D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread [Archive] - Page 3

Stubbazubba

2012-07-03, 10:01 AM

The article disagrees with itself on how they are going to approach magic items. At first he says they want to move away from "a pool of abilities applied to a weapon by picking them off a list." Then only 2 paragraphs later he states that he wants to see "us build a list of special abilities that can be applied to any weapon," which is literally what he just said he wanted to move away from.

There is a slightly implied difference that the former list was all raw, mechanical abilities while the second one would have more fluff abilities, but that's not really a distinction, IMO.

Given Mearls' amazing track record on math, I fully expect this "new" approach to magic items to make them necessary to get through high-level enemies in any reasonable amount of time or with any reasonable chance of hitting. Of course, with this whole bounded accuracy idea that they are already on track to fumbling terribly, they'll realize that monsters would need a lot more HP to keep things "challenging" when AC can't scale as much, so they'll start scaling monster AC, because those four-digit HP numbers aren't casual-friendly. Then, guess what? Everyone will need a +3 magic weapon anyway. And when after the hype of the new edition's release dies down, people will point to that and say, "Hey, what's this all about, Mike? You said we wouldn't need magic items to play!" And he'll slither around and reply, "Well, you don't; magic items are supposed to feel special, so yeah, they'll add a lot of punch when you get them, but you don't need them. Without them things are just harder. That's how we've made magic items cool again! It's a feature, not a flaw." And some people will buy that response, while the rest of us will realize that we've already had that game. Twice.

Here's Mearls' problem; it's not that he refuses to do the math (even when he promises to), or that he hides his incompetence with double-speak, it's that he has no idea how to create good design goals and then implement them. He doesn't understand the math of the game to know what a good game would play like, so his design goals are based on popular philosophies, not the actual outputs of the system. But even when he has some form of design goals, everything he designs appears to have its own exception to said goals to achieve some other, lesser goal, which he thought of on the spot in another, "Wouldn't it be cool if..." moment. That, Mike, is how you successfully fail to achieve your design goals, time after time. Exception-based design results in an incoherent system whose whole is much less than the sum of its parts.

JoeMac307

2012-07-03, 11:08 AM

The more I read about D&D Next, the more it seems like it is a system that is being designed by a fanboy, rather than a game designer. Kinda like how comic books are these days... full of "wouldn't that be kewl" concepts, but no thought to the big picture or the long road.

Ashdate

2012-07-03, 11:22 AM

I think it's okay to have a system that makes broad assumptions about the level of magic items that a player will have (and tie it into the math). Certainly, the last two editions did! If they want to "assume" that 5th level characters will have the equivalent of one +1 weapon and armour, 10th the equivalent of a +2 weapon and armour, and 15 an equivalent of +3 weapon and armour (as a hypothetical example), that's fine with me. Just tell me in the DMG that this is the assumption, and if that is not an assumption that I wish to use, then give me some suggestions about scaling up/down encounters.

If they carry over 4e's method of "building" encounters (through an XP budget), then maybe encounters should be designed past 5th level to be "one level lower" for an appropriate party (again, still using made up math), while "Monty Haul" GMs should be told to build encounters "one or two levels higher". I think we realize that both 3.5's CR system and 4e's "xp budget" system were flawed (3.5 because CRs weren't necessarily accurate in terms of strength, 4e's because the XP budgets were probably too low to give a decent challenge), but once a DM has a few levels under his belt he can accurately gauge whether their party is adequately challenged by book guidelines and adjust accordingly.

Ultimately, my point is that magic items need not complicate the math of the system as long as you design around their inclusion/exclusion. With the math gone, the problem becomes limiting "low cost" magical items that have extraordinary benefits. Removing the ability to buy/create magical items (at least, without jumping through hoops) would solve that nicely.

obryn

2012-07-03, 12:10 PM

I was personally hoping, with the bounded accuracy rules, that pretty much all numeric bonuses to-hit for magic weapons (and to AC for magic armor) were being effectively nuked.

In such a system, any bonus to-hit is insanely desirable, making you hit approximately 10% more often if the standard baseline DC is somewhere in the neighborhood of 11.

This is also why I have pretty grave concerns re: ability score bonuses. I am worried the 18 (or whatever) prime stat will be even more necessary than it was in 4e.

-O

Draz74

2012-07-03, 12:22 PM

I was personally hoping, with the bounded accuracy rules, that pretty much all numeric bonuses to-hit for magic weapons (and to AC for magic armor) were being effectively nuked.

Nah, unfortunately they've said several times that "+X" weapons are "iconic D&D, it wouldn't be D&D without them." So ... yeah. They somehow haven't figured out that it's nigh-impossible to make such weapons without making them a key component of character power. (Unless, I suppose, if the item's +'s didn't stack with the character's +'s ... e.g. if they didn't stack with the character's Strength bonus. Hmmmmmmm. Interesting.)

If I designed a system (oh wait, I am ...), I'd limit magic weapons/armor to +1 stacking bonus, max. And some magic weapons/armor wouldn't even have that.

JoeMac307

2012-07-03, 01:08 PM

Nah, unfortunately they've said several times that "+X" weapons are "iconic D&D, it wouldn't be D&D without them." So ... yeah. They somehow haven't figured out that it's nigh-impossible to make such weapons without making them a key component of character power. (Unless, I suppose, if the item's +'s didn't stack with the character's +'s ... e.g. if they didn't stack with the character's Strength bonus. Hmmmmmmm. Interesting.)

If I designed a system (oh wait, I am ...), I'd limit magic weapons/armor to +1 stacking bonus, max. And some magic weapons/armor wouldn't even have that.

If it didn't stack with the character's Strength bonus, could you potentially end up with situations where say a rogue is a better "fighter" than a fighter?

For example, a fighter with Str 18 (+4 bonus) picks up +4 short sword and because the bonus doesn't stack, he gets no advantage to hit or on damage, except now he can get through some DRs I suppose.

If a rogue with Str 10 (+0 bonus) picks up the same weapon, he now has the same to hit and damage bonus as the Fighter (with or without the magic weapon), plus his sneak attack bonus.

So, in this case high powered magic weapon is almost useless to the Fighter, but extremely advantageous to the Rogue, who is also now more dangerous than the Fighter because he can sneak attack on top of fighting exactly as effectively as the Fighter.

I know I'm not taking into account BAB, which for a high level fighter may be somewhat (but not much) higher than a rogue (remember, this is a system with bounded accuracy), but I think the rogue would still fair better in battle than the fighter in this situation.

But I'm probably missing something and someone will point out what a dunderhead I am! :smallredface:

Seerow

2012-07-03, 01:12 PM

Joemac: DDN rogues already get dex to hit and damage with finesse weapons. So all a +4 weapon would do is make it so a random Wizard or Cleric could be as good as a Fighter while still focusing on their primary casting stat.

HMS Invincible

2012-07-03, 01:26 PM

Link to the article, please?

Really, I felt that familiars would be perfect as background features. I get the historic connection between witches and familiars but, really, why is the familiar restricted to wizards?

Umm, it came as part of the character sheet for the wizard when playtesting 5e. Did you play yet?
They've done some extra things in the past, like animal companions for druids/rangers, intelligent mounts for paladins before.
Pros to 5e familiar: No xp loss upon death=>more familiar usage
Quick cheap respawn (30 minute ritual with no costs)
They start able to channel your touch spells through them, so all those superior touch attacks get some use at range, aka far from you. In addition, 9-12hp is a decent amount, can easily tank 2-3 hits. The cat itself comes with +5 to stealth, so it scouts as well.

Fatebreaker

2012-07-03, 01:44 PM

If you're going to make magic weapons sidestep the math, then you need to give magic weapons non-mathematical bonuses which make them better in other ways.

So blazing fireblade might gain a small bonus to hit and deal damage, but it might also...

...create enough light to see by in a given area.
...have bonus effects against flammable creatures and/or cold creatures.
...provide resistance to cold and/or fire damage.
...launch a fireball once per encounter.
...sunder wooden barriers, such as doors, tables, chairs, etc.
...or any number of other options.

Magic weapons which follow that style of design become desirable not because they let you "fix the math," but because they open up new options.

kyoryu

2012-07-03, 02:05 PM

I haven't read the article yet, but this brought something to mind I've been thinking about for a while: Why does D&D even *have* identify spells anymore? They only make sense if you're playing a roguelike-esque game where cursed items are plentiful and painful, which is considered bad form in today's playstyles. It's just a drain on resources for... no real reason, it seems.

It's a holdover, and if anything, it's yet another sign that the biggest thing they need to do with 5e is address exactly what type of game it is, rather than trying to fit all playstyles.

obryn

2012-07-03, 02:06 PM

The thing is, a +x weapon could still easily add to damage rather than both hit and damage. This would fulfill the "+x weapons must exist" sacred cow.

That's what's kind of baffling about "bounded accuracy." With only a range of maybe 10-15 standard DCs/ACs/whatever, I can't see how getting a +1 to-hit will ever be optional for mathematical advancement.

-O

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-03, 03:02 PM

Umm, it came as part of the character sheet for the wizard when playtesting 5e. Did you play yet?

Ah, you're right. None of my players wanted to play the wizard, unfortunately.

With the math gone, the problem becomes limiting "low cost" magical items that have extraordinary benefits. Removing the ability to buy/create magical items (at least, without jumping through hoops) would solve that nicely.

You could, possibly, take an alternative solution: My homebrew system I've been working on allows players to freely obtain any magic items that they're capable of using. (E.g., you can't use a +6 sword until you have 6 ranks in Swordplay.) So there's no reason to use the only slightly wimpier +1 version to save yourself some gold.

The problem instead becomes based around skill ranks: If the benefits from 6 ranks aren't really worth all that much compared to 5 ranks, then players will only put 5 ranks into Swordplay and put their other ranks into something else. Still working on a solution for that.

Stubbazubba

2012-07-03, 04:35 PM

The problem instead becomes based around skill ranks: If the benefits from 6 ranks aren't really worth all that much compared to 5 ranks, then players will only put 5 ranks into Swordplay and put their other ranks into something else. Still working on a solution for that.

That's a problem? I thought most point-buy systems suffered from the opposite problem; people hyper-specializing in a very narrow focus to the neglect of all else, meaning a party attempting to make the same Jump or Climb check will either have specialists not challenged by the difficulty at all if its set to challenge the normals, or normals who don't have a chance at making it if the difficulty is set for the specialists. If players reach the point where the marginal utility of another point in their specialty is no longer greater than another point in a non-specialty, that's a successfully balanced system, IMO.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-03, 05:03 PM

That's a problem? I thought most point-buy systems suffered from the opposite problem; people hyper-specializing in a very narrow focus to the neglect of all else, meaning a party attempting to make the same Jump or Climb check will either have specialists not challenged by the difficulty at all if its set to challenge the normals, or normals who don't have a chance at making it if the difficulty is set for the specialists. If players reach the point where the marginal utility of another point in their specialty is no longer greater than another point in a non-specialty, that's a successfully balanced system, IMO.

In my view, a game system is balanced when the answer to every question is "maybe."

Should you dump all of your points into a single skill, or spread them out more evenly?

If the answer is obviously to spread them out, and specializing is never worth it, then that's just as bad as a system where specialists win at everything.

(And actually my system turns out even worse than my example problem, as the point to stop investing in melee weapon skills seems to be around rank 3, even though the ranks go up to six.)

Stubbazubba

2012-07-03, 07:52 PM

Sure, and by definition, when the marginal utility of either further specialization or diversification are equivalent, the answer to which one you should take is, indeed, maybe.

And if skill rank 3 is where that balance point is at chargen, then IMO that's great, it'll be a long while before characters feel they need to raise it in order to stay competitive. I think 3 is a good place to start. If that's at mid-game, then that's a little wonky, but couldn't you just make the opposition scale up a little bit to encourage higher numbers at that point?

Edit: And what I mean is that if someone feels comfortable enough with what they want to be good at at skill rank 3, to the point that at that point they feel comfortable branching out and diversifying, then so long as the opposition is scaled down to that level, that's a good balance point, it leaves plenty of upward movement to attain later, while maintaining a relatively small (but hypothetically meaningful) difference between specialists and generalists. But I guess without knowing your dice/RNG mechanics, I certainly can't say for certain. It just "feels" right, :P.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-03, 08:26 PM

Even if you're at max level, it's more worthwhile to have just 1 or 2 ranks in every weapon skill available than to try to max out anything. Just making the higher-ranked abilities more powerful to compensate for this and try to make them worthwhile hasn't turned out so well; they either get completely ignored or snap the game in half.

But this deserves discussion in another thread: I plan on putting up the basic skeleton of the system here in the homebrew forums eventually, so I should quit derailing.

Draz74

2012-07-03, 08:46 PM

If it didn't stack with the character's Strength bonus, could you potentially end up with situations where say a rogue is a better "fighter" than a fighter?

For example, a fighter with Str 18 (+4 bonus) picks up +4 short sword and because the bonus doesn't stack, he gets no advantage to hit or on damage, except now he can get through some DRs I suppose.

If a rogue with Str 10 (+0 bonus) picks up the same weapon, he now has the same to hit and damage bonus as the Fighter (with or without the magic weapon), plus his sneak attack bonus.

So, in this case high powered magic weapon is almost useless to the Fighter, but extremely advantageous to the Rogue, who is also now more dangerous than the Fighter because he can sneak attack on top of fighting exactly as effectively as the Fighter.

I know I'm not taking into account BAB, which for a high level fighter may be somewhat (but not much) higher than a rogue (remember, this is a system with bounded accuracy), but I think the rogue would still fair better in battle than the fighter in this situation.

But I'm probably missing something and someone will point out what a dunderhead I am! :smallredface:
Obviously the non-stacking idea would have to be used in a system in which the Fighter does, in fact, get something worthwhile compared to the Rogue's Sneak Attack. :smalltongue:

The thing is, a +x weapon could still easily add to damage rather than both hit and damage. This would fulfill the "+x weapons must exist" sacred cow.

That's an excellent point, and it's exactly what 5e should do, assuming it sticks with its "bounded accuracy" and "+'s for magic items" intentions.

HMS Invincible

2012-07-04, 01:32 AM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-04, 02:33 AM

IIRC, you need a healing kit for natural healing to work without an extended rest. I just houseruled healing kits out though so I'd have to look up the exact details.

JoeMac307

2012-07-04, 07:36 AM

IIRC, you need a healing kit for natural healing to work without an extended rest. I just houseruled healing kits out though so I'd have to look up the exact details.

