04-04, 10:13 AM
Well see, reading this it seems like I shouldnt play 5e (I do hate the way failureand success is such a fine line that the rogue is just as likely to fail as the fighter) but I shouldnt play 3.5e (I dont like mages in general and my party is split so unbalanced crap will happen constantly) I shouldnt play PF for the smae reason and I shouldnt play 4e, 2e or AD&D because they are hard to understand or have no roleplaying aspects.

Nifft
2018-04-04, 10:17 AM
Well see, reading this it seems like I shouldnt play 5e (I do hate the way failureand success is such a fine line that the rogue is just as likely to fail as the fighter) but I shouldnt play 3.5e (I dont like mages in general and my party is split so unbalanced crap will happen constantly) I shouldnt play PF for the smae reason and I shouldnt play 4e, 2e or AD&D because they are hard to understand or have no roleplaying aspects.

Therefore, you should only play Rules Cyclopedia D&D.

As an aside, there are some great retro-clones of Rules Cyclopedia.

Quertus
2018-04-04, 10:57 AM
Well see, reading this it seems like I shouldnt play 5e (I do hate the way failureand success is such a fine line that the rogue is just as likely to fail as the fighter) but I shouldnt play 3.5e (I dont like mages in general and my party is split so unbalanced crap will happen constantly) I shouldnt play PF for the smae reason and I shouldnt play 4e, 2e or AD&D because they are hard to understand or have no roleplaying aspects.

Are you the OP? (checks) Yes, you are the OP. Cool, something very directly on-topic.

I can't speak to the 5e part, but allow me to address your concerns about 3e.

I play wizards (and casters in general). It's what I do. It's what I enjoy. My signature academia mage, Quertus, for whom this account is named, is a wizard. And he was quite overshadowed by the party Fighter and Monk in 3e. They were well built, he was not. They were well played, Quertus is tactically inept.

The point is that, if your group cares about balance, then, with sufficient system mastery, they can implement whatever balance point that they desire in 3e.

It is not simply caster > muggle. Because role-playing > player > character.


In the metric that trying to anchor as much as possible in the overall system itself, it will lead to "a one true way of playing D&D", else the whole underlying math breaks down. And what were seeing for ages now in discussions, especially common on this board, is discussion on pure character or class mechanics, devoid of the overall game mechanics that fall on the gm side of things.
Now the whole classes and class mechanics were designed around the system based framework, that again was based around the idea of how the gameplay should look like, two things that are commonly rejected by the player base. That alone makes it into a grandiose failure.

So... "D&D 3e falls apart if you aren't playing a 4-man team of blaster wizard, healer cleric, etc" is clearly not what the designers intended (by virtue of them creating gobs other classes and abilities), nor what they created (by virtue of all the successful tables that don't play that particular cookie cutter style).

However, if you aren't taking that extreme, then there's a lot of merit to looking at what the designers intended the game to be. And saying, "we make no guarantees about the suitability of this product for other purposes". "Not for internal use, offer void where prohibited, some restrictions may apply", etc etc - these phrases exist for a reason.

Now, IMO / IME, 3e is reasonably fault tolerant. I've played characters ranging from NPC levels and/or crushing LA, to "I rolled a 12 for initiative? Rats, the over-CR ancient dragon will be dead before I get a turn". And I've played beside a similar range of fellow PCs. I've played on par with the group, and well above, and well below. And I've found 3e to be reasonably tolerant of a wide range of play, at least in my groups.

But a more CaS-oriented player might find it easy to "break the math" such that there was no longer an "appropriate" level of challenge.

Personally, I prefer the group being able to choose their "inappropriate" level of challenge. :smalltongue: So, to me, in that regard, 3e has succeeded beyond expectations. But, if that's not your thing, and you're more CaS, then, yeah, 3e is really easy to "break".


By the way, that's also the problem with Quertus stance of "only one RAW" and "a common, shared D&D multiverse for all tables" because that automatically annuls groups house ruling towards their style or creating setting-based rules or use any kind of rulings consistently.

So overall, this is toxic to the extreme.

Asking for consistency annuls consistency? Is that really the stance you meant to take? :smallconfused:

Expecting monopoly to look and play like monopoly, and not like, say, checkers, is toxic to the extreme?

The "shared multiverse" bit is a separate discussion, and should be it's own thread. I'll not clutter this one with talk of that.


4E was a straight continuation of 3E and actually pushed hard for the "one true way" by codifying the gameplay even more. It always strikes me as funny that WotC actually did what the internet community demanded of them, fixed a lot of things that stem from the rules transparency problem and it got rejected even more because of that.


That might be why 4e is so strongly disliked.

It gave people exactly what they were demanding, and it turned out that wasn't at all what they really wanted.

4e sure wasn't what I was demanding. But, then, I preferred 2e, so, "extending 3e's failure to be as fun as 2e" sure sounds like 4e to me. :smalltongue:

2D8HP
2018-04-04, 11:06 AM
Well see, reading this it seems like I shouldnt play 5e (I do hate the way failureand success is such a fine line that the rogue is just as likely to fail as the fighter) but I shouldnt play 3.5e (I dont like mages in general and my party is split so unbalanced crap will happen constantly) I shouldnt play PF for the smae reason and I shouldnt play 4e, 2e or AD&D because they are hard to understand or have no roleplaying aspects.


Therefore, you should only play Rules Cyclopedia D&D.

As an aside, there are some great retro-clones of Rules Cyclopedia.


Or oD&D, or '77 Basic (sorta 0e with later AD&D and B/X elements), which were the first FRP game I played, and the first I DM'd, and deep in my heart.

But really, the Rules Cyclopedia was awesome, and the '91 "Black box"/'94 Classic rules that match it, are really easy to follow.

So very recommended.

Rhedyn
2018-04-04, 11:18 AM
Dungeon Crawl Classic also looks pretty cool and has been made a tad more recently.

Florian
2018-04-04, 11:29 AM
@Quertus:

No, I´m not talking about extremes. Now please do remember why I asked you in the other discussion to take 3E and dissect it to find the bare-bones rules levels that the underlying math is based on.

Now please do divide between the d20 rules themselves, which I agree with you are functional for a wide variety of play styles, and the actual classes as presented in the PHB, which are heavily informed and modeled by the intended game style as presented in the DMG.

The classes, as presented, map to the CR system and should have their "balance" point based on resource expenditure, roughly 4 encounters to a rest, 4 rests to a level up. That was supposed to strike a balance between "pure" at-will classes (Fighter, Rogue) that only have to care about hp, to "pure" slot-based classes (Wizard, Cleric), with the "mixed" classes in-between.

That's not really CaS, but very near it, breaking when you go into full CaW mode because that makes a major difference how resources are handled, which is the main measure stick for this system.

So, what to do now to solve this? Force/Railroad the characters into the underlying pattern or shift the balance point down to the barest minimum, one combat round?

And yes, the only way to play Monopoly is to play Monopoly. Unless you come up with a game of your own that uses the Monopoly stuff but does something completely different. Then you're prolly not playing Monopoly as everyone else would recognize it.

1337 b4k4
2018-04-04, 11:33 AM
Or oD&D, or '77 Basic (sorta 0e with later AD&D and B/X elements), which were the first FRP game I played, and the first I DM'd, and deep in my heart.

But really, the Rules Cyclopedia was awesome, and the '91 "Black box"/'94 Classic rules that match it, are really easy to follow.

So very recommended.

It really is funny the older I get and the more I see discussions on d&d, it’s problems and what people like the more I’m convinced RC d&d was pretty close to perfect. The few issues it does have are minimal compared to later editions and it grows with the character rather than being the same game from level 1 to 20.

I wonder how history would have been different if D&D had continued along the basic line rather than the AD&D line

Nifft
2018-04-04, 11:42 AM
Or oD&D, or '77 Basic (sorta 0e with later AD&D and B/X elements), which were the first FRP game I played, and the first I DM'd, and deep in my heart.

But really, the Rules Cyclopedia was awesome, and the '91 "Black box"/'94 Classic rules that match it, are really easy to follow.

So very recommended. As I recall (and it's been a while so I might be wrong here), the Cyclopedia rules were consistent, coherent, and reasonably complete.

