Does anyone know what an elite monster is?
XP for monsters seem to be completely random and arbitrary with the 1 HD Dark Cultist beeing being way above the 4 HD cultist. But still I wonder if elite is supposed tohave something to do with this.
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Does anyone know what an elite monster is?
XP for monsters seem to be completely random and arbitrary with the 1 HD Dark Cultist beeing being way above the 4 HD cultist. But still I wonder if elite is supposed tohave something to do with this.
It's mentioned in "Character Creation", step 5.Quote:
Can anyone find where it says what your AC is when you're not wearing armor? I'm assuming 10 + Dex mod.
You get it once per round if you have advantage. How to get advantage is kind of hazy. Examples are, when you're hidden, deliver an opportunity attack, supposedly if someone uses the Help action for you, when the opponent is prone, stunned or similar, or whenever you DM sees fit. It's somewhat hard to judge how easy that is to get. Additionally, if you use the "Thug theme" of the Rogue class, you get sneak attack whenever you opponent is "flanked", i.e., threatened by two other friendly creatures.Quote:
Originally Posted by noparlpf
I think this may be intentional.Quote:
Originally Posted by Menteith
That all depends on the purpose of "filler" encounters. If they're to just add another fight and exercise the mechanics, great.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nu
Random encounters in old-school play were specifically there to put a pressure on players to move forward, rather than waste their resources not getting to the big pile of gold (remember, gold=xp in old-school games).
In more simulation-oriented play, they're there because, well, there's monsters between point A and point B, and you ran into some.
I have no idea what purpose they play in story-based games. Which is probably why most people running story-based games don't use them.
Of course, this gets to my kind of over-arching metapoint with 5e, which is that the first thing they need to do is figure out exactly what game they're making.
I don't think you read MY post. TWF doesn't just fail to increase damage, it actually REDUCES the damage of any class that is likely to use it. Hell, my second paragraph even acknowledged that you can use TWFing with rider effects or for minion clearing, I just state that those effects aren't worth wasting a feat on.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheOOB
It doesn't matter how you spin it. Wizard: 30 spells that can be changed between daily. Right now a 5th level wizard has over a billion permutations of spells available to him. Fighter: 3 abilities that he chooses at level 1 that are then locked into place. That's without even looking at how effective the wizard options are vs the Fighter options. That is the kind of disparity of options we saw in 3rd edition.Quote:
You're really not making any sense. First of all, not everyone wants a ton of abilities. One of the advantages of older editions was that if you wanted a complex class with a ton of abilities, you'd play a wizard or cleric, and if you wanted a more simple class you'd play a fighter or rogue. In 4e you didn't have that choice, you'd have stacks of cards no matter what you played as. Also keep in mind that spells are daily, and cover all manner of effects, not just combat abilities. A wizard can reduce their work load by preparing several copies of the same spells, and won't be using all 30+ of their spells as combat spells
And no, you shouldn't say "If you want a simple class, go play a Fighter". You should say "If you want a simple class, use this optional feature to make your class simple". That optional feature may be "Wizard trades out all of his spell slots for some souped up cantrips" or "Fighter gives up his combat superiority options and just gets a flat bonus to hit and damage", but in no case should you have a single class who by default has so few options.
And now I'm going to go on a tangential rant. We were sold Combat Superiority with the idea that it would be the Fighter's complex option, and someone who wants a simple fighter could just ignore those options and pump out extra damage each round. Instead what we've seen is Combat Superiority have half a dozen options that are variations on "deal more damage", a couple options that are "reduce damage", and a bunch of options that are "Do things that in previous editions anybody could do without wasting an ability slot on"
Seriously, Pushing people and knocking people prone shouldn't require wasting an ability slot. It should be something literally anyone can do for free. Glancing Blow shouldn't have ever been written. There is no reason Jab and Snap Shot should have been separate abilities. Cleave should be an active ability as opposed to a reactive one, where you spend dice to attack two enemies near you, because as is trying to use it will frequently result is wasting your dice for the turn.
The only ability out of the ones presented in the playtest packet that actually seemed interesting or added any sort of new option to the Fighter was Shift. And even that's just a sort of souped up 5ft step.
