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2012-06-11, 06:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
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SpoilerSpecial Thanks: Kymme! You and your awesome avatarist skills have made me a Lore Warden in addition to King of Fighter Fixes!
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2012-06-11, 07:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
This is called kiting in MMOs*, and it doesn't really have anything to do with the fighter/tank, and can be done with only the squishy and the enemy. In many cases, even with free Spring Attack for all, it could make things trickier for the beatstick to position properly in order to hit the enemy.
* No, I am not gonna say "D&DN is more videogamey!"Projects: Homebrew, Gentlemen's Agreement, DMPCs, Forbidden Knowledge safety, and Top Ten Worst. Also, Quotes and RACSD are good.
Anyone knows blue is for sarcas'ing in · "Take 10 SAN damage from Dark Orchid" · Use of gray may indicate nitpicking · Green is sincerity
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2012-06-11, 07:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
I wouldn't even go that far. I accept DMs have to make judgment calls from time to time, but I don't care how much experience a DM has. I should not need to read his mind of what he likes to do stuff. DMs with experience could even be more stubborn in their ways and give arbitrary penalties or fiat refusals if I want to do something they don't like.
It should come with the territory to have trust in the DM you play with not to be Il Duce, but experience has shown me the rule influence DM behavior. 2E rules tend to be restrictive, stressing what player characters can't do. As a result, "Il Duce" DMs (Killer, Dictator, I am god, etc.) were plentiful. 3E rules tend to be open-ended, stressing what player characters can do. As a result, DMs became more accomodating and worked with their players to make the game fun instead of dictating everything. I don't play 4E, so I don't have 4E playing experience, but I do know the rules continued the open-ended theme. Il Duce DMs still exist, but now-a-days they are frowned upon as opposed to accepted status quo of the pre-3E era. I don't want 5E to have the DM decide everything for fear of the return to power of the Il Duce DMs.
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2012-06-11, 07:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Yep. Well, 4E breaks down when people try kiting strategies, so it would be nice if 5E could handle it.
Come to think of it, 5E doesn't have a charge mechanic either, so the bad guy can't just move+charge the wizard. On the other hand, bad guys tend to have higher movement than wizards.Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
"I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums. I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that." -- ChubbyRain
Crystal Shard Studios - Freeware games designed by Kurald and others!
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2012-06-11, 07:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Now that I think about it, I don't know why you would ever play anything other than a ranged character. Unless Bad Guy always has better movement speed than PC. A Wizard with Magic Missile can just about kill anything, with no risk at all, as long as he starts far enough away from it.
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SpoilerSpecial Thanks: Kymme! You and your awesome avatarist skills have made me a Lore Warden in addition to King of Fighter Fixes!
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2012-06-11, 07:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Good question, and I think the answer is inherently subjective. Perhaps like "pron", too much can't be defined but you'll know it when you see it. You can start with how frequent and why the DM needs to. A circumstantial event where two or more rules seem to conflict or cause confusion that happens once in a blue moon is acceptable. If a player needs to ask the DM whether he can do something once per combat on average, that's way too much. Players should be encouraged to have outside the box thinking and a player doing such every combat will ask the DM the question. However, such a question should really be restated as the player wants to do something and is only asking for the "cost" (modifier to the roll, you need a feat to do that, you need a class ability to do that, etc.). If the player has no ink on paper letters and numbers to reference for even basic things, thus he needs to ask "mother may I", that is lazy game design and giving too much power to the DM. Still, subjective.
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2012-06-11, 07:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
It still involves spatial maneuvering, and there are elements of space controlling even without OAs. Plus, given that move-attack-move also includes numerous ways to attack from behind cover at range and get back behind it, I'd be very surprised if tactics didn't come up.
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2012-06-11, 07:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Plenty of games where kiting is sub-optimal, or even downright suicidal. Maybe we should take inspiration from those?
