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2012-09-25, 10:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
This doesn't seem to even vaguely resemble a case of a protagonist who suddenly dies to something unexpected. That he was dead was clear from the beginning, he had the hubris to deny the supernatural, so it killed him. He made one decision, then he died. This was never heroic fantasy to begin with, let alone something that resembles the described hero going out to do heroic things, then dying to some random obstacle that started this conversation.
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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2012-09-26, 05:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I think things are drifting. If people want to play particularly lethal or particularly non-lethal they ideally have that option. The DM can throw tougher or weaker monsters at them for the scale he wants. The problem is if at level 1 the PCs are TOO weak there's nowhere for the DM to go in dialing down the enemies.
Personally I like mistakes to create an "oh ****" moment, but one that's salvageable and can be learned from. If a squishy ranged guy has an orc get into melee and nearly down him in a swing, it creates an interesting problem for him and his teammates to find a way to fix. If the orc instead knocks him fully down in a swing then there's a similar problem (get the orc away, get the guy safe) but the guy doesn't get to participate in solving it. If they fail to solve the problem then I'm willing to follow through, but I'm not fond of "letting it occur at all is the last chance you get" scenarios, it tends to result in overly cautious play for my tastes. Still, at most levels I have the flexibility to make sure things stay in that balance, it's only at the extremes where I have to rely on the balance of the designers, and more games involve level 1 than level whatever-the-max-is.Now with half the calories!
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2012-09-26, 06:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Going back to an earlier discussions, about Mearls wanting the Wizard to have more options available because 'it's magic' - I don't have an issue with that, provided the options take the form of mutually exclusive paths of some kind (forced school specialisation would be one option, it could be done other and probably better (or at least more intertesting) ways).
This way, the Wizard class can have a huge array of abilities and powers open to it, but an individual wizard has a much narrower subset of these abilities to call upon.
If they did take this route, I'd prefer it to be reasonably customisable - so instead of defining 8 different wizard paths and requiring each wizard to pick one, define 30 much narrower paths and allow each wizard to pick perhaps 3 - so you can take 3 closely related paths to make a necromancer, for example, or 3 wildly different paths to make a more generalist mage, or something that fits your personal vision.
Of course, this will take a lot more effort and skill to balance...
However, I fear they will just give all the wizards all the options, and we'll be back to quadratic wizards again...
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2012-09-26, 08:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
This doesn't seem to even vaguely resemble a case of a protagonist who suddenly dies to something unexpected. That he was dead was clear from the beginning, he had the hubris to deny the supernatural, so it killed him. He made one decision, then he died. This was never heroic fantasy to begin with, let alone something that resembles the described hero going out to do heroic things, then dying to some random obstacle that started this conversation.
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2012-09-26, 09:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Death has always had lots of house rules. I mean, what exactly is dead? Or, more exactly, what does dipping below 0 mean?
In early D&D, 0 was dead, but the DM usually wound up throwing in resurrection.
In 3.0, 0 became disabled and -10 became dead. However disabled was meaningless (you healed up quickly) and dead happened just enough to require resurrection.
So, if we are going to reliably have some mechanic to get "dead" people back, then can't we redefine "dead" to "grievously injured?" This way, you don't have the problem of raise dead in the fiction, and at the low levels, the characters have recourse for getting better.
My point here is not that I am right and that the game is wrong. The point is to ask ourselves: do we want to continue a game where the fiction contains raise dead, or do we want some mechanism/consequence that fits better in the genre?
I think that the topic is well worth examining and having a vigorous design argument about.
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2012-09-26, 09:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-09-26, 09:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-09-26, 10:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
The point is to ask ourselves: do we want to continue a game where the fiction contains raise dead, or do we want some mechanism/consequence that fits better in the genre?
