D&D 5th Edition makes the New York Times

[TheArsenal]

You and a couple other people. Incidentally there are a lot of people who play PF/3.5 and feel the same way I do, they just disliked what 4e did on the player side of things. I've seen very few people who actually DM regularly complain about 4e NPCs.

I hope you did not just say "Pff YOUR opinion is just a couple of people"

"MY OPINION is the best"

But its probably not that.

I like their simplicity, but I hate their disconnect from the rules. It makes justifying thier abilities very hard. A simpler LAYOUT to all the monster: Hell ****ing yes! I liked the exemplary ones in the alexandrian. Both simple to use AND maleable and understandable.

[Arbitrarious]

• My motto is complexity in build, simplicity in play. I want a lot of character options that are all equally (at least mostly) valid.
• I want "it's magic" to stop being a bs excuse for one type of character completely overshadows another.
• Retraining/ability swapping built in with reasonable limits, cause sometimes a power doesn't work the way you think it will or after defeating the ice giants in the land of perpetual hypothermia and moving to the jungles of eternal heatstroke that bonus to cold weather survival is no longer useful.
• THE DEATH OF PER DAY POWER! Seriously I don't have a problem with needing to rest to get a power back, but the 15min workday happens and it needs to go. It's also easier to balance an encounter when you know the players will have roughly similar abilities open to them at any time versus "I used my fireball 3 rooms ago and didn't take more aoe so this swarm will now remove our faces" type situations that happen now.
• Removal of dependence on magic items. Having 1 or 2 signature items = cool. Having the GDP of a kingdom in magic items, most of which are "+x" = stupid.

Wow... that was carthic. I'm sure's the more but that's what I've got for now.

[Seerow]

I like their simplicity, but I hate their disconnect from the rules. It makes justifying thier abilities very hard. A simpler LAYOUT to all the monster: Hell ****ing yes! I liked the exemplary ones in the alexandrian. Both simple to use AND maleable and understandable.

Given this, I'm going to assume you agree with what I posted later in the thread on the subject already. I mentioned earlier I don't care if NPCs (particularly humanoid NPCs) use player character powers instead of totally custom ones (though occasional unique racial abilities like shifty I think are fine). Straight up monsters however could probably have powers that aren't appropriate for most PCs (such as Swallow Whole).

What I don't want is every NPC required to have 10 feats and 30 powers and 100 skill points picked out, and having to manage all of those in combat. I want to be able to say "I want this orc to be a X level striker" and be able to grab HP, AC, to-hit, and base damage values that are appropriate for that, and just assume the feats that I'm not bothering to pick out make up the difference in any number discrepancies. I want to be able to pick just 1-4 Fighter or Barbarian powers that seem appropriate, and not have to pick out the other 20 powers that he will never live long enough to use. And I want to just be able to say "He has skills in Athletics and Perception" and not have to worry about his other skills that either wouldn't come up in combat or would be irrelevant to the encounter.

Similarly, if I want a dwarven smith NPC who is going to be crafting for the PCs, about all I need to know about him is his crafting level, any relevant crafting related abilities, and maybe knowledge skills/social skills. He doesn't need combat statistics at all unless your PCs are homocidal maniacs, or you plan on putting him in a situation where he may be in danger.

If you really wanted to you should be able to fill in the blanks, but that should not be the default option or assumption in the game. NPC design should be focused around utility and usability, something that enables and encourages a new generation of DMs to run a game. 3.5 and legend's method of expecting fully fleshed out on level characters for every encounter bogs combat down a lot and is very demanding on DMs, particularly less experienced ones.

[Eldan]

You never know how an adventure develops. Your players may convince the dwarven smith to come along with them on their caravan trip, as mine once did.

That said: you don't have to stat them out fully in 3.5 either. Give your orc the feats and skills you want him to have and leave the rest unspent. It's not that hard.