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2012-06-11, 11:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
You misunderstood the whole point of NPC classes. The PCs are the special ones. The fighter has the training, i.e. feats. The warrior just has the basic anyone can pick up a club. The wizard has the training, i.e. spell progression to level 9. The adepts only practice at Hogwarts. They don't go to the Department of Mysteries to fight Death Eaters to put into practice what they learn. Divine adepts just take care of their tribe and don't need to know more than they do. The NPC classes are not there for players to take. They are just a quick reference guide if for whatever reason a commoner needs to engage in the combat the PCs are in. For the DM to determine class abilities and features for every commoner is madness. The NPC classes with their levels is just so the DM has something handy to use commensurate with the level of the PCs. The BBEG and their Lieutenants still have PC classes like always. They're the BBEG and Lieutenants because they have that training. If the DM wants a commoner to have a PC class he's more than welcome to. The NPC classes are just there for when the DM doesn't want to get into such detail for whatever reason. They are a tool, not a template for the gameworld.
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2012-06-11, 11:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Except the way gaining class levels is described is that, upon reaching adulthood, the character immediately gains 1st level in any class of their choosing. Doesn't say anything about having to roleplay out a training process or a decade-long apprenticeship, you just pick the class and you instantly get the features.
So why the *hell* would anyone pick Commoner?
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2012-06-12, 12:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Except that there is no reason why this is so. An NPC class is no different than a PC class in terms of entry requirements or experience point cost. It's the same, just worse. There is no reason in game for why player characters get to choose a PC class, except that they have a person behind them, puppeteering them. That breaking sound you just heard? That was my suspension of disbelief. My games don't have to be realistic -- but they do have to be internally coherent and internally consistent.
If I want to create a narrative which makes sense, that narrative is heavily strained by a mechanical divide between "characters who have players" and "character who don't have players" which is not supported by a narrative divide as well.
Exalted tells the players straight up that they are special, and then makes this true in both a mechanical and narrative sense. The player, in some ways, is the exaltation alighting upon their character. The character is special in a way which makes sense both within the context of the people in the game-world and the people around the table.
On the other side of the coin, L5R tells the players that, yes, the story may be about them, but they are mechanically no different from anyone else. They will have to earn that spotlight!
But in 3.x? A player is just... well, better, and for no good in-game reason. It creates a world where most everyone, when presented with a range of options, chose the worst possible options for no good reason. Nothing would stop a warrior from picking fighter, expert from picking rogue, or so on and so forth. Heck, anything is better than commoner, so why would anyone pick that class?
Think of any movie where a character receives special treatment because they just happen to be a main character... but there's no reason for them to be a main character. Some game systems are that movie. This is, in general, a Bad Thing, because there's no advantage to doing it that way. It just strains credibility for no good reason.
Precisely.
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2012-06-12, 12:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Fatebreaker: Would it be better for you if NPC classes didn't exist, and classless NPCs were designed just as having a racial hit die, or maybe something like 4e where they get a few arbitrary bonuses, but still no class?
In such a scenario, actually gaining a class level would be the thing that sets the PCs apart. It's not a case of "Everyone has a class, these people just picked wrong", it's more along the lines of "Only a very rare and special few people have the talent and experience to gain a class level in the first place"
Alternatively, what if NPC classes were like 3 levels long, and were described as effectively level 0? I've seen some homebrew on these boards for something similar, where basically NPC classes represent the average person, but by the time you gain a real class level, those NPC levels are irrelevant. (Going this route people who like really low powered gritty games could play through this tier, with their characters struggling to survive to hit level 1)If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?
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2012-06-12, 03:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
This would make sense if you assume that upon reaching adulthood a creature advancing by class levels is actually (that is in-universe) presented with a menu of classes where it can freely choose.
But if you ask me thats a rather silly assumption to make
Stuff like this seems to come up a lot lately.
I have the feeling that most of those problems arise from the view that the 3.5 rules are meant to be an accurate description of the laws and mechanics of any given setting. Which I think is not their (probably intended) purpose.