While complicated wounding mechanics do model things more realistically, they also have a tendency to be a form of escalating suck. Sure, it's not quite realistic to go down 40HP to 2 HP and be fighting at full strength and then suddenly dead 2 HP later, but at the same time, in a lot of systems where wounds decrease your fighting capability, that just leads to higher lethality. For example, combat in Traveller depletes your stats, which in turn affects your fighting capacity, and your ability to heal. Consequently combat in traveller is much like combat in real life, you avoid it unless there's no alternative. Also, you can die after the combat simply because your wounds are so grevious that you can't heal naturally.
Ultimately, I think dead as binary and decreasing capabilities actually result in the same basic thing. Above a certain point, you're contributing to the battle, and below a certain point, you're not, whether thats because you're dead, unconscious or just unable to hit anything effectively, either way you're out of the battle.
If you look at death as a tool for sinking party resources, then I think you'll find that low lethality / less binary death systems consume more party resources during battle (and usually renewable resources), but binary death consumes more permanent party resources outside of battle. Meaning which version you have or use should probably depend on whether battles or the adventure is the main part of your game.
Consider an OD&D party. They get into a fight with a troll, and said troll wipes the floor with Party Member A. In OD&D he's out and done, and the party either choses to continue fighting, or pick up their dead teammate (if they can) and tuck tail. Afterwards, if the party can afford it, the spend gold on the resurrection, or they lose a party member and roll up a new one. The gold cost is great (or the party might pay some other price a la a geas), but it's a one time deal and other than losing the player in the combat, doesn't consume a lot of in combat resources.
Compare this to say 4e, where one character in the process of dying in combat consumes in combat resources (assuming your team mates are trying to help keep you alive). Actions are spent, healing surges are burned, powers are used, healing potions or wands are consumed. But ultimately, unless you Really Die, most of those resources are not permanently lost as resurrection gold might be.
Incidentally, going back to the previous discussion over how much "random" lethality was or wasn't a part of the original game design, as much as it seems Gary was a fan of dangerous and deadly worlds, he was apparently an equal fan of cinematic combat; Mike Mornard again:
Finally, Mike says he doesn't know why Gary didn't record this fact in a book somewhere: when he modified the combat system he got from Dave, he was consciously imitating the battle in the Errol Flynn Robin Hood movie. A movie hero never goes down early with a lucky critical, but low-level guys can be dropped with one hit.
http://blogofholding.com/?series=mornard
A very interesting look into what the early game was like and about from the perspective of an original gamer.
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2012-09-26, 02:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Many good observations.
From a mechanical perspective, there is no difference between a character that is mostly dead and one that is dead. Neither can contribute, and the party must either decide to push on weakly or retire from the field. They must then expend time and energy in resolving the situation.
From a story perspective, there is a significant difference between mostly dead and dead. A person who is mostly dead can pull through with medical help and some magic healing. No miracles are required, nor do you have the social conundrums inherently tied to raise dead. Characters can get this at level one with no game world implications. On the other hand, the easy access to raise dead breaks believability for many, puts a heavier burden on lower level character, and trivializes death at high levels. Is that a worthwhile tradeoff?
In my mind, a good life-death system should work across all levels, meaning that death keeps its meaning, and so the game keeps its tension.
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2012-09-26, 03:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
A person who is mostly dead can pull through with medical help and some magic healing. No miracles are required, nor do you have the social conundrums inherently tied to raise dead. Characters can get this at level one with no game world implications. On the other hand, the easy access to raise dead breaks believability for many, puts a heavier burden on lower level character, and trivializes death at high levels. Is that a worthwhile tradeoff?
Stepping outside the rules, if you view clerical spells as gifts from the gods (as they are described), there's not even a guarantee that your local high cleric can even cast raise dead except in the most extreme circumstances. Honestly the revolving door of death in D&D to my mind is a problem caused by players "doing it wrong". And I hate to use that term, but it is descriptive in this instance. Raise dead works when it's applied with the restrictions the game authors put on it. When you start lifting those restrictions because you don't like them, then it starts to run away and become silly or overpowered. Incidentally, this is why the quadratic wizard problem is so much bigger in 3e.
