D&D 5th Edition XIII: An Inherently Unfinished Product

[Oracle_Hunter]

The title is in reference to WotC's GenCon announcement that they're done with this lousy public playtest idea and are going to continue their excellent development work in secret.

As is (by now) well known to every RPGer who hasn’t spent the past year hiding under a rock, a new edition of D&D is coming out. When? Well, they’re not telling us. What they are giving us is an open playtest, which you can sign up for right here.

Use this thread to discuss the playtest, the weekly mostly-weekly Legends and Lore update articles from Mike Mearls, and other news relating to D&D’s new edition.

Useful (and freshly updated!) links:

• Playtest Signup
• Legends and Lore Archive
• EN World D&D Forum

Penny Arcade / PvP 5e Podcasts:

• Part 1 of 4
• Part 2 of 4
• Part 3 of 4
• Part 4 of 4

Previous threads:

• First Edition
• Second Edition
• Third Edition
• 3.5th Edition
• Fourth Edition
• D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread
• D&D 5th Edition: 6th Thread and counting
• D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
• D&D 5th Edition: 8th Revision and counting
• Pathfinder, Next, and the Future of D&D
• D&D 5th Edition IX: Still in the Idea Stage
• D&D 5th Edition X: Where's the Craft (RPG System) skill?
• D&D 5th Edition XI: The 15-Minute Designer Workday
• D&D 5th Edition XII: Peasant Militias Can Defeat Smartphones?

[Raineh Daze]

Huzzah, the name I came up with as part of random conversation has been chosen! XD

[Flickerdart]

Pretty sure June 14th is not the latest packet.

[Frozen_Feet]

I would like to note that any game system is always unfinished without a game scenario to accompany it. So any edition of D&D only becomes complete when a proper adventure is supplied.

Because of this, I hope Next will provide much better guidelines for making scenarios than... pretty much any version of D&D? And I don't mean "this is how much money you grant to characters" or "this is how you make a level-appropriate encounter" - I mean "here are things you need to consider when planning a combat/stealth/diplomatic scenario and a couple of examples".

The guy who said in the last thread that abilities can't be balanced in a vacuum was right. If you want to give all classes a shot in solving a scenario, there must be ways to approach a scenario in multiple ways - threats for the fighter to face, opportunities for the rogue to exploit, spiritual conflicts for the cleric to mediate and arcane mysteries for the mage to solve.

[DeltaEmil]

So, has obryn written a full review of the latest packet?

How does Next feel?

[Craft (Cheese)]

Because of this, I hope Next will provide much better guidelines for making scenarios than... pretty much any version of D&D? And I don't mean "this is how much money you grant to characters" or "this is how you make a level-appropriate encounter" - I mean "here are things you need to consider when planning a combat/stealth/diplomatic scenario and a couple of examples".

For what it's worth, 4E's DMG2 did a pretty decent job at this. Granted mostly by repeating advice and ideas that everyone else figured out a decade ago but hey, progress.

Those mysteries are solved by the city guard, not PC's. PC's dont get called into solve "this cheating wife with an angry husband was murdered, gee sarge who do you think did it?"

PC's are called into difficult cases where the short of obvious suspects was already eliminated. Or didnt exist in the first place for some reason.

Now if you really want to play your level 10+ party as first day detectives solving first day detective crimes maybe some of the spells would make them easier. But why the hell are you doing that?

Or maybe the PCs decide, without a questgiver having to ask them and offer a reward, that they care about this mystery and want to resolve it? When a character reaches 10th level they don't just stop caring about 1st-level problems, especially when those problems affect them personally (like if the angry husband was a friend of the PC's and they want to clear his name).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I'm not going to do a line-by-line reply to everything from the last few pages of the last thread since we've switched over, but I'll hit the highlights.

Spoiler

Show

It simply is more overhead. Push X and Ongoing Fire X are the entirety of the rule; there's nothing you need to look up for either, once you know the basic vocabulary of the game. Improved Grab, OTOH, gets you into the morass of grappling along with the exceptions for where it's different from your normal grapple. Swallow Whole is likewise an entire separate subsystem ("muscular action" lol) that requires reference.

As Siuis noted, "3e grapple is sooo hard" is one of the 4e marketing memes that has taken on a life of its own. The grapple rules in a nutshell:

Spoiler

Show

1) Make a melee touch attack that provokes an AoO. A successful AoO or a missed attack stops the grapple.

2) Roll opposed BAB + Str + size (±4 for each size category above/below Medium). Deal unarmed damage and move into the target's square if you win, you're grappling; if you lose, you're not grappling.

3) While grappling, you don't threaten, lose Dex to AC, and are immobilized. Being pinned is like being grappled plus you take -4 to AC and may be unable to speak at your opponent's option.

4) While grappling, you can attack with your or your opponent's weapon or pin someone with a grapple check as an attack action and draw a weapon with a grapple check as a move action.

5) While grappling or pinned, you can use a non-scroll magic item or cast a non-somatic spell, move the grapple with a grapple check as a standard action (enemy gets +4), or retrieve a spell component as a full-round action.

6) Going from pinned to grappling or grappling to free requires a grapple check as an attack action or an Escape Artist check as a standard action.

7) You can be in a grapple with up to four Medium-equivalent combatants and must beat all of them to escape, otherwise you make checks against one opponent at a time.

More complicated than it needs to be? Yes. More complicated than 4e's Grab? Hardly; Grab is in 4e terms (Str vs. Ref, Acrobatics to escape) instead of 3e terms (opposed grapple checks, Escape Artist to escape), but it's the same procedure.

The double standards here regarding standardization are kinda starting to tick me off.