Much as I personally enjoyed oD&D, it didn't seem complete -- so if I'm responding to someone who can't hack 5e due to its incomplete skill system, then I sure wouldn't push oD&D on them, which was even more of a toolkit.


Dungeon Crawl Classic also looks pretty cool and has been made a tad more recently.

I'll throw in a rec for Dark Dungeons, which you can get for free here: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/177410/Dark-Dungeons

Florian
2018-04-04, 11:46 AM
I wonder how history would have been different if D&D had continued along the basic line rather than the AD&D line

Not so different. The main problem with each "mainstream RPG" is not rules, but players, often gms.
The solution to handle sh**y to mediocre gms has always been to shift power over to a codified and standardized system, same as in other fields by introducing either certain standards or tools that take the brunt of the work away from the actual worker.
We will always be faced with the same dilemma: "Ok, an experiences wargames can judge the situation, but how can we make a newbie perform the same? Well let's codify it as rules!".

Quertus
2018-04-04, 12:41 PM
@Quertus:

No, I´m not talking about extremes.

I wasn't trying to say or even imply that you were. Sorry if it came off that way. I was just trying to make it clear what I myself wasn't saying.


Now please do remember why I asked you in the other discussion to take 3E and dissect it to find the bare-bones rules levels that the underlying math is based on.

Now please do divide between the d20 rules themselves, which I agree with you are functional for a wide variety of play styles, and the actual classes as presented in the PHB, which are heavily informed and modeled by the intended game style as presented in the DMG.

The classes, as presented, map to the CR system and should have their "balance" point based on resource expenditure, roughly 4 encounters to a rest, 4 rests to a level up. That was supposed to strike a balance between "pure" at-will classes (Fighter, Rogue) that only have to care about hp, to "pure" slot-based classes (Wizard, Cleric), with the "mixed" classes in-between.

That's not really CaS, but very near it, breaking when you go into full CaW mode because that makes a major difference how resources are handled, which is the main measure stick for this system.

So, what to do now to solve this? Force/Railroad the characters into the underlying pattern or shift the balance point down to the barest minimum, one combat round?

First, this implies that it needs to be solved; second (directed @frozen_feet), this is more what a dichotomy sounds like. Personally, I'm fine with at will muggles (plus Warlock, etc) getting the spotlight in the mega-dungeon, and (slot-based) casters getting the limelight in "wilderness travel random encounter"-level one(ish)-a-day scenarios. And, personally, I believe that "varied encounter structure" is a good thing for a GM to do anyway. So, if this was intended as a dichotomy (as opposed to just an incomplete list with an implied "or..." at the end), it's a false one, because I chose option "c".

However, if forced to choose between just those two, for some "the game must absolutely be perfectly balanced no matter how much Badwrongfun the players are having" crowd, I'd make every wizard spell be "at will", and try to find ways to give the fighter equally interesting and powerful ways to contribute, both in combat and non-combat situations. Kinda the opposite of 4e's "let's make everything as monotone and useless out of combat as the 3e Fighter" approach. /unnecessary-jab-at-4e :smalltongue:

(Oooh, I just realized something - I like the rules to have cool; I hate the "rule of cool". But, unless this distinction happens to be the crux of the OP's issue, this isn't the right thread to explore that observation further.)

Rhedyn
2018-04-04, 12:50 PM
@Quertus:

No, I´m not talking about extremes. Now please do remember why I asked you in the other discussion to take 3E and dissect it to find the bare-bones rules levels that the underlying math is based on.

Now please do divide between the d20 rules themselves, which I agree with you are functional for a wide variety of play styles, and the actual classes as presented in the PHB, which are heavily informed and modeled by the intended game style as presented in the DMG.

The classes, as presented, map to the CR system and should have their "balance" point based on resource expenditure, roughly 4 encounters to a rest, 4 rests to a level up. That was supposed to strike a balance between "pure" at-will classes (Fighter, Rogue) that only have to care about hp, to "pure" slot-based classes (Wizard, Cleric), with the "mixed" classes in-between.

That's not really CaS, but very near it, breaking when you go into full CaW mode because that makes a major difference how resources are handled, which is the main measure stick for this system.

So, what to do now to solve this? Force/Railroad the characters into the underlying pattern or shift the balance point down to the barest minimum, one combat round?

And yes, the only way to play Monopoly is to play Monopoly. Unless you come up with a game of your own that uses the Monopoly stuff but does something completely different. Then you're prolly not playing Monopoly as everyone else would recognize it. This just isn't correct.

The fleshed out editions, 3.5 in particular, works well on any sort of encounter pacing, be it 1 or 40 encounters in a day, the CR system, while not perfect, was robust enough to handle it.

It also has no bearing on class balance problems. Narrative power cannot be balanced by the number of rooms in a dungeon and that is the core of 3.5 and 5e balance problems (psst casters are still just better than non-casters in 5e).

5e took out most of the scaling and numbers and rules from 4e so it just can't handle narrative pacing outside 6 encounters and 2 short rest without creating rediculous scenarios.

Anonymouswizard
2018-04-04, 01:16 PM
Well see, reading this it seems like I shouldnt play 5e (I do hate the way failureand success is such a fine line that the rogue is just as likely to fail as the fighter) but I shouldnt play 3.5e (I dont like mages in general and my party is split so unbalanced crap will happen constantly) I shouldnt play PF for the smae reason and I shouldnt play 4e, 2e or AD&D because they are hard to understand or have no roleplaying aspects.

I suggest looking outside of D&D as well.

Sticking just in the 'heroic fantasy genre' I would recommend Fantasy AGE, which has a corebook that costs just £20 and gives enough to start, although bare in mind the spell selection needs a bit of work (fixed in the Companion).

Otherwise, if you can find them in English Yggdrassil and Keltia are fantasy games by a French company about Norsemen and Arthurian Celts with a decent but not overly balanced system. The draw of the games are the settings, which attempt to be as historically and mythically accurate as possible while still allowing for gaming. The translations are no longer published, which annoys me as I'm trying to find a copy of Yggdrassil. Also pretty much entirely point buy, with your good old 'category guidelines' for character creation so everybody has points in both stats and skills.

Blah blah blah, other games, blah blah blah, nobody really cares.

If you're interested in Steampunk, Victoriana is a 'D&D meets steampunk' setting with eldren, dwarfs, wizards, and inventors. The system is interesting, being a d6 dice pool where you're never shrinking the number of dice you roll, and all in all it's rather fun.

Delta
2018-04-04, 02:00 PM
To be fair, this has more-or-less worked for both of them; so we can conclude that many roleplayers really don't care about having skills in the first place.

To put it like this: I care tons about having a good skills system in games that need them. I don't particularly need it for what I want from D&D, so I'm rather fine with the approach of 4e.

Nifft
2018-04-04, 02:09 PM
To put it like this: I care tons about having a good skills system in games that need them.

Idle curiosity: what would some of those games be?

Selene Sparks
2018-04-04, 02:15 PM
5e MM p.6 contains the following rule:

snip

The 3.5e SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm) contains this text instead:"If you don't like our rules, rip them out and make new ones" isn't a ruleset. Until you show me a glabrezu with wish in the rules, it's, by definition, not in the rules.

And, again, mandating homebrew for a game to function is bad design by definition.

In the metric that trying to anchor as much as possible in the overall system itself, it will lead to "a one true way of playing D&D", else the whole underlying math breaks down. And what were seeing for ages now in discussions, especially common on this board, is discussion on pure character or class mechanics, devoid of the overall game mechanics that fall on the gm side of things.So, it's failed on the objective metric of "because you say so?"

Look, disregarding everything else that's wrong with what you said, you a meaningful discussion of the rules between game groups must focus on mechanics and can't really feature the GM as a large-scale focus because the only thing that everyone on the forum actually shares are the rules as they are written, not a GM. This is akin to complaining that telephone conversations don't have visual cues; you can, but it's something inherent in the medium.

Now the whole classes and class mechanics were designed around the system based framework, that again was based around the idea of how the gameplay should look like, two things that are commonly rejected by the player base. That alone makes it into a grandiose failure.Again, by what metric? And please define "commonly rejected" for me.

