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That's fine with me. I don't care who's property it is as long as it's not illegal and I can't be sued for making homebrew based on 5th edition. My intent was, actually, after extensive testing and help from homebrewers better then me, to email it to wizards and see what they think about it. Back when the 5e stuff first started I brought up the complaint that wizards sucked at necromancy in every past edition and that I wanted 5e to change that. My post was ultimately ignored, so I felt that MAYBE, just MAYBE, if I got some good necromancy homebrewed content for 5e I could send it to them and MAYBE, just MAYBE, it would have some influence on what 5e's Necromantic options will look like in the future. I know that in the grand scheme of the system Necromancy is a really tiny piece of the game and doesn't really matter to a lot of people, but it's one I care about deeply and if there is a way for me to influence it, I may as well try.
My only concern was the legality of making 5e homebrew and whether or not WOC would even allow it. I don't care about keeping any rights to it nor would I be upset if they just took my idea, used it and claimed it was their own work. I don't give a darn about getting any credit out of this. I just want to make sure that whatever homebrew work I do, is done legally.
Only if by "worked very well" you mean "it helped sell tons of booster packs." The real reason they do this is the existence of chaff cards in a set means you have to buy more booster packs to get what you want. The whole "This makes the game better!" thing is nothing more than a rationalization and nobody outside of WotC's pocket actually believes it.
I'm not in WotC's pocket and I certainly believe it. I'd argue with you about it, but by your tone I doubt it'd do any good.
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Excellent avatar by Elder Tsofu.
That's once again lots of tiny modifers. While those work great in video games, they are usually poor choices in pnp as it just increases the amount of numbers to remember for very little difference that is actually felt.
I think early on in the development they talked a lot about everything that's in the game being significant enough to justify the additional paperwork. Which has become again a problem with many of the new maneuvers, that are a lot of dice rolling and calculations only to get a +2 to an attack roll.
Well, that is one of the problems with the whole "bounded accuracy" concept: you can't give out many modifiers people would really notice or care about, because once you give out up to +5 for a stat and up to +5 for BAB you're starting to break the bounds if you give out more than +1 or +2 from other sources.
Speaking of the new maneuvers, does anyone else feel like they've split up maneuvers a lot more than they should have? All of the extra attack maneuvers (Flurry of Blows, Volley, Whirlwind Attack) work basically the same way, all of the "roll XdY and add the best result" maneuvers (Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, Deadly Strike, etc.) work the same way, and so on. I can't help but compare this to the factotum: the factotum could just add his Int to any d20 roll, no restrictions, and that was just one of his first level class features.
Instead of coming up with lots of slightly different variations on a theme, I feel like those shouldn't even be maneuvers, similar to 1337 b4k4's suggestion. Each martial class should just get an ability at 1st level that says "You can roll any number of expertise dice, take the best result, and add it to your roll when making [types of rolls] rolls" and one (maybe at 1st, maybe later) that says "You can spend expertise dice to make extra attacks when [condition]," and new uses for expertise dice open up automatically with fighting style/scheme/specialty choices. The fighter gets "add XdYb1 to melee attack rolls, Fort saves, and Str checks, get extra melee attacks when your targets are adjacent," the monk gets "add XdYb1 to saves and Str or Dex checks, get extra melee attacks when fighting unarmed," etc.; Sharpshooter and some future archery specialty lets you get extra ranged attacks that way, and so forth with other styles.
Having Volley as your only 10th level class feature or Great Fortitude as your only 8th level class feature is a joke. Much better to fold all of the generic number-twiddling maneuvers into one class feature and let maneuvers be class features that actually do things. Deflecting arrows, granting resistance, and knocking enemies back should be the least interesting things maneuvers let you do, not some of the few maneuvers that aren't just rolling expertise dice and adding them to rolls.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by abadguy
Darn you PoDL for making me care about a bunch of NPC Commoners!
That's fine with me. I don't care who's property it is as long as it's not illegal and I can't be sued for making homebrew based on 5th edition. My intent was, actually, after extensive testing and help from homebrewers better then me, to email it to wizards and see what they think about it. Back when the 5e stuff first started I brought up the complaint that wizards sucked at necromancy in every past edition and that I wanted 5e to change that. My post was ultimately ignored, so I felt that MAYBE, just MAYBE, if I got some good necromancy homebrewed content for 5e I could send it to them and MAYBE, just MAYBE, it would have some influence on what 5e's Necromantic options will look like in the future. I know that in the grand scheme of the system Necromancy is a really tiny piece of the game and doesn't really matter to a lot of people, but it's one I care about deeply and if there is a way for me to influence it, I may as well try.