• 4e Grab is in a bulleted list while 3e Grappling is in prose, both editions use high-level function calls to grab/grappling in player-side powers and monster-side features, and both function basically the same way, yet Grab is simple and elegant while Grapple is insanely difficult.
• 4e has a 6-page "how to read a power" section and its powers are all nicely self-contained, 3e has a 5-page "spell descriptions" section and its spells are too complex for monster use.
• 4e boils everything down to packages of keywords and it's innovative and fast, I suggest boiling things down to packages of keywords and it requires too much system mastery.
• 4e has a fighter class template that adds +2 Fort, +2 saves, 1 action point, +8+Con HP, two skills, a bunch of proficiencies, and three class features and it's a refreshing breath of simplicity in monster customization. 3e lets you add a level of barbarian to a monster to give it +2 Fort, +1 attack, 1d12+Con HP, 2+Int skills, a bunch of proficiencies, and two class features and it's "a ridiculous amount of overhead to give your monster a few more hit points and Rage."

Well, people, which is it?

Actually 3e Fireball is more than that - but that would be an objective improvement on the fireball that can melt lead.

I realize it's more than that, because the entry you linked is the one I copied and modified. You'll note I said that that entry contains all the important parts of fireball assuming you have standard rules for fire (which the game should) and a base spell template.

Indeed. There are ten different pairs of orcs and a further ten different sets of three orcs. Add in the single type of orc and you have twenty five distinct combinations there. They will eventually become very repetative but it takes twenty five times as long to get as used to the combinations as it would the single orcs.

There are 8 unique abilities among all seven MM1 orcs, which boil down to some combination of "heal when hitting someone", "attack when hit", "let another orc attack", and "ranged AoE". You can get more variety than that by adding a single level of warblade or crusader--or heck, even fighter!--to a 3e orc.

That wasn't a grace. It was a curse.
[...]
And above all it cramped DMs rather than just allowing them to give whatever they thought the monster should do as abilities to that monster.

As noted many times before, "make stuff up" is a valid tactic in any edition of any game. You can whip up a pure-fiat monster in 3e if you really want to, and for those who like to follow the rules or who want to draw on existing material, it's all there.

Here, let me do that now: the Nightblade is an evil creature of evil that sneaks up on people at night and kills them dead. Outsider, maxed Hide/MS, improved grab, sneak attack where rogue level = HD, greater invisibility 3/day, dimension door at will, 1d6 Con/1d6 Con poison (Dex based), immobilizes and silences creatures for 1 round on a hit with its claws (Ref negates), death attack; set HD and ability scores based on how tough and cunning you want it to be, e.g. 6 HD and 14/20/12/18/16/12.

For someone who knows 3e well, you can literally write down the above paragraph and use that in combat because all of those effects are defined and well-known. For someone who doesn't, you can write up a stat block where all of those effects are spelled out...and then when a more experienced DM (or the same DM later on) uses that stat block, they can condense the full stat block into the above paragraph in their notes or just glance at things during combat and know exactly how everything works.

Why on Oerth would having more standardization between monsters and between player and monster abilities be a bad thing?

I don't find it offensive or whatever, except insofar as it constrains the DM's flexibility to a specific pre-set list of "stuff monsters can do."

Hardly. 3e monsters have plenty of unique and diverse abilities, but all of the generic stuff that lots of monsters use is standardized so you only need to read a few abilities for each new monster you come across despite the monster actually having plenty of abilities at its disposal.

Even if we can't agree over which system (3.5 or 4e) is better in a vacuum, I hope we could at least agree that cutting down the complexity of 3.5 monster creation would be a good thing.

Definitely. The actual 3e rules as they stand are certainly full of fiddly bonuses, exceptions and corner cases, and other needless complexity, but I think the general design philosophy behind them is superior.

New stuff:

Because of this, I hope Next will provide much better guidelines for making scenarios than... pretty much any version of D&D? And I don't mean "this is how much money you grant to characters" or "this is how you make a level-appropriate encounter" - I mean "here are things you need to consider when planning a combat/stealth/diplomatic scenario and a couple of examples".

This could be accomplished with a few paragraphs in the DMG explaining that PCs go from being very human to debatably human to superhuman in D&D (insert crack about commoners vs. Asmodeus here ), some plots are only relevant or possible at certain levels, and you need to look at what PCs can actually do when designing scenarios. Maybe some examples of how to handle high-level adventures would be good (e.g. "PCs are now powerful enough to be more proactive than reactive, railroads won't work anymore), but really, all of the "here's what you need to consider" advice always reads to me as "Protips: don't pretend a wooden door is an obstacle for the Hulk, breaking the Voyager's replicators because plot for the umpteenth time this season is nothing but fake drama, and Batman will find out whodunnit."

[tasw]

For what it's worth, 4E's DMG2 did a pretty decent job at this. Granted mostly by repeating advice and ideas that everyone else figured out a decade ago but hey, progress.



Or maybe the PCs decide, without a questgiver having to ask them and offer a reward, that they care about this mystery and want to resolve it? When a character reaches 10th level they don't just stop caring about 1st-level problems, especially when those problems affect them personally (like if the angry husband was a friend of the PC's and they want to clear his name).

In that case the short list of suspects is wrong. So the spells that rely on confirming it dont short circuit the adventure at all.

Alternately, why are you presenting level 1 style adventures to characters who can cast contact other plane and vision?

Whats next, giant rats under the tavern for a bag of shiny copper pieces and a free bed?

[Flickerdart]

Whats next, giant rats under the tavern for a bag of shiny copper pieces and a free bed?

Ratsmodeus under the billion-soul deep freeze spelljammer, for interstellar salvage and not being kicked out into the void between worlds.

[Grod_The_Giant]

In that case the short list of suspects is wrong. So the spells that rely on confirming it dont short circuit the adventure at all.

Alternately, why are you presenting level 1 style adventures to characters who can cast contact other plane and vision?

Whats next, giant rats under the tavern for a bag of shiny copper pieces and a free bed?

An investigation with a limited set of suspects is not a level 1 style adventure, it's every form of crime fiction in existence;*. Mystery as a genre is about the characters as much as anything-- not just whodunnit, but why. You get a much more interesting story-- not to mention something the players can keep straight-- when you can take the time to actually develop characters. It's also about the only way you can actually have useful clues that the players (not characters) can interact with.