4E was a straight continuation of 3E and actually pushed hard for the "one true way" by codifying the gameplay even more. It always strikes me as funny that WotC actually did what the internet community demanded of them, fixed a lot of things that stem from the rules transparency problem and it got rejected even more because of that.No, 4e was rejected because it was a bad game.

Seriously, D&D was just coming off 3.5, and the 4e PHB broke pretty much every record for preorders. And, I don't know if you were in the hobby, but one of the big marketing pushes was "the math just works." I, at least, couldn't go anywhere near a gaming store without hearing some variation of that line. And it's what got everyone I know who ever cared about 4e at all interested, even after gnome debacle, the harassment, and so on. This is because people want a system that just works. I, as a GM, don't want to have to make stuff up because that's why I'm buying a system. I, as a player, want to have a coherent understanding of the world such that I can make informed decision. As both, I want the math behind the encounters to line up with the math behind the PCs. And 4e's problem was, at its core, that it completely failed to deliver this. Everyone functions the exact same way(And, yes, 2[W]+stat, and some fiddly benefit nobody actually cares about is the same as every other variation thereof), the skill challenges are objectively broken(and if you ever found the designers talking about skill challenges, they would describe crap not in the rules, showing that even they didn't care), the game turned into padded sumo, and so on. The math, in 4e, just didn't work. And pretty much everyone could tell this at some level after some play, so the game tanked. Not some silly idea that people don't like rules, because people, before it came out, really wanted what 4e was promising, which is exactly what you're trying to say people didn't want.

By the way, that's also the problem with Quertus stance of "only one RAW" and "a common, shared D&D multiverse for all tables" because that automatically annuls groups house ruling towards their style or creating setting-based rules or use any kind of rulings consistently.

So overall, this is toxic to the extreme.No, again, that's flatly untrue. And I mean so far into untrue I have no idea how you even got there.

That might be why 4e is so strongly disliked.

It gave people exactly what they were demanding, and it turned out that wasn't at all what they really wanted.No, as I mentioned above, it simply failed to deliver on what it promised, because 4e was bad on pretty much every level.

Remember, these are the guys who threw out what was the basic premise for ToB(one of the more popular 3.5 books, which was made from scraps of early 4e drafts) to give everyone the same awful at-will/encounter/daily spread and thought they fixed everything.

Nearly all of the rulebooks encourage creation and invention by players. 3rd edition has a specific section for creating your own prestige classee, base classes and allowing wizards and sorcerers to research their own spells, complete with guidelines on how you create them and may attempt to balance them.First of all, no. There aren't really guidelines in most cases beyond "good luck lol." But 3.5 is robust enough, functional enough, that I don't need to homebrew stuff to get what I need.

Well see, reading this it seems like I shouldnt play 5e (I do hate the way failureand success is such a fine line that the rogue is just as likely to fail as the fighter) but I shouldnt play 3.5e (I dont like mages in general and my party is split so unbalanced crap will happen constantly) I shouldnt play PF for the smae reason and I shouldnt play 4e, 2e or AD&D because they are hard to understand or have no roleplaying aspects.Now this isn't necessarily true. There are 3.5 casters that can, in fact, hang with martials. They're just not wizards, clerics, and so on. If you can convince your melee folks to try out Tome of Battle, then you can have Warmages(CA), Beguilers(PHB2), Dread Necromancers(HoH), Healers(MH), Bards, and so on all hang out around that power level(or lower, with Healers).

Delta
2018-04-04, 03:03 PM
Idle curiosity: what would some of those games be?

Games where the non-combat-encounter relevant skills of characters play a big role, anything with a heavy focus on character, social interaction, drama and the like. Since I wouldn't use D&D (any edition) to ever run a game like that, it doesn't really matter for me how well 4e handles those kind of situations.

Vhaidara
2018-04-04, 05:32 PM
No, 4e was rejected because it was a bad game.

This is not factually correct, because it's a matter of opinion. Imo, 4e is the best out of 3.X, 4e, and 5e (the d20 systems I have experience with. From my (admittedly limited and second hand) knowledge of older editions, they sounded absolutely terrible. 4e has significantly better functional class diversity and options than 3.X, and I've never had more fun with a skill system than in 4e.

Now, I will give 3.5 one thing: it has, by far, the most advanced character building minigame I've ever seen. The sheer variety of insane stupid things you can do with it is amazing. It's the RPG equivalent of those people who make working 16-bit computers in minecraft. And while I respect the hell out of it and find it incredibly cool, imo, it make the system terrible to actually PLAY

Anonymouswizard
2018-04-04, 05:43 PM
Just think, GURPS and similar systems ate even more powerful once you know how to use them.

Intelligent blueberry muffins anybody?

2D8HP
2018-04-04, 08:47 PM
Since the thread is musing on skill systems, I'll list my two favorites:


As a Gamemaster/"Keeper": Call of C'thullu, RuneQuest, and other "BRP" games; sometimes there's "mods" but mostly players roll under their skill percentage that's on their character record sheet

As a player: original Dungeons & Dragons; I look the DM/referee in the eye tell 'em what my character tries to do and 'e decides my chances, sometimes I'd bother to first ask what my character guesses are the odds of success first.


Yeah it basically comes down to what's less work for me, as I'm just that lazy.

Mordaedil
2018-04-05, 01:27 AM
First of all, no. There aren't really guidelines in most cases beyond "good luck lol." But 3.5 is robust enough, functional enough, that I don't need to homebrew stuff to get what I need.

I'm just saying it exists, but I'd agree that they were extremely lackluster. And yes, 3.5 does have enough content for you to not need to make your own, but it's always an option.

I think the only guideline I remember is a table with regards to how many dice of damage arcane casters should be allowed to throw per spell level. Kind of a bizarre choice when there are so many other variables to consider for balancing.

Florian
2018-04-05, 01:39 AM
Since the thread is musing on skill systems

What I really dislike about skill systems is the limiting effect they can have in actual play. I had it more than once that a player didn't act with his character, because he thought the skill was to low or there were no ranks in it. Which is pretty stupid. You don't need high charisma or ranks in diplomacy to talk to an NPC.....

And I do have a problem with "skill bloat" in systems that use fixed value skill points. While it might be nice to have Spot and Listen as separate skills, unless you also have Smell and Touch, the distinction doesn't matter because it is an incomplete simulation then. Awareness is sufficient.

Ok, what I like and why I like it:

L5R: The idea of an " skill emphasis". The difference between Kenjutsu and Kenjutsu (Katana) is not that you're better with a Katana, our just fail less, by ignoring the first critical failure of a roll.

Splittermond: Basic 2d10 + ATT + SKILL vs TN system. What I like is that for each 3 ranks in a skill, you gain one feat associated with the skill (from a list). Not only are the skill uses getting broader, but two characters with the same skills and ranks can have vastly different feats and perform differently.

Kurald Galain
2018-04-05, 01:58 AM
That might be why 4e is so strongly disliked.

It gave people exactly what they were demanding, and it turned out that wasn't at all what they really wanted.
That's a fair point. Specifically, it gave exactly what a vocal minority of forum users was demanding, and it turned out that wasn't at all what the community as a whole really wanted.

Although Selene also has a good point that one of 4E's main selling points was "the math just works" and that it took the players about a week to figure out that no, it did not. Queue a long string of errata and patches, taking more than two years to come up with math that actually works, just to be discarded in favor of the "New 4E" which broke the math again. It's almost as if game designers are clueless about basic probability calculations :smallamused:

Selene Sparks
2018-04-05, 03:37 AM
This is not factually correct, because it's a matter of opinion. Imo, 4e is the best out of 3.X, 4e, and 5e (the d20 systems I have experience with. From my (admittedly limited and second hand) knowledge of older editions, they sounded absolutely terrible.I'm sorry, but it kind of objectively is. By every objective metric, 4e failed spectacularly. The hobby shrunk dramatically from the wild success of 3.X, they fired the head of D&D every year of the product, and the math was an objective failure on pretty much every level. I mean, Pathfinder, a mediocre modification of the previous edition that, at least at the beginning, just made the core problems worse, was regularly outperforming 4e. These are hard facts that tell you that the product was a bad product. I concede that success as a product isn't always a perfect indicator of the quality of the game(see OWoD, although considering its age, the LARP elements, and the fact that people primarily cared about the setting and premise, it's not a fair comparison), but in those objective metrics, and any other objective measure I can think of, 4e failed.

