D&D 5th Edition XII: Peasant Militias Can Defeat Smartphones?

[lesser_minion]

Eh, a game where a 50' dragon claws, bites, and otherwise lays into your face in one turn...

With any luck, we'll be moving very far away from that particular archaism. Very, very far away.

The entire hit point system is not a gritty one. D&D has never done gritty well, but I suppose it has allowed some people to lie to themselves about it.

The entire hit point system is a problem in need of fixing. It's basically the root of the whole magic/mundane double standard that we've spent half these threads complaining about.

[Raineh Daze]

The entire hit point system is a problem in need of fixing. It's basically the root of the whole magic/mundane double standard that we've spent half these threads complaining about.

I thought that was the fact that there are spells that affect every type of defence including HP, and not just the fact that HP must be slogged through?

[lesser_minion]

I thought that was the fact that there are spells that affect every type of defence including HP, and not just the fact that HP must be slogged through?

That's just a different way of putting it.

[Raineh Daze]

That's just a different way of putting it.

Not really. HP as a system is fine. There's nothing wrong with Magic Missile, or Fireball if options are not provided to make tossing an explosion at everything that comes its way.

The problem is the creation of a whole bunch of other defences that are much more fragile and can lead to instant defeat... then letting only one select group affect them.

[lesser_minion]

The problem is the creation of a whole bunch of other defences that are much more fragile and can lead to instant defeat... then letting only one select group affect them.

Yes, which is exactly what I'm talking about.

[Raineh Daze]

Ideally, I guess I'd make every class have abilities that target saves, but make anything leading to literal instant death much harder to use. If you want to drop something reliably, use damage. If you want to make this easier or get other effects through, use something targeting saves. And if you want to drop something in one blow, get lucky or pick a weak enemy. If you want to reliably take out an enemy in one round, teamwork.

... I'd also probably try an excise opposed rolls from existence. One of the most stupid things in 3.X has got to be making stuff like 'trip an enemy' an opposed roll.

[Stubbazubba]

Ideally, I guess I'd make every class have abilities that target saves, but make anything leading to literal instant death much harder to use. If you want to drop something reliably, use damage. If you want to make this easier or get other effects through, use something targeting saves. And if you want to drop something in one blow, get lucky or pick a weak enemy. If you want to reliably take out an enemy in one round, teamwork.

... I'd also probably try an excise opposed rolls from existence. One of the most stupid things in 3.X has got to be making stuff like 'trip an enemy' an opposed roll.

With this I agree. This post on my blog (which was spawned from a discussion in a previous iteration of this thread) lays out what I think the place of powerful Save or Suck effects ought to be; if they're strong enough to end encounters, they require teamwork and time to set up. Even with that, I would still say that the battle-ending effects are only achievable when the target is Bloodied. That being said, I do think mundanes should be able to simply eviscerate something in a single SoD effect, or hamper their mobility, or do other things in a way that works similarly to how casters put on those effects; i.e., targeting saves. In fact past a certain point, I don't think HP damage should be your biggest concern. At higher levels, I think you should have to first explore and then weaken the enemy's defenses somehow, deal enough HP damage to Bloody them, and then rely on someone's "Finisher" to wrap it up.

Going along with that, I don't think parties should face such an intense encounter very often; that should be a boss at the end of a dungeon, not one of three mini-bosses leading up to the end of the dungeon. I want characters to be able to use insta-gib abilities on mooks and weak monsters, to feel awesome and to keep the game at a fast clip (speed being something that every edition seems to sacrifice more of), and still have enough juice left to fight a mini-boss who is roughly equal CR to the party, and then fight the boss, as well. I think some things about adventure design have become fundamentally warped for the worst in the last ten years, and I think even newer editions would work better if the assumptions about them were changed.

[Jerthanis]

Ideally, I guess I'd make every class have abilities that target saves, but make anything leading to literal instant death much harder to use. If you want to drop something reliably, use damage. If you want to make this easier or get other effects through, use something targeting saves. And if you want to drop something in one blow, get lucky or pick a weak enemy. If you want to reliably take out an enemy in one round, teamwork.

... I'd also probably try an excise opposed rolls from existence. One of the most stupid things in 3.X has got to be making stuff like 'trip an enemy' an opposed roll.

I think an interesting way to think about this could be having open ended abilities that classes could take... like a Fighter or a Barbarian could take "Savage Blade: Your attacks with slashing weapons are vicious and sure, inflicting incidental harm." and then what weaknesses that could exploit could be written in monster writeups, like a Hydra could have "Savage Blade: Expert warriors can forego their Martial Damage Dice (or whatever) to sever a head if the Hydra fails a Constitution save." and a Dragon could have "Savage Blade: Warriors can forego Martial Damage Dice to inflict a terrible wound on the flesh of the wing, slowing their fly speed by 20 feet per round each time this weakness is exploited. A warrior can spend one Chutzpah point to cause the Dragon to instead lose its flight ability, sending it plummeting to the ground, taking half normal falling distance for such a fall."

Storing the weaknesses that can be exploited in the monster itself might be a way to allow Fighter types access to Save-or-debuffs without customizing your fighter into a "Trip Monkey", where when all he has is a spiked chain, the whole world looks like a medium sized biped.

[SiuiS]

I assume these were either different editions of D&D or they were both 3rd edition, which has serious issues in terms of what constitutes power in that system.

If it was 3rd edition, I consider its scale being unclear a fixable problem. If it was another edition, I'd need more details, but would default to hypothesizing it was a matter of different settings or something like that.

We were talking third at that point.