The fact that all of the options are practically non options gets added on top of the fact that you only get 3, and you don't even get to pick and choose just adds insult to injury. A Fighter in 3.5 actually had more options than the Fighter in this playtest, because he at least got his feats on top of the baseline options like trip, disarm, and bullrush. A lot of the options may have been terrible, but so are the options the 5e fighter has now, he just gets even fewer of them. It's literally the worst of both worlds.
I completely agree. As I mentioned in a previous post, they could easily combine all of the features a certain specialty gets and give that to you as one feature and I still don't think that would be all that powerful or interesting. Really, everything we've seen so far can be summed up as "Add extra attack given X condition," "Add X combat maneuver as a rider, no save," or "Add +/-X to your/your enemy's damage," which doesn't look like it addresses the complaint that lots of 4e powers are just damage+effect. I'm reminded of a post on RPG.net where someone wrote up a build-your-own-power system for the 4e fighter that managed to duplicate every single PHB1 fighter power in half a page, with the other half page for an explanation and a picture.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seerow
What I'd prefer to see would be a list of standard combat maneuvers as in previous editions and then a list of things you can do with CS dice. Any abilities mentioned would be melee-range and either single-target or personal, to keep things simple and to allow for expansion. Then, your specialty wouldn't grant you CS abilities, you'd have access to all of them, and specialties would do things like "Archer: You may use offensive CS abilities at range" or "Guardian: You may use defensive CS abilities on adjacent allies" or "Horde Slayer: You may spend one CS die when using an offensive CS ability to affect one additional enemy adjacent to both you and the primary target" or "Berserker: [Grant Barbarian rage-type ability] and you increase your CS dice by one step while in a rage" and so forth.
I noticed the durations for many spells are quite large, which isn't exactly an improvement. Combat doesn't last 10 min(IC) so having my spell last 10 min is no different than 3 min, since they both last the whole encounter.
Also, I noticed they nerfed Ray of Frost a bit :smallbiggrin:
They listened!! :smallbiggrin:
Its proof that they really are listening to the playtests. Also, because of the way some of the wording for some of the specialties, certain races allow you to qualify for things without being a spellcaster. So you could have a Fighter with Undead servants.
I hope that when the actual game comes out, Gnomes are in the races. They skipped the Gnomes in 4e at first, and I don't see Gnomes in the playtest yet. Also, while Humans don't get the bonus feat, the ability boost is huge for them. Do you think they're still the best race?
There are no half-elves either. It's 4 classes and the 4 most basic (because from middle earth) races.
There's a ton of argument right now on whether Humans are too good, or on par with other races. There's also some folks who don't like the flavor of, for example, tough humans being tougher than dwarves. Or dextrous humans being more dextrous than elves.
Me? I don't mind it. I think it sounds about right, power-wise. And if it gives them a little edge? Good. I like my D&D humanocentric.
-O
I have absolutely no issue with this, given that there are cases where other races still have the advantage. Perceptive humans are still nowhere near as perceptive as other races, as basically everyone else has much better senses. Tough humans are only equivalent to tough Hill Dwarves. So on and so forth.Quote:
Originally Posted by obryn
My reply was to a specific kind of "filler" encounter, which was as I quote, "filler encounters that don't really tax the players all that much."Quote:
Originally Posted by kyoryu
Of course, an encounter designed to be taxing should be, though I'm a bit unsure if it's a good idea to make an encounter that is both taxing and uninvolved. It seems to me to be more natural that brief encounters don't put much strain on the party's resources, while extended encounters do. Something that is brief and taxing strikes me as less of an encounter and more of maybe a trap, or some kind of natural disaster.
I'm just not liking how much we're having to sacrifice here to reach that point. I don't think this edition is very much catered to the DM anymore. I don't feel like DnD Next is designed in such a way that makes the DM's job easy or intuitive.