Is "Joe the cobbler was killed in a locked bedroom, and the three suspects are his scorned wife, his abused apprentice, and the customer who owes him money" an appropriate mystery for high-level characters? No. But "King Joe was killed in a warded bedroom, and the three suspects are the ambitious Grand Vizir, the Ambassador for a country on the edge of war, and the impatient prince" is, thanks to the added layers of magical and social protections. And "Joe the archmarge was killed in his private demiplane, and the three suspects are a demon lord he was known to bargain with, a rival mage he'd been feuding with for a hundred years, and a black dragon he had enslaved" could work for near-epic level characters.


(Also, please try and dial back the scorn. It's not conductive to a productive discussion.)


*Slight hyperbole for effect.

[DeltaEmil]

Behold. Twitter.

any plans for more world and setting books?

while we can't talk about products, we do want to embrace all the #dnd settings that we can.

we've been seeding stuff from different settings into the packet. For example the next packet will have the kender and the warforged.

[The New Bruceski]

For what it's worth, 4E's DMG2 did a pretty decent job at this. Granted mostly by repeating advice and ideas that everyone else figured out a decade ago but hey, progress.

Something we often forget is that other folks don't have ten years experience, or don't have the same ten years experience. DMG1 had a lot of "these are suggestions for figuring out what you want to do, and how to keep different people engaged," it even has a section of "published adventures suck in a vacuum, here's suggestions on how to improvise when your players leave the rails." Then the DMG2 tries to revise some things, taking another stab at skill challenges (the epitome of "good idea, hard to put in writing") and various DM hurdles (say "yes, but" instead of "no" when a player has an idea), giving examples of how to build different creatures around a unifying theme or design traps (since it was the first edition of D&D to embrace Dungeonscape's idea of interactive traps instead of "remove it or take damage and done").

Neither one is perfect, but they are both very good attempts and I recommend them to people running any game system.

[Kurald Galain]

I think it's fine to have a book with DM'ing advice but no actual rules, as long as it's clear that this book is crucial to beginning DMs and kind of redundant to long-term experienced DMs. The 4E DMG more-or-less fulfills this role, and I think that's better than earlier editions which e.g. put the magical item section in the DMG.

[Jacob.Tyr]

I'm not going to do a line-by-line reply to everything from the last few pages of the last thread since we've switched over, but I'll hit the highlights.

[spoiler]

As Siuis noted, "3e grapple is sooo hard" is one of the 4e marketing memes that has taken on a life of its own. The grapple rules in a nutshell:

Spoiler

Show

1) Make a melee touch attack that provokes an AoO. A successful AoO or a missed attack stops the grapple.

2) Roll opposed BAB + Str + size (±4 for each size category above/below Medium). Deal unarmed damage and move into the target's square if you win, you're grappling; if you lose, you're not grappling.

3) While grappling, you don't threaten, lose Dex to AC, and are immobilized. Being pinned is like being grappled plus you take -4 to AC and may be unable to speak at your opponent's option.

4) While grappling, you can attack with your or your opponent's weapon or pin someone with a grapple check as an attack action and draw a weapon with a grapple check as a move action.

5) While grappling or pinned, you can use a non-scroll magic item or cast a non-somatic spell, move the grapple with a grapple check as a standard action (enemy gets +4), or retrieve a spell component as a full-round action.

6) Going from pinned to grappling or grappling to free requires a grapple check as an attack action or an Escape Artist check as a standard action.

7) You can be in a grapple with up to four Medium-equivalent combatants and must beat all of them to escape, otherwise you make checks against one opponent at a time.

More complicated than it needs to be? Yes. More complicated than 4e's Grab? Hardly; Grab is in 4e terms (Str vs. Ref, Acrobatics to escape) instead of 3e terms (opposed grapple checks, Escape Artist to escape), but it's the same procedure.

See, I've done grappling builds and they somehow manage to be different than how you described. Mainly, I did not know you got to deal unarmed damage on a successful grapple. Also, one of my favourites revolved around a set of rules you didn't mention: Moving an enemy during grapple. Grabbing an enemy, pinning them, and dragging them around a rogue with combat reflexes.

So, in a nutshell, we both didn't know parts of grapple rules

[1337 b4k4]

Mystery as a genre is about the characters as much as anything-- not just whodunnit, but why. You get a much more interesting story-- not to mention something the players can keep straight-- when you can take the time to actually develop characters. It's also about the only way you can actually have useful clues that the players (not characters) can interact with.

Mystery as a genre also involves a lack of information, and a lack of easy means to get the information, whether by specific actions on the part of the criminal or by the nature of the environment or time period. A murder mystery written in and about village people from medieval England will be considerably different and require different preparations, actors and challenges than one written in and about the party members of 1984's Oceania. So if you want to write a mystery that challenges 10th level parties, you have to write a different mystery than one that challenges 1st level parties. It's essentially the same problem that led to bounded accuracy for skills.

This to me is actually in part a problem caused by the compressed leveling system that D&D has developed over the years. There's nothing wrong with having certain styles of adventure and play be appropriate for certain levels (and even spelling it out that way) but when you compress the time it takes to level up, then you reduce the amount of time the players can spend in each genre's level range, and thus have more people trying to run 2nd level adventures at level 13 because they haven't told that part of the story yet.

[obryn]

So, has obryn written a full review of the latest packet?

How does Next feel?

Tackling this first. It reads ... okay? The play is the thing, and I'm not playing this one until Wednesday. The PCs are more interesting than in previous packets, and I've gotten on board with simple staring PCs. But the whole system, as in how easy/fun is it to DM on my side? Dunno yet. I'm reserving judgment.

Now going back to silly quote wars. I think things have gotten dumb when there's more than 3 quote blocks, but here we go...

Oh? How does forced movement interact with opportunity attacks? Damaging zones? Movement triggered abilities? Because I'm pretty sure there are some important fine details in there; slide doesn't trigger OH, but does push/pull?

Once again, this is the fundamental vocabulary of the game - the rules used in absolutely everything. I am not arguing that 4e is a rules-light game. But comparing this to specific spells used in spell-like abilities is either facetious or intellectually dishonest. Unless you think the entire spell list is a part of the fundamental rules of the game, in which case, wow.