The problem with the Paragon and Epic tiers of 4e was that for all your power, you were still a guy in chainmail moving 5 squares and attacking for xd8+Y and a rider effect, same as you behaved at level 1. Sure, you were fighting demon kings rather than goblin kings, but your operational range and suite of problem solving skills didn't expand very much.

Aye. Okay. That's a good summation of my feelings on 4e in general; the 'do something cool' rule wasn't explicit enough. I still find it a rather elegant system when I'm engaged with it though.

Well, sure, you can change what results are returned by a given d20 roll to allow for higher level adventures to feel more mythic, so that at level 1 a DC15 dexterity check walks across a tightrope and a level 20 DC 15 dexterity check balances on the surface of raging floodwater, but how is that different than having DCs 15 and 40 for the two actions and provide 25 points of advancement opportunity between the two extremes of capability?

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean.

Mm. No, I mean you could change things once as be done. Make a qualitative shift. "For this game, anything below DC 13 is mundane, and you can do mythic godly stuff starting at DC 14". And it rays that way. Now when you start getting your +4 and +5, you're moving into greater percent chance of succeeding at, say, holding the sky off Atlas' back instead of carrying an additional stone-weight of rations.

WotC has openly admitted to this fact on their podcasts. The majority of players only play 1-10. I'm only repeating what they have said.

The reasoning for why that is the case is all me, however.

That data is suspect.

That system sounds nice in principle but it didn't work overly well in 4E and I don't see it working well in 5E because, just as a matter of perspective, what happens when a group levels up into another playstyle's milieu? It's radically different both mechanically and flavorfully. It feels different and they don't like it. What do they do? Call it quits at level 7?

Not really an issue. Most folks play their one story and tens witch characters, levels, settings, timelines, OP levels. The real problem for this is the sensation of "doin it rong" when you don't slog up from level 1 first.

My most successful example to date, involved setting an arbitrary cap i. Te 12-14 range (3.5) and setting the story in a tavern. A bunch of retired heroes all say around, drinking and recounting the glory days. Whoever was DM that night would have a character start off with "remember when we slew the Minotaur king and stole the Gorgon's Eye?" And throw us into a session at an arbitrary level. Want a 3-6 game? Great! Start one with a flashback! Want a recent, 13th level save the world game, great! Start one! You could even advance further by havin someone who has heard tell of tear stories show up and pay for One Last Adventure.

People already stop after a bit. No reason to point to that as a bad thing.

A better system is the system Next is shooting for - modularity. Give the DM's all the tools they need to sculpt the basic game into what ever kind of game they really want to play, be it Swashbuckling in the Astral Sea, falling into make-shift pit goblinoid pitraps and everything in between.

My guess is that the core game is going to be far more similar in tone between levels 1 and 20 than most other edition of the game. The add-ons that will be released in the DMG and future books will allow more genre/style tones to be emulated to a greater degree. I, personally, don't relish that because I - like you - enjoy a diversity of tones in my campaigns (I just loathe the "I am a MORTAL GOD!" tone).

See, I'm already able to switch those. I won't need any new splats for it.
I'm not currently able to differentiate between capacity to do something and quality of that something though. It's been a weird day.

Interestingly enough, WotC came very close to actually making melee characters very useful. If they had simply stuck with the Hit Points = Primary Defense mechanic, and then put hit point thresholds into place to resist Save or Lose/Suck abilities, then then classes with higher hit dice would have a distinct advantage over characters with lower hit dice. (And it would help newer players, who tend to play less optimal melee classes more often). But it looks like they're slowly recreating 3.X for some odd reason.

I think they'll keep this, actually.

All this discussion about whether high-level characters are meant to be badasses by default and the intended power level is splitting hairs. The fact is that characters do grow in power from level 1 to 20. A level 20 character is supposed to overcome challenges more easily than a level 1 character. And yet, the primary gauge of this change in competence and power as far as combat is concerned is apparently how many hit points you have. And that's awful.

Taking twenty or thirty cleavers/dragon claws/gouts of acid/what have you instead of one or two is pretty bad ass.

There's also room for modularity on top. A divine champions set could add conditional DR back in, allow one to ignore attacks from enemies below a certain threshold, etc.
Let them figure out how the basic game works so they can safely build on top of that.

I don't think it's very productive to discuss what levels people play at, especially across systems. Rather, we should probably be discussing what level of competence people like to play at. Most people I know start 3.5 campaigns at 3-6, but it's not because they like those numbers. It's because at those levels, characters still feel like they're starting their journey, but they're already defined by several key abilities and options beyond "I attack with my greatsword". Comparatively, I would expect many more people start 4e games at lower levels, since even level 1 gives you 3 or 4 unique abilities. By the looks of it, 5e is much stingier with important character abilities, so I foresee more people starting at higher levels just to get the same kind of experience they've gotten used to.

Hm. I can see competency. It's emergent, and it's a feel, so no amount i equivalency can truly fix that.

I would argue that any god who can be killed by a gaggle of peasants, or who can be killed by a handful of adventurers who can be outdone by a handful of peasants, is not a god.

But aren't we now back to arguing whether your common use or the dictionary is more right?

High-level play is qualitatively different from low-level play, not just numerically, and adding +20 to everything doesn't suddenly make it higher level; higher numbers are necessary for some aspects of high-level play, but not sufficient to define high-level play. You can cut out most bonuses in high-level 3e--just entirely chuck the Big Six items, synergy bonuses, spells that just give numerical bonuses, etc.--and it'll still feel high-level; you can add a bunch of bonuses to high-level 5e (the current incarnation, at least), and it'll still feel low- or mid-level.