My only concern was the legality of making 5e homebrew and whether or not WOC would even allow it. I don't care about keeping any rights to it nor would I be upset if they just took my idea, used it and claimed it was their own work. I don't give a darn about getting any credit out of this. I just want to make sure that whatever homebrew work I do, is done legally.
It's not a good idea, for two big reasons.
Firstly, regardless of whether or not you would do so, the fact that any idea which came from you could potentially lead to a lawsuit means there is no possible way they could use it. Even if you signed some kind of agreement, there's still too much risk for essentially no reward (see below). In fact, even submitting an idea similar to one they come up with independently could raise legal issues if their design documents aren't properly dated and signed or if you accidentally pre-empt one of their ideas. One of the reasons a lot of authors refuse to read FanFic is that these kinds of suits are a huge potential liability.
Secondly, and I mean no offense here, but Wizards of the Coast does not care about your homebrew. Game companies receive so many of these kinds of "look at my common-sense improvement!" letters and emails (even for games like Chess!) which are of such low quality that they just screen them out entirely. Even putting the legal issues aside, they won't look at your homebrew because they think it's a waste of time to review every single idea which floods in at them from customers.
That said, the Giant Forums have a really top-notch Homebrew section and I'm sure the people there would love to see what you come up with, provided you're not violating the terms of your agreement when joining the play-test.
I'm not in WotC's pocket and I certainly believe it. I'd argue with you about it, but by your tone I doubt it'd do any good.
Because putting chaff cards in your deck by accident is a mistake that can 100% be avoided by looking up builds on the internet, and all of that supposed depth and learning experience can be totally skipped by anyone with a computer. It punishes small children while not really accomplishing much of anything else.
Because putting chaff cards in your deck by accident is a mistake that can 100% be avoided by looking up builds on the internet, and all of that supposed depth and learning experience can be totally skipped by anyone with a computer. It punishes small children while not really accomplishing much of anything else.
As I said before, I don't want to argue here, but if you really want to hear my side of the argument, it's best summarized here, here, and here.
If, after reading all that (or at least some of it), you still want to discuss it, then I'd be happy to do so in a separate thread. I won't pretend that this is a simple issue, so I don't want to clutter this thread up any further.
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Excellent avatar by Elder Tsofu.
Only if by "worked very well" you mean "it helped sell tons of booster packs." The real reason they do this is the existence of chaff cards in a set means you have to buy more booster packs to get what you want. The whole "This makes the game better!" thing is nothing more than a rationalization and nobody outside of WotC's pocket actually believes it.
Not exactly.
WOTC has done a lot of work in mapping out the player archetypes of Magic. These are Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. Simply put, Timmy wants big numbers, Johnny wants convoluted combos, and Spike wants to win the game. Of course, most players are a combination of all three.
Tournament players tend to be Spike-y, because they want to win the tournament. If a card isn't tournament-worthy, then it is "bad" by Spike standards... but that doesn't mean it's bad by Timmy or Johnny standards. Most Magic cards labeled "bad" are simply for an archetype that isn't you. There are some cards that are bad by any standard, but not all that many, and this is usually a honest mistake and not something WOTC does on purpose.
Now whoever wrote that "we print bad feats on purpose" column wasn't on the MtG team, because printing bad cards on purpose is really not what the MtG team does. More importantly, just because the T/J/S archetypes work pretty well for MtG doesn't mean they apply to D&D mechanics, primarily because MtG is a competitive game and D&D is not.
Now whoever wrote that "we print bad feats on purpose" column wasn't on the MtG team, because printing bad cards on purpose is really not what the MtG team does.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Rosewater
If we can have 300-400 good cards, doesn’t that mean we can make a large expansion where all the cards see play? Yes, in theory, we could design a 330 card set where every card sees play. But what about the next set? Would anyone buy the next small expansion if none of the cards were tournament worthy? Of course not. The only way to then make the next set have tournament-worthy cards is to increase the power level. The new more powerful cards would then displace some of the cards from the first set. Unfortunately, this solution would ultimately destroy the game as the power level would keep increasing until it spun madly out of control.
R&D long ago figured out the solution to this problem. Take the 300-400 good cards and spread them out over the seven sets legal (the two blocks and the base set) in any one Standard environment. But that leaves 1100+ cards that will never see Standard play. What do we do with them?