It looks easier to GM for me, simply because there are far fewer rules in play.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nu
What would the purpose of a "filler encounter that doesn't tax the PCs" be, under any system?Quote:
Originally Posted by Nu
Read posts before you reply to them please. I never said that a wizard is just going to use magic missile over and over, only that they may stick to minor and lower level spells, saving their big guns for the tougher encounters. As a 5th level wizard you can solve simple encounter quickly with a fireball, or you can use burning hands and mop up with magic missile and basic attacks. One choice leaves you without your best damage spell for a later encounter, one choice will likely cause more wounds to your team and make your other party members use more resources. It's not a choice of be cool or do nothing, it's a choice of how much power you want to save for later.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nu
The way to make weak classes more powerful is not to make them more complex. The game needs simple classes for more casual players, and complex classes for more hard core players. I like what they are doing with the 5e fighter. The expertise dice allows the fighter to have some cool tricks, while not being hard to play. The fact that they refresh quickly means that a casual player will never have to make the hard choice on if they use them or not, and casual players hate difficult choices. Depending on what fighting styles you pick, you may have an array of interesting abilities to spend your dice on, or you may just be able to make your numbers bigger. What's most important, however, is that even if a fighter is playing simply, and just has big numbers, they are useful, unlike say 3e fighters.Quote:
Originally Posted by AgentPaper
I defiantly think some classes should be more complex than others, and I like it when classes have the ability to alter how complex they are. That said, it's important to be flexible with flavor. As it stands in D&D Next, from most complex to least complex you have Wizard>Cleric>Rogue>Fighter. That is, the more magical you are, the more complex you are. There needs to be options for complex martial characters, and simple magic characters, though I think that is done best with new classes. 3e had the warlock, a simple arcane caster, and the warblade, a complex fighter, and I see no reason Next cannot do the same.
Honestly, it's not the concept of Combat Superiority I think, or it's complexity. I think the idea of CS is actually a simple and elegant and could lead to something that's fun for both types of players.
Two problems I think need to be addressed, the first is that they need to say that advanced players can choose not to take a package and just pick the maneuver they want, and that the prepackaged ones are for those who don't feel comfortable with such options (on the same token, pre-packaged spells fo wizards is not a bad idea as long as the same statement is made). The second problem comes in the options presented aren't that interesting, at all. And they won't scale well. Now neither will spells, admittedly, but as it goes the Fighter will only have 12 or so options, while the Wizard will have around 60+ spells. Those dozen options need to scale.
Anyway what I would do.
Deadly Strike: Use a CS die to deal that damage directly to the target regardless of whether or not you hit.
This gets rid of the superfluous (and crappy) Glancing Blows, and is a general damage bonus for those who just want the simple option to lay the smack down.
On the same token
Protection: Use a CS die to reduce the damage taken by you or an ally within reach by the die result.
Cleave: Same, but gains Great Cleave after a few levels.
Knock Down/Push: Increase the size you can use the ability on as you level up. Yes, getting a no-save ability to push a dragon around is pretty good.
Shift: Increase the distance you can move as you level up.
Tumble: I don't think this should be a Fighter only ability to be honest. Tumbling Rogues are too much in my brain. However some ability to spend a CS to negate an AOO (or whatever they're calling it these days) would be useful
Breaker: Use a CS to either break an object that was being held by your target, or to break through the target you were attacking (if you were attacking a wall or something)
Precise Attack: Use a CS to gain Advantage against an opponent. As you gain levels you can allow your allies to also gain Advantage against that opponent until the start of your next turn.
Fearsome Blow: Use a CS to make the opponent Shaken. As you gain levels nearby enemies can also become Shaken.
Mark: Use a CS on an opponent, that opponent takes a penalty to attack if it attacks anyone but you. As you gain levels the penalty increases.
Crippling Strike: Use a CS on an opponent, that opponent gains Disadvantage on it's next attack.
Hamstring: Use a CS on an opponent, that opponent's Movement Speed reduces by 10, for a round. As you gain levels the penalty increases until the opponent cannot move.
And so on. Anyway I think these are simple and could be fun for the new player, and more of them could bring a lot of complexity for the advanced player.