Yes. I do not see Next as inhibiting that qualitative shift, so much as not providing it just yet.

Also, doesn't removing the big six really jus screw you against anything level appropriate?

Any generic system of advancement? No. D&D's particular system of advancement, which is full of "you must be this heroic to do X" effects for better or for worse and which has several breakpoints at which lower-level characters are non-challenging mooks? Yes.

Okay.

So again, if 5e wants to emulate the style of any prior edition, its math and leveling assumptions should match those of said prior editions, which requires a sort of planned obsolescence and is incompatible with bounded accuracy and everything being a threat up through level 20.

Not sure I agree. The minimum threshold ("a goblin will still have a 5% chance to ruin your day") isn't problematic.

My group primarily plays D&D because of high level, essentially; it's the only system that bridges the gap between the lower-powered lower-magic games like WHFRP, GURPS Fantasy, and the like and the higher-powered higher-magic games like Exalted, Mage, and similar. We usually make it to the high teens if not low 20s for our games, and other groups in our area are similar. As Kurald noted, starting in the mid-10s and going up from there isn't uncommon, so reaching at least the mid-high levels like Friv's group does isn't uncommon either, so support for those levels can't simply be ignored.

The fact that most people play at 1-10 is no reason to neglect the higher levels...especially because WotC's sucky design and playtesting of higher levels in 3e is likely to blame for many groups finding high levels untenable and avoiding them. Not to belabor the point, but 5e is supposed to be all editions to all people, and if it is to succeed at that goal it has to be able to emulate other editions at least passably, which includes functional high-level play.

Interesting.

Well, I'm not saying that "A good game must contain these elements all at the same time", I'm saying, "It'd be nice if a game captured this feel for those who want it". It's not a pejorative to say that it's preferable to have different level ranges represent different power levels when your intent is to capture the interest of groups that prefer different level ranges.

Surely. In fact, having different levels map to different power levels is basic English, and is rather elegant. If 3e had made this explicit, it could have gone places.

Well, isn't that kind of them being a little selfish? I mean, to demand the game represent hardcore dark, grim and gritty low power levels even at high levels just because it's their preference? Can you name the level range I prefer, just from my discussion of possible power scale breakdowns by level? If I like that specific level range, I could just as easily argue for that level range and tone representing the full 1-20 advancement on the same basis of people who prefer the other tone.

Wouldn't it be better in a game they're intending to sell as a game for everyone, to make it function in such a way that many preferences are served at the same time, rather than just the majority?

I think the trick is we don't want the game designed such that folks who war gritty dark and crappy from 1-20 are by necessity excluded. It strikes me as easier to make a system and setting which defaults to low power and allow for more to be sacked on and shift the game upwards, than the opposite. A game of grim & gritty up to twenty can be made to stop the G&G at 5th and progress; a game that stops at 5th is harder to keep down at that level I've the advancement is baked so thoroughly into the engine.

Then why as it stands does it only present adventurers of the competence of the group falling into the make-shift goblin pit trap, no matter how many levels they gain? They grow more powerful in that they can survive more damage and thus can engage more dangerous enemies, but they don't advance their overall competence. They're as likely to fall into a makeshift pit trap at level 20 as at level 1, they just can climb out of them unhurt more times per day. (Although now they've added 6 points of advancement to some characters, so, they ARE moving away from this)

Because this fits with the modularity of design goal? It makes more sense to allow for "Heroic: You are a mythic hero and gain the following benefits" which stops goblin puts from mattering, than it does to use 4e's "we want goblins to still matter so now they're making more dangerous pit traps".

Personally, I thought that 4e Rituals were going to be a hallmark of the system. I thought that aspect of the game was going to be a cornerstone of the way you interacted with the game world, and would be expanded on throughout the edition into a really robust problem solving mechanic. Instead, maybe fifty or sixty rituals were published outside the core, and many of them simple variations on existing rituals or extremely specialized tools or plot devices.

I will not assume that "Future products will develop an anemic aspect of the core books into a robust limb" any more. If genres other than grim 'n gritty Medieval Special Forces are to be represented in D&D Next, there are very important reasons they should be included in the core ruleset.

Yeah. Rituals could have Gone Places. Sigh.

I fully expect they will include these in the core rules. I just don't think they need to be made default now. Though I would like to playtest, say, a higher powered 'module'.

With any luck, we'll be moving very far away from that particular archaism. Very, very far away.

The entire hit point system is a problem in need of fixing. It's basically the root of the whole magic/mundane double standard that we've spent half these threads complaining about.

Eh, disagree. Not only do HP and HD provide a rubric for defense, it's easy to allow non casters to have the same benefits. Pull a Balor and make Vorpal Blade a class feature, not a weapon. High level fighters now have save or dies. Allow trip, grapple and bull rush to evolve. They now have same or sucks. Allow backstab to inherently oil up 3e'a ambush feats. Etc.

I think an interesting way to think about this could be having open ended abilities that classes could take... like a Fighter or a Barbarian could take "Savage Blade: Your attacks with slashing weapons are vicious and sure, inflicting incidental harm." and then what weaknesses that could exploit could be written in monster writeups, like a Hydra could have "Savage Blade: Expert warriors can forego their Martial Damage Dice (or whatever) to sever a head if the Hydra fails a Constitution save." and a Dragon could have "Savage Blade: Warriors can forego Martial Damage Dice to inflict a terrible wound on the flesh of the wing, slowing their fly speed by 20 feet per round each time this weakness is exploited. A warrior can spend one Chutzpah point to cause the Dragon to instead lose its flight ability, sending it plummeting to the ground, taking half normal falling distance for such a fall."