Why'd you house rule out healing kits? Thought they were stupid or no one wanted to play Cleric of Pelor? Just curious.

obryn

2012-07-04, 08:29 AM

Ashdate

2012-07-04, 09:32 AM

I want a second opinion with people who have played before. Say you have a healing kit, but you got time for a short rest. Can you heal yourself without needing a healing kit or using a spell, or potion?

You would need to be more specific (I'm not 100% sure what you're asking); you could use potions or a cleric spell to heal hitpoints (as per the spell description), but to use a characters "hit dice" you would need a healing kit.

The problem with healing kits is that they're very arbitrary, in the same way that keeping track of carrying capacity is. Since kits have limited uses (20 if I recall) you need to keep track of how many times you've used it. They're somewhat expensive (50gp), but this would seem more to be an issue at level 1 than at level 2.

Another note: per the test rules, if no one took the Cleric of Pelor, the party would be without a healer's kit until they could scrap up 50gp.

HMS Invincible

2012-07-04, 12:13 PM

IIRC, you need a healing kit for natural healing to work without an extended rest. I just houseruled healing kits out though so I'd have to look up the exact details.
I got into an argument with someone, he kept insisting that you can healing up to your hit dice every time you get a short rest.
Yea, we had to steal, and cajole our way into getting our hands on healing kits extra healing kits.
How does everyone feel about the time restricted healing? Healing is unlimited if you get a 8 hour rest, but it's pretty restricted if you don't, at least early on.

Ashdate

2012-07-04, 02:15 PM

I got into an argument with someone, he kept insisting that you can healing up to your hit dice every time you get a short rest.

You "spend" hit dice to heal, and don't get them back without a "long" rest.

I think how random hit dice are for healing is pretty dumb; 4e had the right idea: make them a percentage of your total hit points. It would be extremely irritating to me, as a player, if we had to do a "long" rest because the fighter rolled a 1 on his d12 and didn't feel comfortable continuing.

Rummy

2012-07-04, 02:32 PM

Do you guys have a list of things that you really want to see in 5e? My list goes something like this...

1. Pre-made modules that have maps and minis. Minis for all of the baddies would be AWESOME. I have a one year old, so I really need to keep the prep time to a minimum.

2. Faster combat.

3. Better integration of later material. In 4e, later stuff often made earlier stuff pointless (Ex. Rod Expertise was not compatible with Superior Implement (Defiant Rod). 3.5e was even worse... I loved Hexblades, but they never received any support after their initial publication.

3a. At the very least, make new stuff backwards compatible (or fix the old stuff with a revision)

3b. Build flexibility into the system... i.e. future Hexblades can access certain types of wizard spells.

4. Munchlin resistant game designs. When 4e came out, it was immediately obvious that the game designers were not obsessive character optimizers (Orb Wizards that could make it impossible to save at paragon level... really?). Granted that most of the ridiculous results were fixed by errata, but I really hope that they do a better job with the initial publication of 5e.

Yora

2012-07-04, 02:39 PM

Something different than spellpoints and a nature priest without plate armor or shapeshifting.

HMS Invincible

2012-07-04, 02:45 PM

I was hoping for some combination of 4th ed powers/Tome of battle stuff for the fighter/nonmagic classes.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-04, 03:37 PM

Why'd you house rule out healing kits? Thought they were stupid or no one wanted to play Cleric of Pelor? Just curious.

Because the entire stated purpose of hit dice was to give you the ability to have limited self-healing without having to spend resources, just to help you get from one encounter to the next. Healing kits completely negate that.

Draz74

2012-07-04, 10:14 PM

Because the entire stated purpose of hit dice was to give you the ability to have limited self-healing without having to spend resources, just to help you get from one encounter to the next. Healing kits completely negate that.

Well, you could just give healing kits unlimited charges. That preserves a modicum of verisimilitude without requiring "spending resources."

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-04, 10:41 PM

Well, you could just give healing kits unlimited charges. That preserves a modicum of verisimilitude without requiring "spending resources."

For all intents and purposes that's what I did.

JoeMac307

2012-07-05, 09:32 AM

Rummy

2012-07-05, 09:51 PM

navar100

2012-07-05, 10:06 PM

I'd definitelybe willing to pay 50 to 60 bucks for a module with minis. Actually, I'd pay $100 if it was a long module, like Revenge of the Giants. My group has been chipping away at RotG for months, so it would be a good investment for us. Still... it couldn't be that expensive to make... I bet they could bring the expense to $40. Especially if they repurpose existing minis, and thus do not have to design new ones.

I am really surprised that WoTC has not done this yet. What better way to attract new players than a module that requires almost zero prep time?

$50+ is a lot of investment for a game. Some board/card games can go that high, but if they're fun enough and have high replay value, the money is worth it. Yay Dominion. However, a module tends to be played just once. Maybe a DM will run it for another group, but a third time is asking too much of a customer. The miniatures of a module can be reused, but what of the next module and its miniatures raising the price?

Best just leave it as is. Players who want miniatures will get them and will reuse them. The modules are only needed for the plots and statistics. Any game is going to have prep time. If you're that lazy . . .

A DM should want to spend the prep time.

Seerow

2012-07-05, 10:10 PM

$50+ is a lot of investment for a game. Some board/card games can go that high, but if they're fun enough and have high replay value, the money is worth it. Yay Dominion. However, a module tends to be played just once. Maybe a DM will run it for another group, but a third time is asking too much of a customer. The miniatures of a module can be reused, but what of the next module and its miniatures raising the price?

Best just leave it as is. Players who want miniatures will get them and will reuse them. The modules are only needed for the plots and statistics. Any game is going to have prep time. If you're that lazy . . .

A DM should want to spend the prep time.

People drop 50 bucks on games they play through just once all the time. Hell, my brother is a chronic buyer of random video games that catch his eye, he's got hundreds of dollars worth of games that he's probably only put 5-10 hours into each, never coming close to finishing the game.

Besides, it's not like the minis from the module couldn't then be recycled into other things in the future.

It's not something Id be personally interested in, because I dont care a lot about minis, but I don't think that 50 dollars for a couple of months (for a decent length module) of game time plus minis is a bad deal.

Rummy

2012-07-05, 10:13 PM

Some DMs relish the prep time, some dread it. Why not have one module that is ready to go from the start?

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-05, 10:19 PM

People drop 50 bucks on games they play through just once all the time. Hell, my brother is a chronic buyer of random video games that catch his eye, he's got hundreds of dollars worth of games that he's probably only put 5-10 hours into each, never coming close to finishing the game.

I'm even worse: I've got at least 6 games installed on my PC right now that I haven't bothered to even open yet, let alone finish <.<

Menteith

2012-07-05, 10:46 PM

I'm even worse: I've got at least 6 games installed on my PC right now that I haven't bothered to even open yet, let alone finish <.<

Ditto, except mine are generally either Steam games, or emulated stuff like Shining Force II, Final Fantasy 6, I Wanna Be the Guy, and other free/cheap things. The only thing that I've paid over $20 for in the last few years are Starcraft 2 and Dragonage 2, if I remember right.

holywhippet

2012-07-06, 12:42 AM

You know, between how the designers said they'd handle AC improvements (buy the better one!) and +x to-hit items, I think we're back in a wealth-by-level situation where the DM will need to tightly control access to money.

-O

That could be tricky if the sample module is any guide. All normal kobolds have daggers for throwing (I don't think the rules even give them a limit, but my DM decided they have 2 each). A dagger is worth 2 gold, you can sell them for 1/2 price so each kobold you kill is worth at least 1 gold. They are about the lowest level monster you will come across also.

Clawhound

2012-07-06, 07:54 AM

Wealth accumulation was an issue in previous edition. What do you do with all that gold when magic items just aren't available? So, you pulled your money and bought ships, built fortresses, and did other RP things. Either that, or your DM houseruled a Magic Mart, which was pretty common.

When 3rd brought in the magic item bazaar to the game, it "solved" the problem by allowing players to buy and sell magic items. That is, it just adopted the house rule that many people already used. However, it introduced the new problem that the only logical use for gold was increasing your character's power. Any other use was sub-optimal, even for the average player. It brought in the additional problem that buying items meant that you could plan to buy items for your character and build the character around the item, adding yet another path for optimization.

Returning to the old paradigm, we will again run into the problem of wealth accumulation. I expect the magic bazaar to become a common houserule again.

JoeMac307

2012-07-06, 08:13 AM

Some DMs relish the prep time, some dread it. Why not have one module that is ready to go from the start?

I think the work around would be to have two versions of the module - one without any minis, and one with minis, like a standard and premium edition. Or, they could package all the minis into one package (or a few packages) and sell it apart from the module.

Grac

2012-07-07, 07:33 PM

Wealth accumulation was an issue in previous edition. What do you do with all that gold when magic items just aren't available? So, you pulled your money and bought ships, built fortresses, and did other RP things. Either that, or your DM houseruled a Magic Mart, which was pretty common.

The reason for that, is that high level characters (which in early D&D meant level 9-ish) were not meant to be running around dungeons. They were powerful, kings and bishops tried to gain favor by giving them titles, land, vassals, but that meant duties in war and peace. So yes, you 'did RP things', but that's what the point of the game was. If you want to have huge amounts of gold and not have to worry about stupid magic item inflation, then this goal of the high-level game needs to be beaten into people's heads. :smallsigh:

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-07, 07:51 PM

And, honestly, good riddance to that. If I want to run a social campaign or a dungeon crawl I'll do either one at any level I damned well please.

Grac

2012-07-08, 01:12 AM

And, honestly, good riddance to that. If I want to run a social campaign or a dungeon crawl I'll do either one at any level I damned well please.

And when the game is made to handle that sort of thing as default, well, then we see the absurdities of the christmas tree characters because if your group wants to play a dungeon crawl outside its level appropriateness, then what else are they going to spend their gold on? And if it can be assumed that they will waste their gold on combat trinkets and not status symbols, well we should be clear about how much we expect at any given level... And so the WBL, the bonus inflation, and the relegating of big-ticket non-combat items to the back ground.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-08, 01:24 AM

Siegel

2012-07-08, 01:53 AM

Stubbazubba

2012-07-08, 03:32 AM

And players spending all of their money on combat gear in a combat-centric campaign is a problem... why?

By the way, I'm not trying to defend 3.5/4E here, I just think building the assumption of a mid-campaign genre change into the system is patently ridiculous.

I both agree and disagree. Obviously, as a game, it should not be changing how its played at mid-level arbitrarily. Unfortunately, as D&D has consistently proven, you can't tell very many interesting stories at (3.5) level 18, when the answer is literally just change reality until the problem is gone, and certainly looks nothing like a level 3 dungeon. Your game either needs to have the discipline to keep its range of power levels a heck of a lot tighter, or you inform your players early and often that as your power increases, the game changes in different ways, but they're just as enjoyable (preferably the higher game modes would expand the mechanics of the lower ones, creating a smooth and intuitive transition). Either of those works, depending on implementation, but you have to broadcast the desired experience to your players clearly.

Kurald Galain

2012-07-08, 03:33 AM

By the way, I'm not trying to defend 3.5/4E here, I just think building the assumption of a mid-campaign genre change into the system is patently ridiculous.

I don't. If you can expect to do the same things at every level, then the concept of level becomes meaningless. For instance, I like the idea of level-1 PCs being vulnerable; anyone who doesn't want that amount of danger can always opt to start at a higher level.

Likewise, defeating a dragon is something that should not happen at level 1: it is anticlimatic if one of the most iconic and dangerous beasts gets taken down by the weakest kind of adventurer.

Jeivar

2012-07-08, 04:21 AM

I only recently found out about the upcoming fifth edition. What are the major differences from Pathfinder/3,5? Are they doing anything new with the classes or feats or leveling system or whatever?

Kurald Galain

2012-07-08, 04:38 AM

I only recently found out about the upcoming fifth edition. What are the major differences from Pathfinder/3,5? Are they doing anything new with the classes or feats or leveling system or whatever?

Well, you can download the playtest material and find out yourself. Or, you could read this excellent summary (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwiki.php?title=Books:D+and+D+Next). Note that the game as a whole isn't out yet, so large parts of it are still unknown.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-08, 04:40 AM

I don't. If you can expect to do the same things at every level, then the concept of level becomes meaningless. For instance, I like the idea of level-1 PCs being vulnerable; anyone who doesn't want that amount of danger can always opt to start at a higher level.

Likewise, defeating a dragon is something that should not happen at level 1: it is anticlimatic if one of the most iconic and dangerous beasts gets taken down by the weakest kind of adventurer.

That's not quite what I meant. "You move on from fighting goblins to dragons to balors" is just fine. Incomparable benefits gained with levels (like Teleport) are also just fine.

What I find ridiculous is "Okay, you've hit level 9. Sell your weapons because the game system says you're not supposed to fight anything else for the rest of the campaign." I realize this is (likely) hyperbole when it comes to AD&D, but my point is this sort of transition should be left up to the group, not to the game designer.

Kurald Galain

2012-07-08, 04:50 AM

What I find ridiculous is "Okay, you've hit level 9. Sell your weapons because the game system says you're not supposed to fight anything else for the rest of the campaign." I realize this is (likely) hyperbole when it comes to AD&D,

It is :) It just comes from different assumptions. Okay, you've saved the realm from the evil dragon and got a boatload of treasure... what would your character do with that? Are you going to spend it all on booze and wenches, or are you going to build a castle for yourself? And if you do, what happens next? It's the same design space as 4E's epic destinies (which also occur at a fixed level). And yes, you can always opt not to build a castle (or wizard tower, or thief guild, etc), but there are just rules that tell you what happens next.

And this isn't retirement either. It means a few months of downtime, but then the next threat appears and who do you think people are going to call for aid? Frankly I like downtime: it makes little sense for people to level from 1 to 20 in a matter of weeks. The plot tends to work better if the DM occasionally makes a few weeks pass between sessions while the PCs relax (or craft or research or whatever).

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-08, 04:53 AM

It's probably just because I haven't played AD&D at all but when people talk about that aspect it always sounds like they're trying to say combat isn't supposed to happen *at all* after 9th level.

Yora

2012-07-08, 04:56 AM

Where did you get that idea?

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-08, 05:01 AM

From statements like this:

And when the game is made to handle that sort of thing as default, well, then we see the absurdities of the christmas tree characters because if your group wants to play a dungeon crawl outside its level appropriateness, then what else are they going to spend their gold on?

kyoryu

2012-07-08, 11:23 AM

From statements like this:

Saying that the presumption is that players will do things like build castles hardly means that's the only thing they're allowed to do.