Beyond that, math fix feats were pretty were and remain one of the worst game design decisions imaginable. The reduction of monsters was a massive step backwards in game design. 4e, in addition to the monetary aspects, regularly made awful design decisions. I honestly have trouble coming up with things 4e did right. I have some notable respect for the early stage of the game, and the writers of Orcus(the 4e prototype), because they were trying new things, but the fact that their experiments were failures is, I don't think, a debatable point, and the fact that they let the terrible system with fundamentally bad math get out as a finished product is inexcusable.

You can have fun with a bad system, and if you do, more power to you, but that doesn't change the quality of the system.

4e has significantly better functional class diversity and options than 3.X, and I've never had more fun with a skill system than in 4e.Again, no it doesn't. Every class is simply the same. 2[W]+whatever and a fiddly effect with an irregular duration that makes bookkeeping a pain on literally every class's powers isn't diversity. In fact, if you look at some of the design notes during the Orcus phase(that is, when designing the prototypes), they initially had a bunch of different systems for different classes, which were all cut, and some of which were later turned into ToB, one of the best-received books in 3.5. But, again, the designers threw that out to deliberately put everyone on the same power schedule and pattern; that's the opposite of diversity.

And, again, the skill system is objectively mathematically bad. Here's (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49652) a nice analysis of the fundamental problems with the skill system.

If you enjoy it, I wish you the best in using it, because having fun is the most important part of an RPG, but the skill system is objectively bad and failed on literally every promise put forward.

I'm just saying it exists, but I'd agree that they were extremely lackluster. And yes, 3.5 does have enough content for you to not need to make your own, but it's always an option.Not really. As loathe as I am to support Pathfinder on general principles, look at how they handled the racial construction system. That's what an actual system looks like. The 3.5 DMG's section on creating classes lacks any rules at all. And I'm being literal here, there isn't anything specific. There's a handful of shoulds and cans, but nothing that even resembles actual rules.

That's a fair point. Specifically, it gave exactly what a vocal minority of forum users was demanding, and it turned out that wasn't at all what the community as a whole really wanted.Except it didn't. I genuinely cannot think of a single promise that the 4e designers put forward that they delivered on when it came to the mechanics. And, again, the 4e preorder numbers were insane. People clearly wanted what they were promising, just not what they delivered.

Mordaedil
2018-04-05, 05:39 AM
Not really. As loathe as I am to support Pathfinder on general principles, look at how they handled the racial construction system. That's what an actual system looks like. The 3.5 DMG's section on creating classes lacks any rules at all. And I'm being literal here, there isn't anything specific. There's a handful of shoulds and cans, but nothing that even resembles actual rules.
That's true, it just lists how it'd make a theoretic new class it dubs the Witch, but no real guidelines otherwise.

But my point was that it was there, something that lacks from non-3rd or Pathfinder editions.

Quertus
2018-04-05, 06:45 AM
4e has significantly better functional class diversity and options than 3.X, and I've never had more fun with a skill system than in 4e.

Now, I will give 3.5 one thing: it has, by far, the most advanced character building minigame I've ever seen. The sheer variety of insane stupid things you can do with it is amazing. It's the RPG equivalent of those people who make working 16-bit computers in minecraft. And while I respect the hell out of it and find it incredibly cool, imo, it make the system terrible to actually PLAY

Ok, this is so far from my experience, I gotta ask how you came to these conclusions.

I see 4e as having the least functional diversity of any D&D system ever written. I mean, Heck, I could write 6e as having only make and female character, and it would have more diversity, so long as make and female meant something different in the game world. 3e had too much diversity in capabilities and power level for some people to handle (particularly people in groups who don't know how to balance to the group). So how on earth do you perceive 4e as having the most diversity?

I find 2e the most fun to play, and 4e the least. But fun is utterly subjective. So, what made 4e fun?

And why do you consider having the capability to build whatever you want to play something that makes a system terrible to actually play? I kinda think the opposite, personally...


That's true, it just lists how it'd make a theoretic new class it dubs the Witch, but no real guidelines otherwise.

But my point was that it was there, something that lacks from non-3rd or Pathfinder editions.

2e had a section on creating new classes, complete with tables of costs. And it had Skills and Powers.

Vhaidara
2018-04-05, 07:24 AM
Ok, this is so far from my experience, I gotta ask how you came to these conclusions.

I see 4e as having the least functional diversity of any D&D system ever written. I mean, Heck, I could write 6e as having only make and female character, and it would have more diversity, so long as make and female meant something different in the game world. 3e had to much diversity in capabilities and power level for some people to handle (especially people in groups who don't know how to balance to the group). So how on earth do you perceive 4e as having the most diversity?

I find 2e the most fun to play, and 4e the least. But fun is utterly subjective. So, what made 4e fun?

And why do you consider having the capability to build whatever you want to play something that makes a system terrible to actually play? I kinda think the opposite, personally...

The problem with 3.5 is that while it has a billion options, 90% of them are incompatible with each other due to a massive power gap that is present, ranging from "who the hell thought that was okay?" to "this is actively making my character worse"

4e does a much better job of narrowing the range so that people can play together. I can still build these weird janky things and they'll be able to keep up. They won't be optimal, but they won't be completely outshined (one example is a friend's build that gets to chuck a glaive in someone's face and walk away to stab someone else with the glaive every time an enemy moves adjacent to him).

And beyond that, 4e's consistent math makes running it and writing enemies a joy. The level based monster scaling is a system that actually works, as opposed to 3.x's CR system which straight up flops on its face.

The reason it's a problem from 3.5 is that it makes at table power level variety a massive problem, and more to the point it makes it easy for those problems to arise by accident. A druid who just goes for "I'm a bear, riding a bear, summoning bears" will probably end up showing up the fighter who invests all his feats into being the very best with a greatsword.

Additionally, I find 4e's power system FAR more palatable than "I full attack" or "I cast the Win spell"

Kurald Galain
2018-04-05, 07:29 AM
The problem with 3.5 is that while it has a billion options, 90% of them are incompatible with each other due to a massive power gap that is present, ranging from "who the hell thought that was okay?" to "this is actively making my character worse"
So your point is not actually "4E is more diverse", but "4E is less diverse and I prefer that". :smallcool:


And beyond that, 4e's consistent math makes running it and writing enemies a joy. The level based monster scaling is a system that actually works, as opposed to 3.x's CR system which straight up flops on its face.
You're aware of Needlefang Drake Swarms, yes? (i.e. an example of a creature that is so wrongly CR'ed in 4E that using it as written tends to cause TPKs).

Anonymouswizard
2018-04-05, 07:45 AM
4e has a different type of diversity to earlier editions and 5e.

There's little differentiation in terms of what resources you get, and damage is pretty constant between the different classes in the roles. So yes, there's a lack of diversity in that respect (although it means that in theory the maths works), but it means that in theory we can allow the secondary features to pick up the slack.

4e begins by narrowing down the first set of classes to the Heroic Fantasy genre it wants. Which means the Bard and the Sorcerer are out, because Warlords and Warlocks fit better. It then tries to make certain each role feels and plays differently, and then as a third concern wants each class to feel different.

Whether that works will depend on who you are, I think 4e did a good job with getting classes to feel different, and only got better as it went along (I prefer the Runepriest to the Cleric because I feel like it had a tighter design that knew what was special about it, and wasn't split between maces and lasers). Like 3.X 4e was at it's worst when it first came out, with classes not really getting unique play options in the Player's Handbook but instead flavouring their role differently. When the PhB2 came out we got classes that could switch between two 'forms' which had access to different powers, that had companion spirits, and so on. the PhB3 gave us classes which used Power Points instead of Encounter Powers, and a couple of classes only I care about.

4e did branch out at the end, with Essentials (which I am actually interested in even though I no longer own 4e), which tried to make everything simpler.

But 4e would probably have worked better if instead of pick your class you picked a Power Source, a Role, and possibly a Secondary Role or power source, and selected your powers based on that. So you might have a Martial Defender (who can select from the Martial Defender set of powers), an Arcane/Primal Leader (who can select Arcane Leader powers and Primal Leader powers), and a Divine Controller/Striker (who can select Divine Controller powers and Divine Striker powers). Give each combination an ability open to those who picked it as their Power Source and Role (but not their secondary), but turn things like Channel Divinity into Feats. Lots more diversity there if you pull it off.