Storing the weaknesses that can be exploited in the monster itself might be a way to allow Fighter types access to Save-or-debuffs without customizing your fighter into a "Trip Monkey", where when all he has is a spiked chain, the whole world looks like a medium sized biped.

That would be cool, but storing weaknesses in monsters won't catch on. Too easy to not want to hard-code that stuff in, because "then you're shoe-horsing players into dealing with them a single way".

[Loki_42]

Every couple of weeks lead designer Mike Mearls posts a Legends and Lore where he explains some fairly reasonable design goal, then gives examples of how they're going to implement it in the worst possible way, and then states that it will be included in the next iteration of the play test, but without actually ever delivering a new play test packet.

Yep, exactly the same as when I quit following. It's a shame, I really wanted to like this edition, it seemed promising, but it never delivered.

Since I know that they're stealing a lot of design goals, from other, much better games, maybe I should try to figure out what games Mearls is taking everything from. What kind of games have systems similar to the Legacy and Downtime stuff that Legends & Lore described?

[Oracle_Hunter]

Since I know that they're stealing a lot of design goals, from other, much better games, maybe I should try to figure out what games Mearls is taking everything from. What kind of games have systems similar to the Legacy and Downtime stuff that Legends & Lore described?

Pathfinder for Downtime. I forget what "Legacy" is, but I'm guessing it's the stuff from Burning Wheel.

But you shouldn't be down on him for that. Game designers steal their best ideas from other games in the same way authors and musicians get "inspired" by other creators. Mearls's real problem is that he doesn't appear to understand the ideas he's stealing which means his implementation is always off.

For example, I'm stealing his AD/DA mechanic for Gold & Glory but I actually fleshed it out enough to function within a game. Mearls still (19 months and counting!) doesn't know what to do with it and it's his own mechanic.

[Loki_42]

Pathfinder for Downtime. I forget what "Legacy" is, but I'm guessing it's the stuff from Burning Wheel.

But you shouldn't be down on him for that. Game designers steal their best ideas from other games in the same way authors and musicians get "inspired" by other creators. Mearls's real problem is that he doesn't appear to understand the ideas he's stealing which means his implementation is always off.

For example, I'm stealing his AD/DA mechanic for Gold & Glory but I actually fleshed it out enough to function within a game. Mearls still (19 months and counting!) doesn't know what to do with it and it's his own mechanic.

Yeah, I'm not blaming Mearls for stealing ideas. You basically said what I meant, I just didn't feel like typing so many words for something that I didn't think was critical to my point.

Also, it kind of sucks that the Downtime stuff was Pathfinder. I don't really like Pathfinder, or anything that sticks to 3.5 that closely. I wonder how hard it would be to hack their rules into something like 13th Age, or 4e, or Legend, which are basically the only d20 based fantasy games I like right now.

[Felhammer]

I think designers should always pilfer the best mechanics they see in other games.

[Scowling Dragon]

Its worse if they DON'T out of spite.

[Jerthanis]

Mm. No, I mean you could change things once as be done. Make a qualitative shift. "For this game, anything below DC 13 is mundane, and you can do mythic godly stuff starting at DC 14". And it rays that way. Now when you start getting your +4 and +5, you're moving into greater percent chance of succeeding at, say, holding the sky off Atlas' back instead of carrying an additional stone-weight of rations.

That's actually an interesting idea, but it does mean any creature given stats will be able to do such things as well. You'll wind up in a situation where every barbarian is of godly intellect and each wizard can heft and throw boulders, and unless you rewrite peasants and goblins and soldiers, it'll be a world of paper. If you instead apply this change in DCs only to the PCs, it's essentially identical to giving the PCs an untyped miscellaneous bonus. If you give the untyped bonus only to PCs, then they're more powerful than they otherwise would be at their level, and will then challenge higher level opponents sooner and you've got to rewrite the higher level opponents.

It's a good idea but it just seems like too much footwork to achieve pretty much the same idea as having scaling power that comes with levelling up.

There's also room for modularity on top. A divine champions set could add conditional DR back in, allow one to ignore attacks from enemies below a certain threshold, etc.
Let them figure out how the basic game works so they can safely build on top of that.

You're positing additions that have not been suggested by any Legends and Lore columns or playtest packet material that I have read and indeed what I have read has been to the effect that these are explicitly are not intended to be included in this game. I am completely unsure why you have such confidence that these options will be included in the final product.

I think the trick is we don't want the game designed such that folks who war gritty dark and crappy from 1-20 are by necessity excluded. It strikes me as easier to make a system and setting which defaults to low power and allow for more to be sacked on and shift the game upwards, than the opposite. A game of grim & gritty up to twenty can be made to stop the G&G at 5th and progress; a game that stops at 5th is harder to keep down at that level I've the advancement is baked so thoroughly into the engine.

I'm not sure I'm convinced that it is the case that a system that defaults its assumptions to having a 20 level spread with no significant advancement in terms of power will be able to handle optional modules which insert actual power advancement into the system any more comfortably than the other way around.

We have examples of E6 and other E#s being successful gaming platforms delivering the sort of feel of those levels without sacrificing advancement entirely at the level cap. This lets us know it's possible to craft a rewarding system out of a slice of a larger advancement track, and designing a game from the ground up to incorporate these elements can only improve its success.

However, we don't even have an indication of what sort of advancement modules might later be introduced to 5e that could introduce the high-power feel into a game where none are so strong as to stand unafraid before an unruly mob. We don't even have any assurances that they're going to be attempted, nor do we have any idea what sort of form they'll take or if they'll be successful to any extent.