Hm, isn't double moving an option? If it is, most creatures eventually WILL reach the kiter.
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2012-06-12, 04:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Because some characters fail their intelligence check
Well anyway, as I recall the only reason NPC classes exist is because of the arbitrary level-based skill cap. Since a level-1 character can only have four ranks in e.g. craft (smithing), for a village blacksmith to be remotely competent he has to be reasonably high level. And to avoid blacksmiths upstaging the PCs, he has to be high level in a crappy class. There would have been a more elegant fix for this, but this is what the design team chose.
5E doesn't allow double moving, so far.Last edited by Kurald Galain; 2012-06-12 at 04:04 AM.
Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
"I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums. I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that." -- ChubbyRain
Crystal Shard Studios - Freeware games designed by Kurald and others!
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2012-06-12, 08:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Why pick commoner?
Because the game for them is Farmhands and Fields.
D&D is meant to be an interesting game for adventurers. However, it utterly fails at being an interesting farm simulator, or for that matter, fails at being an interesting small business simulator. That's OK, though, even thought it breaks immersion for me.
I assume the we only see a subset of the world's rules. We see the ones that are useful for adventuring. What we don't see are the rules for non-adventuring. Presumably, most people do a cost-benefit analysis and determine that they would rather be commoners.
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2012-06-12, 08:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-06-12, 10:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Aside from FATE, original Traveller used a zone system for combat. Given the military nature of many Traveller campaigns, you can see that zones can work in something besides artsy indie games.
Then again, the zones system never appeared in an earlier version of D&D, and it doesn't involve "using your imagination", so there's no way 5E will use it."Conan what is best in life?"
"To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, to sell them inexpensive furniture you can assemble yourself with an Allen wrench. And meatballs."
"Meatballs. That is good!"
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2012-06-12, 12:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
The gameworld actually does revolve around the PCs. No PCs, no game. Revolve around, not cater to. PCs get to be classes because they are PCs. Call it tautology all you want, it just is by existence and definition. NPCs are just filler. Particular ones have more importance than others. The class and abilities of Farmer #5 are irrelevant. He's just some guy the DM mentioned in background but the players decided to talk to. The players may like him and take an interest in his happiness. For roleplaying reasons they involve themselves with the farmer and the farmer involves himself with the PCs. Since his importance level has increased quadratically, the DM can decide for himself by fiat whether he has an NPC class, is a "retired" PC class, or whether he even has levels at all and is just a one HD human who knows how to farm. Farmer #2 was also mentioned in background filler but for whatever reason the PCs never engage in any conversation with him or have any interaction at all. He was scenery. The class of Farmer #2 is irrelevant and unnecessary to know, except perhaps if the DM elevates him by fiat to be a new villain because he is a competitor to Farmer #5 and doesn't like his competitor has new powerful friends, i.e. the PCs.
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2012-06-12, 01:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Out of curiosity, what sort of modules would most excite you as a player about D&D Next? What parts of the game do you think will be most subject to change?
There is the moral of all human tales;
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past.
First freedom and then Glory - when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption - barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page...
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2012-06-12, 04:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Something higher level, so we can see how more iconic and interesting monsters fight. So far we have essentially HP bags that attack with mundane weapons and aside from bosses (which have one or two powers), have no special attacks or powers.
I'd like to see how Dragons, Liches, Beholders, Displacer Beasts, Blink Dogs, Illithid, Troglodytes, Vampires, and Giant Squid are going to work... how numbers scaling is going to interact with higher levels.
I've also been thinking about all the mundane information people could use to make their fantasy worlds really come alive. Information on horsemanship and horse breeding, historical castles, how fuedalism works, hunting and jousting as sport (and other leisure activities appropriate to a fantasy world)... these elements would really help to make me feel like they were interested in actually going with the idea of a realistic and reactive world, rather than just saying "other tribes will reinhabit areas the PCs have cleared" and so on.