[Urpriest]

You never know how an adventure develops. Your players may convince the dwarven smith to come along with them on their caravan trip, as mine once did.

That said: you don't have to stat them out fully in 3.5 either. Give your orc the feats and skills you want him to have and leave the rest unspent. It's not that hard.

It could be streamlined though. I could see a printed set of guidelines for setting up specific NPC capabilities.

Example: in 3.5, a crafting NPC with the elite array will have +2 from Int (higher at higher level), +3 from Skill Focus, +level+3 from ranks. How hard would it be to put a 1-20 table of this sort of thing in the NPCs section? Yes it's easy to calculate, but including it would shut up people like Seerow, at least on that particular issue.

[ericgrau]

It's been 4 years since 4e.

Our mission is to ensure that D&D enters its next 40 years as a vibrant, growing, and exciting game.

15e?

More seriously, I'm curious what they do next. Whether it's more like 4.5 or if it's another major revamp. I've accepted that 4e isn't 3e for better and worse which means it offers another game to play. Though I think yet a 3rd game to play would be a bit much and they should probably stick with something similar for a bit and then do a major revamp. Easy conversion from 4e would be a plus. I know a lot of people might want something more like 3e, I might too, but I don't think that's realistic.

Regardless of the rules style I do agree with making things simpler like Arbitrarious' points.

[Seerow]

You never know how an adventure develops. Your players may convince the dwarven smith to come along with them on their caravan trip, as mine once did.

That said: you don't have to stat them out fully in 3.5 either. Give your orc the feats and skills you want him to have and leave the rest unspent. It's not that hard.

The difference is the default game assumption is everything is statted out. I'm saying handle it the other way around: Give baseline statistic/power guidelines a la 4e, but leave them closely aligned enough with PCs that almost any NPC can be fleshed out to full PC levels without losing what the NPC had in time. So instead of starting with a full stat block and cutting useless stuff, I'm saying start with a relatively simple stat block, and let DMs add to taste.


The most important thing is the baseline stats. In 3.5, creating a new monster is a lot of eyeballing and guesswork. The CR system is a mess, and if you ask 3 different people what sorts of statistics and abilities are appropriate at level X, you'll get on average 4 different answers. NPCs should be easy to create, and easy to adjust up and down.

[Urpriest]

The difference is the default game assumption is everything is statted out. I'm saying handle it the other way around: Give baseline statistic/power guidelines a la 4e, but leave them closely aligned enough with PCs that almost any NPC can be fleshed out to full PC levels without losing what the NPC had in time. So instead of starting with a full stat block and cutting useless stuff, I'm saying start with a relatively simple stat block, and let DMs add to taste.


The most important thing is the baseline stats. In 3.5, creating a new monster is a lot of eyeballing and guesswork. The CR system is a mess, and if you ask 3 different people what sorts of statistics and abilities are appropriate at level X, you'll get on average 4 different answers. NPCs should be easy to create, and easy to adjust up and down.

I agree that everybody should have a decently consistent set of baseline stats for their role, but I think the bolded part is what's tripping you up here. From everything I've seen said by the actual designers about 5e, the whole idea of default game assumptions is what they're trying to defeat. The game is a tool, and their goal seems to be for that tool to have as few assumptions built in as possible, so that people will be equally comfortable using it for any conceivable gamestyle.

[Eldan]

Something like standard kits would be nice. The DMG for third edition had level 1-20 standard NPCs of all classes statted out, with equipment IIRC. That is going a bit far, perhaps, but just a few "ability packets" would be nice. Then you can have a standard NPC statblock and just add the "crafter" packet, or the "scholar" packet, as necessary.

[Seerow]

I agree that everybody should have a decently consistent set of baseline stats for their role, but I think the bolded part is what's tripping you up here. From everything I've seen said by the actual designers about 5e, the whole idea of default game assumptions is what they're trying to defeat. The game is a tool, and their goal seems to be for that tool to have as few assumptions built in as possible, so that people will be equally comfortable using it for any conceivable gamestyle.