Yeah. Rituals could have Gone Places. Sigh.

I fully expect they will include these in the core rules. I just don't think they need to be made default now. Though I would like to playtest, say, a higher powered 'module'.

Do you understand why the fact that Rituals were included in the Core, yet were never nurtured and developed into a comprehensive aspect of the system leads me to doubt the capacity of the modules you hypothesize to accomplish their task, even if you demonstrate that they're coming down the line, which I'm also unconvinced of?

That would be cool, but storing weaknesses in monsters won't catch on. Too easy to not want to hard-code that stuff in, because "then you're shoe-horsing players into dealing with them a single way".

Well, monsters could have several weaknesses that produce different Save-Ors based on what abilities the fighty types have. A group with no Savage Blade Barbarian might not be able to ground a Dragon, but a Paladin with Ordained Aegis might render his whole group invulnerable to its breath weapons until he's attacked or something, necessitating the Dragon actually engage them or run away.

Heck, you could have these Adjective-Noun abilities decoupled, allowing Ordained Blade or Savage Aegis, and have the monsters' weaknesses keyed off just the one or the other word, enabling a greater customization of how the character feels to play when facing all kinds of monsters.

Honestly, the biggest problem might come from "Mother May I" in a system like this, where a Fighter type is locked into the types of monsters he can affect and in what ways ahead of time and then must ask his DM to put those monsters before him if he wants to play that way.

[Felhammer]

I'm not sure I'm convinced that it is the case that a system that defaults its assumptions to having a 20 level spread with no significant advancement in terms of power will be able to handle optional modules which insert actual power advancement into the system any more comfortably than the other way around.

It's easier to add then subtract, both in terms of numbers and mechanics.

The core game could be very simple and relatively homogenous in in tone. Then through the DMG (and other books like the Unearthed Arcana) we could see optional add-ons that enhance the game to better emulate a more traditional D&D experience (which could be as simple as a skill DC table that scales with level, rules adjustments to player attack/defense/saves based on Magic items (or flat bonuses based on level), simple templates that enhance monsters based on your power expectation, etc.) to something more complex (re-introducing BAB, save progression, a host of more powerful spells, highly customizable monsters (like Dragons in 3.x), lots and lots of fiddly monster templates, etc.) to something even more complex (like a lot of the more esoteric and niche variant rules found in 3.5's Unearthed Arcana).

You can easily accomplish the same goal by subtracting but I think there is something psychological dissatisfaction with "nerfs" compared to "buffs".

However, we don't even have an indication of what sort of advancement modules might later be introduced to 5e that could introduce the high-power feel into a game where none are so strong as to stand unafraid before an unruly mob. We don't even have any assurances that they're going to be attempted, nor do we have any idea what sort of form they'll take or if they'll be successful to any extent.

Mearls and Co. have stressed how Next is going to be modular in design and they do not want to arbitrarily impose a vision of the game upon any one the way WotC did with 4E. We only have their word for this but, to me, it seems logical. They can't please everyone with a single vision for the game, no matter what they do. D&D has lost the prestige of being the top RPG over the last few years. The only hope of regaining that prestige is to make a game that can be molded to please a significant portion of everyone. 5E could very well be a bigger flop than 4E but I'd like to hold out hope that D&D isn't going to be boxed up and left to languish as some niche game trotted out once a decade by Hasbro to make a quick buck.

Do you understand why the fact that Rituals were included in the Core, yet were never nurtured and developed into a comprehensive aspect of the system leads me to doubt the capacity of the modules you hypothesize to accomplish their task, even if you demonstrate that they're coming down the line, which I'm also unconvinced of?

My guess is that Rituals never developed because they were poorly implemented and never took off the way WotC had intended, both in terms of anecdotal evidence and the numbers seen on the character builder. I agree with one of your earlier assessments of WotC regarding the statistics from the character builder as being indicative of the entire community.

Honestly, the biggest problem might come from "Mother May I" in a system like this, where a Fighter type is locked into the types of monsters he can affect and in what ways ahead of time and then must ask his DM to put those monsters before him if he wants to play that way.

Very much like the Ranger from 3.x. That is one thing I like about Next's design idea in that the "mother may I" style abilities are written more broadly and are applicable to more scenarios.

[SiuiS]

That's actually an interesting idea, but it does mean any creature given stats will be able to do such things as well. You'll wind up in a situation where every barbarian is of godly intellect and each wizard can heft and throw boulders, and unless you rewrite peasants and goblins and soldiers, it'll be a world of paper. If you instead apply this change in DCs only to the PCs, it's essentially identical to giving the PCs an untyped miscellaneous bonus. If you give the untyped bonus only to PCs, then they're more powerful than they otherwise would be at their level, and will then challenge higher level opponents sooner and you've got to rewrite the higher level opponents.

It's a good idea but it just seems like too much footwork to achieve pretty much the same idea as having scaling power that comes with levelling up.

It may be a lot of footwork, aye. But the barbarian problem isn't really a problem, if everyone is playing mythic status. So long as his native bonus is less than 6, hell be fine. If its 7 or more, he built for it so let him have it.

You're positing additions that have not been suggested by any Legends and Lore columns or playtest packet material that I have read and indeed what I have read has been to the effect that these are explicitly are not intended to be included in this game. I am completely unsure why you have such confidence that these options will be included in the final product.

They aren't giving us ANY details. Do you still remember "the sorcerer will come back, later?" And all that?

I'm also not confident, but room to add on top is easier to work with then carving out a hollow inside. So that's where I'll advocate.