In short, "We print chaff because we couldn't possibly make a game where all 1500 cards see competitive play." Sounds pretty deliberate to me. Of course Rosewater ignores the obvious solution: Print fewer cards.
In short, "We print chaff because we couldn't possibly make a game where all 1500 cards see competitive play." Sounds pretty deliberate to me. Of course Rosewater ignores the obvious solution: Print fewer cards.
Again, if you want to discuss this further, make a thread for it. This is off-topic, since even if you agree with the proposal (as I do), it still doesn't apply to DnD since it's a very different game from MtG.
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Excellent avatar by Elder Tsofu.
In short, "We print chaff because we couldn't possibly make a game where all 1500 cards see competitive play." Sounds pretty deliberate to me. Of course Rosewater ignores the obvious solution: Print fewer cards.
Generally speaking, when one considers both Limited and Block play, there is a substantially larger range of viable cards. The existence of Draft and Sealed formats gives purpose to all but the worst of the existing card pool. MTG changes the metric that cards are measured against by changing the formats, which ensures that "chaff" cards are minimized. Just because Standard, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage may rarely use a new card doesn't mean that the card is unused in MTG. This approach doesn't work for D&D, unless one is specifically limiting parts of the game (much the way that a Warmage in 3.5 may be more attractive if other casters are banned).
Limited play is a pretty awesome part of MTG, and couldn't exist without a wide range of cards that aren't useful in other formats. You can't compare apples to oranges here.
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Theory and practice are the same in theory, but differ in practice.
Well, that is one of the problems with the whole "bounded accuracy" concept: you can't give out many modifiers people would really notice or care about, because once you give out up to +5 for a stat and up to +5 for BAB you're starting to break the bounds if you give out more than +1 or +2 from other sources.
Does WotC really think bounded accuracy is still a good idea? Hasn't it been mathematically repudiated enough times?
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Does WotC really think bounded accuracy is still a good idea? Hasn't it been mathematically repudiated enough times?
Yes it has.
A scaling bounded accuracy was implemented in 4e, and I think that is one of the big reasons a lot of people didn't like it. I know it is the reason my group and myself stopped with 4e. Its just silly.
The sad thing is that a non scaling bounded accuracy that they are using in 5e is even worse then the scaling one. So whatever fancy stuff you pile up on your deeply flawed base system doesn't matter, it will still be just **** in fancy wrapping paper.
The only sane reason I can come up with for that, other then that they don't know how to design a game, is that all playtest material is for show and that they have a super duper secret system behind the screen and all we see is just to fool the competition.
So, time for another one of Craft's crazy ideas: Advancement-less play. Characters don't get stronger over the course of the adventure. The DM just picks a power level and everyone stays there, unless there's very good reason to bring characters up or down. Characters can change over the course of the adventure by shuffling their abilities around to become better in some areas while also becoming worse in others, but strictly speaking advancement is subject to DM fiat and is not something the players should expect as a regular reward.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "But Craft, if you want to play that way, just don't give out XP for anything!" but it really isn't that simple. I've been playing advancement-free games for a while and the way you structure the game is completely different. Many things, including lots of things core to D&D's design in other areas, just flat-out stop making sense, or even worse become a direct hindrance to play.
So, time for another one of Craft's crazy ideas: Advancement-less play. Characters don't get stronger over the course of the adventure. The DM just picks a power level and everyone stays there, unless there's very good reason to bring characters up or down. Characters can change over the course of the adventure by shuffling their abilities around to become better in some areas while also becoming worse in others, but strictly speaking advancement is subject to DM fiat and is not something the players should expect as a regular reward.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "But Craft, if you want to play that way, just don't give out XP for anything!" but it really isn't that simple. I've been playing advancement-free games for a while and the way you structure the game is completely different. Many things, including lots of things core to D&D's design in other areas, just flat-out stop making sense, or even worse become a direct hindrance to play.
For the record that sort of advancement-free play is the one major qualm most of my group has with Shadowrun.
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If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic. No, really. Don't bite my head off for saying the Fighter is way overpowered, or how Wizards need more spells per day to keep up.
Speaking of the new maneuvers, does anyone else feel like they've split up maneuvers a lot more than they should have? All of the extra attack maneuvers (Flurry of Blows, Volley, Whirlwind Attack) work basically the same way, all of the "roll XdY and add the best result" maneuvers (Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, Deadly Strike, etc.) work the same way, and so on. I can't help but compare this to the factotum: the factotum could just add his Int to any d20 roll, no restrictions, and that was just one of his first level class features.