Quertus
2018-04-05, 08:05 AM
But 4e would probably have worked better if instead of pick your class you picked a Power Source, a Role, and possibly a Secondary Role or power source, and selected your powers based on that. So you might have a Martial Defender (who can select from the Martial Defender set of powers), an Arcane/Primal Leader (who can select Arcane Leader powers and Primal Leader powers), and a Divine Controller/Striker (who can select Divine Controller powers and Divine Striker powers). Give each combination an ability open to those who picked it as their Power Source and Role (but not their secondary), but turn things like Channel Divinity into Feats. Lots more diversity there if you pull it off.

Clearly, one person's "pro" is another's "con".

In that vein, would anyone object to, say, D&D 6e having this level of modular character design, where you select power source and role(s)?

And, perhaps independent of that, do the same for out-of-combat role(s)?

Kurald Galain
2018-04-05, 08:09 AM
4E classes within a role do play differently...

...but they're differences like how fighters mark creatures they attack, paladins mark as a swift action, and wardens mark adjacent creatures. Or how rangers, rogues, and warlocks each deal their striker bonus damage in a slightly different fashion.

I mean, it undeniably is different and has a clear impact on tactics, but I can easily understand that some people don't find it different enough, or that they find that it doesn't impact roleplaying.

Delta
2018-04-05, 08:15 AM
I mean, it undeniably is different and has a clear impact on tactics, but I can easily understand that some people don't find it different enough, or that they find that it doesn't impact roleplaying.

Oh, absolutely. I'd never say that 4e is a good game for every one. Matter of fact, in my opinion it's only a good game for exactly one type of play, but as far as smashing through combat encounters and gathering mountains of loot goes, for me it hits the right sweet spot between being so structured it makes running and playing it really easy yet still giving you enough crunchy options to make it fun.

Ratter
2018-04-05, 08:25 AM
I would recommend Fantasy AGE,
Ive played fantasy AGE before, and you have I think it was 3 classes? (idk) this seems kind of wierd to me

Nifft
2018-04-05, 08:43 AM
4E classes within a role do play differently...

...but they're differences like how fighters mark creatures they attack, paladins mark as a swift action, and wardens mark adjacent creatures. Or how rangers, rogues, and warlocks each deal their striker bonus damage in a slightly different fashion.

I mean, it undeniably is different and has a clear impact on tactics, but I can easily understand that some people don't find it different enough, or that they find that it doesn't impact roleplaying.

The biggest issue with 4e discussions is that the 4e PHB reads like a VCR manual.

In actual play, the classes are distinct, and each one feels unique given how you can interact with the battlefield (including mobility, forcing opponent movement, or exerting zones of control).

In actual play, there's a striking diversity of styles.

But if you've never played the game -- and there's a sizable forum population who don't play any edition -- if you've never played the game, then all you have to go on is the presentation in the books (which is clear, but not evocative).

So, that's what you'll be hearing. An impression based on looking at the presentation, not playing the game.

4e wasn't exciting to read. But it could be fun to play.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-05, 09:01 AM
4e wasn't exciting to read. But it could be fun to play.

This is my experience as well. I only had limited play time and everyone was new, but classes didn't feel the same. At the core they're similar (using the same frameworks), but in play they feel different. And the books (especially the PHB) do a crappy job of showing that difference.

Anonymouswizard
2018-04-05, 09:01 AM
Ive played fantasy AGE before, and you have I think it was 3 classes? (idk) this seems kind of wierd to me

Yeah, 3 classes. Warrior, Rogue, and Mage. The idea being that whatever concept you have probably boils down to one of those three with Talents added. I tend to like a small number of broad archetypes over specific ones (or 5e's weird mix of broad and narrow), I'm a firm supporter of 'my class is elf'. Remember that in Fantasy AGE Paladin would be a specialisation, which you get two (one you pick up between level 4 and level 10, the other between about level 12 and level 18).

If you think that's kind of weird, wait until you get to point buy games. No classes, just a stack of points and things to spend them on. They can work really well, being a lot more flexible than even the broadest classes, but can easily cause wild imbalances based on what's been picked. A high combat game where only one character has a greater than 25% chance to hit somebody? I've seen it. A party including a nun, a ninja, a private investigator, and a reformed diabloist? I've seen it. An old woman, a nurse, a magic-using priest, and a LARPer? The only reason I haven't seen it is because the GM banned my priest character.

2D8HP
2018-04-05, 09:48 AM
Ive played fantasy AGE before, and you have I think it was 3 classes? (idk) this seems kind of wierd to me


Oh the OP!

Welcome back!

History time!

The 1974 Dungeons & Dragons rules had three classes:

"Fighting-Men includes the characters of elves and dwarves and even hobbits.

Magic-Users includes only men and elves.

Clerics are limited to men only. All non-human players are restricted in some aspects and gifted in others"

Sadly, while the smell of a few made me wonder, I never actually saw any "non-human players unless a cat moving a d20 across the floor counts.


:frown:


Now despite my STUNNING HUMILITY I have my own suggestions for just three classes:


1) PC's like Fafhrd from the stories of Fritz Leiber, which would have elements of Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger, and Thief

2) PC's like The Grey Mouser from the stories of Fritz Leiber, which would have elements of Fighter, Sorcerer, Thief, and Wizard

3) Freak show PC's of whatever kind that will entice other players besides me to the table despite their lacking my absolutly objective correctness, good looks, stunning humility, and my total absence of commiting the vile act of sarcasm and bluetext which I never use EVER!!!



...4e wasn't exciting to read. But it could be fun to play.


Good to know.

Thanks!


:smile:

Ratter
2018-04-05, 11:16 AM
Yeah, 3 classes. Warrior, Rogue, and Mage. The idea being that whatever concept you have probably boils down to one of those three with Talents added. I tend to like a small number of broad archetypes over specific ones (or 5e's weird mix of broad and narrow), I'm a firm supporter of 'my class is elf'. Remember that in Fantasy AGE Paladin would be a specialisation, which you get two (one you pick up between level 4 and level 10, the other between about level 12 and level 18).


Now I just have to find an online group that runs this ...

Selene Sparks
2018-04-05, 01:55 PM
That's true, it just lists how it'd make a theoretic new class it dubs the Witch, but no real guidelines otherwise.

But my point was that it was there, something that lacks from non-3rd or Pathfinder editions.I see what you're saying now. I simply disagree with your definition of something being there, so I think agreeing to disagree over this is probably for the best.

That said, 2e actually did have class creation rules. They were pretty bonkers, but they were there.

The problem with 3.5 is that while it has a billion options, 90% of them are incompatible with each other due to a massive power gap that is present, ranging from "who the hell thought that was okay?" to "this is actively making my character worse"And 4e makes everyone who's not the exact same functional role, and preferably same class, as everyone else an actual liability in combat, because they're not engaging in their share of kiting/soaking/paladin shenanigansing.

And beyond that, 4e's consistent math makes running it and writing enemies a joy. The level based monster scaling is a system that actually works, as opposed to 3.x's CR system which straight up flops on its face.Except, no. The math in 4e is bad on every level, including in combat. At least in 3.X, discarding dragons and a handful of ludicrous things like Ephemeral Swarms or Adamantine Horrors, the CR function was useful.

The reason it's a problem from 3.5 is that it makes at table power level variety a massive problem, and more to the point it makes it easy for those problems to arise by accident. A druid who just goes for "I'm a bear, riding a bear, summoning bears" will probably end up showing up the fighter who invests all his feats into being the very best with a greatsword.Except that a druid also has the option of going hard BFC, probably being more useful overall than the bears and letting the fighter with the greatsword shine. This isn't an option in 4e if someone else picked one of the bad classes and someone else picked up a good class, because the bottom line is the classes all do basically the same thing.

Additionally, I find 4e's power system FAR more palatable than "I full attack" or "I cast the Win spell"I, again, disagree, because the power system is even less dynamic than the full attack or win spell system, and that's without getting into the massive diversity of other power systems within 3.X.