This is false, and can be proven so. You want to give a monster rage and some HP? Do it. The 3.5 monster system can entirely mimic the 4e system. The 4e system Cannot Handle The 3.5 System AT ALL. I find the much more adaptable system with the more powerful engine to be inherently better. Just trim it down and throw some training wheels on it. Learn from 4e.

This sounds suspiciously like a rule zero fallacy. What I've seen over and over again is that the 3e system's strength is that you can reverse engineer monsters and that players can pick up their tricks right there in the rules. Just adding 50 HP seems ... not really in that list.

But in answer - what do you need in 4e other than knowing what bits and pieces of a class you want to swipe? What is gained by saying, "2 levels of barbarian" that isn't gained by a simple Rage power and a trait?

So? That's how prep work is in 3.5. You need to compare monster creation! How do you build a monster from the ground up? You pick it's type, referencing a chart. You figure it's level, then needed expressions. How do you pick it's special abilities? Is there a list somewhere telling you the appropriate slidin distance for a 13th level monster?

Again, I'm not arguing it's rules-light. It's a lot easier than the make-work that 3.x monster design pushes you into, but between using existing monsters for examples and learning from a few sessions, it does the job. But better guidelines would definitely be helpful re: special abilities.

This is making more work for yourself. If in a given encounter the monster won't use certain abilities, then you don't need to know them for this fight.your prep work doesn't have to exceed the 4e level at all.

How do you know this until you read the spell description?

All this "grappling is haaaaaaard" crap is just that. It comes from kids who gloss over at three paragraphs and ne'er put the knowledge to work. It's a trigger for me; grapple is easy. You're just lazy.

Oh, I understood it well enough and used it often when I was running 3e. It's a clunky morass of opposed rolls, however, with a few too many steps with the roll to hit, opportunity attack, roll for grapple, figure out what you do with grapple every round, interactions with attackers, etc.

More complicated than it needs to be? Yes. More complicated than 4e's Grab? Hardly; Grab is in 4e terms (Str vs. Ref, Acrobatics to escape) instead of 3e terms (opposed grapple checks, Escape Artist to escape), but it's the same procedure.

Eh? It's nowhere near as complicated as the 4e grab. Nowhere close. Are you reading the same rules I am?

[*]4e has a 6-page "how to read a power" section and its powers are all nicely self-contained, 3e has a 5-page "spell descriptions" section and its spells are too complex for monster use.

You never once need to look up a power as the DM in 4e. That's the difference, and it's hardly a double standard.

4e boils everything down to packages of keywords and it's innovative and fast, I suggest boiling things down to packages of keywords and it requires too much system mastery.

Because you're putting detailed rules into those keywords rather than using them as "tags" as (current) 4e does. Keywords (nowadays; MM1 was crappy about this, as Ashdate pointed out) are labels with no game effect unless something specifically leverages them. Like lightning attacks are just attacks until a PC has lightning resistance. There's no general rules about what happens when you are hit with lightning damage.

4e has a fighter class template that adds +2 Fort, +2 saves, 1 action point, +8+Con HP, two skills, a bunch of proficiencies, and three class features and it's a refreshing breath of simplicity in monster customization. 3e lets you add a level of barbarian to a monster to give it +2 Fort, +1 attack, 1d12+Con HP, 2+Int skills, a bunch of proficiencies, and two class features and it's "a ridiculous amount of overhead to give your monster a few more hit points and Rage."

Oh lord, no it's not. Those templates are a terrible, terrible idea that showed up in DMG1 back before the designers knew anything about the system. It was an attempt to cram inappropriate 3e-isms into 4e monster design. And that terrible, terrible idea made terrible, terrible monsters.

I realize it's more than that, because the entry you linked is the one I copied and modified. You'll note I said that that entry contains all the important parts of fireball assuming you have standard rules for fire (which the game should) and a base spell template.

Why use a base spell template and descriptors like "long range" when you can just put the ranges and full description right there?

There are 8 unique abilities among all seven MM1 orcs, which boil down to some combination of "heal when hitting someone", "attack when hit", "let another orc attack", and "ranged AoE". You can get more variety than that by adding a single level of warblade or crusader--or heck, even fighter!--to a 3e orc.

At which point you've gone through the hassle of adding class levels, adjusting saving throws, attacks, calculating DCs, etc. With less hassle in 4e, you take flavorful neat thing as inspiration from a class and put it into 4e monster terms. Done; no overhead.

As noted many times before, "make stuff up" is a valid tactic in any edition of any game. You can whip up a pure-fiat monster in 3e if you really want to, and for those who like to follow the rules or who want to draw on existing material, it's all there.

Explain how this isn't a rule zero fallacy?

Why on Oerth would having more standardization between monsters and between player and monster abilities be a bad thing?

Hardly. 3e monsters have plenty of unique and diverse abilities, but all of the generic stuff that lots of monsters use is standardized so you only need to read a few abilities for each new monster you come across despite the monster actually having plenty of abilities at its disposal.

The standardization nets you zero benefit if you spell them out precisely, as you should in the stat block.

-O

[lesser_minion]

The standardization nets you zero benefit if you spell them out precisely, as you should in the stat block.

Standardisation is not just about saving space. It also makes the system as a whole easier to balance, easier to learn, easier to understand, easier to reason about, and more flexible in what it can handle.

And regardless of other considerations, it is the height of pointlessness to take essentially a single concept from the game world and then model it in twelve different ways within the rules.

Explain how this isn't a rule zero fallacy?

Because you were pretending that rule zero didn't exist at all.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Something we often forget is that other folks don't have ten years experience, or don't have the same ten years experience. DMG1 had a lot of "these are suggestions for figuring out what you want to do, and how to keep different people engaged," it even has a section of "published adventures suck in a vacuum, here's suggestions on how to improvise when your players leave the rails." Then the DMG2 tries to revise some things, taking another stab at skill challenges (the epitome of "good idea, hard to put in writing") and various DM hurdles (say "yes, but" instead of "no" when a player has an idea), giving examples of how to build different creatures around a unifying theme or design traps (since it was the first edition of D&D to embrace Dungeonscape's idea of interactive traps instead of "remove it or take damage and done").