"Fewer rules" can make it harder in many situations, not easier. Fewer rules mean you have to make on-the-spot decisions more often. Fewer rules means there are fewer guidelines for building challenges for the players. I mean, the reason we HAVE rules in the first place is to make it easier for the DM and the players to make stuff, right? If "fewer rules" meant "easier to DM," then why have any rules at all? Just go freeform and have fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by Knaight
I wouldn't know, I'm not the one who brought it up or presented it as desirable to have as an option.Quote:
Originally Posted by kyoryu
I simply used magic missile as an example because it was the most iconic minor spell. I could have said "magic missile or ray of frost" and it'd be more accurate, I suppose. It would require VERY specialized circumstances for any of the other minor spells to be useful.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheOOB
I'm well aware of the mindset behind daily resources, so you don't have to explain it to me or sing their praises. I still think that taking away the encounter resources is anti-fun and a step backwards. And yeah, I did kind of hate the style of play that promoted wizards holding onto their good spells for more important encounters, and just stayed away from the battle and used a wand of magic missile or whatever to make some minor contribution to the battle.
Besides that, let's not talk about the 5th-level wizard. Let's talk about the 1st level wizard, because most campaigns will start at the 1st level. Three spells per day. I'm sorry, but eww. As soon as you run into a tough encounter and blow say two of your spells to push the party through (suppose one misses or is rendered ineffective), congrats, you get to be useless for the rest of the day. Oh, you have ONE spell, good luck with that. Enjoy your feather fall (why are offensive and utility spells taking up the same slots again?).
Unfortunately, an alternative wizard build, one that has "per-encounter" options, is not available, despite full casters completely eclipsing non-caster in terms of options. For a system that is praised by some as "letting you do what you want" I'm not finding what I want. The fighter's "options" barely even count (as has been pointed out, it basically amounts to "do a little more damage, cause enemies to do a little less damage, or maybe do push/trip an enemy unless they happen to be bigger than you in which case you're screwed). Heck, they're not even customizable, you're completely locked into a single path once chosen.
I guess if I had to summarize this edition as it currently exists in three words, it'd be "a step backwards."
And you still didn't read my post. Stop trying to put up a strawman of my argument and actually put some effort into reading comprehension before you try to refute something. I said minor or lower level spells. Fact, a wizard will gain 1 or 2 spells per day every level. Fact a wizard gains a new spell level every two levels. Fact a wizard will end up having many spells that, while not as powerful as their top level spells, are non the less useful. Just because a wizard doesn't go supernova and throw out their best spells, doesn't mean they don't have options.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nu
By the way, have you ever played an older edition of D&D, even 3rd. 3 spells per day is enough to cast 1 spell per typical encounter in a day, and at level 1 your minor spells are powerful enough to be relevant when you run out better spells. And while most games start at level 1, few games stay there, by the time you're tired of your minor spells, you'll have plenty of new spells to cast. If your DM doesn't want players to resort to basic attacks and minor spells, he shouldn't start the campaign at level 1.
Further, why shouldn't "utility" spells be the same as attack spells. It's part of what makes a wizard fun, picking the spells for the situation at hand, playing the wizard you want. Unlike 4e, a character isn't just about how they kill monsters, there is more to an adventure than fighting. In 4e utility powers were few and far between, and most of them were still combat powers(just non offensive ones). Now a spellcaster can actually have real utility powers, and having them also gives a use for some of their lower level spells slots when their offensive spells are obsolete.
Also, you need to remember that this is a play test build, if it was a video game it would still be in early alpha. And no, there shouldn't be a per encounter wizard. Apart from the fact that such a build kind of goes agienst the design goal of Next(which is to get away from encounter based powers because they want a DM to define what an encounter is, not the players powers), the wizard a daily based spellcaster class. There is only 4 classes right now, and I can guarantee there will be more classes as time goes on, and not all of them will work the same as the currently existing classes.
Ok first off, where the heck is this idea that the 12 listed cs options will be the only ones the fighter will ever have? If you want more options than that, be sure to include it in the feedback, but let's not pretend they've set this list in stone here. There's absolutely no reason to think that this is all there will ever be or that they're done. More likely they've built up a base and want to see how people like it as it plays out. No point in designing 30+ cs options only to scrap the whole system because it actually sucks when put on the table. And before you ask, the reason there are so many spells already is because they were already written before this play test even started.