I've genuinely had, in a game I was playing in, a player who had to leave at the start of a boss fight write down the actions they expected to take for the combat. And you know what? It worked. Because 4e combat is predictable padded sumo in the majority of cases, and every combat follows the exact same pattern of popping encounters then at wills unless its a boss fight. 3.5, between all the subsystems, the length of combat, and so on, has never had this happen in any game I've been in.

But 4e would probably have worked better if instead of pick your class you picked a Power Source, a Role, and possibly a Secondary Role or power source, and selected your powers based on that. So you might have a Martial Defender (who can select from the Martial Defender set of powers), an Arcane/Primal Leader (who can select Arcane Leader powers and Primal Leader powers), and a Divine Controller/Striker (who can select Divine Controller powers and Divine Striker powers). Give each combination an ability open to those who picked it as their Power Source and Role (but not their secondary), but turn things like Channel Divinity into Feats. Lots more diversity there if you pull it off.That doesn't solve the underlying problems of the system, though, unless you thoroughly revise the power system as a whole, as well as alter what math there is underlying the game.

In that vein, would anyone object to, say, D&D 6e having this level of modular character design, where you select power source and role(s)?

And, perhaps independent of that, do the same for out-of-combat role(s)?Power sources would probably be fine, so long as you actually differentiated them, but the roles thing was a bad idea. "Roles" shouldn't be a thing at all, and you should instead have "responsibilities." That is, instead of having party damage mitigation handled by classes labeled "tank" who are all high-defense and high-HP, you have the responsibility of damage mitigation, which can be handled in numerous ways(CC, debuffs, etc) so you don't have the players pidgeonholed into something they don't want to be because the raidgroup needs a tank and we don't have one.

4E classes within a role do play differently...

...but they're differences like how fighters mark creatures they attack, paladins mark as a swift action, and wardens mark adjacent creatures. Or how rangers, rogues, and warlocks each deal their striker bonus damage in a slightly different fashion.

I mean, it undeniably is different and has a clear impact on tactics, but I can easily understand that some people don't find it different enough, or that they find that it doesn't impact roleplaying.The problem is, again, that this is only true in the worst possible way.

The game actively incentivizes the whole party doubling down on whatever role they decided on, that is everyone should be ranged DPS, or melee DPS, or all paladins, or what have you.

The biggest issue with 4e discussions is that the 4e PHB reads like a VCR manual.

In actual play, the classes are distinct, and each one feels unique given how you can interact with the battlefield (including mobility, forcing opponent movement, or exerting zones of control).

In actual play, there's a striking diversity of styles.In actual play, this really isn't the case. "Oh, hey, I get a slightly different mediocre rider on my encounter power" isn't diversity, and the game actively discourages diversity within the party.

Florian
2018-04-05, 02:03 PM
@Selene:

Shut up and write your own system already.

Anonymouswizard
2018-04-05, 03:10 PM
That doesn't solve the underlying problems of the system, though, unless you thoroughly revise the power system as a whole, as well as alter what math there is underlying the game.

I was focused on one problem, but you know what? I'm going to take that as a challenge.

I'm going to see if I can write a system that takes the AEDU power system, goes for a more free form style of character building. At the same time I'm going to see if they can fix the other problems. My goals are within the spoiler.


Balance across all four roles over ten levels.
Each role feels unique, and feels like it contributes.
At least one competitive build that deals no damage.
Science Fantasy genre, and all powers must work with both melee and ranged weapons.
Monsters that make for fun encounters.


Not in the list is any ability to use an alternative resource system. Because that's not a problem, it's a design choice. I know it's not one that you like, but it's a valid choice. The challenge here is to make a game which uses the AEDU system, has characters that feel different, and so on.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-05, 03:20 PM
Because that's not a problem, it's a design choice. I know it's not one that you like, but it's a valid choice.

And that quote sums up this entire thread (and all the similar ones on this forum) for me. It's so easy to mistake "I don't like that choice" with "anyone who makes that choice is incompetent" or "that's bad."

Nifft
2018-04-05, 04:17 PM
In actual play, this really isn't the case.

I've got three years of experience both running and playing 4e that says it really is the case, the classes really do play differently when dice hit the table in earnest.

Do you have any actual experience with 4e?

Or is this just an uninformed opinion?

Delta
2018-04-05, 05:12 PM
In actual play, this really isn't the case.

Um, yes it is. You may not like the way 4e classes are made up and I fully understand that, but to say they all play the same is just factually wrong.

kyoryu
2018-04-05, 06:03 PM
That's a fair point. Specifically, it gave exactly what a vocal minority of forum users was demanding, and it turned out that wasn't at all what the community as a whole really wanted.

More importantly, it de-emphasized a lot of things that 3.x players really enjoyed. In doing so, it alienated a good number of D&D 3.x players.

There's also the fact that it's in the "D&D Uncanny Valley", in that there were a lot of things that, initially, looked like traditional D&D things but really weren't, or places where they took terms from previous editions and applied them to utterly different things. It just shattered a lot of expectations, and that's usually not a great thing.

I don't think D&D 4e was a bad game. I really don't. I do think that its design was almost guaranteed to alienate a large chunk of the D&D 3.x fanbase.

(disclaimer: I actually prefer 4e to 3.x. The things that 3.x does well aren't things I actually want from D&D).

Rhedyn
2018-04-05, 08:58 PM
I know our group is thrilled to be running 4e for the first time rather than giving 5e another chance to disappoint us.

The problem with 3.x is that it is hard to GM. Pathfinder is arguably harder than 3.5 in some respects because the builds are more fiddly to understand as a GM. Where as in 3.5 if you list off the classes you took, then I have a rough idea what you can do. Oh sure there are worse 3.5 builds, but you actually have to try to make them complicated rather than the default "talent" structure of PF.

Quertus
2018-04-05, 09:11 PM
I know our group is thrilled to be running 4e for the first time rather than giving 5e another chance to disappoint us.

The problem with 3.x is that it is hard to GM. Pathfinder is arguably harder than 3.5 in some respects because the builds are more fiddly to understand as a GM. Where as in 3.5 if you list off the classes you took, then I have a rough idea what you can do. Oh sure there are worse 3.5 builds, but you actually have to try to make them complicated rather than the default "talent" structure of PF.

This assumes a play style where the GM knows or cares about the PC's capabilities. As GM, I personally couldn't care less what you can do, so long as a) you are balanced to the party, and b) the party is balanced to the module.

That having been said, I thoroughly agree that 3e is still the hardest to GM of the D&D editions that I'm familiar with.

Mechalich
2018-04-05, 10:53 PM
With regard to the edition wars, 4e specifically has the problem that many of the design choices made fell outside the 'D&D' conceptual space that a huge portion of the playerbase possessed.

When you're making a game you only get to define 'what this game is' one time. The ideas will carry forward into new editions. So choices made in a new iteration of the same game will be evaluated both on their merits and on their relationship to what people feel the game actually is.

What is D&D? This question was largely answered during the later 1e and early 2e eras when the game became popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s when TTRPGs were going big and TSR was able to sustain multiple best-selling novel lines. When 3e came along it largely claimed to be roughly the same game as the editions that had preceded it and kept a lot of the same labels, even down to obscure things like the names of the planes and the lore behind some truly weird monsters. 3e actually played very differently from 2e or 1e, especially once people dug into it a lot but this took some awareness and many of the early examples or play and scenarios make it clear that even the designers hadn't figured out how this was supposed to work. So there was the appearance of continuity if not the reality of it.

4e, by contrast, was obviously vastly different from the moment the first promotional materials hit. 4e actually does slay a bunch of D&D sacred cows, for better or worse, but many fans were attached to various of those sacred cows. I was a part of the Planescape community at the time, and that group revolted outright, because 4e murdered Planescape. Nobody in that group was even the slightest bit interested in evaluating 4e on the merits, they cared only about the manifest fact that it was impossible to use the system to run Planescape.

This is hardly a unique phenomenon. White-Wolf managed to do almost the exact same thing going from oWoD to nWoD at more or less the same time.