Which means it would be pretty much what I'm requesting wouldn't it? Start with simplistic stat blocs, provide optional rules to make them more complex/more like PC stat blocks.

[Urpriest]

I don't think that there's any problem with requiring vast amounts of knowledge to play the game, as long as people are actually motivated to learn it. If the rulebooks are so engagingly written that people won't be able to put them down until they understand everything then the rules can be as complex as you want. If everyone who wants to play D&D can quickly learn the mechanics but they're really complicated, then these people will feel a major sense of accomplishment. Part of the reason why people want to play D&D rather than other RPGs is the prestige involved, the sense that they've learned some arcane knowledge that the general population lacks. Bringing this back would be a major step towards resuscitating D&D.

[Kerrin]

Part of the reason why people want to play D&D rather than other RPGs is the prestige involved, the sense that they've learned some arcane knowledge that the general population lacks.

For me, personally, I disagree with this. It is not at all the reason I learned to play the first version of D&D that I did, nor any version since then. There can be a sense of accomplishment from learning anything, but with regard to D&D for me, this isn't at all the reason I *wanted* to learn and play D&D.

[Mando Knight]

4e had shiny art. 5e should have shiny art as well.

...Shh. Don't mention "shiny art" anywhere near WotC. Especially since I'm pretty sure that Hasbro still thinks of them as "the MtG department."

Otherwise, we'll have our Monster Manuals divided into sealed wrappers, and each book may contain a well-designed monster with high-quality art printed on foil.

[Fax Celestis]

Asking for our input is all well and good, but frankly it is going to end up like this:

[MukkTB]

After skimming over what people say they want this is what I get.

#1 People want the game to feel like a spiritual successor to D&D. They don't care as much whether it follows 3.x or 4E but they want it to feel like it belongs with the tradition going all the way back to the beginning.

#2 People want a wide variety of character classes and options that feel different. However they generally agree that at least some of those should be very simple to build for noobies or people who don't want to expend much effort. The Fighter and Sorcerer receive praise for ease of play even though they're underpowered.

#3 People want simpler faster combat. They want to be able to quickly run a fight, and get on with the story. I'm left with the impression that they feel it would be OK to make more complicated combat optional, but not mandatory. For example running a simple combat without a battle grid, but when it gets hairy, going to one.

#4 People want to reduce magic item dependency to almost nothing. Magic items should be much more rare and not at all necessarily for a good character.
(Personally I don't know how to reconcile this with nonmagic characters being unable to fly. Maybe flying mounts could replace items for it.)

#5 Nobody wants the design specs to read like a video game. People who like 3.X say 4E is like a video game. They insult the edition by saying 'like WoW' implying that Wizards were trying to ride on Blizzard's coattails. People who defend 4E say it's not like a video game. They don't want their edition compared to one.

#6 People like balance but don't want developers to be a slave to it. General consensus is that balance is good but other things are more important.

Everything else is subject to argument or personal opinion. But I feel that there are two things that are incredibly important to me. These things are not universally agreed upon. However I will not move to the new edition without them.

(A) Get rid of dissociation. I mean those things like marks that make sense for a miniature battle game but have no reasonable explanation in the game world.

(B) Stop the video game trend of making the game easy. In WoW I can die and respawn with almost no worries. In many FPS I sit behind cover and heal bullet wounds in seconds. In a movie someone who dies may come back through a plot device but for the most part death is final and important. Wounds are important. I would rather feel like I'm in a movie than a videogame. Serious damage shouldn't heal over night. Characters shouldn't be able to walk off being stabbed with a sword. Yeah a wand of cure light wounds does the same thing as a healing surge. However I'm much more able to accept 'the sword wound was healed by magic,' than 'He took a breather and the sword wound went away.'

[navar100]

And I'd argue that a core only fighter/monk/paladin/ranger is unplayable.