Now its perfectly reasonable not to like the restrictions on raise dead, but if you change them, you need to realize that you then need to change raise dead. Conversely, it's perfectly reasonable to think that raise dead, even with all the restrictions is still "too much", and in that case you need alternative rules to handle death. The problem WotC faces is that there are a lot of different ways to handle death, and all of them require major assumptions about the game world. It would be somewhat useful for them to release a module called "The Book of Death" which talks about and provides rule adjustments for the various forms of in game death (e.g. None, Plot Armor, Heroic/Cinematic, Gritty, NetHack)
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2012-09-26, 03:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
In D&D, in one of the 3/3.5 books, they explained how resurrection spells work. (I forget which book). They note that in order to be resurrected, the person needs to agree to it. However, the vast vast majority of people find peace in where the soul is sent after they die(even if they are evil), which means they won't accept a resurrection. This means that typically only people who have some sort of important unfinished business typically come back.
"Sometimes, we’re heroes. Sometimes, we shoot other people right in the face for money."
-Shadowrun 4e, Runner's Companion
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2012-09-26, 06:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Unfortunately, we're not talking about the "vast majority" of people, we're talking about PCs, who will average about 4 or 5 creatures out of the entire population. In a lot of cases, whether the PC "allows" himself to be resurrected boils down to the player agreeing to take a cut in party treasure to pay for the "Raise Dead" spell. And if the player outright says "no, don't resurrect me", the other PCs are probably not going to try at all.
I actually prefer 4e's way of doing it; the relative difficulty in "killing" a PC means that they all effectively have a form of plot armour, without explicitly stating in the book "PCs can't die". You can effectively remove "Raise Dead" from the system with few implications; the PCs won't need it, and the world doesn't need to account for whether NPCs have access to it.
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2012-09-27, 04:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
D&D has a problem where it has to deal with a large number of settings and group types. Some people want death to be nothing but an inconvenience, some people want it to be the end, and different people want death to be more or less common. In one of my favorite gaming systems(7th Sea), barring truely massive damage(see cannon), it's impossible for a hero or villian to die unless someone takes an action to finish them off
"Sometimes, we’re heroes. Sometimes, we shoot other people right in the face for money."
-Shadowrun 4e, Runner's Companion
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2012-09-27, 07:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
The way I see it, characters shouldn't die unless the player wants them to. They can be overcome or defeated in combat, but can be rejuvenated once the battle is over by the victors (whether friend or foe).
Death, instead, becomes exclusively a story/character-driven event. Say you want your character to die because you want to play out a dramatic death scene, bring in a new character, or for some other reason. Or perhaps your group wants to roleplay the quest into the underworld to retrieve the "dead" character's soul (would be a way to deal with the situation when a player is going to be unable to play for an extended time or the player can just play a friend of the party helping them on their quest to save their dead friend).
If characters only die when the players want them to there's no mucking about with resurrection and death ceases to have a revolving door, thereby retaining its significance.
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2012-09-27, 12:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Death is definitely a play style issue. There are plenty of players (such as myself) who view character death, by whatever means, as just as much a part of the story as any pre-planned plot point. I think this stems from a different view point concerning the story telling that happens around the table.
People who like their PCs to have plot armor tend to view the role playing game as a vehicle to tell an existing story. In this perspective, it makes sense that a PC can't die until the player decides, because their story isn't finished yet (and, to a lesser extent, because their story doesn't involve a quest to resurrect them).
The other group tends to look at the game as a vehicle to create a story, where the players and the DM alike are discovering the plot as they go along. From this perspective, non plot related character death makes sense because the story is ever evolving and changing and not everyone gets to be the hero through the whole arch.
Incidentally, I would wager that if you took a poll, you would also find that those same perspectives closely correspond to whether you prefer a high degree of randomness in your game in the first place. That is, Group 1 people also are likely to dislike random character generation, swingy combat and damage and things like wandering monster checks. Group 2 are more likely to prefer those things, or at least not mind them.
Both are valid viewpoints, but they require different approaches to death, and yield different stories.