Instead of coming up with lots of slightly different variations on a theme, I feel like those shouldn't even be maneuvers, similar to 1337 b4k4's suggestion. Each martial class should just get an ability at 1st level that says "You can roll any number of expertise dice, take the best result, and add it to your roll when making [types of rolls] rolls" and one (maybe at 1st, maybe later) that says "You can spend expertise dice to make extra attacks when [condition]," and new uses for expertise dice open up automatically with fighting style/scheme/specialty choices. The fighter gets "add XdYb1 to melee attack rolls, Fort saves, and Str checks, get extra melee attacks when your targets are adjacent," the monk gets "add XdYb1 to saves and Str or Dex checks, get extra melee attacks when fighting unarmed," etc.; Sharpshooter and some future archery specialty lets you get extra ranged attacks that way, and so forth with other styles.
Having Volley as your only 10th level class feature or Great Fortitude as your only 8th level class feature is a joke. Much better to fold all of the generic number-twiddling maneuvers into one class feature and let maneuvers be class features that actually do things. Deflecting arrows, granting resistance, and knocking enemies back should be the least interesting things maneuvers let you do, not some of the few maneuvers that aren't just rolling expertise dice and adding them to rolls.
Agreed. Manuevers need to give the characters the ability to do something new that they can't do otherwise. Adding numbers is boring. It's something your class should do. Each character only has a handful of manuevers, so each of them should do something interesting. Even with the greatly lowered spells per day, casters get access to spells that do interesting things; why should the non-casters only get to toll a die and add the result to another roll?
Going back to my crossbow complaints, it all boils down to one thing - if D&D Next wants to be a really new, fresh system it needs to be less prohibitive of character concepts. In 3rd edition, making a lot of concepts work involves jumping through hoops. Let's say I wanted to make the character from my avatar. A goblin spy using a crossbow. In 3e D&D, he's obviously a Goblin Rogue. But after that, I hit a brick wall - crossbows suck and rogues can't effecitvely use ranged weapons. 1d6 damage with an additional 1d6 at the beginning of combat - if I manage to go first - might cut it on the first levels, but afterwards I might as well be throwing peebles. In order to make it work, I need to work against the system, which actively hampers me. And of course I need to juggle sourcebooks. The same applies to other concepts, such as a nimble, dexterous Fighter or a Rogue who wants to focus on throwing knives.
Now, D&D Next seems to be a bit better about it, but I think it's still an issue to keep in mind.
I don't mention 4e in this post because it's been a while since I read its rules and I honestly have no idea if my crossbow rogue would work there or how it handles this problem in general.
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My FFRP characters. Avatar by Kid Kris. Sigatars by Gulaghar, Kid Kris, Zefir and billtodamax, respectively.
Now whoever wrote that "we print bad feats on purpose" column wasn't on the MtG team, because printing bad cards on purpose is really not what the MtG team does. More importantly, just because the T/J/S archetypes work pretty well for MtG doesn't mean they apply to D&D mechanics, primarily because MtG is a competitive game and D&D is not.
That's a great tidbit I hadn't heard before, but it does fit well with D&D. I'll take a quick stab at it.
Timmy = Min/Maxer
Johnny = High Power Player
Spike = Theoretical Optimizer
We'd also need to add "William" (for William Shakespeare) who is more interested in flavor/role than in facts, and Joe, who just wants to kill monsters and take their loot.
Most [feats|powers|spells] fail or succeed by the same logic as MtG: is it useful to the interested player? We also have an opposite problem: if you remove optimizing and combos, you lose the interest of those MtG groups. Thus, the game becomes bad because it doesn't do what they enjoy.
The "bad feats are bad on purpose" statement was from Monte Cook, who really has a talent for talking out of his ass. When he joined the 5th Edition design team, he immediately started to make statements that sounded rather implausible, which then were usually followed by a "clarification" by Mike Mearls that often came down to "No, we're not planning to do anything like you thought Cook said yesterday".
And thankfully Cook left the team after just a few weeks of this and it immediately stopped.
Don't listen to anyting Monte Cook says, it's usually garbage.
The random background generator is awesome. I got a NG dwarven magus who was involved in a "pleasure" scandal with some arcane experiment backfire as well. My imagination is running off with that.
That's a great tidbit I hadn't heard before, but it does fit well with D&D. I'll take a quick stab at it.
Timmy = Min/Maxer
Johnny = High Power Player
Spike = Theoretical Optimizer
No, I don't think that's it.