2D8HP
2018-04-06, 12:26 AM
....What is D&D? This question was largely answered during the later 1e and early 2e eras when the game became popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s when TTRPGs were going big and TSR was able to sustain multiple best-selling novel lines. When 3e came along it largely claimed to be roughly the same game as the editions that had preceded it and kept a lot of the same labels, even down to obscure things like the names of the planes and the lore behind some truly weird monsters. 3e actually played very differently from 2e or 1e, especially once people dug into it a lot but this took some awareness and many of the early examples or play and scenarios make it clear that even the designers hadn't figured out how this was supposed to work. So there was the appearance of continuity if not the reality of it....


Now that is an extremely interesting insight to me.

I first DM'd D&D in 1978, and then in '79 played at a table with guys who started play in '75, and I continued with that gaming circle till about '86, with a few reunions until '89, but less D&D and more other games from '83 on, with my walking completely away from any new D&D rules upon the release of 1985's Unearthed Arcana (which I really didn't like, though I wish I had a copy now!), until recently starting D&D again with 5e.

Often folks in this Forum (and other sites), will make statements about "D&D has always....", "D&D historically..", "traditional D&D is..." that have just not rung true to me, and I'll dig out my '74 to 79' rules, go Nuh-uh!, and quote from my old books, and dim memories about what to me "Is D&D", but if I read you right @Mechalich, my D&D is "pre-history" and doesn't matter, because "What is D&D" formed after I stopped playing it, effectively making the old D&D I knew, non-existent, not unlike a scholar of pre-Columbian civilisation talking American history with someone for whom "American History" begins in 1776.

For example, in the early rules, besides Hobbits, Balrogs, and Ents they were some bits of rules for the Mars of Burroughs John Carter novels, and John Carter as well as Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are listed as what D&D emulates, but there was no mention of Drizzt, Elminster, The Harpers, or indeed anything about the "Forgotten Realms", and an argument may be made over which is "traditional D&D" (hint: I'm not fond of Faerun)

Oh well,

"Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra"

and

"Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel"



:frown:


I miss a common language

Kurald Galain
2018-04-06, 12:50 AM
There's also the fact that it's in the "D&D Uncanny Valley", in that there were a lot of things that, initially, looked like traditional D&D things but really weren't, or places where they took terms from previous editions and applied them to utterly different things. It just shattered a lot of expectations, and that's usually not a great thing.
Precisely.

And not just expectations from earlier editions, either. Fluff builds a lot of expectations, and 4E just has too many places where the description suggests that a power or feat does one thing, and if you actually read the rules it doesn't do that. Like for example, a death spell that is described as instantly killing enemies, but that actually just deals more-or-less the same damage as any other spell of that level.

(now I do NOT mean that the game must have save-or-die spells, but if you describe a spell as save-or-die then it had better actually kill stuff; if it doesn't, then the description needs to change)

Or like the druid that can turn into any animal he wants, but none of the forms make any mechanical difference: if you turn into a bird, you can't fly; if you turn into a fish, you can't swim. It would have been more consistent to rule that the druid can turn into (e.g.) any land-based mammal that he wants, and have bird/fish/whatnot be feats or something. Point is, with rules that state you can technically do X but it will not really act like X or have any impact, then you're going to end up with frustrated players.




Um, yes it is. You may not like the way 4e classes are made up and I fully understand that, but to say they all play the same is just factually wrong.
4E classes within a role do play differently...

...but they're differences like how fighters mark creatures they attack, paladins mark as a swift action, and wardens mark adjacent creatures. Or how rangers, rogues, and warlocks each deal their striker bonus damage in a slightly different fashion.

I mean, it undeniably is different and has a clear impact on tactics, but I can easily understand that some people don't find it different enough, or that they find that it doesn't impact roleplaying.

Mechalich
2018-04-06, 01:07 AM
Often folks in this Forum (and other sites), will make statements about "D&D has always....", "D&D historically..", "traditional D&D is..." that have just not rung true to me, and I'll dig out my '74 to 79' rules, go Nuh-uh!, and quote from my old books, and dim memories about what to me "Is D&D", but if I read you right @Mechalich, my D&D is "pre-history" and doesn't matter, because "What is D&D" formed after I stopped playing it, effectively making the old D&D I knew, non-existent, not unlike a scholar of pre-Columbian civilisation talking American history with someone for whom "American History" begins in 1776.


It's not that early D&D 'doesn't matter' it's just that it had no real presence in the popular consciousness. D&D exploded into mass popularity in the mid-1980s, when TSR was the largest publisher of fantasy and science fiction in the United States (every fan of modern fantasy's prominence owes a debt to the Dragonlance Chronicles) and the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon was on the air. So the image the public and the majority of the playerbase gained of 'D&D' was of the material that was popular at that time, which was late 1e AD&D and later 2e AD&D. This was after Gygax and many of the original team members had been fired and the game had moved in a significantly different direction from its founding.

In many ways talking about the 1970s history of D&D is like talking about a band before they get on a record label and release a charting single. It's interesting historical information, but it does little to shape the image of the band in the popular consciousness.

Knaight
2018-04-06, 01:08 AM
Precisely.

And not just expectations from earlier editions, either. Fluff builds a lot of expectations, and 4E just has too many places where the description suggests that a power or feat does one thing, and if you actually read the rules it doesn't do that. Like for example, a death spell that is described as instantly killing enemies, but that actually just deals more-or-less the same damage as any other spell of that level.

(now I mean that the game must have save-or-die spells, but if you describe a spell as save-or-die then it had better actually kill stuff; if it doesn't, then the description needs to change)

Or like the druid that can turn into any animal he wants, but none of the forms make any mechanical difference: if you turn into a bird, you can't fly; if you turn into a fish, you can't swim. It would have been more consistent to rule that the druid can turn into (e.g.) any land-based mammal that he wants, and have bird/fish/whatnot be feats or something. Point is, with rules that state you can technically do X but it will not really act like X or have any impact, then you're going to end up with frustrated players.

There's a term I like to use for this sort of thing - qualitative mechanics, here defined as any mechanic that acts primarily upon the setting fiction. Wildshape usually fits this, as it turns someone into an animal, and thus grants them the in fiction abilities of said animal, though this applies less to editions which tried to exhaustively define animals so there was always a statblock. Outside of D&D this sort of thing is ubiquitous, but D&D has tended to be low on it in general.

Even by D&D standards though, 4e was built in such a way that it pretty thoroughly avoided these, which came across particularly strong in terms of how the magic system was defined. Other editions of fireball usually come across as "there's a ball of fire, it light things and melts things and generally acts like fire, and also game mechanically it does damage" where in 4e it was very much "[x] damage in area".

I also suspect this is part of where the 4e as videogame accusations came from, particularly the ones based more in general feel than in specific argumentation. Videogames are pretty bad at qualitative mechanics, and in 2008 they were significantly worse, without much in the way of systemic games that made more use of them. This general intuition was then mapped onto game mechanics where there was more of an existing vocabulary to describe them, even if they didn't fit that well.

Selene Sparks
2018-04-06, 01:16 AM
I was focused on one problem, but you know what? I'm going to take that as a challenge.

I'm going to see if I can write a system that takes the AEDU power system, goes for a more free form style of character building. At the same time I'm going to see if they can fix the other problems. My goals are within the spoiler.


Balance across all four roles over ten levels.
Each role feels unique, and feels like it contributes.
At least one competitive build that deals no damage.
Science Fantasy genre, and all powers must work with both melee and ranged weapons.
Monsters that make for fun encounters.
Good luck! Please share your results on the forum if you do, I'd love to see something that accomplishes these goals actually done.

Not in the list is any ability to use an alternative resource system. Because that's not a problem, it's a design choice. I know it's not one that you like, but it's a valid choice. The challenge here is to make a game which uses the AEDU system, has characters that feel different, and so on.It's a design choice, yes, and it's not an innately awful choice on a raw numbers perspective. Honestly, my only real objection is when people claim diversity of classes and abilities when they only have one system and everyone functions on it the same way. But if you actually manage above, while likely not something I'd enjoy overly much, it, itself, wouldn't necessarily be an awful system.

I've got three years of experience both running and playing 4e that says it really is the case, the classes really do play differently when dice hit the table in earnest.

Do you have any actual experience with 4e?

Or is this just an uninformed opinion?Over a year of it being the only RPG available where I was, so yes, I do have experience.