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2012-09-27, 12:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Speaking of 4e deaths, we had one in my 15th-level campaign last night. And another whose mind was broken so badly he'll need a month's worth of psychic surgery to repair it and never be without the mental scars.
So ... yep. It definitely, absolutely happens. :D I was kind of thinking it might turn into a TPK when I was prepping it.
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2012-09-27, 03:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Thing is, even with the method I described, players who enjoy the randomly-generated-story approach can always just say "well, I'm at -10, I guess it's time to roll up a new character."
Say that the rulebook states that when a character fails their third death save, they're incapacitated for the remainder of the encounter. However, it can easily have a line or two afterwards saying something to the effect of: "Some groups prefer combat to be more risky and rule that when a character fails their third death save they are truly dead instead of incapacitated. Check with your DM on whether it's possible for a dead character to be restored to life."
When doing a campaign write-up for a new home game or play-by-post you'd just note that the campaign will be played with the "character death real" or "hardcore" setting.
Besides, it would also put an end to craziness like "oh no, Bob the fighter died. Time to roll up a new character. Say hello to Bob II! Exactly the same as Bob I, but alive!"
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2012-09-27, 04:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
IME that would never happen. Bob I and Bob II existed in D&D campaigns where people role dice like God and Gygax intended them to. (Pulls out dice.) So:
Bob I got: 17 11 12 6 12 9
and played with the rolls in order. Real old-school.
Bob II got: 15 15 10 9 12 17
and rearanged to: 17 15 15 10 12 9
Bob III got: 8 14 8 10 10 11
and would have jumped off a random cliff except the PHB says to reroll if you're that bad.
Bob IIIa got: 13 14 14 10 14 13
Swapped strength and dexterity and built a Paladin instead of a fighter. Then he jumped off a cliff anyway.
Bob IV got: 12 14 8 9 14 9
and jumped off another cliff.
Bob V got: 16 13 11 18 16 9
Rearanged to 18 13 16 13 16 9 and is currently in play. He may even get raised if he ever dies.Last edited by Doug Lampert; 2012-09-27 at 04:17 PM.
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2012-09-27, 05:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
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2012-09-27, 09:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
And D&D has successfully catered to both styles and many more for decades already. The idea that 5e can all of a sudden make D&D customizable is nothing short of trying to sell us the game we already have through the power of pure rhetoric. /tangent
So can the rules of Next just have both, and ask the DM to select his 'temperature' setting? That's supposed to be what will sell this edition to us, but we haven't seen anything like this in any actual materials yet.*********
Matters of Critical Insignificance - My Blog for all my favorite entertainment
11/4: Announcing the Vow of Honor KS! (I contributed)
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2012-09-27, 10:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I'd like to see rules that say, when you go down to 0 you are out.
Then you have two options. Death or Injury
Every time you go beyond 0 you take an Injury, if you go beyond your con +10 (just to make a very large window to fall in) you die
Injuries would be like loss of limbs or serious trauma to the body that imposes a permanent negative unless fixed.
Don't know if it's all that relevant to the conversation right now but that's my two copper.
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2012-09-27, 10:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Plot armor mechanics work to make a story satisfying and fit the genre of the kind of story we want to create. This is not the same thing as already having a script that we're just following.
So can the rules of Next just have both, and ask the DM to select his 'temperature' setting? That's supposed to be what will sell this edition to us, but we haven't seen anything like this in any actual materials yet.
That said, I've said before, I'd really like to see the final layout look something like what Zack S. proposed in his Type V posts. I know I keep harping on them, but they were good, and if you haven't had a chance to look at them, you should. Ultimately it would be nice if as many parts of the system were compartmentalized, even if the compartmenting is just to different play styles, and then those compartments were visually indicated so that it was obvious which parts depended on which other parts. My only concern is that it might make it messy in presentation, but I think with some work, it could be doable and doable well. Additional rules modules would list what components they depend on and so land so forth. Of course, my dream would be that WotC takes advantage of the rising popularity of print on demand, and allows for the creation and purchase of "customized" rule books, which contain only the modules you want to use, and their dependencies. Even if its just in electronic form, I think that would be a huge huge thing.