Secondly, let's stop being disingenuous about our comparisons. There's nothing productive about saying a 20th level wizard will have 30 spells per day and then comparing that to the 1st level fighter with his 3 cs maneuvers. A more accurate comparison is the 1st level wizard with his 3 daily spells and the fighter with his 3 at will cs abilities. Sure, by level 5 it's 9 vs 5 but again daily vs at will. Also note that your fighter can take the magic user specialty giving him access to some magic as well. Also it reads to me like you can start stacking your cs abilities as you gain more dice. Consider the following at 5 th level ( the first multi die level):
Your magic user specialty fighter opens his turn by casting "magic missile" hitting a ranged foe. Then he spends one cs die to "jab" (casting spells is not a ranged attack per my reading of the combat section of the how to play document) jab lets him make a melee attack against an enemy with d8 damage (which is only worse than heavy weapons), finally your fighter spends his other cs die on either "deadly strike" for another d8 worth of damage or "knockdown" to inflict prone. That's pretty damn cool to me, and while the rules aren't explicit about you being able to do multiple cs actions in a single turn, it's absolutely consistent with the rues as written, and to my mind perfectly in the spirit of the ability.
That would be why we have rules, yes. That doesn't mean that having a bunch of rules doesn't weigh things down. I'm fine with on the spot decisions as long as there is a framework for them. For instance, D&D 5e has a qualitative scale for difficulties which corresponds to certain DCs. Whenever someone tries to do this, you can refer to this one scale. I'm fine with that. 3.x, meanwhile, has explicit DCs laid out for every single skill. That's either a pain in the rear to memorize, or something you need to check all the time. It's rules getting in the way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nu
You seem to be positing that rules are inherently linear, and that because having rules makes it easier at one point it must make it easier at all points. I don't think that this is a safe assumption, and would instead posit that it's probably closer to a bell curve, with a portion on the left chopped off. As a GM, my rules preference curve is a narrow one, that puts D&D 3.x a good two standard deviations to the right of my ideal rules spot, where freeform is about one to the left.
I'd characterize both 3rd and 4th editions as poster children in rules getting in the way, and 5e appears to be moving away from that. Good riddance to it, I'm in favor of a much lighter system as a GM. Qualitatively evaluating how difficult things are really doesn't add to my work load,
I haven't seen anyone make that assumption. So I'm not sure where this is coming from at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by 1337 b4k4
However, what the current list of abilities does show is a parred down basic CS option list vs a parred down basic spell option list, and we see that favoring the casters 3:1. That's on top of the fact that the CS options are universally more bland and weaker than spells. It may not be all there is or ever will be, but it is showing where the developer mindset is as far as utility and power level, and that mindset is showing us abilities that are decidedly lacking. The fact that I would be happy to trade away the majority of my CS abilities to gain 2 cantrips at this point is a really bad sign.
If the point is to test the CS as a system, then including worthwhile abilities would have made the test better. As is I could see a lot of feedback saying "This doesn't fix the fighter at all, it's still bland and boring" because of how the CS abilities have been handled.Quote:
There's absolutely no reason to think that this is all there will ever be or that they're done. More likely they've built up a base and want to see how people like it as it plays out. No point in designing 30+ cs options only to scrap the whole system because it actually sucks when put on the table. And before you ask, the reason there are so many spells already is because they were already written before this play test even started.
The Wizard gains 3 spells every 2 levels. The Fighter gains 1 maneuver every other level. Also calling Deadly Strike and Parry options is really stretching incredulity, those are the equivalent of the Wizard's cantrips, but with less flexibility. So at level 1 you have 3 spells per day and 5 spells known vs 1 option. By level 5, it's 9 spells per day and a minimum 21 spells known vs 3 options. By level 20, it's 31 spells per day, and a minimum 85 spells known, vs 11 options.Quote:
Secondly, let's stop being disingenuous about our comparisons. There's nothing productive about saying a 20th level wizard will have 30 spells per day and then comparing that to the 1st level fighter with his 3 cs maneuvers. A more accurate comparison is the 1st level wizard with his 3 daily spells and the fighter with his 3 at will cs abilities. Sure, by level 5 it's 9 vs 5 but again daily vs at will.
The scaling is there for everyone to see, and leaves the fighter in the dust starting at very low levels.