It's probably worth noting that the original campaigns tended to have more than one character per player - so if your high level was building castles, you'd still go adventuring with your other characters.

Draz74

2012-07-08, 11:42 AM

It's probably just because I haven't played AD&D at all but when people talk about that aspect it always sounds like they're trying to say combat isn't supposed to happen *at all* after 9th level.

Nah ... my long-running 2e character's most numerous and memorable battles were mostly in defending his castle throughout his teen levels. Sprinkle in a dash of inter-henchmen politics and the occasional world-threatening quest hook that made him leave the castle in those henchmens' hands, and voila ...

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-08, 08:02 PM

Seerow

2012-07-08, 09:44 PM

Fair enough. Still though, I've stumbled upon discussions that go like this more than once while browsing the WotC forums (not so much here):

"The fighter sucks in combat compared to the wizard after a certain level!"

"True, but in AD&D this didn't matter because the high levels were all about castle-building and gaining titles, which the Fighter is best at for arbitrary reasons, not combat. We should go back to that!"

From what I can tell it's about 2-3 really vocal people who actually believe this. Most of the rest of the WotC forums just believe what was level 1-6 in 3.5 should be level 1-20 in 5e, even if they don't really recognize this or admit it.

Kurald Galain

2012-07-09, 03:54 AM

"True, but in AD&D this didn't matter because the high levels were all about castle-building and gaining titles, which the Fighter is best at for arbitrary reasons, not combat. We should go back to that!"

Well, that's a bit exaggerated, but the point is that 2E actually has mechanisms to balance casters against non casters (and this is one of them), that 3E threw out. So even though 2E isn't really balanced, it actually does a better job at balance than 3E does.

Another example is automatic spell disruption if you get hit (and you become easier to disrupt if you use higher level spells), long memorization times, a slower XP track, and that you can't buff saving throw DCs (thus higher level enemies will make most of their saves; in 3E that's the other way around).

Clawhound

2012-07-09, 08:28 AM

There's a huge tension created by going up in levels, as that does change how the game feels.

In 1st and 2nd, the change in the game just came naturally with the story. You spent a long, long time leveling up, and you had lots of opportunity to do things like secure fortifications and settle lands. Sooner or later, the players decided to play the castle game.

3.X never solved this internally. Or, it did solve it by making the highest levels so un-fun that many groups just chose to reboot their campaigns. ;)

In 4th, they created tiers and recognized that the feel of the game changes as you advance in level. You can't really help that.

E6 solved this by just stopping the accumulation of levels. There's no reason, in any edition of D&D, that you can't choose the levels that "feel" the most right and keep yourselves there. Presumably, you do this because this is where most players in your group have the most fun. Which is to say, players like the fantastic, but they only like it finitely fantastic. Past a certain point, the fantastic gets so fantastic that they stop identifying with the setting.

hamlet

2012-07-09, 08:46 AM

Well, that's a bit exaggerated, but the point is that 2E actually has mechanisms to balance casters against non casters (and this is one of them), that 3E threw out. So even though 2E isn't really balanced, it actually does a better job at balance than 3E does.

Another example is automatic spell disruption if you get hit (and you become easier to disrupt if you use higher level spells), long memorization times, a slower XP track, and that you can't buff saving throw DCs (thus higher level enemies will make most of their saves; in 3E that's the other way around).

I wouldn't say that AD&D was not balanced, but that it relied strongly on a very different concept of balance than the strict numerical parity that WOTC editions strove for, and failed to acheive. I've always been a strong fan of AD&D's style of balance, actually, rather than the "everybody can contribute equally in all situations" stuff.

And for the record, I think that D&D Next has done a fair job of bringing the fighter back to the forefront of an adventuring group. At our table, he was, really, the most valuable character to have around most of the time when it came to actually walking into a room, though that might actually have had something to do with the way the character was played by our player . . . as a berserking blender, really. He was, especially after finding a suit of plate armor that fit him (which I rolled randomly for), the best able to absorb damage and dish it out. Hold the line and just plow through enemies like a bulldozer as required.

I know this is like to change, given what I've read of folks' opinion of the fighter and how it is "boring," but I can always dream.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-09, 09:13 AM

And for the record, I think that D&D Next has done a fair job of bringing the fighter back to the forefront of an adventuring group. At our table, he was, really, the most valuable character to have around most of the time when it came to actually walking into a room, though that might actually have had something to do with the way the character was played by our player . . . as a berserking blender, really. He was, especially after finding a suit of plate armor that fit him (which I rolled randomly for), the best able to absorb damage and dish it out. Hold the line and just plow through enemies like a bulldozer as required.

I know this is like to change, given what I've read of folks' opinion of the fighter and how it is "boring," but I can always dream.
I'm curious -- did you also have the Warrior Cleric in the party?

hamlet

2012-07-09, 10:17 AM

I'm curious -- did you also have the Warrior Cleric in the party?

Yes, we did. Though that player found a tougher time trying to figure out what particular niche that PC was intended to occupy. Same, actually, goes for the Cleric of Pelor. It felt, to them, that the Cleric's niche was not as well defined as it had been in previous games. Wasn't clear if they were supposed to wade into battle and thwack things, or were supposed to be heal bots, or something else. They just didn't have anything that defined them as apart from the other characters.

Personally, I kind of liked the clerics, but I can sort of see where they're coming from since they realized fairly quickly that healing magic, and the guy who could use it, became much less important when you factored in hp bloat and how very easy it was to get all your hit points back (i.e., healing is just too freakin' easy).

The thief (I will not call it "the R word") was another table favorite as they really started to abuse the hiding ability to get advantage, and my inability to roll perception checks successfully, though they never bothered to use him, really, for scouting purposes.

The wizard's player had a lot of fun coming up with innovative uses for spells. Using Ray of Frost to coat the bugbears' gong with ice to dampen the sound. Using Mage Hand to poke the hobgoblin chief's eyes three stooges style, which I ruled in the end gave him one round of disadvantage in combat and sight related checks, which the players really liked. Using Mage Hand as a faultless oil delivery system, which was then set alight by torch bearing characters. Using Mage Hand to open suspected trapped doors/chests from a distance. He really liked Mage Hand, and in the end, I think that spell kind of negates some of what makes the thief character important if it's unlmited use. But that's a minor thing, really.

They all, ALL OF THEM, hated how healing works in the new edition. Having HP represent an abstraction of energy, luck, etc., works fine for them, but then having all HP restored after a night's rest, even going with the metaphor that once reduced to 0 HP you're actually wounded, makes no sense, and breaks the game sensibility to them. There has to be some real consequence of being reduced to 0 HP beyond "you fall down for an extra couple hours."

They really liked the advantage/disadvantage system and spent a good bit of time bargaining with me over what would and would not grant/constitute advantage at any given moment. I like it a lot better than applying fiddly little modifiers to every roll.

Seerow

2012-07-09, 10:45 AM

Yes, we did. Though that player found a tougher time trying to figure out what particular niche that PC was intended to occupy. Same, actually, goes for the Cleric of Pelor. It felt, to them, that the Cleric's niche was not as well defined as it had been in previous games. Wasn't clear if they were supposed to wade into battle and thwack things, or were supposed to be heal bots, or something else. They just didn't have anything that defined them as apart from the other characters.

Personally, I kind of liked the clerics, but I can sort of see where they're coming from since they realized fairly quickly that healing magic, and the guy who could use it, became much less important when you factored in hp bloat and how very easy it was to get all your hit points back (i.e., healing is just too freakin' easy).

So let me guess, the Guardian Cleric (you know, the guy with more AC and features focused on defending) just passed on the full plate to the Fighter, because he had no idea what his role was?

Because seriously, the guardian cleric's role is literally "Fight as good as or better than the Fighter". The Laser Cleric's role is literally "Blast as good as or better than the Wizard", both get a splash of healing thrown in.

Also, the pcs getting 1dx worth of healing for free each day made the clerics feel like their healing was useless? Or was it the recover all hp in an extended rest? Because if it's the former, I'm calling shenanigans. The hit dice healing system is objectively crap, and either cleric contributes far more to healing.

kyoryu

2012-07-09, 11:43 AM

Fair enough. Still though, I've stumbled upon discussions that go like this more than once while browsing the WotC forums (not so much here):

"The fighter sucks in combat compared to the wizard after a certain level!"

"True, but in AD&D this didn't matter because the high levels were all about castle-building and gaining titles, which the Fighter is best at for arbitrary reasons, not combat. We should go back to that!"

That's a weird point. I'd say the "balance" was more about the fact that, given that PC death happened relatively frequently, getting a high level wizard was actually something of an accomplishment. That, and multiple characters in the campaign meant that any imbalance was only in play part of the time.

hamlet

2012-07-09, 12:27 PM

So let me guess, the Guardian Cleric (you know, the guy with more AC and features focused on defending) just passed on the full plate to the Fighter, because he had no idea what his role was?

Because seriously, the guardian cleric's role is literally "Fight as good as or better than the Fighter". The Laser Cleric's role is literally "Blast as good as or better than the Wizard", both get a splash of healing thrown in.

Also, the pcs getting 1dx worth of healing for free each day made the clerics feel like their healing was useless? Or was it the recover all hp in an extended rest? Because if it's the former, I'm calling shenanigans. The hit dice healing system is objectively crap, and either cleric contributes far more to healing.

Actually, no, she held onto her plate armor throughout. Eventually, she figured out a happy medium of learning that "fight as well or better than the fighter" was actually not at all the intent, but that she was much better off in a defensive position, putting herself between the nasties and the squishies.

I'm not saying it's a design flaw, I'm saying that the group I was running had difficulty pinning the clerics down themselves. This is from a group of mixed players, some from 3.x and some from AD&D and prior. Nobody was able to immediately satisfactorily come to grips with the purpose of either cleric because "with a splash of healing thrown in" is counter entirely to what a cleric "should be" in pretty much everybody's perception there. Especially since healing magic is . . . superfluous in some regards here.

HMS Invincible

2012-07-09, 07:13 PM

I have to disagree here. I really like how they made the heal spells part of something else. I always feel so lame when I'm the cleric because I have to spend actions healing as opposed to doing something productive. All healing does is let someone else be productive. I hope they explore more heal+something else combo spells. The cleric should be a divine warrior based in magic, more paladinish than healbot.

Seerow

2012-07-09, 07:42 PM

Cleric hasn't been a dedicated healer since AD&D. I doubt it's ever going to go back to that. If that's what your players are hoping for, then I don't know what can help them.

Jerthanis

2012-07-10, 02:00 AM

The thief (I will not call it "the R word") was another table favorite as they really started to abuse the hiding ability to get advantage, and my inability to roll perception checks successfully, though they never bothered to use him, really, for scouting purposes.

Odd, even when I granted our thief automatic stealth without checking to make sure she maintained the requirements for rolling it and without bothering to check each monster's perception against her steath roll, the thief STILL seemed totally worthless compared with the Fighter or Moradin Cleric. Attacking for slightly more than double damage every other round is only slightly better than just attacking normally every round, and since pretty much everyone else was better at each individual attack, the Thief was collossally unimpressive. It only really contributed when the boss monsters with 90ish HP rolled out, and even then, she accounted maybe 40% the monster's HP.

Yora

2012-07-10, 03:32 AM

The cleric should be a divine warrior based in magic, more paladinish than healbot.
Which they have been for the last 12 years.

Saph

2012-07-10, 03:52 AM

Odd, even when I granted our thief automatic stealth without checking to make sure she maintained the requirements for rolling it and without bothering to check each monster's perception against her steath roll, the thief STILL seemed totally worthless compared with the Fighter or Moradin Cleric. Attacking for slightly more than double damage every other round is only slightly better than just attacking normally every round, and since pretty much everyone else was better at each individual attack, the Thief was collossally unimpressive.

We found the same thing at level 1, but to be fair it does change as you go up levels. Since the thief gains +1d6 sneak attack damage every level (not every other level like 3.5) their damage scales much faster than everyone else's.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 04:31 AM

We found the same thing at level 1, but to be fair it does change as you go up levels. Since the thief gains +1d6 sneak attack damage every level (not every other level like 3.5) their damage scales much faster than everyone else's.

What was that about the fighter being the best at killing things?

Saph

2012-07-10, 04:45 AM

What was that about the fighter being the best at killing things?

Oh, the fighter is good at doing damage, that's not the problem. The problem is that it doesn't do anything else.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 05:05 AM

Oh, the fighter is good at doing damage, that's not the problem. The problem is that it doesn't do anything else.

Oh, I know. In their design articles on the fighter they keep saying "Fighter is best class for killing! Nobody kills better than Fighter!"

Which is kinda inconsistent with the rogue getting sneak attack dice crazy fast.

Kurald Galain

2012-07-10, 05:12 AM

Oh, I know. In their design articles on the fighter they keep saying "Fighter is best class for killing! Nobody kills better than Fighter!"

Which is kinda inconsistent with the rogue getting sneak attack dice crazy fast.

It strikes me that the intent is for the rogue to have situational powerful attack, which means that it won't get a consistent way to get Advantage all the time. It also strikes me that most 3E/4E players won't like this.

Yora

2012-07-10, 05:12 AM

Which is not a unique fault of D&D. To my knowledge, nobody ever had any good ideas what else a warrior could be doing to compare to a rogue or mage.

@ Kurald: I do! :smallbiggrin: (Fighting is for fighters. Rogues have to wait for their time to take the spotlight and can make themselves useful when the fighters are doing their job.)

Kurald Galain

2012-07-10, 05:17 AM

@ Kurald: I do! :smallbiggrin: (Fighting is for fighters. Rogues have to wait for their time to take the spotlight and can make themselves useful when the fighters are doing their job.)

Actually, I do too. I like having to put some work into getting a (big) sneak attack bonus. I really dislike how 4E has made it trivial for rogues to get sneak attack every turn, all the time, from level 1.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 05:23 AM

Which is not a unique fault of D&D. To my knowledge, nobody ever had any good ideas what else a warrior could be doing to compare to a rogue or mage.

We all know the answer to this: The fighter's job is to use his high strength score to carry things!

At least until everyone in the party gets their own bag of holding.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 07:28 AM

Cleric hasn't been a dedicated healer since AD&D. I doubt it's ever going to go back to that. If that's what your players are hoping for, then I don't know what can help them.

Actually, in AD&D, the cleric wasn't neccessarily a "healbot" either, and playing one as such was, generally, seen as an inferior way to actually play the class.

Yes, he had the healing magic, but resorting to just healing magic was really ignoring a lot of what he was capable of doing.