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2012-06-12, 04:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
I was happy with 4e's approach, for a variety of reasons:
1) Most NPCs aren't going to be important outside of their five minute screen time where they show up and engage in some hilarious violence, so it's not important to know all the nuts and bolts of how they got their particular abilities.
2) NPCs could have abilities which were suitable for them. A militia captain, for example, might have an ability along the lines of, "When militia captain is bloodied, all militia within five squares get +1 to hit and +10 temporary hit points." That sort of ability is the kind of thing that's good for a militia captain, but not really the sort of ability which fits most class-characters. Sure, that militia captain isn't an adventurer with classes, but you still feel like he spent his life developing abilities which were suitable for his lifestyle.
3) As you say, the "class or no class" divide makes PCs special because they have classes, not because everyone had the chance to choose a PC class and instead decided to be pants-on-head retarded by picking commoner. Joe Commoner, sitting in the tavern and grousing about how "he coulda been a contender" is pathetic in 3.x, because he really could have been a contender, but in 4e, he's the town loudmouth who never really had a shot.
Is it the best approach? I'm not even sure what the best approach is in my own mind, so I couldn't say. Exalted works for Exalted, L5R works for L5R, and 4e works for 4e. But it had enough going for it to not break my suspension of disbelief, because it didn't ask me to ignore that the vast majority of people in the world had deliberately made terrible life choices.
I've honestly never considered this. I'd be curious to see how it actually plays out.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it starts to ask some pretty awkward question about fundamental elements of D&D3.x.
D&D is built on a class/level system. Each class has the same number of levels. Every level is equivalent in cost to the corresponding levels in any given class. If I pay 1,000xp to become a level 2 wizard, I could just as easily have paid 1,000xp to become a level 2 anything else. And base classes possess no entry-level requirements (though casters will not be able to cast certain spells without a corresponding ability score, which still does not prevent a character from taking the class). So when the cost and opportunity are equal, the power level of those classes should also be equal (because if not, suddenly xp is an unequal currency among the party, which gets into all sorts of nastier messes which, for the sake of brevity, we'll ignore for now).
I'm not okay with monk and wizard being at opposite ends of the power spectrum, but I can at least say, "Well, they weren't deliberately made this way -- they were just implemented poorly." With NPC classes, the levels are distinctly and deliberately unequal, in spite of costing the same amount of xp to enter and having no particular mechanical advantage.
This is not good game design. If you want NPCs to be less powerful than PCs, then they should be lower level. Once you create unequal levels, it undermines the entire point of an equivalent class/level system.
It also starts asking whether classes are in-game constructs or meta-game constructs, and that is not a question D&D3.x really wants you to take too close a look at.
Also, sidebar regarding intentions: In an interactive game, especially a tabletop one, the intentions of the designers are only relevant in evaluating how well the mechanics express those intentions.
For example, if you create a My Little Pony RPG, and it has rules for spaceships but not for ponies, your intention is irrelevant, because however much you talk about how it's a pony game, there are still no rules for ponies.
Even so, other classes would do that better. Better hit dice (wild animals or farming accidents can hurt, and let's not forget stray cats!), better saves (being sick as a farmer sucks), better abilities (more skill points! Or how about spells?), better everything is available, for the exact same cost as that commoner class.
No. The game revolves around the PCs. The game world does not, until it is given a reason to. Having NPCs make the blatantly idiotic choice of an NPC class over a PC class when they are identical in terms of entry requirements means that the game world is full of blithering morons. Personally, my heroic fantasy does not involve me triumphing over profoundly stupid people.
Put another way, when a game asks me to believe that "NPCs accept that they aren't the stars of the show, so they deliberately make themselves more vulnerable to calamity and less capable of living out their lives so you can feel special," then that game has lost whatever internally coherent narrative it claimed to create.