Neither one is perfect, but they are both very good attempts and I recommend them to people running any game system.

I don't disagree, I was just being snarky that it took WotC so long to get a clue.

[SpacemanSpif]

Standardisation is not just about saving space. It also makes the system as a whole easier to balance, easier to learn, easier to understand, easier to reason about, and more flexible in what it can handle.

And regardless of other considerations, it is the height of pointlessness to take essentially a single concept from the game world and then model it in twelve different ways within the rules.

How does standardisation make the system easier to balance, or more flexible?

What about making monsters and players draw from the same pool of abilities is easier to make balanced than being able to modify those abilities as the situation requires it?

Similarly, how is a system that doesn't let you give monsters things that don't work as player abilities more flexible?

These ideas, coincidentally, are the reason multiple models of one concept are not pointless.

[Raineh Daze]

How does standardisation make the system easier to balance, or more flexible?

What about making monsters and players draw from the same pool of abilities is easier to make balanced than being able to modify those abilities as the situation requires it?

Similarly, how is a system that doesn't let you give monsters things that don't work as player abilities more flexible?

These ideas, coincidentally, are the reason multiple models of one concept are not pointless.

I think the standardisation in question is that, rather than each monster having a slightly different fireball ability that are all called 'Fireball', you just have the one Fireball ability and that's the same across all monsters. Nothing to do with players and monsters sharing abilities.

[SpacemanSpif]

I think the standardisation in question is that, rather than each monster having a slightly different fireball ability that are all called 'Fireball', you just have the one Fireball ability and that's the same across all monsters. Nothing to do with players and monsters sharing abilities.

Ah, my mistake. Is there an edition that does that?

[DeltaEmil]

Fireball was not even consistent in D&D 3.x. A level 5 wizard's fireball deals less damage and has less range than that of a level 6 wizard, or a level 10 wizard.

So it's really nonsense to clamor for all fireballs to be the same, when they're not.

Woe befalls us when the fireball was also modified through metamagics, a feat, and could become either a spell-like or supernatural ability, psionic, psi-like, and stuff like that.

Fireball is not equal to fireball, except that fireball should deal fire over a large area.

[Raineh Daze]

Ah, my mistake. Is there an edition that does that?

I think the examples that keep getting used are Improved Grab and Pounce from 3.5? You get the full ability writeup for the monster, but if you know the ability the names are enough, as it's consistent across the different enemies.

Also Swallow Whole.

Fireball was not even consistent in D&D 3.x. A level 5 wizard's fireball deals less damage and has less range than that of a level 6 wizard, or a level 10 wizard.

... it was an example. Nobody claimed that all fireballs were the same.

[Ashdate]

I think the standardisation in question is that, rather than each monster having a slightly different fireball ability that are all called 'Fireball', you just have the one Fireball ability and that's the same across all monsters. Nothing to do with players and monsters sharing abilities.

(As an aside Raineh, I don't know which side you end up on this, so please take this reply to the idea, rather than whatever position you have on it.)

The problem, as has been pointed out, is that even if we accept that Fireball is a simple ability (and it really isn't), DMs without the system mastery to understand what a Fireball does are going to have to look it up. And even if we decide that it's okay to simply write "Fireball" on a monster's stat block (with perhaps a few notes to indicate strength), then what other spells should WotC be comfortable using in such a manner, and how many?

What I (and I believe, obryn) am suggesting is that worrying about every Fireball being identical to every other Fireball is a lot of work for relatively low benefit. I think the most important parts of Fireball to a player who is facing one (not casting themselves), are the following:

1) Does the effect feel like what I expect a Fireball spell to feel like?
2) Is this going to hurt me?

If you wish to have a monster use the Fireball spell (and noting that you, as a DM, might have good reasons to modify such a thing), I think I'd rather see it spelt out in the monster's stat block in full:

Fireball (standard action): Range 50ft, 20ft radius burst (8x8 squares), each creature in the burst. DC 13 Reflex check.
Hit: 6d6 fire damage.
Miss: half damage.
Effect: Fireball ignites flammable objects not being worn or carried.

(The same goes for traits; if "Swallow Whole" means something, then write out on the monster somewhere, in full, what it does.)

Is this going to require longer stat blocks for creatures that are supposed to cast spells or have several abilities/traits? Yes. But I would hope that rather than stretch a stat-block onto two pages, WotC recognizes that figuring out how to capture the essence of a creature in a manageable space. If spelling things out takes too much room, either cut the abilities out, or do what 4e did and take the opportunity to split them up into different monsters.

And from the DM monster creation side, ideally you would have some guidelines that suggest that for a level X monster (5?), having the ability to use an attack that hits multiple creatures for 6d6 damage is appropriate for them to have once per encounter/day. Then you, as the DM, can either make that a Fireball, or something more appropriate to the creatures (a breath attack? Poison spore? Whirlwind of blades?). The monster math seems sufficiently complicated that I don't know if this is the direction they are going, but I think it should be the direction they do go.

[Raineh Daze]

If you wish to have a monster use the Fireball spell (and noting that you, as a DM, might have good reasons to modify such a thing), I think I'd rather see it spelt out in the monster's stat block in full:

But I think I keep seeing that it should be both--you get the short statblock with just the names in it, and then the full abilities spelled out below. It ends up being possible to read monster entries without looking at the full ability writeup, because you know what they do, and if you don't then you just read a bit further.

Which means that things like Pit Fiends and other high-powered baddies, that accrue abilities like mad, do not require you to read through a dozen ever-so-slightly-different-from-other-monsters abilities because they wrote them out from scratch each time.

I guess if a monster had a more powerful fireball it'd be labelled Improved Fireball or something.

For reference: my position on this is 'I don't really care about monster abilities'.

[obryn]

I think the standardisation in question is that, rather than each monster having a slightly different fireball ability that are all called 'Fireball', you just have the one Fireball ability and that's the same across all monsters. Nothing to do with players and monsters sharing abilities.

Then you rapidly run out of namespace. There's only so many ways to say "fireball."