For you, maybe. Not universally true.

[Psyren]

Asking for our input is all well and good, but frankly it is going to end up like this:

*snip*

Followed by throwing out the feedback documents (just like they did in 4e) and making a frankenstein's monster that will fail to convert any PF/Legend lovers.

[MukkTB]

On #3 my group handles it like this. The DM starts combat on a battlegrid if he can't easily remember the variables in his head. If we aren't using a battle grid any player can request going to the battle grid for any reason.

[gkathellar]

You never know how an adventure develops. Your players may convince the dwarven smith to come along with them on their caravan trip, as mine once did.

That said: you don't have to stat them out fully in 3.5 either. Give your orc the feats and skills you want him to have and leave the rest unspent. It's not that hard.

And if he comes along, add any relevant stats. Unless he's actually going to be in combat, he still doesn't require a full stat block. You can do it in 3.5, and it should be encouraged or at least mechanically supported, I think.

Followed by throwing out the feedback documents (just like they did in 4e) and making a frankenstein's monster that will fail to convert any PF/Legend lovers.

It doesn't have to convert me from Legend. I just want it to ... be a rival for my affections, I suppose. In general, I don't think 5E has to try to beat Indie games. It just needs to be fun enough that people want to play both.

Something ancient and visceral within me wants to see whatever they come up with grand PF into the dust, though. I have no idea why, I don't even have a really strong opinion on PF.

I know. I gave bad examples of what I wanted to see, but I can give good examples of the kinds of crap I don't want to see, just because I feel like it clogs up room for things I could actually use:
- Aboleth
- Achaierai
- Arrowhawk
- Chaos Beast (maybe)
- Darkmantle (maybe)
- Delver (maybe)
- Digester
- Ethereal X
- Gibbering Mouther
- Grick
- Howler
- Phantom Fungus
- Phasm (just looks weird in the picture and is just another version of the Mimic/Doppelganger/etc.)
- Rast
- Tendriculos
- Tojanida
- Xorn
- Yrthak

Emphasis mine. You don't like the the Aboleth? Sir, this is a matter of honor! Pistols at dawn!

And before our duel, I don't see how having more stuff is bad unless it's specifically in the way of something else. If you don't like certain monsters, don't use 'em. I'd be more interested in seeing examples of things you think should be there instead.

[Vanzanze]

Emphasis mine. You don't like the the Aboleth? Sir, this is a matter of honor! Pistols at dawn!

And before our duel, I don't see how having more stuff is bad unless it's specifically in the way of something else. If you don't like certain monsters, don't use 'em. I'd be more interested in seeing examples of things you think should be there instead.

And, most of the time, I choose not to. You are correct. But it sucks having a $35 book and only using 1/3 of the monsters in it because all the others seem too outlandish for the campaigns/worlds I build.

Either give me a really good grasp of the monster-building process so I can do my own (vis-a-vis AD&D 2nd, where they at least attempted to give you instructive guides to build your own monsters and classes in the base source materials), or give me a wider variety of things that live in a forest that don't come from Dimension X or are CR 25.

They also made the templates a bit too hard to really follow for casuals, so that I ended up just referring to other websites that already had that kind of stuff built in, which wasn't so bad. But before those sites existed, I didn't have a whole lot of confidence in adding levels to my gnolls and making sure the challenge would come out all right.

I'm probably just too lazy for my own good, actually. If I were more proficient, I would have used said websites to generate dozens of stat blocks for creature/level combinations I wanted to use a long time ago and just left the Monster Manuals to rot.

[Trog]

My idea for 5th Edition D&D is this:

No 5e. Don't make it.

Instead, WotC should continue to publish 4e.

...

And restart 3.5 publishing.

...

And 2nd Ed.

...

And AD&D.

Publish for ALL the pre-existing systems that already have rabid, devoted fan bases and players who LOVE the system. AS IS. Who would love for more published materials for these systems. More adventures, more spells, more random encounter tables, more magic items, more classes, more monsters, more setting sourcebooks in their favorite system.