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2012-06-12, 06:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Nothing prevents you from giving every NPC in your gameworld PC classes. The DMG even has tables of such for quick reference, and you can switch around numbers on your own for variety. You need never, ever worry about Warriors, Experts, or Adepts existing. For other DMs, those classes exist as options to represent the less skilled NPCs who exist in their gameworld for whatever reasons those DMs prefer.
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2012-06-12, 07:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
If I'm not mistaken, the original d20 Star Wars game used something similar for ship combat if I'm understanding what "zone" means. Instead of moving the ships around, the ship stays still and all the other ships move in relation to it so it's always the center of focus. You speed up? Ships in front of you get closer and ships behind you get further away. Other ship speeds up? It gets closer if it's behind you or further if it's in front.
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2012-06-12, 07:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
I used to mix them in my old 3rd Ed game. The former captain of the guard becomes the mayor as he grows older, so when the PCs meet him, he's a Fighter 6/Aristocrat 3.
Personally, I think NPC classes should be just as useful as PC classes, just not useful in adventuring. No armor or weapon proficiencies, but far more skills of the non-useful types that PCs rarely take - appraise, wilderness lore, etc. Or social skills like bluff, sense motive/insight, that sort of thing. One thing I don't want to see, though, are NPC classes that are just neutered versions of the PC class like warrior was in 3.x I never used it because it served no purpose. Fighter did everything the warrior did and did it far better and they both had the same balance CR-wise. Why would I ever use the warrior class for an NPC when the fighter class gives me more punch and challenge for the players?
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2012-06-12, 11:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Q&A w/Mike Mearls & Rob Schwalb on 5e @ Origins 2012
https://vimeo.com/43880444
apologies for shaky hand-held phone camerawork..
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2012-06-13, 01:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Personally, I found the "NPC classes" in the 3.5 to be 100% useless. They were too much information to use on the fly (I would say that for all of the "quick" NPCs in the DMG). Yay for world building, boourns for speed of play.
If I'm going to quick create NPCs, I want really simple guidelines. I think 5e can accommodate this fairly easy as is (assume if someone is a blacksmith they have a +1 bonus from a relevant stat and a +3 skill bonus). Give them enough hit points for whatever the story requires (do you want the PCs to save this character? They have enough HPs. Do you not care? The Ogre hits the innkeeper and crushes his skull).
Templates for NPC fighters/rogues/etc. should be in the MM, not as "humans" but as simple templates (think 4e "sneak", "soldier", "controller" etc.) with a small list of simple race specific abilities to apply (i.e. duergar can use their "melee" ability as a ranged attack 1/encounter, because beard quills are stupid awesome).
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2012-06-13, 04:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
NPCs really just need Hit Dice (in the 3rd Edition sense of the word). In 3rd Edition, that was the really complicated part, because that meant skill points and buying feats and stuff.
In 5th Ed, there's no skill points and no base attack and no base saves, which should make creation of any NPCs and creatures a lot faster. Chose HD, chose ability scores, add some skill specializations and maybe a background and done.
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2012-06-13, 05:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
https://plus.google.com/u/0/11126696...ts/Q8qRhCw7az5
'bout original DnD...
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2012-06-13, 05:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Nice narration of old-school gaming.
I still have to try out the rules in a game, working on getting a session together, but in general feel there are some definite good things about what is included in the playtest, as well as a few things I'm more sceptical about. No AoO's is one of the latter, while doing away with a lot of feats (weapon finesse, spring attack for example) belong to the former.
The one thing that really needs to be tested in the field is the skills and exploration system with (mostly) ability checks.
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2012-06-13, 07:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
Interesting. Though I'd argue that his description of Basic being "all dungeon no overland" just a bit unfair. It was simply that the rules did not concern themselves with overland travel as that was not the point of the rules, which was to govern the exploration of ancient places and the robbing blind thereof.
Very interesting exercise, though.It doesn't matter what game you're playing as long as you're having fun.