I think it's only good sense to try and limit the namespace collisions in monsters you're likely to find with one another (really, the cyclopes from MM1 are terrible in many ways; evil eye is just the tip of the iceberg), but past that it's not really a big deal. Because, like I said, everything you need to know about it is right there, spelled out for you.

Standardisation is not just about saving space. It also makes the system as a whole easier to balance, easier to learn, easier to understand, easier to reason about, and more flexible in what it can handle.

In what way is it easier to balance, learn, more flexible, etc? Using 3.x for 8 years and 4e for 5, it's simply none of the above. I don't need to learn every firey burst-ish spell; I just need to know what it does. Which is spelled out in the stat block.

And regardless of other considerations, it is the height of pointlessness to take essentially a single concept from the game world and then model it in twelve different ways within the rules.

Again, not if you spell it out in precise terms where it appears.

Because you were pretending that rule zero didn't exist at all.

If you need Rule 0 to fix a rule, you should just make the rule properly in the first place. You can say "3e monster design is fine ... if you ignore all the rules about monster design," but you're implying that 3e monster design is specifically not fine by doing so.

-O

[Kurald Galain]

Ah, my mistake. Is there an edition that does that?

Second edition, actually. Third edition made it more difficult by making things like saving throw depend on the caster's stats. Fourth edition made it even worse by having it sometimes target fort instead of ref, sometimes dealing Xd8 instead of Xd6 and so on.

Regardless, just because it isn't perfect in <insert edition here> doesn't mean it's a bad idea for future design. Indeed, we expect future design to improve over past editions.

[Raineh Daze]

Then you rapidly run out of namespace. There's only so many ways to say "fireball."

I think it's only good sense to try and limit the namespace collisions in monsters you're likely to find with one another (really, the cyclopes from MM1 are terrible in many ways; evil eye is just the tip of the iceberg), but past that it's not really a big deal. Because, like I said, everything you need to know about it is right there, spelled out for you.

... why do you need that many variations of fireball? If you have a base fireball, then you can append basically any adjective you feel like to it. But if you need that many different ways to basically have a spherical flaming projectile explosion, then you might be using it too often.

If you need Rule 0 to fix a rule, you should just make the rule properly in the first place. You can say "3e monster design is fine ... if you ignore all the rules about monster design," but you're implying that 3e monster design is specifically not fine by doing so.

... but it's not fixing the rule, in this case, is it? I think the original statement was something along the lines of 'You can do it properly, with PC classes and everything, or you can just add the stuff you want if you want to do it quickly'.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

See, I've done grappling builds and they somehow manage to be different than how you described. Mainly, I did not know you got to deal unarmed damage on a successful grapple. Also, one of my favourites revolved around a set of rules you didn't mention: Moving an enemy during grapple. Grabbing an enemy, pinning them, and dragging them around a rogue with combat reflexes.

So, in a nutshell, we both didn't know parts of grapple rules

Au contraire. "5) While grappling or pinned, you can use a non-scroll magic item or cast a non-somatic spell, move the grapple with a grapple check as a standard action (enemy gets +4), or retrieve a spell component as a full-round action." As with my modified fireball example earlier, I took the SRD entry and compressed everything, so it's all there.

Eh? It's nowhere near as complicated as the 4e grab. Nowhere close. Are you reading the same rules I am?

The 3e description has more fiddly details, but the general structure is the same. To grapple, make a touch attack (stopped by AoO) and then grapple check against a creature of [your size + 1] as an attack action; if you win, you're both immobilized, you can attack the grappled creature or use a spell, you need to make grapple checks to move on your turn, you don't provoke AoOs from each other but you do from anyone else, the grappled creature can make an Escape Artist check to escape on its turn, and the grapple ends if you release it or are unable to continue the grapple.

To grab, make a Str vs. Ref check against a creature of [your size + 1] as a standard action; if you win, you're both immobilized, you can attack the grappled creature or use a power, you need to make Str vs. Fort checks to move on your turn, you don't provoke AoOs from each other but you do from anyone else, the grabbed creature can make an Athletics/Acrobatics check to escape on its turn, and the grab ends if you release it or are unable to continue the grapple.

The differences are (A) grapple requires a touch attack first, but you also deal unarmed damage so it's more like adding a free attack (like if grab also let you make a free melee basic attack) than requiring an extra roll, and (B) grapple is maintained as an attack action while grab is maintained as a minor action, which means grab is better at low levels and grapple is better at high levels when people start getting multiple attacks, (C) grapple has a list of allowed actions, which is basically 4e's "you must have one hand free and be able to act unhindered" rule that enumerates everything instead of leaving things up to the DM, and (D) you can pin in grapple but not in grab, so a grapple is harder to escape.

A and B are tossups, C is an advantage for grab in simplicity, D is an advantage for grapple in usefulness. Now, grab is definitely a streamlined version of grapple, but the idea that grab is "easy" and is used a lot while grapple is "hard" and never used is simply hyperbole.

Because you're putting detailed rules into those keywords rather than using them as "tags" as (current) 4e does.

The keywords I'm referring to are things like push, ongoing, grab, zone, etc., not Martial or Healing or the like. Those keywords do have mechanics attached, and the rules behind them are described elsewhere, just like their 3e counterparts.

At which point you've gone through the hassle of adding class levels, adjusting saving throws, attacks, calculating DCs, etc. With less hassle in 4e, you take flavorful neat thing as inspiration from a class and put it into 4e monster terms. Done; no overhead.[

Explain how this isn't a rule zero fallacy?

If something here is an Oberoni fallacy, it's your statement that 4e is superior because it requires a DM to make stuff up and alter monsters by fiat rather than providing a system to do so.

Once again: you can make stuff up in any system. If you want to make a fighter-like monster in 3e, you can easily take a "flavorful neat thing as inspiration from a class" and slap it on a monster. Whether you prefer to make stuff up or follow a monster-building system is up to personal taste, but for someone who does like to make stuff up having a monster-building system to fall back on or use for examples and guidance is not a drawback and for someone who likes to use a monster-building system having no system in place is not an advantage.

The standardization nets you zero benefit if you spell them out precisely, as you should in the stat block.