However, turning healing into something so ridiculously easy is, IMO a bad thing. It really rubbed every single person in the group the wrong way no matter what their starting edition was. Not a single person out of about 10 folks thought it was in any way good.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 07:30 AM

Oh, the fighter is good at doing damage, that's not the problem. The problem is that it doesn't do anything else.

Eh?

The fighter "doesn't do anything else"? What the heck is that supposed to mean?

No, really, that one just puzzles me. Especially since the fighter was, even outside of combat, one of the most active characters at our table. He did a lot above and beyond "hit it with a stick."

I simply cannot fathom this particular meme of "the fighter can't do anything but fight and is thus boring." Really seems to me like bad players.

Saph

2012-07-10, 07:32 AM

No, really, that one just puzzles me. Especially since the fighter was, even outside of combat, one of the most active characters at our table. He did a lot above and beyond "hit it with a stick."

Our fighter was the same. But the actual class is just a bit boring. I really can't see myself playing one without a bit more mechanical variety.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 07:45 AM

Eh?

The fighter "doesn't do anything else"? What the heck is that supposed to mean?

No, really, that one just puzzles me. Especially since the fighter was, even outside of combat, one of the most active characters at our table. He did a lot above and beyond "hit it with a stick."

I simply cannot fathom this particular meme of "the fighter can't do anything but fight and is thus boring." Really seems to me like bad players.

As Saph said, what we mean is the class. The person playing the fighter might be very creative and charismatic, figuring out and using dirty tricks around the environment at every turn. The problem is you can play that way with any class, so why should anyone choose the Fighter over, say, the Cleric or Wizard?

hamlet

2012-07-10, 08:24 AM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 08:28 AM

Boring how?

I found it in no way boring. In fact, it was one of the better written classes in the playtest. Forthright, simple, and straight up. It said what needed to be said quickly (one side of one page) and without any questions on how it was intended to work as opposed to how it actually did according to what was written there. Brevity is something that was completely lost after AD&D, which is a shame.

What, exactly, makes it boring as opposed to the wizard, cleric, or thief?

Wizards and clerics get spells, and rogues get powers to make them better at using skills. The fighter gets... damage on a miss. And technically that's a feat that theoretically any class could take, so that doesn't really count.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 08:34 AM

Wizards and clerics get spells, and rogues get powers to make them better at using skills. The fighter gets... damage on a miss. And technically that's a feat that theoretically any class could take, so that doesn't really count.

Eh? Spells and powers is what you want? If a character isn't doing something special, unique, and awesome every round, he's not contributing to the success of the party, or he's just flat out not interesting to you?

Do you need special rules to govern "doing something"? Is the fighter ONLY capable of fighting with a sword/ax/club/whatever because that's all that's on his sheet?

No, really. I'm not trying to be a jerk here. I simply cannot understand this constant meme of "the fighter is boring" that's been going around. It's a complete, total, and absolute break with . . . well . . .EVERYTHING that I know about gaming and basic logic and nobody's been able to actually explain it.

Drazik

2012-07-10, 08:43 AM

what craft i think is trying to say is that yes, although you can (and most people think you should) play more than what is on your sheet, you can do that with every other class also. it is not fighter specific.

My group did 2 playtest runs. the first time i played the fighter, the second one of my friends did. both times we had a lot of fun.

HOWEVER just comparing the class mechanics WITHOUT playing the class, the fighter appears very boring.

the wizards and both clerics get spells, and the cleric gets channel divinity powers. cool!
the rogue gets +1d6 on attacks with advantage every level, plus some other goodies (night vision, scheme, ect...) that cool to.

the fighter gets... oh. the fighter gets an extra action, twice a day. that's cool i guess, but it's only one thing and starts at level two.

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 08:46 AM

Eh? Spells and powers is what you want? If a character isn't doing something special, unique, and awesome every round, he's not contributing to the success of the party, or he's just flat out not interesting to you?

Do you need special rules to govern "doing something"? Is the fighter ONLY capable of fighting with a sword/ax/club/whatever because that's all that's on his sheet?

No, really. I'm not trying to be a jerk here. I simply cannot understand this constant meme of "the fighter is boring" that's been going around. It's a complete, total, and absolute break with . . . well . . .EVERYTHING that I know about gaming and basic logic and nobody's been able to actually explain it.

You aren't alone here. I like that the fighter is mechanically simple, and so do my players who favor fighters. I don't think being straightforward is boring or limiting... I see it as a strong platform on which to build in nearly any conceivable direction. But I seem to be in the minority here with that point of view.

I also don't have any problem with a rogue not being a huge contributor to combat. I see them as a finesse class, that shines during certain circumstances (scouting, trapfinding, occassional sneak attacks) but otherwise just survives combat situations rather than thrives in them. On this point, I again seem to be in the minority here.

Maybe it's just different styles of play. Maybe it is generational. Sometimes it seems that everybody has to feel special every single second of every single day, and that bleeds over to D&D. A rogue has to be just as good at fighting as a fighter, but if so, then the fighter is a stupid class because all it can do is "hit it with a stick" so it needs cool manuevers to make it interesting. Fair enough. Not my style of play, but a valid one...

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 08:47 AM

hamlet

2012-07-10, 08:52 AM

The only thing the Fighter can do aside from attacking is making something up and asking the DM if it's okay.

Fighter: "I grab the Kobold and hold him in place while the rogue stabs him in the neck!"

DM: "Hmm, okay. You and the Kobold make opposed strength checks to see if it works."

That's just fine, but the purpose of a game system is to provide rules to adjucate situations so the DM doesn't have to make up a rule on the spot like that. Freeform roleplaying is fine and good fun, but why should I bother to buy/learn a system just to play Freeform?

So . . . again . . . it boils down to because the fighter doesn't have special unique snowflake status on paper, he is therefore horribly boring?

Or is this, yet again, the utter dread that seems to be the norm nowadays with regarding the DM as having any responsibility to make regular adjudications?

Sorry, still don't get it. Seems to boil down to "it isn't on the sheet, therefore it's boring and wrong and not right" or whatever. Seriousl lack of imagination.

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 08:53 AM

The only thing the Fighter can do aside from attacking is making something up and asking the DM if it's okay.

Fighter: "I grab the Kobold and hold him in place while the rogue stabs him in the neck!"

DM: "Hmm, okay. You and the Kobold make opposed strength checks to see if it works."

That's just fine, but the purpose of a game system is to provide rules to adjucate situations so the DM doesn't have to make up a rule on the spot like that. Freeform roleplaying is fine and good fun, but why should I bother to buy/learn a system just to play Freeform?

I agree that there should be detailed combat rules that tell you how to do any common action in combat, such as holding a kobold still while the rogue stabs it in the neck. I don't think the poor DM should have to come up with all of that on the fly in every circumstance.

But that is combat rules. That everyone follows. Not just the fighter. How does the lack of detailed combat rules equal a need to make the fighter a more mechanically complicated class? There seems to be a disconnect there.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 08:57 AM

I agree that there should be detailed combat rules that tell you how to do any common action in combat, such as holding a kobold still while the rogue stabs it in the neck. I don't think the poor DM should have to come up with all of that on the fly in every circumstance.

But that is combat rules. That everyone follows. Not just the fighter. How does the lack of detailed combat rules equal a need to make the fighter a more mechanically complicated class? There seems to be a disconnect there.

Because, once again, if everything the Fighter does can be done by anyone else, why even have the fighter?

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 09:04 AM

Because, once again, if everything the Fighter does can be done by anyone else, why even have the fighter?

Fair enough. It goes back to what I was saying originally. The Rogue can't just be a finesse character that is only rarely useful in combat and really shines with traps and sneaking around, etc... because then half the game the player wouldn't feel special. So, the Rogue has to be beefed up in combat, and that makes it so "everything the Fighter does can be done by anyone else", and now you have to make the Fighter mechanically complicated to make it seem like a relevant class.

So we agree. If you want to make the Rogue feel special all the time, you have to make the Fighter into something complicated so that the Fighter can be special also. The only other option is to have Rogues that are only useful sometimes, primarily outside of combat, and then the Fighter will and can shine in combat, without a lot of fancy powers / maneuevers / abilities.

Or am I missing something?

Edited to fix a couple of typos.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 09:07 AM

Because, once again, if everything the Fighter does can be done by anyone else, why even have the fighter?

Because the fighter is, simply put, better at physical combat than any other class in the game. The fighter fights. It's what he does, it's what he was hired for.

The wizard wizards. The thief steals. The fighter fights, and he does it better than anybody else.

You know that whole concept of "rogues" as being primary damage dealers? Yeah, that's much newer than you think. Theives were originally conceived (well into the game, actually, since they weren't an original class) as sneaks, scouts, scoundrels, and party faces. They weren't expected to stand toe-to-toe with the bad guys. They were expected to find out information that helped the rest of the party do its job more effectively. Find out where the bad guy is so that he can be ambushed or at least be deprived of the advantage of being hidden. Avoid falling victim to traps. And occasionally stick a knife in the back of somebody unaware.

The fighter was, then, the guy who was really the one expected to put the bad guys down when it came time to do it. Yeah, a wizard could, from time to time, really do some major killing, but he was a flash in the pan, really.

If anything, the uniqueness of the fighter was killed not because "everybody else can do what he does" but because WOTC editions muddied the roles so dramatically that folks never actually understood the design goals of the original systems.

obryn

2012-07-10, 09:09 AM

So . . . again . . . it boils down to because the fighter doesn't have special unique snowflake status on paper, he is therefore horribly boring?
"My special ability is having no special abilities whatsoever! It makes me awesome at coming up with stuff because I really have no alternatives!"

That's the 20-miles-uphill-in-the-snow answer. Where surviving on nothing but cornmeal and beetles is advertised as "character-building" rather than just something you do when you're desperate. (That's the way it was, and we liked it!)

Everyone at the table can innovate. Clerics don't stop coming up with clever stuff just because they have spells. Neither do Wizards. What's more, because spells are back to their puffy 1e/2e glory, they can innovate more.

It'd be nice for Fighters to have some interesting mechanics that belong to the class, is all. Stuff Fighters can do that Joe Commoner can't with a few feats. You might dismiss this in a snarky kids-these-days/special snowflake/lack-of-imagination sort of way (I think you hit all the classics in your past few posts), but it's hardly an unreasonable desire.

-O

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 09:10 AM

If anything, the uniqueness of the fighter was killed not because "everybody else can do what he does" but because WOTC editions muddied the roles so dramatically that folks never actually understood the design goals of the original systems.
So... you're railing against the game as is? I thought you were defending the 5E Fighter Design, since that's what folks were talking about? :smallconfused:

hamlet

2012-07-10, 09:12 AM

Fair enough. It goes back to what I was saying originally. The Rogue can't just be a finesse character that is only rarely useful in combat and really shines with traps and sneaking around, etc... because then half the game the player wouldn't feel special. So, the Rogue has to be beefed up in combat, and that makes it so "everything the Fighter does can be done by anyone else", and now you have to make the Fighter mechanically complicated to make it seem like a relevant class.

So we agree. If you want to make the Rogue feel special all the time, you have to make the Fighter into something complicated so that the Fighter can be special also. The only other option is to have Rogues that are only useful sometimes, primarily outside of combat, and then the Fighter will and can shine in combat, without a lot of fancy powers / maneuevers / abilities.

Or am I missing something?

Edited to fix a couple of typos.

Commenting on this separately.

I think that, really, is part of the crux of the problem. It's not that there's a flaw in the fighter inherently, it's that there's a major paradigmatic difference in how the game works, vis-a-vis, a character has to be interesting, cool, and fun ALL THE TIME, or something's wrong. It's not acceptable that at some times, a character might not have anything immediate or direct to contribute, especially within combat.

It's "not fun" for a thief's player to stand back while the fighters and clerics are wading into melee, because he's "not playing anymore just watching others play."

It's "boring" to be a fighter because "everybody can fight and he can't do anything special."

It's just a wholly different world view that's completely incompatible with older conceptions of how things worked.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 09:15 AM

"My special ability is having no special abilities whatsoever! It makes me awesome at coming up with stuff because I really have no alternatives!"

That's the 20-miles-uphill-in-the-snow answer. Where surviving on nothing but cornmeal and beetles is advertised as "character-building" rather than just something you do when you're desperate. (That's the way it was, and we liked it!)

Everyone at the table can innovate. Clerics don't stop coming up with clever stuff just because they have spells. Neither do Wizards. What's more, because spells are back to their puffy 1e/2e glory, they can innovate more.

It'd be nice for Fighters to have some interesting mechanics that belong to the class, is all. Stuff Fighters can do that Joe Commoner can't with a few feats. You might dismiss this in a snarky kids-these-days/special snowflake/lack-of-imagination sort of way (I think you hit all the classics in your past few posts), but it's hardly an unreasonable desire.

-O

No. You're not actually listening.

The fighter is not without special abilities. His special ability is, and should be, that he is the best at fighting. He's the guy who's best at getting into the thick of furball melees and coming out alive on the other end. He's the guy who gets between the bad guys and good guys. He "stands between you and harm in all the dark places you must walk . . ."

That is not "no special abilities." That is very specific.

So... you're railing against the game as is? I thought you were defending the 5E Fighter Design, since that's what folks were talking about?

You're not understanding me.

I'm not, at all, railing against 5th edition design at this point. I'm talking specifically about the, to me, unfathomable view of a huge number of fans who think the fighter is boring, un-unique, uninteresting, and not good. I've been very specific about that.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 09:16 AM

It's "not fun" for a thief's player to stand back while the fighters and clerics are wading into melee, because he's "not playing anymore just watching others play."

It really isn't. Have you ever sat around for 30 minutes while your other party members do all the work because you weren't capable of contributing in the current situation?

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 09:22 AM

@Hamlet

I'm not, at all, railing against 5th edition design at this point. I'm talking specifically about the, to me, unfathomable view of a huge number of fans who think the fighter is boring, un-unique, uninteresting, and not good. I've been very specific about that.
That's not what you said.

You said "If anything, the uniqueness of the fighter was killed not because "everybody else can do what he does" but because WOTC editions muddied the roles so dramatically that folks never actually understood the design goals of the original systems."

Since you also said the reason to have a Fighter is "[b]ecause the fighter is, simply put, better at physical combat than any other class in the game. The fighter fights. It's what he does, it's what he was hired for" which has not been true because "WOTC Editions muddied the roles so dramatically." Therefore, it is the failure of WOTC to design Fighters to be "the best at fighting" which makes the Fighter non-unique.