It's a goldmine of stuff they ALREADY have. Stuff that each one of us... even if we moved on to the next system... the next change in the setting... the next boxed set... the next Big Thing™ ... that each one of us loved and wanted to see them continue to go on because we had fallen for the system at that moment in time. Because we adventured there. We were *heroes* there in those systems and settings...

But that TSR and WotC just... left behind.

Don't you know that we loved it? That we sat at home imagining up new plots and adventures and NPC we ourselves had created to inhabit the worlds you created? That we used NPCs and monsters that you created in our own settings? That we saved those areas with heroes made in those systems and that we were hooked already. Some of us hooked for life.

Why did you leave all of *us* behind?

Gamers come in all sorts of editions. We're all still here. We all still hunger for more of the good old stuff.

It's time to come back home WotC... "There And Back Again," remember?

Do it.

Come home.

[Aidan305]

The problem with that proposal is that it would probably end up dividing the fanbase even more than it already has leading to some of the problems TSR had in its late stages: i.e. Too many people buying one of something and none of the other.

That's not to say I wouldn't support it. It just would probably be a bad business idea.

[Trog]

The problem with that proposal is that it would probably end up dividing the fanbase even more than it already has leading to some of the problems TSR had in its late stages: i.e. Too many people buying one of something and none of the other.

That's not to say I wouldn't support it. It just would probably be a bad business idea.

Can't possibly be more divided than adding yet another system to the list of systems fans are divided into already. It's divided into, say, 4 major parts right now. Dividing it into 5 will be LESS of a bad business model HOW exactly?

[Seerow]

Can't possibly be more divided than adding yet another system to the list of systems fans are divided into already. It's divided into, say, 4 major parts right now. Dividing it into 5 will be LESS of a bad business model HOW exactly?

Because despite dividing into 5 (which is a strange statement, how many people actually still play AD&D or OD&D?) they would be supporting their one true edition.

Printing works on economies of scale. Making smaller print runs of 4 different books costs far more than one larger print run of 1 book. On top of that, you have to pay people to actually develop 4 different books.

In the very best case scenario, you spend significantly more money to get a little bit of the old user base back. On the other hand, with 5e they have a chance to convert the old customers they've lost, so they can get their numbers up again without having to spend all the extra money.

[Trog]

Because despite dividing into 5 (which is a strange statement, how many people actually still play AD&D or OD&D?) they would be supporting their one true edition.

Printing works on economies of scale. Making smaller print runs of 4 different books costs far more than one larger print run of 1 book. On top of that, you have to pay people to actually develop 4 different books.

In the very best case scenario, you spend significantly more money to get a little bit of the old user base back. On the other hand, with 5e they have a chance to convert the old customers they've lost, so they can get their numbers up again without having to spend all the extra money.

And if you came out with an adventure or setting that had all the same (or similar) fluff but a few different sets of crunch so that it could be played by multiple editions? Only one book to print then.

I don't know how many AD&D types there are still out there. Since WotC is asking for feedback from fans I think fans should tell them what edition they play most often and what they would sooner buy I guess. Would you rather buy a new 5e book or a new book for 3.5? I say as fans ask for some old stuff back if that's really what they'd prefer. I hear of people not going to the next edition an awful lot. I still know people that play only 2e. And some that only play 3.5. And some that play 4e. Many fans stop advancing with the system when they don't like the new stuff coming out. And they stop buying too. They might flip through the book at the bookstore to see what's changed but.... yeah.

As to publishing costs e-books saves a ton of printing and distribution costs provided they have somewhere where players can buy the files online. Pirating is happening all the time even if they don't publish an electronic version of the books coming out. The least they can do is save the printing costs. Like they did with Dragon magazine and Dungeon.