As Kurald said in the last thread:

The point of standardization is to make things easier to remember, which makes combat faster to run.

Take a look at Magic cards: they'll say things like "Flying (cannot be blocked by non-flying creatures)". This is spelled out, so it's useful for beginning players; but it's also standardized, which means that advanced players can stop reading after the word "flying".
Similarly, a D&D creature could read "Pack tactics (+1 to hit for each ally adjacent to the target)" and then use this for multiple creatures. What 4E is doing wrong is that they would give "pack tactics" a different effect on other creatures. One of the earlier playtests of 5E said that Turn Undead would have its effects spelled out in each undead creature and they could be different for each; that is completely missing the point of centralized design.

Fireball was not even consistent in D&D 3.x. A level 5 wizard's fireball deals less damage and has less range than that of a level 6 wizard, or a level 10 wizard.

So it's really nonsense to clamor for all fireballs to be the same, when they're not.

Woe befalls us when the fireball was also modified through metamagics, a feat, and could become either a spell-like or supernatural ability, psionic, psi-like, and stuff like that.

Fireball is not equal to fireball, except that fireball should deal fire over a large area.

CL 6 fireball == CL 6 fireball

empowered CL 5 fireball == empowered CL 5 fireball

(Su) fireball == (Su) fireball

All of those things have standardized rules, and if you know what fireball does and empower does, you can combine them to get an empowered fireball.

[neonchameleon]

First on the current state of Next:

If the current playtest packet had been the first, second or even third playtest packet I would be looking forward to Next. It has some interesting stuff in there and for an early Alpha isn't bad.

However it's literally the last-but-one playtest packet, and if Wizards want Next out by GenCon 2014 then there really isn't much time left. (4e was released 11 months after the end of the intensive 3 week playtest). For where it's at it's a hell of a lot better than the previous packet, but is about a year late.

Now for replies:

Oh? How does forced movement interact with opportunity attacks? Damaging zones? Movement triggered abilities? Because I'm pretty sure there are some important fine details in there; slide doesn't trigger OH, but does push/pull?

If you do not understand very basic concepts in 4e, concepts that are used by almost every PC, this merely says that you don't understand very basic concepts in 4e and should probably work out how the game works before trying to ask questions.

Forced Movement does not provoke opportunity attacks. Damaging zones are written on a per-zone power and refer to forced movement.

The only rules difference between a push, a pull, and a slide is the direction they may be in. A slide can be in any direction. A pull must be towards the origin and a push must be away from the origin. (The origin is normally the character triggering, but can be the epicentre of a spell or explosion). Other than pulls and pushes restricting which direction you can move someone, the rules are exactly the same.

So no there aren't important fine details in the distinction between pulls, pushes, and slides. There is an important major difference; restrictions on the direction you can use. But they all otherwise use the same forced movement rules.

This is false, and can be proven so. You want to give a monster rage and some HP? Do it. The 3.5 monster system can entirely mimic the 4e system. The 4e system Cannot Handle The 3.5 System AT ALL.

Ding, dong, the witch is dead. You can match literally any outcome 3.5 can bring you in 4e. And vise-versa if you choose to ignore the rules in 3.5. But you don't have to go through the stupidly long winded process of creating monsters in 4e. Saying "4e doesn't give you the option to run three times round the block before opening your front door" is not a problem.

I find the much more adaptable system with the more powerful engine to be inherently better.

4e. Where you can and are encouraged to do whatever you want. Far more adaptable than deriving your output values.

So? That's how prep work is in 3.5. You need to compare monster creation! How do you build a monster from the ground up? You pick it's type, referencing a chart. You figure it's level, then needed expressions. How do you pick it's special abilities? Is there a list somewhere telling you the appropriate slidin distance for a 13th level monster?

Given that "a 13th level monster" is not a thing that actually exists within the fiction of the gameworld other than in certain rare explicitely D&D universes no there isn't. In 4e you start with the picture of the monster. It slides people as far as you think it should slide them.

How do you design a monster in 3.5? You start with the 3.5 rules. And if your monster is a bad fit for the 3.5 rules? Too bad.

I find the idea that we should eliminate niche monsters because they aren't common enough to be an uncomfortable one.

And I find your claim here to be a complete straw man. The context of you talking about niche monsters is several of us saying that the DM should not have to remember the Swallow Whole rules because they are niche and seldom used. Which means that in SiuS-land the 4e Purple Worm should not exist. But literally no one is arguing for that. What is being argued for is that the Swallow Whole rules, because they are rare, should be a part of the monster rather than the standardised set. The argument isn't that no monster should swallow people whole. It's that when you have the rare monsters that can swallow people whole the rules should be right there.

The overhead on swallow hole is "you're permagrappled. You take damage. You can crawl out te mouth with a grapple check or cut out the belly with a weapon." If that's too hard for you, don't use any non-fighter NPCs!

Oh rubbish. There is no one rule that is the problem. The problem is that there are fifty eight little rules you believe that a DM should need to memorise in order to become a DM. Feats. Spells. Special Abilities. Conditions. Every single one of them is going to have an overhead. And I don't know which one is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Me, I believe that there are many skills that are useful to a DM, and it's a relatively rare combination. The ability to improvise. The ability to entertain. The ability to keep things consistent. The ability to call things back and keep plots in the air. The ability to write flexibly and then bring what they write to life.

The ability to memorise half a ream of unnecessary rules is nowhere on that list. And cutting out a large swathe of your potential DMs simply because you decide to unnecessarily weigh them down with fiddly rules is IMO a bad idea.

All this "grappling is haaaaaaard" crap is just that. It comes from kids who gloss over at three paragraphs and ne'er put the knowledge to work. It's a trigger for me; grapple is easy. You're just lazy.

Grappling rules in 3.5 aren't hard. They are merely fiddly and annoying. To illustrate how fiddly and annoying the grab and grapple rules are in his summary of the grapple rules Sean K Reynolds manages to get the Improved Grab rules wrong in his attempt to make them clear on his website (for the obvious mistake Improved Grab (the text is the same in 3.0) does not prevent you from counting as grabbed unless you only use a body part against a smaller foe, and take -20 to the grab check).