Can you reconcile your thinking presented above? :smallconfused:

EDIT: Oh wait, I see. Your argument is actually "the Fighter is the best at Fighting but WOTC confused fans as to the truth of this." If so, your argument is empirically false so... OK?

It really isn't. Have you ever sat around for 30 minutes while your other party members do all the work because you weren't capable of contributing in the current situation?
Sure, I've played a Decker in Shadowrun :smalltongue:

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 09:26 AM

I noticed everyone responded directly to hamlet, but no one addressed my argument (besides hamlet).

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 09:30 AM

I noticed everyone responded directly to hamlet, but no one addressed my argument (besides hamlet).

Well, I agree with your argument: Our choices are to accept the model that one player will be doing the work while the other players sit around and do nothing in each situation (with different players for different situations, hopefully), or give everyone abilities that make them always able to contribute.

Personally, I think the latter is vastly preferable to the former.

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 09:38 AM

It really isn't. Have you ever sat around for 30 minutes while your other party members do all the work because you weren't capable of contributing in the current situation?

That is a fair point. The only thing I don't get is why does a Rogue have to be incredibly good at fighting to contribute during combat? Can't the Rogue contribute a bunch of different ways besides mowing people down with sneak attacks? (Sneaking past enemies and setting their escape routes on fire, pulling hurt allies out of melee, laying down suppressive ranged attacks, making clever use of a magic item via UMD, etc)

I think it just comes down to different styles of play, which again, I think is fine. I think it depends on the player's ability and the DM's foresight to make sure a non-combat centric Rogue still has a way to contribute during combat. Just like a combat centric Fighter should still have some way to contribute outside of combat (intimidating NPCs while they are being questioned by the Rogue, sizing up potential hirelings when building a fighting force, etc).

However, if your game is 90% tactical combat, then yeah, playing a Rogue that can't fight as well as a Fighter would suck, and playing a Fighter that has no special maneuevers/powers/abilities would suck.

Just a different approach to the game, I'm guessing.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 09:39 AM

@Hamlet

That's not what you said.

You said "If anything, the uniqueness of the fighter was killed not because "everybody else can do what he does" but because WOTC editions muddied the roles so dramatically that folks never actually understood the design goals of the original systems."

Since you also said the reason to have a Fighter is "[b]ecause the fighter is, simply put, better at physical combat than any other class in the game. The fighter fights. It's what he does, it's what he was hired for" which has not been true because "WOTC Editions muddied the roles so dramatically." Therefore, it is the failure of WOTC to design Fighters to be "the best at fighting" which makes the Fighter non-unique.

Can you reconcile your thinking presented above? :smallconfused:

EDIT: Oh wait, I see. Your argument is actually "the Fighter is the best at Fighting but WOTC confused fans as to the truth of this." If so, your argument is empirically false so... OK?

Uhm, no. Reading comprehension failure.

Or, maybe explanation failure.

Or both.

The fighter "should" be, simply put, the best at fighting. That is what makes him unique and special. That's what makes him interesting and desirable as a class as opposed to thieves, clerics, or wizards.

The issue is that, starting really with AD&D 2.5, but really with D&D 3.x, the roles of the various classes as set out in the design of AD&D and original D&D got muddied. The thief was a lot less about being the sneak and more about, or exceptionally about rather, causing massive amounts of damage with "sneak attacks," a majorly missaplied term if I ever saw one. Almost everything that originally balanced wizards against fighters (those "annoying disadvantages" that wizards had) were utterly removed. In the end, everything that made fighters worthwhile as a class could be done, with a bit of planning, by any other class as well as or better than the fighter. The fighter, as a class, became virtually superfluous and, ever since, has been playing catchup because nobody wants to say, flat out, that D&D 3.x fudged the entire thing up.

I do then go on to say that, based on what we have now in playtest, I like the fighter. It goes back to doing what I think the fighter "should" do as I've explained above. Multiple times. I don't see any way in which the fighter is boring or unspecial compared to the other classes. Not at all. The arguments about why the fighter is such really make no sense to me at all.

THAT is what I'm saying.

It really isn't. Have you ever sat around for 30 minutes while your other party members do all the work because you weren't capable of contributing in the current situation?

Well, then you aren't actually playing things well are you? There's a difference between "not being a primary melee combatant" and "not having anything to contribute in combat" isn't there?

I've played thieves before who, if they got into a straight fight, would die within seconds, but were very able to support the group via any number of ways. Not least of which is remaining hidden until an opportune moment to strike at a crucial foe (like a leader or a spell caster) presents itself. Or taking up a sniping position. Or throwing flasks of flaming oil.

Again, just because there isn't something on the character sheet that says this doesn't mean it's not possible or that it's "boring" because others can do it to. What makes a class special may or may not be directly combat related and might not apply at every single given moment within the game. It's up to the player to apply what they have when it's appropriate and to make sure that when the opportunity arises that they do make use of the skills that make them unique to good effect.

Good games don't neccessarily have to cater to bad players.

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 09:45 AM

Good games don't neccessarily have to cater to bad players.

While I agree with your argument and your general style of play, I don't think it is fair to insinuate people who disagree are bad players. I think they just play a different game than you and me. It is not necessarily a less valid, or bad, style of play.

Who's to say if we played in their campaign, we wouldn't be clogging up the works and doing terribly stupid things because we couldn't keep track of a bunch of different special powers that their type of Fighter would have, and we would be viewed as bad players?

Simply put, let's not get nasty here if we can avoid it.

As usual, edited to fix some typos.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 09:51 AM

Well, then you aren't actually playing things well are you? There's a difference between "not being a primary melee combatant" and "not having anything to contribute in combat" isn't there?

I've played thieves before who, if they got into a straight fight, would die within seconds, but were very able to support the group via any number of ways. Not least of which is remaining hidden until an opportune moment to strike at a crucial foe (like a leader or a spell caster) presents itself. Or taking up a sniping position. Or throwing flasks of flaming oil.

I wasn't really talking about combat.

Go ahead, just *try* to make that important Bluff roll against the King with your -3 CHA and no skill ranks...

Ashdate

2012-07-10, 09:53 AM

I'm not, at all, railing against 5th edition design at this point. I'm talking specifically about the, to me, unfathomable view of a huge number of fans who think the fighter is boring, un-unique, uninteresting, and not good. I've been very specific about that.

I would suggest that rather than assume that this "huge number of fans" are somehow wrong, that you understand where they're coming from.

Characters have become a lot more complex (mechanically!) since 3e was introduced. More importantly, the internet has dramatically changed the way people play D&D, thanks to the availability of optimization guides and forums like this one.

I think one of the golden rules of game design that 3/3.5e (unfortunately) showed is that the class with more flexible options is going to be more powerful in OR out of combat. Not everyone will experience this! I played 2e and 3e for years, including playing with players who could not comprehend that maybe the 3.5 Wizard was inherently "more powerful" than the 3.5 Fighter, despite all the evidence on the Internet to prove otherwise. Some players (god bless them) don't see an edition of D&D as a pile of mechanics. They see it as escapism where they can pretend to be a gnome, where Unearthed Arcana bloodlines are something they want to take because it sounds cool

(Censored for optimizers: )She was playing a cleric. Take that full spell-casting progression!

If you thought the 5e fighter was unique, interesting, and good, then great! The early 5e playtest has delivered to you a fighter you'll enjoy playing.

For the "huge number of fans" who see the fighter as a narrowly focused character which will rely on DM whim and improvisation to feel "special" next to some of the other characters presented however, this feels like a slap in the face. This may not be the fighter (as presented)'s fault! Keep in mind that the "Caves of Chaos" presented are not a great reflection of the strength of the fighter, mostly due to the vast majority of monsters have about half as many hit points as the fighter's average damage. The fact that the fighter is "the best at fighting" doesn't mean much if the Cleric of Pelor (who is, let's pretend, average at fighting) is still one-shotting everything.

Wizards of the Coast also keep going on and on about all these magical optional add-on doodads that DMs can add to the game to make everyone happy, but right now exist in some sort of design, thought bubble until they actually roll some out.

You're also coming off of two editions, one where the fighter was given multiple feats to customize how they want to play, and another where the fighter was designed primarily to protect allies rather than cleave monsters in half, and given multiple powers and abilities to do so, along with associated mechanics (such as grabbing) that are absent from the current playtest.

Surely then, you can see how people (who care about the mechanics, despite there being more to the game than the mechanics) see the return to the "2e fighter" as a bit of a let down.

Seerow

2012-07-10, 09:57 AM

Hamlet, simply put the big flaw in your argument is that "best at fighting" isn't going to be accomplished with a simple class. Ever. They could give a Fighter +3million to damage and auto hit on all attacks, and we could still make a convincing argument that the Wizard is better at combat because he has actual options and can deal with situations where melee damage doesn't work.

That's probably the single biggest problem with Fighters. They're advertised as being the best at fighting, but fighting isn't just dishing damage. It's about having mobility, defenses, action denial, debuffing, minion clearing, and I could probably make this list go on. Being able to do solid reliable damage at melee range is an aspect of Fighting, but it isn't all that Fighting is. The Fighter was really bad at all of the other things in 3e, and looks to be more of the same in 5e.

When people talk about wanting combat options/maneuvers, they mean they want these issues shored up. I want my Fighter to actually be the most durable guy on the battlefield. Not be outclassed in both AC and HP by a half dozen classes, and lack every other defense that is used at mid-high levels. I want my Fighter to have the mobility to be able to use his melee combat against level appropriate enemies, rather than relying on them to stand and fight. Traditionally the Fighter in his heavy armor is one of the least mobile classes in the game, this goes completely against what is necessary for melee combat to work.

Of course, that's just the combat aspect. That's just me saying "Okay Fighter is supposed to be the best at fighting... well he's not". Out of combat he's even more lacking. His entire out of combat skill set consists of +3 to 3 skills. His attributes are weighted towards strength and con, two of the least useful attributes for non-combat situations (as opposed to dex, int, or charisma, which are all typically much more useful out of combat). Even some of the Fighters' minor utilities from 3.5 have been removed. It used to be that the Fighter at high levels got absurdly strong. We're talking lifting and throwing several tons strong. That could be used out of combat to accomplish some interesting things. In 5e, carrying capacity is 10*str score, rather than scaling multiplicitively like it did in 3.5. That combined with a lower attribute cap makes for weaker fighters. Similarly, in 3.5 Fighters could jump ridiculous distances, helping somewhat with their utility. In 5e, jump distance has been normalized and this has been taken away.

We're looking at a class who in combat is NOT the best, but is in fact only middling, and generally good only at one specific area of combat. This class has nothing that is a part of the class to do out of combat, to an even worse degree than there was in previous editions where this was a serious problem. Yes, an individual player can contribute out of combat while playing the Fighter, but while playing any other class he could do so and likely be more effective because he has actual abilities and skills that are intended to help there.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 09:58 AM

While I agree with your argument and your general style of play, I don't think it is fair to insinuate people who disagree are bad players. I think they just play a different game than you and me. It is not necessarily a less valid, or bad, style of play.

Who's to say if we played in their campaign, we wouldn't be clogging up the works and doing terribly stupid things because we couldn't keep track of a bunch of different special powers that their type of Fighter would have, and we would be viewed as bad players?

Simply put, let's not get nasty here if we can avoid it.

As usual, edited to fix some typos.

I wasn't actually trying to get nasty. I'm responding from the perspective that, as a player learning how to play 20 years ago, anybody who ever uttered the phrase "I can't actually do anything here!" was, flat out, a bad player. It was not the job of the rules, DM, other players, or God Himself, to show you what to do or give you things to do during any given situation. It was YOUR job, as a player, to figure out what, if anything, you could contribute to the success of the party even if, or especially if really, that didn't involve any of the abilities written down on your character sheet.

I was not, in any concious way, trying to call people objectively bad players, here. Merely pointing out that from the perspective of somebody who cut their teeth on older editions, any such assertion by a player would have been seen as a symptom of inexperience at best, and just flat out bad play generally.

I'm sorry if anybody actually got offended by my remark.

I'll respond to Ashdate in a separate post in a few mintues.

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 10:03 AM

Characters have become a lot more complex (mechanically!) since 3e was introduced. More importantly, the internet has dramatically changed the way people play D&D, thanks to the availability of optimization guides and forums like this one.

I think one of the golden rules of game design that 3/3.5e (unfortunately) showed is that the class with more flexible options is going to be more powerful in OR out of combat.

This is totally the crux of the issue. There was a time long ago before the internet where "optimization" was seen as "gaming the system" or "being a munchkin", but now it is the be all and end all of gaming for many players.

To that I say, to each their own.

This is the impossible problem that WOTC is trying to solve, appealing to these two diametrically opposed views of gaming at the same exact time. I wish them luck.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 10:03 AM

I noticed everyone responded directly to hamlet, but no one addressed my argument (besides hamlet).
Well, your argument was far less impassioned and far more coherent, so where's the fun in that? :smalltongue:

Rambling Response
Anyhoo, the fact that WoyC recognized the Decker Problem early on is a point in its favor. AD&D, like FASA Shadowrun, went by a "Party of Experts" model in which each team member had one thing they did very well and could do little else; therefore they all had to work together to get through the adventure. Unfortunately, play revealed that not only is it not optimal to have 4 people sit around while 1 person does something every game, this design means that if someone doesn't take one of the roles (i.e. the Cleric) then the game doesn't run at all without substantial houseruling.

WotC's solution in 3e, generally speaking, was to take the major area of gameplay -- fighting -- and make it so everyone could participate. For Rogues this meant useful Sneak Attacks, for Clerics it meant Spontaneous Heals (and more combat buffs) and for Wizards it meant more spell slots. Unfortunately, WotC failed to compensate the Fighter by giving him anything to do in any other area of the game; as a result, the Fighter's raison d'être was lost particularly as Power Creep provided classes that not only could fight as well as a Fighter, but do other things as well. The fact that Rogues became "silent killers" instead of Thieves was merely a symptom of this larger adjustment.

4e fixed this problem, by and large, by splitting up "fighting" into sub-divisions (e.g. Defending, Striking, Controlling, Leader-ing) and making each Class specialized in one of those sub-areas. This returned co-operative gameplay to combat and gave you a reason to have Fighters. Arguably, the Fighter lost out because there were multiple Defender Classes but, in practice, multiple Defenders in a party need not step on each others' toes. The larger problem in 4e was that the non-combat portion of the game atrophied since WotC did not want to return to the Decker Problem; traps and locks were not particularly strong and could be bypassed by other classes (if somewhat less effectively) but more importantly they fit badly into the Encounter-centric gameplay.