I'd like to see rules that say, when you go down to 0 you are out.
Then you have two options. Death or Injury
Every time you go beyond 0 you take an Injury, if you go beyond your con +10 (just to make a very large window to fall in) you die
Injuries would be like loss of limbs or serious trauma to the body that imposes a permanent negative unless fixed.Last edited by 1337 b4k4; 2012-09-27 at 10:23 PM.
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2012-09-27, 11:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-09-27, 11:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
But then if the injuries are a revolving door, why bother with them at all? Why not simply give PCs more hit points? The injuries have to at least be slightly more permanent than HP. The trick would be striking some balance that doesn't make the injuries as bad (or worse) than death, while still making them more meaningful than HP, and without generating too much "escalating suck"
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2012-09-27, 11:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
More of a way to say, "Hey you may have lost your eye, & have trouble talking but at least your aren't dead right?" Now lets try to find a cleric who can help you see again. As opposed to they way it is now with it being so binary. (I'm either at peak fighting condition or dead/dying). Then death is a little bit more infrequent. By allowing death to come at -10+Con, it saves first level characters from being one shotted as well.
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2012-09-28, 01:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I'm with 1337 b4k4 here, it sounds like a good idea, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like it would lengthen combats and probably not address the problem in the first place.
If it's difficult to get rid of an Injury, being injured may very well be more annoying than dying, to the player. Many would rather die and passively wait to be resurrected than live and fail when they try to contribute.
If it's easy to get rid of an Injury, then combats now just last longer, with no side benefits to speak of.
Originally Posted by 1337 b4k4
Even that would be OK if it wasn't WotC we're dealing with. Having a Dark Sun rules module that changes core classes and tweaks mechanics a bit to really suit that setting would be awesome, but WotC has not shown the finesse nor the attention to detail to pull off something like that; the Dark Sun book will at best be a lot of fluff, new classes, new feats, new spells, none of which are mutually exclusive with the core game, since no one wants to have their core book purchases rendered useless. If it's going to be a rules module, it needs to be mutually exclusive with the core, which means people won't want to buy the rules modules after they've bought the core.*********
Matters of Critical Insignificance - My Blog for all my favorite entertainment
11/4: Announcing the Vow of Honor KS! (I contributed)
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2012-09-28, 02:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I'd disagree there, to some extent, since psionics had enough of a presence in 1e to make it into the PHB as an appendix (with every PC theoretically being able to gain psionics), into the DMG in the form of psionic combat tables and different timescales, and into the MM with many monsters having innate psionics including many iconic D&D-original monsters. Very integral? Not necessarily. Iconic, and extricated from the core rules only with some difficulty? Certainly.
But your larger point about psionics and other subsystems likely being splatbooks at best in 5e is granted.Last edited by PairO'Dice Lost; 2012-09-28 at 02:21 AM.
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2012-09-28, 08:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Yeah. As optional as psionics may have felt, my recent experience running 1e reminded me that it's still an integral system. Quite a few monsters in MM1 rely on them very heavily - including most demons and devils. For a handful of monsters (intellect devourer, thought eater, some others I can't remember) that's basically all they have.
I'd say it was often ignored in 1e, but it's not nearly as vestigial as it seems like it should be.
-O
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2012-09-28, 08:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
That sure sounds like some great rollplaying.
Seriously, though, for a throwaway character random rolls are fine but for a character and campaign I intend to play for a while I'd prefer if everyone started with the same baseline - a point buy is just more fair. Nobody wants to play the 14 10 10 8 10 12 fighter when the party wizard is rocking 16 13 11 18 16 10.
Also, when you have to generate a number of characters at a time (as I usually do since I tend to get strong-armed into building characters for other players in my group) using a point buy is faster once you're familiar with it since it eliminates the need to muck about with rerolling bad stat sets and rearranging rolls to fit the character concept.
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2012-09-28, 08:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
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
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