I'm not sure I'm convinced that it is the case that a system that defaults its assumptions to having a 20 level spread with no significant advancement in terms of power will be able to handle optional modules which insert actual power advancement into the system any more comfortably than the other way around.

Why not? Advancement is qualitative. E6 is not just a number cap but a qualitative one; entire care stirs are aborted by it. The truism is that "it doesn't matter if you get +3, +300 or +300k^2, you're still a fighter and you suck because specific things aren't there" so why is it not equally true that, if given those specific things sans numbers, advancement will be had?

Mostly though, it's about makeup. If the ame is built with advancement, ten it will be more invasive and pervade much of the rules. If it is not, then you only need a little bit of work to make something apply all over the place. So it is, in a very real way, not the same as doing the reverse.

Do you understand why the fact that Rituals were included in the Core, yet were never nurtured and developed into a comprehensive aspect of the system leads me to doubt the capacity of the modules you hypothesize to accomplish their task, even if you demonstrate that they're coming down the line, which I'm also unconvinced of?

Yes.

Well, monsters could have several weaknesses that produce different Save-Ors based on what abilities the fighty types have. A group with no Savage Blade Barbarian might not be able to ground a Dragon, but a Paladin with Ordained Aegis might render his whole group invulnerable to its breath weapons until he's attacked or something, necessitating the Dragon actually engage them or run away.

Heck, you could have these Adjective-Noun abilities decoupled, allowing Ordained Blade or Savage Aegis, and have the monsters' weaknesses keyed off just the one or the other word, enabling a greater customization of how the character feels to play when facing all kinds of monsters.

Honestly, the biggest problem might come from "Mother May I" in a system like this, where a Fighter type is locked into the types of monsters he can affect and in what ways ahead of time and then must ask his DM to put those monsters before him if he wants to play that way.

I like the idea, but it looks prime for abuse as the line progresses. First, designers won't want Obvious Weakpoints in monsters unless they're built around such, and the class features languish. Second, designers will narrow in on favorite class features, so you get a slew of monsters all vulnnerable to Purging Fire while the poor guy with Knives In The Dark gets like, a zombie and a pudding. Third, they've tried this and it failed; do you know how to stake a vampire? Are hydras ever threats or just Cleave fodder? And have you had arguments about how you can cut off a hydra's heads but you can't cut a beholder's eye stalks?

[BayardSPSR]

This is where the class imbalance of 3.5 is having a knock-on effect on its successors - we have a precedent for Level 20 meaning 'quite strong' and a precedent for Level 15 meaning 'practically invincible' coming from the exact same edition, with the result that no one's sure just how strong a given level should be. If you make a Fighter as strong as a Wizard, you're doing someone wrong; if you make a Wizard as weak as a Fighter, you're doing it wrong for someone else. If you leave things as they are, you're obviously making things cripplingly imbalanced.

Maybe this is why they're choosing to focus on the low levels. It's like E6, but with the numbers saying '20' instead of '6'. I think I get that logic, but I'm not sure about how I feel about it yet.


On a side note: wow, does this thread move fast or what?

[Raineh Daze]

This is where the class imbalance of 3.5 is having a knock-on effect on its successors - we have a precedent for Level 20 meaning 'quite strong' and a precedent for Level 15 meaning 'practically invincible' coming from the exact same edition, with the result that no one's sure just how strong a given level should be. If you make a Fighter as strong as a Wizard, you're doing someone wrong; if you make a Wizard as weak as a Fighter, you're doing it wrong for someone else. If you leave things as they are, you're obviously making things cripplingly imbalanced.

Maybe this is why they're choosing to focus on the low levels. It's like E6, but with the numbers saying '20' instead of '6'. I think I get that logic, but I'm not sure about how I feel about it yet.

I get the logic, but I think stretching what was six levels into a full twenty is going overboard. It turns each level into less than a third of what it was two editions previously. Not sure what fraction of a 4E level it would be, though.

On a side note: wow, does this thread move fast or what?

Seems like it's been going a bit slow for the past few days, to me.

[Stubbazubba]

That's actually an interesting idea, but it does mean any creature given stats will be able to do such things as well. You'll wind up in a situation where every barbarian is of godly intellect and each wizard can heft and throw boulders, and unless you rewrite peasants and goblins and soldiers, it'll be a world of paper. If you instead apply this change in DCs only to the PCs, it's essentially identical to giving the PCs an untyped miscellaneous bonus. If you give the untyped bonus only to PCs, then they're more powerful than they otherwise would be at their level, and will then challenge higher level opponents sooner and you've got to rewrite the higher level opponents.

It's a good idea but it just seems like too much footwork to achieve pretty much the same idea as having scaling power that comes with leveling up.

In addition, making all mundane and mythic be a mere 5% apart, with even untrained level 1 commoners able to accomplish mythic feats 30% of the time (at DC 14) is bizarre and unusual. You need to pad that out significantly more. By its very definition, a mythic feat ought not be within the capabilities of your average joe. The d20 + variables RNG has the strength of being a floating RNG, where the min and max change and can change rapidly if necessary, while the curve within the possibilities remains the same. It's a very convenient tool for designers, and there's no reason not to utilize that advantage of it. I think Mundane tasks ought to go right up to DC 20 or 25, and epic stuff can start at 30. Then just make skill training come in larger chunks at a time: Untrained (+0), Trained (+5), Expert (+10), Master (+15), Grandmaster (+20). The trick is to keep specialists and non-specialists from getting too far away from each other on that scale, but that's a simpler problem than truncating all of D&D's power onto a single 20-point scale that the RNG covers from level 1.