With this in mind, did Thieves need to become combat monsters to work in D&D? No, but the idea of Rogues-as-DPR has cemented in the minds of modern gamers because of 3.X and its successors and so it is unlikely that will stop. IMHO, Rogues could have instead become "melee controllers" -- capable of dirty tricks that hindered or incapacitated opponents so that Fighters would have a freer hand at handling the brutes. You saw a bit of this in 4e but this controlling element was inevitably sidelined by their impressive Sneak Attack damage.
All that said, it is important to remember that mechanics matter: if some classes rely on improvising while others can improvise or use mechanics, the strictly improvisational classes will typically be weaker/less desirable unless granted superior improvisational mechanical abilities (e.g. oWoD Mages).

EDIT:
@Hamlet -- This is really apropos my parting comment

I wasn't actually trying to get nasty. I'm responding from the perspective that, as a player learning how to play 20 years ago, anybody who ever uttered the phrase "I can't actually do anything here!" was, flat out, a bad player. It was not the job of the rules, DM, other players, or God Himself, to show you what to do or give you things to do during any given situation. It was YOUR job, as a player, to figure out what, if anything, you could contribute to the success of the party even if, or especially if really, that didn't involve any of the abilities written down on your character sheet.
20 years ago, nobody could do anything outside of improvisation. Assuming AD&D (2nd Edition) the only people with actual useful mechanics were Casters (strictly limited by low spell-slots and easy disruption) and Thieves (d% for abilities as exotic as "Listen") and some "prestige" classes (e.g. Rangers, Paladins) which were extremely difficult to get using the default ability score generator (3d6, 6 times). In combat the only "mechanics" anyone was given was roll vs. AC; if you wanted to trip a charging ogre you needed to convince the DM it was something you could do.

Back then, anyone who said "I can't actually do anything here" basically missed the point of the game -- the numbers on your sheet won't let you do anything, so you have to convince the DM that you can do something. It was roughly equivalent to showing up to a 3e game with a Fighter and spending all your time elaborately describing tripping attacks without taking any of the appropriate feats.

However, that is not now, and has not been, the way D&D has been played since 3.0. Improvisation is no longer at the heart of the game: standard interactions are governed by rules to give Players a sense as to what they can reasonably do and how to get better at doing it. In AD&D, a Human Fighter trying to balance on a branch would have as hard a time doing so at 10th level as he would at 1st level -- it was a straight DEX check and aside from NWP, there was little mechanically the Player could do to make the Human Fighter better at balancing. In 3e, if you wanted your Human Fighter to be better at balancing you would put points in Balance; if a Player wanted to make a Human "Fighter" good at balancing on branches he could take a level of Rogue and put a lot more skill points into it. There was no need to wheedle bonus points out of the DM to have a chance at success; the Player already knew approximately how likely he was to succeed when he set out on a course of action. IMHO, this was a big improvement.

So yes Hamlet, 20 years ago your comment would be correct but it simply is not true for D&D today or any number of similar rules-heavy RPGs that exist today. It is no more appropriate to lambast people for not accepting "improvisation" as a reason that the 5e Fighter is a worthwhile class to select then it would have been to lambast a AD&D Fighter for not taking Trip Feats before trying to trip an ogre. Different rules for different games.

Seerow

2012-07-10, 10:06 AM

I wasn't actually trying to get nasty. I'm responding from the perspective that, as a player learning how to play 20 years ago, anybody who ever uttered the phrase "I can't actually do anything here!" was, flat out, a bad player. It was not the job of the rules, DM, other players, or God Himself, to show you what to do or give you things to do during any given situation. It was YOUR job, as a player, to figure out what, if anything, you could contribute to the success of the party even if, or especially if really, that didn't involve any of the abilities written down on your character sheet.

I was not, in any concious way, trying to call people objectively bad players, here. Merely pointing out that from the perspective of somebody who cut their teeth on older editions, any such assertion by a player would have been seen as a symptom of inexperience at best, and just flat out bad play generally.

I'm sorry if anybody actually got offended by my remark.

I'll respond to Ashdate in a separate post in a few mintues.

The problem comes when you have one character who has 50-100 things written on his character sheet that can be applicable to a non-combat situation, while another character has none.

Yes, the Fighter might be able to think of something that works, and then convince the DM that it works, and solve the problem. Or the guy with the dozens of abilities just uses one of those abilities, and it works.

There are a lot of gamers out there who don't want to play "Mother May I" or "Magical Tea Party" with the Dungeon Master. Incidentally, there's a strong cross section of these players who also want to play a martial class. You can see where that becomes a problem quickly.

If you want to play a freeform game where everyone can think up creative solutions regardless of what their character sheet says, that's fine. I don't even mind if 5e has a rules light option where each of the classes gets stripped down to where the Fighter/Rogue are now (say Wizards and Clerics get dropped down to a single at will spell, that they now have to use creatively in the same way that Fighters have to use their stuff creatively), and let groups who prefer that method play that way.

What I absolutely will not ever agree with in any situation is a system where at the core you have two classes, one with a lot of abilities that are applicable to all situations, and one with almost no abilities that are applicable to very specific situations. Straight up that is horrible design that is nothing short of wanking to caster superiority. I expect the core rules to be balanced and consistent in the sorts of abilities available to characters. If we have a Wizard with hundreds of spells usable in and out of combat, I expect Fighters/Rogues to have similar numbers of tricks which can be applied both in and out of combat. If 5e can't give this, I won't buy it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 10:08 AM

That's probably the single biggest problem with Fighters. They're advertised as being the best at fighting, but fighting isn't just dishing damage. It's about having mobility, defenses, action denial, debuffing, minion clearing, and I could probably make this list go on. Being able to do solid reliable damage at melee range is an aspect of Fighting, but it isn't all that Fighting is. The Fighter was really bad at all of the other things in 3e, and looks to be more of the same in 5e.

I think this depends on how tactical combat is in your campaign. If you are play TOTM-style, or even just quickly sketching out battlegrounds, then this is less of an issue, IMHO. But if you have full-on minis with detailed battle sites and lots of tactical things going on, then yeah, this is a big problem.

(Point being, trying to make the feel / style of older editions mesh with the feel / style of newer editions seems impossible, but maybe WOTC can pull it off. I'm hoping they can)

Seerow

2012-07-10, 10:14 AM

I think this depends on how tactical combat is in your campaign. If you are play TOTM-style, or even just quickly sketching out battlegrounds, then this is less of an issue, IMHO. But if you have full-on minis with detailed battle sites and lots of tactical things going on, then yeah, this is a big problem.

(Point being, trying to make the feel / style of older editions mesh with the feel / style of newer editions seems impossible, but maybe WOTC can pull it off. I'm hoping they can)

Even in Theater of the Mind or a quick sketch, if your Fighter moves 20ft before attacking and the enemy can move 40ft, you're never going to catch up and that's the end of it. In theater of the mind it doesn't matter what the exact position of the enemies are, you're not getting more than 2 or 3 minions with cleave, while the Wizard's 40ft diameter fire ball will fry many more of them. Theater of the Mind especially doesn't matter when talking about defenses, because it doesn't matter what the grid looks like, when the Fighter doesn't have spell resistance, elemental resistances, damage reduction, temp hp, good saves, and immunities, while all of the casters and level appropriate enemies do, the Fighter is not the most durable person on the battlefield. In fact, he's pretty much the squishiest.

Theater of the Mind is not a way to change the problem of "Fighters aren't particularly good at combat". It doesn't matter if you use a grid or not, if your Fighter is only good at one out of 8 aspects of combat, while there are other classes out there that are good at all of them, your Fighter is not good at combat. Period. Now when there's other classes comparable to him in the one aspect he IS good at, then it's just adding insult to injury. (And for what it's worth, if you give the Moradin Cleric the same weapon/theme as the Fighter, his average damage is very similar)

obryn

2012-07-10, 10:17 AM

No. You're not actually listening.

The fighter is not without special abilities. His special ability is, and should be, that he is the best at fighting. He's the guy who's best at getting into the thick of furball melees and coming out alive on the other end. He's the guy who gets between the bad guys and good guys. He "stands between you and harm in all the dark places you must walk . . ."

That is not "no special abilities." That is very specific.
I've seen you answer 3 people that we're not really listening. There's a common factor in all three of these failed communications. :)

(1) The Fighter is not currently the best at fighting, if you take everything that goes into a fight. Saying "I hit it with a sword" a bunch of times does not make you awesome at fighting.
(2) He might stand between the monsters and squishies, but without restrictive terrain like dungeon corridors, he can't actually do anything about it.
(3) If the Fighter is supposed to be the best at fighting, he needs some flexible tactical options. Flexibility is power.

I was not, in any concious way, trying to call people objectively bad players, here. Merely pointing out that from the perspective of somebody who cut their teeth on older editions, any such assertion by a player would have been seen as a symptom of inexperience at best, and just flat out bad play generally.
Erm. So did I? I started playing in the early 80's, myself, so I don't think that your perspective is necessary and expected in someone who's been playing this long.

-O

hamlet

2012-07-10, 10:22 AM

I would suggest that rather than assume that this "huge number of fans" are somehow wrong, that you understand where they're coming from.

I understand the argument. I merely do not grant it validity. It's a specous argument that misses a great deal itself and relies on a priori reasoning. I am here disagreeing with it.

Characters have become a lot more complex (mechanically!) since 3e was introduced. More importantly, the internet has dramatically changed the way people play D&D, thanks to the availability of optimization guides and forums like this one.

I would argue that characters have become a lot more mechanically complex needlessly. I look at 3.x and do not see, at least half the time, what the extra complexity really gets you in the end. More rules, mostly. More is not always more. Sometimes, it's just more.

Maybe, just maybe, simplicity should be a design goal. Rather than scads of rules, maybe we should look at what actually made prior editions great for decades. Simplicity. Bare frameworks upon which to build. Fewer rules and more rulings. The fighter works very well within its given framework.

I think one of the golden rules of game design that 3/3.5e (unfortunately) showed is that the class with more flexible options is going to be more powerful in OR out of combat. Not everyone will experience this! I played 2e and 3e for years, including playing with players who could not comprehend that maybe the 3.5 Wizard was inherently "more powerful" than the 3.5 Fighter, despite all the evidence on the Internet to prove otherwise. Some players (god bless them) don't see an edition of D&D as a pile of mechanics. They see it as escapism where they can pretend to be a gnome, where Unearthed Arcana bloodlines are something they want to take because it sounds cool

Where you see "flexible options" I see additional complexity that doesn't add much to the experience. I also see a distressing tendancy towards "if it isn't on a character's sheet it can't be done" and the need for everybody to have something special and unique to contribute at all times. Egalitarianism taken to an absurd extreme really, that.

And I've played AD&D with people who cut their teeth on 3.x and, suddenly being exposed to the limitations on wizards, were astonished that suddenly wizards weren't the "fix all" to every situation. They weren't inherently more powerful than fighters, and in fact, they were critically vulnerable to the fighters' greatest strengths. It was a major eye opener to them. As has been said repeatedly here on this board, the reason that 3.x and beyond wizards were more powerful, objectively so, is because the 3.x designers removed most of what limited wizards (and clerics, actually) and removed much of what made fighters powerful (though this gets a littly hairy in the analysis). It's an artificially created problem that is flasly retroactively applied to all D&D editions. The problem didn't exist, or at least was not really prevalent, prior to 3.x. It's a problem that they created and fixing it is actually fairly simple, but something that will not (can not) be done now because the expectations of the game are so fabulously different that doing that would effectively doom the edition.

(Censored for optimizers: )She was playing a cleric. Take that full spell-casting progression!

Not sure what this is supposed to mean. I know that it's a 3.x thing, but I'm not sure what you mean here in context.

If you thought the 5e fighter was unique, interesting, and good, then great! The early 5e playtest has delivered to you a fighter you'll enjoy playing.

Yeah, it has. And I enjoy it as is. And hell, I can actually fix up the healing thing if I want to. But, in the end . . . what have I got? The very first iteration of playtest rules. A badly disguised alpha.

And, in the end, at least judging by Mearls' last article on the subject, the edition is going to "fix" things so that what I liked about things is going to go away and this will be, again, another edition that I won't be playing.

Sure, I can stick with the games I like, but it's kind of annoying when the hobby I grew up on walks away from me and I'm left holding 20+ year old product, and especially annoying when people point out "problems" with the new edition that looked to me to be steps in the right direction.

Wizards of the Coast also keep going on and on about all these magical optional add-on doodads that DMs can add to the game to make everyone happy, but right now exist in some sort of design, thought bubble until they actually roll some out.

Speaking as a died-in-the-wool cynic, I doubt very much that these things will ever really escape the thought bubble stage and see the light of day in a form that makes any sense to the people they're supposed to appeal to.

Surely then, you can see how people (who care about the mechanics, despite there being more to the game than the mechanics) see the return to the "2e fighter" as a bit of a let down.

Sure. I can see that. I disagree with it. Extensively.

That is, after all, the purpose of a playtest, to take the measure of the system and voice your opinion on it, right? I'm permitted and even encouraged to do that?

Or is this really just a situation like a lot of people found in the Pathfinder playtests where their opinion was encouraged, as long as it fell within certain parameters?

Seerow: Suffice to say, I disagre with pretty much every word you just wrote. Completely.

Seerow

2012-07-10, 10:25 AM

Seerow: Suffice to say, I disagre with pretty much every word you just wrote. Completely.

That's nice. Unfortunately every word I wrote is true, so disagreeing with it doesn't make your argument valid or right in the least.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 10:28 AM

That's nice. Unfortunately every word I wrote is true, so disagreeing with it doesn't make your argument valid or right in the least.

"Every word [you] wrote is true"? You sure that "true" doesn't start with a capital "T"?

Seerow

2012-07-10, 10:30 AM

"Every word [you] wrote is true"? You sure that "true" doesn't start with a capital "T"?

Not sure I get your reference here. But I note you still haven't refuted anything I said, just stated you blanket disagree with it, because it doesn't agree with your flawed arguments.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 10:31 AM

I've seen you answer 3 people that we're not really listening. There's a common factor in all three of these failed communications. :)

(1) The Fighter is not currently the best at fighting, if you take everything that goes into a fight. Saying "I hit it with a sword" a bunch of times does not make you awesome at fighting.
(2) He might stand between the monsters and squishies, but without restrictive terrain like dungeon corridors, he can't actually do anything about it.
(3) If the Fighter is supposed to be the best at fighting, he needs some flexible tactical options. Flexibility is power.
-O

1) The fighter, actually, is the best at fighting. Or, in my experience he is. Yeah, the clerics can stand shoulder to shoulder with him most times, but in terms of pure damage dealt, the fighter wins nine times out of ten (assuming he hits).