Every game, every fight, often multiple times. And there isn't much to learn, you're right – just like slide/push/pull. But it establishes a keyword for other things to work off of. Just like slide/push/pull. I though you wanted that level of 4e coordination?

I have no objection to standardised grappling rules. I just object to any standard set of rules that in one turn involve a touch melee attack, an AoO, and an opposed check. (And that make a pixie easier to hold on to than a same strength human). That's three sets of rolls, two against unusual target numbers.

How does "you have any and all possibilities available" equate to a limited number of archetypes?

Because you only have the classes available. And there is plenty that they don't do.

How so, and how is this in contrast to 4e? My experience shows otherwise.

As you don't even know the push and slide rules in 4e but know the grapple rules in 3.5 cold, I'm going to suggest that you might possibly have an extremely lopsided understanding of the two systems. Of course you're going to be able to do more in the system you understand than the one you don't.

As Siuis noted, "3e grapple is sooo hard" is one of the 4e marketing memes that has taken on a life of its own. The grapple rules in a nutshell:

Fiddly, obnoxious, annoying, and take four times as long as they need to. And rely on attributes that sometimes change in the course of play. They aren't terribly hard (ask me about GURPS vehicles sometime...). But they are fiddly and require multiple rolls as part of the same action.

More complicated than it needs to be? Yes. More complicated than 4e's Grab? Hardly; Grab is in 4e terms (Str vs. Ref, Acrobatics to escape) instead of 3e terms (opposed grapple checks, Escape Artist to escape), but it's the same procedure.

You mean other than:

• Grab in 4e using standard numbers that are used elsewhere. (Ref rather than using a specific grapple modifier never used for anything else as well as a Touch attack)
• Grab in 4e being a single roll to apply.
• Grab in 4e not requiring an opposed roll
• Grab in 4e not giving people different modifiers based on whether they are inside or outside the grab
• Grab in 4e not inflicting an extra special penalty to attacking your opponent either with unarmed or native attacks.
• Grab in 4e not provoking opportunity attacks (now there's a fiddly list: things that provoke in 3.5)

So yes, the 3.5 rules are significantly more complicated than the 4e rules - that's half a dozen clear ways off the top of my head. You can say they aren't all you like - but when I can come up with this many things in the 3.5 rules that do not have an equivalent in the 4e rules you are simply objectively wrong. Are the 4e grab rules a pretty obvious streamlining of the 3.5 grab rules? Yes. But they are a quite deliberately streamlined version that don't use extra special numbers for most people, or as many die rolls or steps to remember.

The double standards here regarding standardization are kinda starting to tick me off.

Then stop trying to create double standards as you did above by misrepresenting the two sets of rules to claim they were equivalent. As far as I can tell every single one of your supposed double standards involves either a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation:

4e Grab is in a bulleted list while 3e Grappling is in prose, both editions use high-level function calls to grab/grappling in player-side powers and monster-side features, and both function basically the same way, yet Grab is simple and elegant while Grapple is insanely difficult.

As I've gone into above Grab is simpler than Grapple in at least half a dozen ways. Grapple takes a minimum of 3d20 to initiate, and there in addition to escaping and moving are three special moves that are only ever used in a grapple:

• Pin
• Break another's Pin
• Use Opponent's Weapon

There are also special rules when grappling on both drawing a weapon and drawing a weapon from a spell component pouch.

Yes, they both function basically the same way. But then 3.5 decides to tack on a mountain of junk that 4e doesn't. Which is why grapple is considered insanely difficult - people think they need to know the rules for using opponents weapons, and for counter-pins.

[*]4e has a 6-page "how to read a power" section and its powers are all nicely self-contained, 3e has a 5-page "spell descriptions" section and its spells are too complex for monster use.

You are missing the point here. This is largely a matter of presentation; 4e monster spells are right there in the monster statblock where as 3.5 monster spells are stored in another book entirely. The problem almost vanishes if you copy every spell the monster needs to be able to cast into the monster statblock.

[*]4e boils everything down to packages of keywords and it's innovative and fast, I suggest boiling things down to packages of keywords and it requires too much system mastery.

4e boils them down into a small handful of keywords, with all the damage keywords having no direct in game effect. There are ten damage types, three forced movement types, a small handful of movement modes (teleport, climb, swim, fly, shift, move), and almost a couple of dozen conditions like dazed, stunned, ongoing, prone, invisible. And 4e still has too many conditions. And a number of bad keywords like Rattling, Reliable, and Invigorating that should be in the effect portion rather than keywords.

You, on the other hand, I think want to make fireball into a keyword. 4e already has more keywords than it should. This is not a double standard. This is you wanting to take somewhere where 4e is already bursting at the seams and make the whole problem an order of magnitude worse. "Keywords" are not a magic talisman that allow you to add a further few dozen to the system.

[*]4e has a fighter class template that adds +2 Fort, +2 saves, 1 action point, +8+Con HP, two skills, a bunch of proficiencies, and three class features and it's a refreshing breath of simplicity in monster customization. 3e lets you add a level of barbarian to a monster to give it +2 Fort, +1 attack, 1d12+Con HP, 2+Int skills, a bunch of proficiencies, and two class features and it's "a ridiculous amount of overhead to give your monster a few more hit points and Rage."

Hint: 4e has some monster design templates to give them PC classes that almost no one uses because they are fiddly and annoying but were presented as a slightly obscure option in early 4e and never followed up on after the DMG 2 as far as I am aware because no one used them and because they are fiddly, obnoxious, and annoying. (I've once or twice used the more interesting templates like the Invisible Blade, but not for years now).

Literally no one I have ever seen claims that 4e is a breath of fresh air in terms of monster design simplicity because it has those templates. People consider 4e a breath of fresh air because you do not have to use such templates. Saying "4e has this optional tool that resembles 3e that no one likes therefore 4e does things the 3e way" is IMO just a little ridiculous.

Well, people, which is it?

That almost all of your claims about double standards are, as I have just shown, based on you not understanding things and because of this you misrepresenting the opposing position

Please stop doing this.