[Doug Lampert]

I get the logic, but I think stretching what was six levels into a full twenty is going overboard. It turns each level into less than a third of what it was two editions previously. Not sure what fraction of a 4E level it would be, though.

If you trust the XP system then 4th ed levels took 4 to double power and 3rd ed levels took 2 to double power.

In both cases this turns out to be wrong (power grows faster in both systems than the XP system would lead you to believe, which is one reason both systems warn you not to use overleveled monsters and that such things will be harder than you'd think).

But broadly, a 4th edition level is about half as significant as a third edition level.

Note, despite the fact that core 4th edition had no "dead levels", I think the individual levels were too small in effect, fewer levels, fewer and more signifant feats would both have been improvements in my mind.

[Icewraith]

I'm beginning to think the only good way to do bounded accuracy is to have no static modifiers whatsoever, but you have fixed modifier dice that you gain stacking advantage (add an extra die and pick the best result) or disadvantage (same except worst) on.

You have a d20 and up to maybe three dice- say class, weapon/skill, and something else.

For hitting things, your opponent's armor class would be composed of two numbers, the DC to hit it (determined by 10+ modifier based on your class) and the number of times it grants disadvantage on your weapon dice. Your weapon's enhancement bonus is the number of times it grants advantage. Class features define special abilities (working like feats that give you more things to do with your actions) and feats grant certain actions extra advantage or disadvantage (or vice versa, but if you have a pool of options that can be used to either add abilities or add advantage one will amost always be optimal and the other neglected). Class die size increase with level, but slowly.

Upon a bit more thought, Class dice may be a bad idea and you instead have level dice, with your defenses adjusted by class type and level and advantage or disadvantage granted by items and defensive abilities.


Rogues get better skill die than other classes, and there are tiers of training in skills that grant you increasing advantage. There is a set of advancing fixed DCs for easy, difficult, hard, and legendary tasks and DM advice on if/when to alter those DCs instead of granting advantage or disadvantage.

With a nonlinear, completely defined probability curve you don't have the sort of flat number stacking issues you did in third. You don't have the issues in third and fourth with feat taxes since either all or none of your feats go to improving abilities or gaining new ones, respectively. The d12 gets more love. No matter how big the dice pools get you roll a bunch and then pick either the best or worst of each size and add them, and things should be set up so that only your d20 and weapon/skill/attribute/whatever die change size for any given roll according to advantage/disadvantage. Experts have advantage over beginners, but a lucky beginner can still sometimes best an expert.

[Grod_The_Giant]

So something like Savage Worlds, then? (Rolling a d20 with your skill die, instead of a d6)

[Raineh Daze]

So something like Savage Worlds, then? (Rolling a d20 with your skill die, instead of a d6)

What do you mean?

[Icewraith]

I was thinking a d20 would be your "circumstance" die and the other dice would be in the d4-d12 range, possibly hardcapped at d12. The "static bonus will probably expand without bound once splatbooks come out" issue was really starting to irk me- this way you can stack advantage all you like, and while magical weapons are demonstrably better you can still (though increasingly unlikely) damage a well-protected foe with a nonmagical weapon. With a limited number of feats you can only stack advantage to so many things, and so splatbooks would be focused on providing new and interesting class features, subsystems etc.

Interesting class mechanics might be

Spoiler

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Barbarian: class/level and weapon dice set (not gains +1, set) to advantage 1 while raging (class dice generally do not gain adv/disad, so unique mechanic, and even the most well armored dragons need to worry about a raging barbarian with a club). Rage is only good for a couple rounds, after which Barb gains disadvantage 1 to class dice and weapon returned to normal for same duration. Limited selection of melee powers, mostly usable at-will but with additional effects if raging or exhausted. Baseline tanky abilities but effects change based on rage state-some for the better, some for the worse.

Rogue: Improved skill dice and sneak attack. When flanking or attacking a surprised target, gain 1d6 sneak attack dice and add them to your weapon damage. You always have advantage 1 on the first roll of these dice and they always explode (reroll 6es and add to total). Every x levels you gain one more sneak attack dice. At 4th level you gain advantage 1 on the second roll of any sneak attack dice (the roll for exploding dice). Every y levels thereafter you gain advantage on an additional set of explode rolls. Melee powers may grant multiple attacks or improve movement but generally do not add damage, that all comes from the sneak attack dice. Squishy.

Fighter: Weapon specialization. Pick one type of weapon. At first level you gain +1 advantage with that weapon. At 4th you gain advantage on weapon damage rolls with that weapon (unique). You get increasingly useful abilities at higher level (reach, melee weapon mastery type stuff). Large repertoire of possible melee powers (more versatile than barbarian), Warblade recovery mechanic. Maybe can cherry pick barbarian powers but won't get extra effects when raging or exhausted. Tanky abilities focus on limiting movement and impeding opponents.

Sorcerer: Focus on at-will and per encounter damage/combat magic, limited access to Wizard spell list but does not suffer disadvantages of Wizard casting. Quite squishy.

Wizard: All "at will" spells recharge after 1d4 rounds and "encounter" spells recharge after 1d4 (disadvantage-which is acutally good here) additional encounters. Knows (approximately) double the number of encounter spells compared to sorcerer, but few at-wills. Focus on battlefield control, buff/debuff spells. Limited access to Sorcerer list, casts Sorcerer spells with Wizard restrictions. A long fight could in theory result in a reckless or unlucky Wizard running "out of magic" (but only for a couple rounds), which is a classic of the genre. As squishy as sorc.