2) Eh? Did you not see the map of the Caves of Chaos? What, precisely, is stopping you from using the narrow cave mouths and passages as chokepoints to funnell and trap enemies? What stopped you, precisely, from using the bed in the bugbear leader's chamber along with the cover rules to provide a good place from which to make a last stand?

3) Flexibility is not neccessarily (or even significantly) a function of having more concrete rules defining actions.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 10:33 AM

Seerow

2012-07-10, 10:35 AM

Kurald Galain

2012-07-10, 10:40 AM

So . . . again . . . it boils down to because the fighter doesn't have special unique snowflake status on paper, he is therefore horribly boring?

No, it boils down to this. If the fighter consists of making something up and asking the DM for permission, then why on earth am I paying WOTC a lot of money for that game? I can do rules-light for free and without a 300 page rulebook.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 10:42 AM

2) Eh? Did you not see the map of the Caves of Chaos? What, precisely, is stopping you from using the narrow cave mouths and passages as chokepoints to funnell and trap enemies? What stopped you, precisely, from using the bed in the bugbear leader's chamber along with the cover rules to provide a good place from which to make a last stand?
Out of curiosity, how did your Fighter survive wave attacks while standing at that checkpoint? Lack of Attacks of Opportunity and all that.

The point, rather, is that Fighters are no better at defending squishies than clerics or anyone else with high AC. In fact, why not put a Cleric in Plate there instead, since he could at least heal himself while physically blocking a 5' corridor.

Compare with the 4e Fighter who not only could intercept enemies moving adjacent to him (Opportunity Attacks) but would actually stop their movement if he hit -- something that no non-Defender could do, and, IIRC, something that few, if any, other Defenders could do. He was a better choice for guarding squishies precisely because he could do it even when not at a natural chokepoint -- a beefy Cleric trying to do the same thing would not be nearly as effective.

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 10:43 AM

hamlet

2012-07-10, 10:45 AM

obryn

2012-07-10, 10:46 AM

1) The fighter, actually, is the best at fighting. Or, in my experience he is. Yeah, the clerics can stand shoulder to shoulder with him most times, but in terms of pure damage dealt, the fighter wins nine times out of ten (assuming he hits).
2) Eh? Did you not see the map of the Caves of Chaos? What, precisely, is stopping you from using the narrow cave mouths and passages as chokepoints to funnell and trap enemies? What stopped you, precisely, from using the bed in the bugbear leader's chamber along with the cover rules to provide a good place from which to make a last stand?
3) Flexibility is not neccessarily (or even significantly) a function of having more concrete rules defining actions.
(1) I agree that he clearly does more damage with a simple attack before spells are added into the equation and that he has a lot of HPs. I disagree that this makes him better at "fighting" because "I hit it with my sword" is not the only component of "fighting."

(2) Of course? But now your entire ability to defend your party is terrain- (and specifically dungeon-) dependent. There's nothing intrinsic to the class that helps with this, as opposed to (say) a wizard's spells helping them wizard. Your defending capability can be bypassed by adding an extra 5' to the corridor width, fighting in a room instead of a hallway, or ... simply being outside.

(3) Fighter 1 can make attacks and improv. Fighter 2 can make attacks, trip people, push them around, get free attacks at people who ignore him, and improv. I'd say Fighter 2 is better able to do his job. It's the same situation with wizards - is a wizard more powerful with a single Magic Missile, or Magic Missile AND Sleep AND Comprehend Languages?

-O

Seerow

2012-07-10, 10:49 AM

I often find that these arguments quickly get petty and repetitive, and completely entrenched, with neither side willing to see the other side's point of view, or even concede that the other side is anything less than a moron.

I see one side insinuating the other side are "bad players" and that side then turn around and state everything they say is "true" like their word is law or something. :smallfurious:

Well, at least people are passionate about D&D. That, if nothing else, bodes well for the future of the game.

Everything I stated IS true from a mechanically objective viewpoint. If you disagree, go back and actually argue the points rather than trying to say it's just repetitive argument for the sake of argument.

I don't like going through the trouble of making an argument then being ignored by people who want to just say that I am wrong without giving any tangible reason why. If you want to make the case that the Fighter is in fact the best at all aspects of combat, make that case. I'd love to see the case given that there is no mechanical basis for it. All the Fighter has going for him is high hit points and high damage. That is one small aspect of combat. Hell you could argue the high hit points is just a part of defense, which is an area the Fighter is objectively terrible at because he lacks the defenses at mid-high levels that other characters do have.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 10:50 AM

Out of curiosity, how did your Fighter survive wave attacks while standing at that checkpoint? Lack of Attacks of Opportunity and all that.

The point, rather, is that Fighters are no better at defending squishies than clerics or anyone else with high AC. In fact, why not put a Cleric in Plate there instead, since he could at least heal himself while physically blocking a 5' corridor.

Compare with the 4e Fighter who not only could intercept enemies moving adjacent to him (Opportunity Attacks) but would actually stop their movement if he hit -- something that no non-Defender could do, and, IIRC, something that few, if any, other Defenders could do. He was a better choice for guarding squishies precisely because he could do it even when not at a natural chokepoint -- a beefy Cleric trying to do the same thing would not be nearly as effective.

At my table, the fighter managed, with help, to hold off a "swarm" of about 25 foes (they really managed to step in it an alert the entire hobgoblin group at once) by planting themselves firmly in a narrow passage doorway with the fighter and "knight cleric" standing side by side. The fighter still had only chainmail at the time.

The fighter, with a good initiative, stayed precisely where he was and essentially one shot killed anything that came close to him. The knight cleric, after we explained to her player that the shield special ability was actually quite powerful if used properly, did very little than keep that shield at the ready to defend the fighter and anybody else who became a target for missile fire throughout the battle. The rest stayed back and lobbed missiles and magic over the front line. In about 12 or so rounds, the combat was done and the party was victorious because they used good tactics and relied on the strengths of each party member.

There was, at no time, that the fighter felt ill used or "boring." I'd actually post the player's actual response from an email he sent me a while ago, but suffice to say it would not go over well in this forum.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 10:54 AM

The fighter, with a good initiative, stayed precisely where he was and essentially one shot killed anything that came close to him. The knight cleric, after we explained to her player that the shield special ability was actually quite powerful if used properly, did very little than keep that shield at the ready to defend the fighter and anybody else who became a target for missile fire throughout the battle. The rest stayed back and lobbed missiles and magic over the front line. In about 12 or so rounds, the combat was done and the party was victorious because they used good tactics and relied on the strengths of each party member.
But... why didn't the kobolds dart in, attack, and then step back for the next kobold to do the same? The Fighter should have been taking over a dozen attacks each round and could only kill 1 (if Readied Attacks are permitted) without moving out from his position.

Or did the Kobolds use really bad tactics? :smallconfused:

obryn

2012-07-10, 10:55 AM

The knight cleric, after we explained to her player that the shield special ability was actually quite powerful if used properly, did very little than keep that shield at the ready to defend the fighter and anybody else who became a target for missile fire throughout the battle.
You knew that the Cleric can do that only 1/round, right? :smallsmile:

-O

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 10:57 AM

hamlet

2012-07-10, 10:58 AM

(1) I agree that he clearly does more damage with a simple attack before spells are added into the equation and that he has a lot of HPs. I disagree that this makes him better at "fighting" because "I hit it with my sword" is not the only component of "fighting."

No, saying "I hit it with my sword" does not make him a better fighter. Hitting most of the time while others routinely missed (higher to hit bonus) and consistantly doing more damage make him a mechanically better fighter. Being smart enough to make use of existing terrain features makes him, as a player, a better fighter.

(2) Of course? But now your entire ability to defend your party is terrain- (and specifically dungeon-) dependent. There's nothing intrinsic to the class that helps with this, as opposed to (say) a wizard's spells helping them wizard. Your defending capability can be bypassed by adding an extra 5' to the corridor width, fighting in a room instead of a hallway, or ... simply being outside.

Or, you know, being outside and making use of the outside terrain. The world outside of the dungeon isn't a flat, featureless field, you know. Hills, rivers, rocks, mountains, etc. ALL of them can be used to advantage. The party at my table did fight some outside battles, using the elevation of the valley walls to tremendous effect.

Claiming that such an advantage is entirely due to a dungeon is not very honest.

(3) Fighter 1 can make attacks and improv. Fighter 2 can make attacks, trip people, push them around, get free attacks at people who ignore him, and improv. I'd say Fighter 2 is better able to do his job. It's the same situation with wizards - is a wizard more powerful with a single Magic Missile, or Magic Missile AND Sleep AND Comprehend Languages?

-O

Yeah, except our fighter did perform trips, disarms, shoves and grapples, and a whole host of other things. It's right there in the playtest rules for you to figure out. And, with a high strength and a reasonable dexterity, he was quite able at them, more so than others who tried them. So, yeah, he was the best fighter at the table.

So, again, I will assert that, on some level, a lot of folks are failing to make use of what is actually in the rules of the playtest and blaming it on bad design.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 10:59 AM

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 11:00 AM

No doubt the DM was roleplaying that 8 WIS score.
How much WIS does it take to figure out "I run in to hit him, and then run away so he can't hit me?" :smallconfused:

Also:

So, again, I will assert that, on some level, a lot of folks are failing to make use of what is actually in the rules of the playtest and blaming it on bad design.

Speaking of which...

But... why didn't the kobolds dart in, attack, and then step back for the next kobold to do the same? The Fighter should have been taking over a dozen attacks each round and could only kill 1 (if Readied Attacks are permitted) without moving out from his position.

You knew that the Cleric can do that only 1/round, right? :smallsmile:
Did your DM actually use the rules of the playtest :smalltongue:

Seerow

2012-07-10, 11:03 AM

But... why didn't the kobolds dart in, attack, and then step back for the next kobold to do the same? The Fighter should have been taking over a dozen attacks each round and could only kill 1 (if Readied Attacks are permitted) without moving out from his position.

Or did the Kobolds use really bad tactics? :smallconfused:

Also worth noting: Hamlet noted earlier his group found a set of full plate. Had the Cleric taken it, his AC would have been 20, vs the Fighter's 17. So you would be trading giving disadvantage once around in exchange for the kobolds only hitting on a 20 instead of a 17, meaning the cleric would have been hit 25% as often against the kobolds the Cleric couldn't give disadvantage to, and only twice as often against the kobold that got disadvantage. So if the kobolds were moving around to get lots of attacks each turn, the Cleric up front would be taking consistently fewer hits, plus have the ability to heal himself while attacking. And given the 2 hp of the kobolds, killing a kobold with every hit is easy.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 11:03 AM

How much WIS does it take to figure out "I run in to hit him, and then run away so he can't hit me?" :smallconfused:

Well, I presume the designers have the average score of 10 or 11, and THEY didn't figure it out...

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 11:03 AM

How much WIS does it take to figure out "I run in to hit him, and then run away so he can't hit me?" :smallconfused:

9 WIS? I'm pretty sure it states you have to have at least 9 WIS to come to that conclusion. :smallsmile:

hamlet

2012-07-10, 11:04 AM

You knew that the Cleric can do that only 1/round, right? :smallsmile:

-O

Yes, but with a relatively low "to hit" bonus, the hobos weren't hitting reliably anyway, so it was frequently only needed once or twice a round.

But... why didn't the kobolds dart in, attack, and then step back for the next kobold to do the same? The Fighter should have been taking over a dozen attacks each round and could only kill 1 (if Readied Attacks are permitted) without moving out from his position.

Or did the Kobolds use really bad tactics?

Did I mistype? They were fighting hobgoblins, not kobolds. Sorry if I had a typo there.

And the hobbos weren't darting around because, like I said, the fighter very carefully picked his spot so that there was only one possible avenue of attack (they'd spiked the back entrance) and that the hobos had no real choice but to engage in combat or, effectively, be sealed up in their caves forever.

The kobolds got bought off (again, the fighter's idea and execution, even with a low charisma, he combined the bribe with a very effective threat of bodily harm if the kobolds didn't see their way clear to running away to greener pastures).

The Goblins were actually brought in as allies. Again, fighter's execution here. He actually brought back a delegation to the keep (you guys did put the keep in your module, right?) and negotiated a truce and even trade agreements with the goblins provided they helped clear out the more aggressive hoobgoblins, orcs, and bugbears.

Again, good play that relied on more than what was explicitely called out on the character sheet.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 11:05 AM

Well, I presume the designers have the average score of 10 or 11, and THEY didn't figure it out...
Zing! :smallbiggrin:

@JoeMac307 -- if self-preservation requires WIS 9 then how do Kobolds survive in the first place? :smallconfused:

EDIT:

And the hobbos weren't darting around because, like I said, the fighter very carefully picked his spot so that there was only one possible avenue of attack (they'd spiked the back entrance) and that the hobos had no real choice but to engage in combat or, effectively, be sealed up in their caves forever.
What prevented the Hobgoblins from moving up, attacking, and then moving back? Were the PCs fighting at the bottom of a pit or something? I really don't understand how any spot could be so "carefully" selected to negate the move-and-attack rules in the playtest.

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 11:09 AM

@JoeMac307 -- if self-preservation requires WIS 9 then how do Kobolds survive in the first place? :smallconfused:

Didn't I read somewhere that the magic inherent in their blood from their diluted dragon-heritage is what keeps the alive in the first place? :smallwink:

I might have that wrong. Maybe?

Ashdate

2012-07-10, 11:13 AM

I wasn't actually trying to get nasty. I'm responding from the perspective that, as a player learning how to play 20 years ago, anybody who ever uttered the phrase "I can't actually do anything here!" was, flat out, a bad player. It was not the job of the rules, DM, other players, or God Himself, to show you what to do or give you things to do during any given situation. It was YOUR job, as a player, to figure out what, if anything, you could contribute to the success of the party even if, or especially if really, that didn't involve any of the abilities written down on your character sheet.

The environment has changed. It's fine to remember the good old days where groups played in a bubble, unaffected by the experience of other players and/or the Internet, but those days have passed. The game has (for better or worse) grown up.

Heck, I cut my teeth on 2e in the mid-90s. I must have lost about a half-dozen characters before I finally began to grasp the line between being heroic and living to level 2. Crude battlemaps indicating the position of orcs versus our team, the disappointment that I had when my Druid found out that purify food and water doesn't make rotten food "new" (just unable to give you food poisoning. The mold remained). Those memories are special to me.

But they are not modern D&D, and for good reason; players demand more from their games.