[bloodtide]

Publish for ALL the pre-existing systems that already have rabid, devoted fan bases and players who LOVE the system. AS IS. Who would love for more published materials for these systems. More adventures, more spells, more random encounter tables, more magic items, more classes, more monsters, more setting sourcebooks in their favorite system.

This is just such a good idea that it will never happen. Just think, they could put out an 'ultimate spellbook', and on one page it would have a nice flavorful description, lore and fluff and on the other page a bunch of stat blocks for each edition to show the spell effects. You could do the same thing with monsters, magic items, and whatever. So if you play a single edition D&D 2/3s of the book would be of use and interest to you. That's almost an automatic sell. And they could put out dozens of them ''spellbook II'' and ''Monster Manual IX''.

The could publish adventures the same way, at leas the first couple. Then maybe do a couple 'single edition' type adventures depending on demand.

They could make some unique places, not whole settings, just places smaller then a kingdom. With lots of fluff and detail so that any DM can use them for any edition. But as a bonus sell a 'edition boosters' that stat everything out for each edition.

You could even tag onto the published words too. If you made a great book of the ''Elven Knights of Evermeet'' or ''Dragonriders of Krynn'' and had plenty of fluff, and some new rules and editions that were all fun and interesting, no one would care what world it came from. For example, most people bought the FR book Underdark for the underdark information, not the FR information.

[Seerow]

Even with ebooks they have to pay writers, editors, and artists. Books aren't cheap to develop. If you're developing 4 books for every 1 book you would normally, costs are going to creep up.

And your idea for publishing one adventure with 4 sets of crunch? First, that sounds terrible. Seriously I can only imagine how cluttered that would be. Second, WotC hardly ever publishes adventures. They mostly produce crunch material that they know a larger percentage of their audience would be interested in.


Finally, a lot of the people who don't want to switch editions are people who are perfectly happy with what they already have. Particularly among those who claim to still play second edition, I know of a few... but have not met a single one who didn't have such a huge number of houserules it was not a recognizable game anymore. Even if WotC DID try to support 2e, most of the players who play it wouldn't bother, because their own game is so different from the actual 2e system, that the material is as useless to them as 3.5 or 4e material.

[Tengu_temp]

Publishing a new edition brings better profits than publishing materials for old editions. Between your love and your money, WotC would rather have your money.

[Slipperychicken]

I would like characters who can both swing weapons and cast spells competently. Accomplishing this seems to have been the subject of a number of homebrew and optimization efforts.

I would like at some powers (martial ones especially) to be at-will or per encounter, rather than per-day. Take Rage for example; why should a Barbarian only get angry 5 times per day?

I would not like to see characters forced into RP stereotypes, with harsh mechanical penalties for noncompliance. The Paladin's Code feels like the worst example of this, straight-jacketing the class into only one very specific flavor of Good, losing all class features if it does one evil act.

That said, I am fine with class-fluff that doesn't interfere with mechanics, since you can just ignore it if you want to play a different concept: ToB classes do this admirably.

I like Alternate Class Features, since these let me create unique/different characters. I would really like to see the Eidetic Spellcaster variant (dragon magazing) carried over, because I enjoy the idea of a Wizard who isn't tied to a book.

[bloodtide]

And your idea for publishing one adventure with 4 sets of crunch? First, that sounds terrible. Seriously I can only imagine how cluttered that would be. Second, WotC hardly ever publishes adventures. They mostly produce crunch material that they know a larger percentage of their audience would be interested in.

Well, it would be six sets of crunch: 0E, 1E(AD&D), 1E(D&D), 2E(AD&D), 3/3.5E(D&D, but not the 1E D&D) and then 4E.

And it would only be cluttered if they had an idiot do it. Using space, tiny type and creativity such you can make a page look good.

It's true WotC does not publish adventures now....but I'm saying that is a mistake. Some of the best selling RPG books in history have been adventures. What sold better 'the tome of magic' or 'the tomb of horrors'...