Also note that your fighter can take the magic user specialty giving him access to some magic as well. Also it reads to me like you can start stacking your cs abilities as you gain more dice. Consider the following at 5 th level ( the first multi die level):
Great, the fighter picked up wizard abilities to do something interesting. Also very questionably rules legal (casting an attack spell not an attack? Okay). It's also still just a variant on deal damage, just from a different source. It's a different way of dealing damage, but it's still the same thing.Quote:
Your magic user specialty fighter opens his turn by casting "magic missile" hitting a ranged foe. Then he spends one cs die to "jab" (casting spells is not a ranged attack per my reading of the combat section of the how to play document) jab lets him make a melee attack against an enemy with d8 damage (which is only worse than heavy weapons), finally your fighter spends his other cs die on either "deadly strike" for another d8 worth of damage or "knockdown" to inflict prone. That's pretty damn cool to me, and while the rules aren't explicit about you being able to do multiple cs actions in a single turn, it's absolutely consistent with the rues as written, and to my mind perfectly in the spirit of the ability.
And I'll ask you to stop making assumptions. There is no need to be so patronizing, I do not believe I have acted in this way towards you. I assure you I am reading everything you say, I merely disagree, and for some reason you take that to mean I'm not reading your arguments. Try to calm down a bit. You really don't need to try and repeat the material that's already in the book, I can see it quite clearly (though, I wonder, did YOU read the playtest material? Example:)Quote:
Originally Posted by TheOOB
From the DM Guidelines document: "As a rule of thumb, you can figure that the characters will probably get through four average encounters, six or seven easy encounters, or two tough encounters before they have to take a long rest."Quote:
Originally Posted by TheOOB
So unless you're fighting only tough encounters, I don't see 3 spells lasting you 1 per encounter being the norm. Not that "1 spell per encounter" is a good model in my book, and the minor spells are even weaker than the at-wills available in 4E, but that's beside the point.
I'll also ask you to not resort to accusations of a "strawman argument," especially not when you say something like "unlike 4e, a character isn't just about how they kill monsters." I mean, really? Are we going to resort to this childish debate again?
Yes, I played 3rd edition for quite some time before 4th edition even came out. My experience was that being a low-level level caster was dull and being a high-level caster made other classes irrelevant. And I'm seeing that mistake repeated here, though at least they can cast magic missile instead of shooting a crossbow now. About 3rd level it seems that things become better, but I don't really like that the first two levels are basically a crap-shoot. Incidentally I have other complaints in regards to this as well, such as the hit dice mechanic which seems to me to necessitate someone with the healer specialty, and even that doesn't really kick in until the 3rd level.
As for utility vs. attack, this was actually a common complaint I saw in 4E, that there should be more room for both. That the "utility powers" had some options that were useful out of combat, but overshadowed by combat-oriented options. Same for feats. It seems wizards did not take these complaints to heart, however, as they continue to make us choose between combat power and out-of-combat power. Odd, that in a model that is supposed to support "more than combat," you often need to choose which you'll devote a spell slot to. I would prefer a model where the two were made more separate, but again, that is my just opinion. It'd definitely make it simpler to create a character that is competent both in and out of combat (and isn't that a stated design goal, to make things simpler?).
Finally, as I have said before but apparently you were the one not reading, I am making my assumptions based on the playtest material because that is what we have in front of it. Assurances that "it's going to get better" don't hold much water with me until I see it, or at least see some indication that there's going to be something better down the line. I don't see any indication of a good or interesting encounter-based class yet, so I don't see any reason to believe there will be one, especially when, as you said, that conflicts with the design goals of DnD Next.
The thing is that 4th edition also had a chart for improvised use of skills and abilities, there is a very handy chart with levels and DCs that corresponds to "easy," "medium," and "hard" tasks. In fact, such a chart is common in tabletop RPGs and is not unique to either 4th or DnD Next.Quote:
Originally Posted by Knaight
In any case, I was talking about monsters and encounter-building. The encounter-building rules detail how many monsters and how much XP the encounter should be worth, but they don't say anything about what kinds of monsters to use beyond those statistics. I believe that's problematic, because it either implies that the stated guidelines for DMs are insufficient for creating different kinds of encounters for the players, or that the monsters are so generic that it doesn't really matter what kind of monster you put there as long as it gives a certain amount of XP.