Um, yes it is. You may not like the way 4e classes are made up and I fully understand that, but to say they all play the same is just factually wrong.They don't all play the same exactly. After all, some parties are ranged DPS, some parties are melee DPS, and some parties are about grinding. That, however, is not "a striking diversity of styles."

Kurald Galain
2018-04-06, 01:29 AM
Even by D&D standards though, 4e was built in such a way that it pretty thoroughly avoided these, which came across particularly strong in terms of how the magic system was defined. Other editions of fireball usually come across as "there's a ball of fire, it light things and melts things and generally acts like fire, and also game mechanically it does damage" where in 4e it was very much "[x] damage in area".
Exactly.

In other editions (and pretty much every RPG that isn't D&D), a fireball acts like a ball of fire; it usually deals Xd6 damage but in some situations (e.g. underwater) it doesn't, and that's normal and expected. Whereas in 4E it's precisely the opposite: a fireball deals Xd6 damage; it is usually described as "a ball of fire" but in some situations it's described as something else (or not described at all, because the damage is what matters).

I've had several players try to describe their actions in combat, and sooner or later this always ends up with something completely ridiculous or wildly inconsistent with what's happening mechanically. Often both; and in some splatbooks the designers even outright admit that they don't know how to describe some effect either. Unsurprisingly, this bothers certain kinds of players. Aside from that, a character that throws balls of fire is just much cooler than a char that deals Xd6 damage; so on that level, 4E fails to excite and engage certain kinds of players. Of course, the group of "certain kinds of players" turns out to be much bigger than what WOTC expected.


I also suspect this is part of where the 4e as videogame accusations came from, particularly the ones based more in general feel than in specific argumentation. Videogames are pretty bad at qualitative mechanics, and in 2008 they were significantly worse, without much in the way of systemic games that made more use of them. This general intuition was then mapped onto game mechanics where there was more of an existing vocabulary to describe them, even if they didn't fit that well.
Also straight on the point; in videogames and boardgames contradictory (i.e. non-qualitative) mechanics are expected, whereas in RPGs they are not.

Delta
2018-04-06, 02:31 AM
They don't all play the same exactly. After all, some parties are ranged DPS, some parties are melee DPS, and some parties are about grinding. That, however, is not "a striking diversity of styles."

What exactly "striking diversity of styles" is completely subjective though, so I won't argue for or against that. In 4e, I've played a half-orc melee ranger and deva avenger, both melee dps, but the gameplay feeling between them couldn't have been more different. Now, you may well feel that the confines of the system is too narrow for you, the way everyone gets their at-will/encounter/daily powers , the way every class sits within the same very structured framework and so on, and if that's your criticisim, again I'd never argue against that, it is a very narrowly structured game. But as you can see, for some people, that framework is very much a positive, not a negative, for reasons just as valid as yours, so to call it objectively bad is just missing the point.

Mordaedil
2018-04-06, 03:04 AM
2e had a section on creating new classes, complete with tables of costs. And it had Skills and Powers.
I don't think my 2e books have that? What page is it on?

Kurald Galain
2018-04-06, 03:04 AM
as you can see, for some people, that framework is very much a positive, not a negative, for reasons just as valid as yours, so to call it objectively bad is just missing the point.

If I understand her correctly, Selene's point is not that it's "objectively bad", but that it objectively fails to meet its own stated design goals, and that its designers were fired over this.

Now arguably, most players don't care at all whether a game meets its design goals as long as it's fun, but it is nevertheless a fair criticism of game design if a game is intended to do X and ends up not doing X.

Kurald Galain
2018-04-06, 03:09 AM
I don't think my 2e books have that? What page is it on?

It's in the DMG, just one page though. It's not bad for a first attempt, as long as we note that it's a tool for the DM for the purpose of campaign building, and not a tool for the players to cherry pick from.

Of course, it doesn't fit the 1E/2E philosophy that players can cherry pick exactly what items and/or spells they get. While I'm sure some players did it anyway, building a powerful combo of specific parts is really more the 3E/4E mentality.

Selene Sparks
2018-04-06, 03:52 AM
What exactly "striking diversity of styles" is completely subjective though, so I won't argue for or against that. In 4e, I've played a half-orc melee ranger and deva avenger, both melee dps, but the gameplay feeling between them couldn't have been more different. Now, you may well feel that the confines of the system is too narrow for you, the way everyone gets their at-will/encounter/daily powers , the way every class sits within the same very structured framework and so on, and if that's your criticisim, again I'd never argue against that, it is a very narrowly structured game. But as you can see, for some people, that framework is very much a positive, not a negative, for reasons just as valid as yours, so to call it objectively bad is just missing the point.Honestly, my dislike for the narrowness of the class system and complete lack of diversity is not been the grounds upon which I've been saying 4e was bad. My complaints on the narrowness of the system specifically are ultimately value judgements, although I will say that everyone bringing essentially the same thing and engaging in the exact same behavior patterns isn't anything I'd call diversity.

I am saying 4e is bad because the system is bad. The math simply doesn't work on pretty much every level. It fails to meet the goals and promises that it put forward. There are all sorts of perverse incentives that run counter to what the designers say they intended. And, as a note of measurement distinct from the previous, although not a direct measure of the quality of the game itself, it, as a product, objectively failed. The sales numbers are objectively awful, worse than the previous edition, they fired the head of D&D literally every year that 4e was being produced, and so on. Those are not simply reasons to dislike 4e, those are objective reasons why 4e is a bad product. I do, in fact, strongly dislike 4e, both because of the objective reasons I've noted, most specifically the math issues, as well as the more subjective issues, such as the lack of diversity, the reduction of creatures to mobs, and numerous other issues, but my dislike of the system is distinct from the fact that, by every objective measure I can come up with, 4e was a bad product. Now if people enjoy 4e, more power to them. Seriously, if you have fun with it, that's the most important thing for your group, so keep at it. But people having fun with a system is entirely a different question from a system being good. I RP because it's a thing I do with my friends, and so I can and have had fun with many a bad system, but that doesn't change the fact that the bad systems are bad.

hamishspence
2018-04-06, 03:58 AM
4e Essentials appeared to be based around the fact that they recognized that people want to play classes with no Daily powers at all - so they created the Thief rogue variant, and the Slayer and Knight fighter variants..

Delta
2018-04-06, 04:14 AM
I am saying 4e is bad because the system is bad. The math simply doesn't work on pretty much every level.

I hear that rather often, but honestly, even in my limited playing time with 3.5e, I've had way more math headaches with 3.5 than I ever had with 4e. Now, I'm not saying 4e is perfect, far from it, but in my experience, the math works really well (and I am a pretty numbers oriented gamer).


It fails to meet the goals and promises that it put forward. There are all sorts of perverse incentives that run counter to what the designers say they intended. And, as a note of measurement distinct from the previous, although not a direct measure of the quality of the game itself, it, as a product, objectively failed. The sales numbers are objectively awful, worse than the previous edition, they fired the head of D&D literally every year that 4e was being produced, and so on.

None of this I deny. Actually, I made the very same points in my first posts in this very thread. 4e failed, and failed hard, and for obvious reasons. If you consider it under those circumstances, it's a very bad product.

We can argue semantics all day and I don't want to, there are many reasons to dislike 4e, but I still stand by my statement that if you just want to roll out the battle map and smash through some dungeon encounters, with a focus on tactical combat (and loot) rather than narrative and just enough fiddly bits and pieces here and there, but within a narrow framework to keep everything nice and tidy and easy to run, it handles that extremely well. I've played a lot of games, if 4e was that objectively bad at what it did, I wouldn't be coming back to it (especially since I'm not emotionally invested in D&D at all). To make this clear yet again: I'm not a huge 4e fan, in my list of favorite RPGs, I'm not sure it would even crack the top 10 because it does only this one very narrowly focused gaming style really well.

Kurald Galain
2018-04-06, 04:27 AM
4e Essentials appeared to be based around the fact that they recognized that people want to play classes with no Daily powers at all - so they created the Thief rogue variant, and the Slayer and Knight fighter variants..

Yes. Unfortunately this wasn't well received by 4E fans.

hamishspence
2018-04-06, 04:31 AM
I thought that they were quite popular with those 4e players that saw ways to optimise them?