Timmy likes characters with big swords or big guns, and wants to do cool things like punch a dragon in the nose. Note that he doesn't care about DPR or anything, he'll just pick the weapon with the highest base damage, set it on fire because flames are awesome, and hope for a critical hit. His favorite class is probably barbarian.
Johnny likes characters with lots of options, and wants to pull off convoluted stunts involving sovereign-gluing a bag of holding to an immovable hole and then filling it with a decanter of endless water. His favorite class is probably wizard, but not for the high-powered stuff but for the oddball utility spells.
Spike wants to win. He is a powergamer or min/maxer, and cares about such concepts as DPR or RTK. His favorite class is whatever is the most powerful (which would be wizard in 3E but ranger in 4E). This is basically the same as Joe.
In the traditional classification of roleplayer archetypes, Timmy is The Real Man; Johnny is either The Real Roleplayer (brain) or The Loonie; Spike is The Munchkin. The William you note is The Real Roleplayer (thespian), and his MtG equivalent would be somebody who doesn't play, but collects cards for the pictures.
Adding numbers is boring. It's something your class should do. Each character only has a handful of manuevers, so each of them should do something interesting. Even with the greatly lowered spells per day, casters get access to spells that do interesting things; why should the non-casters only get to toll a die and add the result to another roll?
Adding numbers doesn't have to be boring. Especially in a bounded accuracy system, where each addition is worth so much more. The problem I see developing right now is that despite their attempts (and claims) to the contrary, there are once again a lot of ways to get pluses to things, and since every mundane class so far uses expertise dice the same way for the same basic set of maneuvers, it's not all that interesting anymore. Still, it can work, but going back to what I was talking about before, each class should get to add their pluses to different things (and yes, they should also get to do unique things that aren't just straight pluses). If everyone is just rolling expertise dice and adding the result to to hit or damage, then that's what's uninteresting.
Some confirmation that Expertise Dice are going to become the martial character's schtick just like spells are for magic users:
Quote:
Right now, we’re experimenting with expertise dice being the primary expression of the growth of a character’s martial prowess, and we aren’t looking to cross the streams with spellcasting.
As I said above, this should be doable provided that they examine how each class can use expertise dice in a thematically appropriate way rather than thematic maneuvers that all amount to roughly the same thing.
The random background generator is awesome. I got a NG dwarven magus who was involved in a "pleasure" scandal with some arcane experiment backfire as well. My imagination is running off with that.
Adding numbers doesn't have to be boring. Especially in a bounded accuracy system, where each addition is worth so much more. The problem I see developing right now is that despite their attempts (and claims) to the contrary, there are once again a lot of ways to get pluses to things, and since every mundane class so far uses expertise dice the same way for the same basic set of maneuvers, it's not all that interesting anymore. Still, it can work, but going back to what I was talking about before, each class should get to add their pluses to different things (and yes, they should also get to do unique things that aren't just straight pluses). If everyone is just rolling expertise dice and adding the result to to hit or damage, then that's what's uninteresting.
When it comes down to it, all mechanics are basically adding and subtracting numbers. But like you said, there are more and less interesting ways of going about it. Expertise dice are a nice idea, but right now they're more or less the same as a flat +x bonus in the vein of Weapon Focus, only randomized.
With that said, there ought to be manuevers that don't let you simply attack with bigger numbers, but instead give you ways to attack or use skills that you normally wouldn't have at all.
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My FFRP characters. Avatar by Kid Kris. Sigatars by Gulaghar, Kid Kris, Zefir and billtodamax, respectively.
Expertise seems to be a much better solution than Tome of Battle. ToB maneuvers always seemed like spells for martial characters.
Shooting fire from your sword and teleporting are typically considered magical effects. Also the whole bit where the book explicitly calls it magic on numerous occasions. Also that many maneuvers don't work in an AMF because they're supernatural.
So, time for another one of Craft's crazy ideas: Advancement-less play. Characters don't get stronger over the course of the adventure. The DM just picks a power level and everyone stays there, unless there's very good reason to bring characters up or down. Characters can change over the course of the adventure by shuffling their abilities around to become better in some areas while also becoming worse in others, but strictly speaking advancement is subject to DM fiat and is not something the players should expect as a regular reward.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "But Craft, if you want to play that way, just don't give out XP for anything!" but it really isn't that simple. I've been playing advancement-free games for a while and the way you structure the game is completely different. Many things, including lots of things core to D&D's design in other areas, just flat-out stop making sense, or even worse become a direct hindrance to play.
The William you note is The Real Roleplayer (thespian), and his MtG equivalent would be somebody who doesn't play, but collects cards for the pictures.
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