My assertion is that the addition of "monster roles" and gearing the abilities of monsters towards a particular theme or function made building challenging and/or more interesting encounters easier for the DM. And that I believe removing such things is a step backwards.
Page 42 scales easy, medium, and hard by level, and is generally nonsense. Moreover, while this isn't anything unique to D&D, 5e is the first time this has actually happened (which means that D&D is catching up to where the industry as a whole was in 1980 in this regard, but whatever). However, that still makes a decent example regarding rules bulk as a negative in general, which was what was pertinent to the context.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nu
And why is it nonsense? I've used it for scaling the DCs of skills in skill challenges and it has worked quite well (though of course I use the updated version found on page 126 of the Rules Compendium). It is necessary to scale by level in 4E because checks also scale by level, I don't see why that's a necessarily negative thing, though obviously if you cut out skills scaling by level then there's no need for the chart to do so.Quote:
Originally Posted by Knaight
Just played a session as a Human Rogue using the Thug scheme and a quarterstaff. My front-line partners were a Slayer-themed Dwarf Fighter and an Elven War Cleric. They were very useful in standing next to something that was big and bad so that I could destroy it.
Quarterstaff Ninja one-shotted everything.
I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of the table. It was meant to give DMs who needed to improvize a difficulty check, and I think that's a useful thing for any DM to have.Quote:
Originally Posted by Knaight
Granted, the scaling DCs were completely unnecessary; they should have simply not scaled skills (and I think they ended up giving people a lot more negative an opinion of Page 42 than was warranted*), but as a quick and easy guide, they work wonderfully.
* as a note, I think the page 42 DCs of the DMG are a lot better than the ones in the rules compendium, really rewarding specializing, and in fact allow a lot more of the "don't use the dice" than I think even 5e hopes to accomplish.
Well yes they are in a single instance weaker than the spells, that would be because they're at will abilities. I'm not sure why this is so controversial. The fighters get to be more regularly awesome at the expense of being nova, the wizard is nova at the expense of being below normal when they run out of resources.Quote:
However, what the current list of abilities does show is a parred down basic CS option list vs a parred down basic spell option list, and we see that favoring the casters 3:1. That's on top of the fact that the CS options are universally more bland and weaker than spells. It may not be all there is or ever will be, but it is showing where the developer mindset is as far as utility and power level, and that mindset is showing us abilities that are decidedly lacking.
Sure, I can also see a lot of feedback that says "This is pretty damn cool, but it would be nice if XYZ." In fact thats not only the type of feedback I've seen so far, but it's far more useful than "The fighter is still bland and boring." In fact it seems to me that the groups actually play testing are providing that useful feedback, as opposed to the general grognarding and edition warring that is occurring on most of the forums.Quote:
If the point is to test the CS as a system, then including worthwhile abilities would have made the test better. As is I could see a lot of feedback saying "This doesn't fix the fighter at all, it's still bland and boring" because of how the CS abilities have been handled.
You know, in 4e you did everything you could (especially as a rogue) to get combat advantage for the extra damage, and it was awesome. Now you give a (admittedly weakened) version of that ability to the fighter for free and at will and suddenly it's a mere "cantrip". You'll have to excuse me for saying so but I believe your biases are seriously clouding your judgement.Quote:
Also calling Deadly Strike and Parry options is really stretching incredulity, those are the equivalent of the Wizard's cantrips, but with less flexibility.
Nothing questionable about it. The how to play clearly differentiates between spell casting and attacking. Magic missile says nothing about making an attack, and jab says any action other than a melee or ranged attack.Quote:
Also very questionably rules legal (casting an attack spell not an attack? Okay)
Somehow I get the impression that even if the cs abilities were all battlefield controll, you still wouldn't be happy.Quote:
It's also still just a variant on deal damage, just from a different source. It's a different way of dealing damage, but it's still the same thing.