Cleric: More 4e style healer/leader powers. Not sure if dailies should be a thing or if the Wizard restriction would be appropriate here. Cleric could also play a strong role as "the daily class" with some 4e #/encounter healing abilities, limited at wills, and then multiple distinct and powerful -but daily divine miracles, and nowhere near as prevalent as 3.5 spells. May take leaf from 3.5 and let Clerics burn an unused daily to cast a used daily once per day/scene. Durable but not a tank.

Bard: some 4e style leader/healer powers, bardsong schtick is to roll a (smaller die than class/level die for this level with advantage) on his turn and friendly players can use result in place of class die or roll class die as normal. Durable but not a tank.

Druid: Focus on shapeshifting. Offensive (wolf, cat, dino), defensive (bear, rhino, bull) and scout (rat, hawk) options with narrowly defined abilities and specific weaknesses- also generally especially strong vs mental control but weak to illusions and misdirection. Limited encounter powers that summon minions, very limited dailies that summon more formidible allies of nature. Heals for less than other classes with additional small amounts per round and require Druid to be in physical contact with target for initial effect and improving recurring effects. Retains some 3.5 "good at everything" without the 3.5 "superior at everything and completely obsoletes other classes".

Paladin: Tanky, superior supernatural defenses. White raven style combat abilities, mount option for the awesome. Capable of healing at range but superior healing by touch.

...crap, I'm pulling an Oracle_Hunter and designing a system out of thin air.

[Felhammer]

I think part of the problem with Next is that the designers want to build this more realistic and simple system while still harkening back to- and using many of the same numbers as- were used in the past. It feels like they want to make Game X but are forced to use ideas and concepts from Game Y, many of which don't gel with Game X without jumping through a lot of hoops.

[SiuiS]

In addition, making all mundane and mythic be a mere 5% apart, with even untrained level 1 commoners able to accomplish mythic feats 30% of the time (at DC 14) is bizarre and unusual.

No, because peasants and Joe Blow himself aren't mythic, and wouldn't benefit from the rules for being a mythic hero.

I'm beginning to think the only good way to do bounded accuracy is to have no static modifiers whatsoever, but you have fixed modifier dice that you gain stacking advantage (add an extra die and pick the best result) or disadvantage (same except worst) on.

You have a d20 and up to maybe three dice- say class, weapon/skill, and something else.

Huh. That might be pretty cool.

I think part of the problem with Next is that the designers want to build this more realistic and simple system while still harkening back to- and using many of the same numbers as- were used in the past. It feels like they want to make Game X but are forced to use ideas and concepts from Game Y, many of which don't gel with Game X without jumping through a lot of hoops.

Yeah kinda.

[Icewraith]

I think part of the problem with Next is that the designers want to build this more realistic and simple system while still harkening back to- and using many of the same numbers as- were used in the past. It feels like they want to make Game X but are forced to use ideas and concepts from Game Y, many of which don't gel with Game X without jumping through a lot of hoops.

I think that's where I'm going with the multiple dice thing. Higher levels do mean bigger numbers in both 3.5 and 4e, and to get players past that feeling of level fifteen actually being level fiv ein the old system you have to change the whole experience and not just decrease the numbers.

[Felhammer]

I think that's where I'm going with the multiple dice thing. Higher levels do mean bigger numbers in both 3.5 and 4e, and to get players past that feeling of level fifteen actually being level fiv ein the old system you have to change the whole experience and not just decrease the numbers.

But WotC is very hesitant about changing the experience because of how badly they were burned by 4E.

So if I am understanding your system correctly, instead of static modifiers, you roll a d4-d12, which is determined by proficiency/training and level?

It's not a bad idea (and definitely has a high fun factor to it) however, I wonder what the cap would be for the total number of dice you could roll in a given situation. The system could easily become just as unbalanced as static number stacking, especially as people start min/maxing dis/advantage.

One problem with the system, especially once you start stacking advantage and rolling 4 dice a turn is player fatigue. I often play the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game where the game forces you to roll between 3 and 7-ish dice a turn. After a whole night of that, I see my players - even the ones who are math whizzes, becoming very tired. Most people don't exercise that portion of their brain on a regular basis (that is to say adding multiple small numbers up (like say 2+5+12+4+3+1)). Granted Calculators are definitely an option but you don't always have one available (who wants to eat up their phone's juice for calculations?).

Of your classes, I think the Rogue has the coolest mechanic. I love exploding dice in Rokugan and whole heartily support their addition to D&D in some form or another.

I like the idea of combining Vancian casting with encounter powers. I love the thought behind 1d4 encounters later but that just winds up being as vague as an "encounter" was in 4E, doubly so since you have to track 4 in a row. What might be easier would be 1d4 hours for recharge but a wizard can expend the energy from a higher level spell to recharge x number of lower level spells whose total spell level is equal to or lower than the spell level of the spell that was sacrificed (so by sacrificing a 7th level spell, a Wizard could recharge one 6th level and one 1st level spell OR three 1st level spells and two 2nd level spells OR two 3rd level spells and one 1st level spell OR etc.). The only issue with that is the idea of tracking all of that information.


Recharging an At Will spell at a rate of 1d4 rounds harsh as most combats only last 4-5 rounds. Perhaps the mechanic could be changed to "signature spells" where you get two or three at will spells that each individually have a recharge time of 1d4 rounds?

[Grod_The_Giant]

What do you mean?

In Savage Worlds, your skills and attributes are designated by die sizes, rather than numbers. Instead of having a Stealth skill of +3, you have a Stealth skill of 1d8. When you use a skill/attribute, you roll a die of the appropriate size. PCs and major NPCs also roll a d6, and use the better of the two rolls.