The adventuring day is set up such that you have roughly 16 rounds of combat in a day. The Wizard is casting his dailies for more than half of that by level 5. That number will go up with level.Quote:
Originally Posted by 1337 b4k4
The Fighters deal a lot of single target damage. They do little else, really. What does this remind you of?
The point is, you said if the mechanic doesn't work, they may scrap the mechanic rather than putting more work into fleshing it out. I'm pointing out that by showing off the mechanic with no interesting uses of it, you have the potential of seeing the mechanic get scrapped because the mechanic did not solve the problem it was intended to solve. It would have been better to have more interesting options from the get go than risk having a potentially good mechanic thrown away because it was under utilized with release.Quote:
Sure, I can also see a lot of feedback that says "This is pretty damn cool, but it would be nice if XYZ." In fact thats not only the type of feedback I've seen so far, but it's far more useful than "The fighter is still bland and boring." In fact it seems to me that the groups actually play testing are providing that useful feedback, as opposed to the general grognarding and edition warring that is occurring on most of the forums.
Cantrips are the go-to spells of Wizards now. Being compared to a cantrip does not mean useless, but it does mean it shouldn't be listed as an option when lining it up with daily abilities. Frankly, cantrips like Mage Hand and Ghost Sound are more interesting and generally useful than anything the Fighter gets. Even a Ray of Frost equivalent reducing movement speed would have been a huge step up for the playtest Fighter.Quote:
You know, in 4e you did everything you could (especially as a rogue) to get combat advantage for the extra damage, and it was awesome. Now you give a (admittedly weakened) version of that ability to the fighter for free and at will and suddenly it's a mere "cantrip". You'll have to excuse me for saying so but I believe your biases are seriously clouding your judgement.
Quote:
Somehow I get the impression that even if the cs abilities were all battlefield controll, you still wouldn't be happy.
And you would be correct. Because if it was all battlefield control, you'd still be lacking in other areas. The point is all about versatility. That is what complexity in options are meant to give. What makes the Wizard powerful isn't just battlefield control, it's his huge amount of versatility. While battlefield control is a part of that, it isn't all of it.
But seriously, even ignoring what we don't have, look at what we do have. We should not have to waste ability slots on things like push/prone, or disarm, or other basic combat maneuvers. In earlier editions of the game these were things anyone could attempt to do. Yet now the Fighter has to waste ability slots to get it. Snap Shot and Jab should be the same ability, why write up the same ability twice for melee and ranged, is it that broken for the Fighter to have flexibility to do both? Glancing Blow shouldn't have been put in at all as is. Tumble seems like it is completely useless. Maybe useful to set up flanking, but that's being held off until the tactical module. Protect is decent, but Protect, AoOs, and the Guardian Theme, all key off reactions, which are 1/round making Protect effectively superfluous, especially with dice regenerating at the start of your turn so to even try to use Protect, you have to risk letting your dice go to waste altogether.
I know exactly what they were there for, but they broke consistency of the setting by centering it around the players. In basically every other game with something you could call a difficulty, certain things simply have a certain difficulty - very hard is always very hard. In 4e, it magically scales with the players, so that things get harder as you level up to keep uncertainty in, and you're just sort of supposed to cover this gaping hole in the system with fluff. It's a terrible mechanic as a result.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashdate
5e, meanwhile, avoids that problem. Becoming better at things means that one is more likely to succeed at them, not that they suddenly turn more difficult, but only when you're the one performing the task. D&D has finally caught up to where the rest of the hobby was in 1980.
Ar you trying to say it seems unreasonable to have scaling dcs?:smallconfused:Quote:
Originally Posted by Knaight
It's unreasonable that an epic-level Rogue needs to roll against a monstrous DC to pick the lock on the tavern door, whereas a Heroic-tier Rogue has to roll a much lower DC to pick the same lock.Quote:
Originally Posted by Togath
Some people took "scale you DCs on skill checks" to mean just that, not that the super-duper amazing locked door that epic rogues generally run across have harder to pick locks and that a Heroic rogue wouldn't have a chance of picking one.
Like the advice to not stat up every NPC, and to only give stats to NPCs that were supposed to engage in combat was taken to mean that NPCs don't matter unless the PCs are killing them.
I swear, people intentionally (mis)interpret things like this.