I understand the argument. I merely do not grant it validity. It's a specous argument that misses a great deal itself and relies on a priori reasoning. I am here disagreeing with it.

I think you're being disingenuous. I can't speak for other players, but I've played a lot of D&D, including the 5e playtest. My arguments are therefore a posteriori.

I would argue that characters have become a lot more mechanically complex needlessly. I look at 3.x and do not see, at least half the time, what the extra complexity really gets you in the end. More rules, mostly. More is not always more. Sometimes, it's just more.

I want to say that I don't disagree with you that "more rules" does not make a great game experience. But I think the 5e playtest (that we have seen so far) has applied that "simplicity" to only the fighter. The other classes have more options, either due to backgrounds, or raw ability (i.e. spells). I don't think it's unreasonable for the 3.5 fighter/wizard warning bells to go off when you see one class who is capable of doing one thing well (i.e. the fighter) and other classes who will get exponentially better thanks to the introduction of new and more varied powers and abilities (i.e. the wizard and clerics).

Let me suggest that, rather than the idea that the 5e has perfectly hit the simplicity nail with the fighter, that they've missed the head of the nail (sometimes entirely) with the other classes. The fighter can't exist alone in a bubble; it must be compared to the other classes in the game (which is really where people's issues with the 5e fighter come from).

In short, rather than argue that the fighter is "the right amount of complexity" I think arguing that the other classes are "too complex" would be a more persuasive argument.

I also see a distressing tendancy towards "if it isn't on a character's sheet it can't be done" and the need for everybody to have something special and unique to contribute at all times. Egalitarianism taken to an absurd extreme really, that.

I have two comments here:

1) It's absurd to think that more options = less improvisation.

2) Some players want to have everything they can do listed on their character sheet. Not everyone is a quick-thinking, improvisation monster. They want the safety of a set of options, and I honestly don't see the benefit in creating a game where they will sink for WotC.

Finally, I just want to say that your opinion is noted. I know other people who agree with you, and even if I disagree with your opinion, I don't have a problem with WotC designing a very basic fighter for their game that YOU love, as long as there are options to customize the fighter to create one that I love. Is that fair?

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 11:13 AM

@JoeMac307 -- if self-preservation requires WIS 9 then how do Kobolds survive in the first place? :smallconfused:

Everything in the universe leaves Kobolds alone, because it knows exactly what a Kobold could become if it tried to ascend...

...Except the PCs. Which gives me a lovely campaign idea, actually.

Seerow

2012-07-10, 11:14 AM

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 11:16 AM

Finally, I just want to say that your opinion is noted. I know other people who agree with you, and even if I disagree with your opinion, I don't have a problem with WotC designing a very basic fighter for their game that YOU love, as long as there are options to customize the fighter to create one that I love. Is that fair?

I know you weren't addressing me, but personally, I think that is super fair, and I hope that is what WotC pulls off.

Seerow

2012-07-10, 11:18 AM

Ashdate

2012-07-10, 11:19 AM

I know you weren't addressing me, but personally, I think that is super fair, and I hope that is what WotC pulls off.

*respec knucks*

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 11:20 AM

Clawhound

2012-07-10, 11:48 AM

One problem with the fighter is that there is NO SUCH THING as a fighter.

A wizard is a wizard. A thief is a thief. These suggest abilities? But a fighter? Are we talking Champion? Thug? Knight? Guard? Brigand? Militia? Legionaire? Mercenary?

In movies, those things don't really matter. You get archetypes, such as Big Bruiser, Disciplined Veteran, Wreckless Upstart, Old Master, Selfless Defender, Flashy Trickster, etc. Each of those actually implies some unique mechanics.

I don't see that happening anytime, so I think that the Fighter will always be doomed to a wishy-washy existence.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 12:06 PM

EDIT:

What prevented the Hobgoblins from moving up, attacking, and then moving back? Were the PCs fighting at the bottom of a pit or something? I really don't understand how any spot could be so "carefully" selected to negate the move-and-attack rules in the playtest.

The fighter, with his high initiative, readied a reaction so that when the first hobgoblin stepped up into melee range, he sliced it before it could actually attack. Missiles and spells from the back rank kept the pressure on.

The hobos tried to bull past, but opposed strength checks proved the party was stronger.

Clever use of a readied mage hand spell stopped hobgoblin flaming oil from coming at the party (a readied action and a dex check to actually catch the incoming oil and send it back).

obryn

2012-07-10, 12:20 PM

I will cut this part out first:

Claiming that such an advantage is entirely due to a dungeon is not very honest.
It was intended to be a bit of hyperbole. If you want to call that "dishonest" you can.

My point is simply this: If you need terrain to defend your group, you're relying on that terrain being around, or having enough time to (say) dig trenches. Yes, there are rocks & boulders & trees & ravines outside. All of these can be avoided far more easily than, say, a 5'-wide dungeon corridor. Chokepoints are not everywhere.

(And I'll head down to here...)

Yeah, except our fighter did perform trips, disarms, shoves and grapples, and a whole host of other things. It's right there in the playtest rules for you to figure out. And, with a high strength and a reasonable dexterity, he was quite able at them, more so than others who tried them. So, yeah, he was the best fighter at the table.

So, again, I will assert that, on some level, a lot of folks are failing to make use of what is actually in the rules of the playtest and blaming it on bad design.
I am not blaming it on bad design. Boring design, sure. But not bad design. I still run and enjoy 1e; I don't find that to be bad design, either.

All of the stuff you mentioned above, with the various ways in which the fighter did cool stuff? Could other characters have done the same? And if so, what's the point of the Fighter?

Let's go down a different thought experiment. I have a new spellcaster - call him a Caster for sake of argument. The Caster has a spell he can cast over and over again. What can the spell do? Well, he can make attack rolls and deal damage with it. Want to do anything else with it? Talk to your DM. Use the environment to your advantage. Improvise.

Is such a system sufficient for a spellcasting system? Is it an interesting system? Would you pay a game designer for it? (If so, I'll send my paypal address!)

-O

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 12:22 PM

The fighter, with his high initiative, readied a reaction so that when the first hobgoblin stepped up into melee range, he sliced it before it could actually attack.

You do realize this only works once per round, right?

hamlet

2012-07-10, 12:23 PM

Menteith

2012-07-10, 12:24 PM

You do realize this only works once per round, right?

Yeah, I'm not seeing why that would have actually stopped them running past and attacking the Fighter. At the end of the day, the Fighter is still getting the same number of attacks, and the enemy's movement isn't restricted.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 12:34 PM

Let's go down a different thought experiment. I have a new spellcaster - call him a Caster for sake of argument. The Caster has a spell he can cast over and over again. What can the spell do? Well, he can make attack rolls and deal damage with it. Want to do anything else with it? Talk to your DM. Use the environment to your advantage. Improvise.

Is such a system sufficient for a spellcasting system? Is it an interesting system? Would you pay a game designer for it? (If so, I'll send my paypal address!)

-O

There are actually quite a few successful magic systems out there that are based on improvisation, where the caster can create any effect desired, they just have to succeed on a skill check of some sort. You can go for hundreds of pages just giving advice on how to set the DCs in various situations.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 12:34 PM

You do realize this only works once per round, right?

Yes, and it was only needed once a round since the fighter could only attack once around anyway. Being first level and all. All he did was hold his attack until the bad guys came to him. Sound, tactical thinking.

It was intended to be a bit of hyperbole. If you want to call that "dishonest" you can.

My point is simply this: If you need terrain to defend your group, you're relying on that terrain being around, or having enough time to (say) dig trenches. Yes, there are rocks & boulders & trees & ravines outside. All of these can be avoided far more easily than, say, a 5'-wide dungeon corridor. Chokepoints are not everywhere.

(And I'll head down to here...)

Yes, it was hyperbole. I knew that. And actually, "dishonest" is not the word I was searching for. I was looking for "disingenuous" rather, but didn't think of it until 40 minutes into my lunch while I was outside and about 4 miles from my computer.

And yes, it is relying on that terrain being there. Again, that's part of being a smart and good player. Making use of the terrain that's there to your advantage. If there's nothing at all there that you can work to your advantage, then you probably shouldn't be fighting there. Simple, basic tactics say that fighting a battle on terms you permit your enemy to dictate is unwise. Why aren't you, as a fighter, setting things up to your own advantage? Why does everything have to come off that character sheet instead?

Let's go down a different thought experiment. I have a new spellcaster - call him a Caster for sake of argument. The Caster has a spell he can cast over and over again. What can the spell do? Well, he can make attack rolls and deal damage with it. Want to do anything else with it? Talk to your DM. Use the environment to your advantage. Improvise.

Is such a system sufficient for a spellcasting system? Is it an interesting system? Would you pay a game designer for it? (If so, I'll send my paypal address!)

Not exactly a good example, though. Because what you're describing is essentially a warlock. Roll to hit, maybe do some damage. Uninspiring in terms of magic.

But yeah, in the end, I don't have a problem with that particular concept provided the description of your spell works out. Take, for specifics, the ray of frost spell in the playtest. As I remember it (and I don't have the rules on hand so correct me if I'm wrong) it's designed pretty much entirely around stopping one enemy's movement for a round. Right? Says nothing about causing ice buildup or anything like that. But when a player wants to use it to ice over the gong in the bugbear lair and dampen that sound, what's wrong with asking the DM if it'd work, and then either letting it happen if he agrees, or coming up with another idea if he doesn't? What's inherently wrong with asking the DM to adjudicate the situation?

Or, for example, a vampire spell caster using a Web spell to block out the sun beaming through a broken window thus preserving his unlife?

Or a fighter asking the DM if he can use his ax to trip the hobgoblin in front of him instead of merely lopping off its leg?

Why do these things need to be specified in order to be good or interesting design?

Seerow

2012-07-10, 12:34 PM

hamlet

2012-07-10, 12:42 PM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 12:45 PM

Yes, and it was only needed once a round since the fighter could only attack once around anyway. Being first level and all. All he did was hold his attack until the bad guys came to him. Sound, tactical thinking.

And this protected him from the other 800 hobbies who could come in and swipe at him that round... how?

Unless you're saying the Fighter made the hobbies too scared to advance because they didn't want to die, but I'd call BS on that one two: That is most certainly NOT the hobgoblin way.

Menteith

2012-07-10, 12:45 PM

Why do these things need to be specified in order to be good or interesting design?

Because they're charging a decent amount of money for what appears to be a very basic system, that isn't terribly robust. I am fully capable of making my own rulings, and I've played in freeform games and enjoyed them a lot. But this isn't a freeform game, and the mechanics of other classes recognize that and are clearly defined. I dislike that the only way to give a fighter versatile options is literally to make stuff up and hope that everyone is comfortable with it, when that doesn't need to be done for other classes. I dislike that the options you've discussed regarding the fighter aren't unique to the class, and could be duplicated by anyone with a comparable strength skill. I dislike that I could receive highly variable rulings about my character, based on who's the DM and their preconceived notions about what is and isn't reasonable. And I dislike that the current system does nothing to distinguish itself from another system.

obryn

2012-07-10, 12:49 PM

And yes, it is relying on that terrain being there. Again, that's part of being a smart and good player. Making use of the terrain that's there to your advantage. If there's nothing at all there that you can work to your advantage, then you probably shouldn't be fighting there. Simple, basic tactics say that fighting a battle on terms you permit your enemy to dictate is unwise. Why aren't you, as a fighter, setting things up to your own advantage? Why does everything have to come off that character sheet instead?
...Why not both? There's a lot of middle you're excluding here.

Not exactly a good example, though. Because what you're describing is essentially a warlock. Roll to hit, maybe do some damage. Uninspiring in terms of magic.

But yeah, in the end, I don't have a problem with that particular concept provided the description of your spell works out. Take, for specifics, the ray of frost spell in the playtest. As I remember it (and I don't have the rules on hand so correct me if I'm wrong) it's designed pretty much entirely around stopping one enemy's movement for a round. Right? Says nothing about causing ice buildup or anything like that. But when a player wants to use it to ice over the gong in the bugbear lair and dampen that sound, what's wrong with asking the DM if it'd work, and then either letting it happen if he agrees, or coming up with another idea if he doesn't? What's inherently wrong with asking the DM to adjudicate the situation?
Plainly, there's nothing inherently wrong in asking the DM to adjudicate. Come on now; you get on me about hyperbole and come right back with more?

I want a more robust rule-set in which the DM doesn't need to adjudicate every bit of interesting tactics beyond attack and damage rolls. I don't expect 5e Fighters to have a 4e-like list of powers. What I expect is for them to be able to do interesting, Fighter-y stuff based on their actual class features.

Why do these things need to be specified in order to be good or interesting design?
Like I said - I am not making a "good" or "bad" value judgment.

I'm talking about what I want in Next. If I want the 1e or RC experience, I still have those games. I can still play them. I have, in fact, done so rather recently. 1e's a much better-designed game than it often gets credit for, with a much tighter caster/non-caster balance than any edition up until 4e.

Putting out a brand new rule-set where the PHB is 2/3 stuff for Wizards and Clerics and the Fighter gets left out in the cold on more interesting options ... well, it's not a game that's offering me anything I don't already have.

-O

hamlet

2012-07-10, 12:50 PM

And this protected him from the other 800 hobbies who could come in and swipe at him that round... how?

Unless you're saying the Fighter made the hobbies too scared to advance because they didn't want to die, but I'd call BS on that one two: That is most certainly NOT the hobgoblin way.

800? There were only about 25 of them. And only so many of them could get into such a closed area at any given moment. Remember? Narrow chokepoint?

No moving of goalposts!

Because they're charging a decent amount of money for what appears to be a very basic system, that isn't terribly robust. I am fully capable of making my own rulings, and I've played in freeform games and enjoyed them a lot. But this isn't a freeform game, and the mechanics of other classes recognize that and are clearly defined. I dislike that the only way to give a fighter versatile options is literally to make stuff up and hope that everyone is comfortable with it, when that doesn't need to be done for other classes. I dislike that the options you've discussed regarding the fighter aren't unique to the class, and could be duplicated by anyone with a comparable strength skill. I dislike that I could receive highly variable rulings about my character, based on who's the DM and their preconceived notions about what is and isn't reasonable. And I dislike that the current system does nothing to distinguish itself from another system.

1) It's not a system that they've released. It's the very first iteration of the playtest. The very first release of any rules. It's not a complete anything.

2) Why do these abilities need to be unique to the fighter? Why does one need to be a fighter in order to trip somebody with a weapon? Or attempt to push past? Why? Actually, I have no problem with simplifying the fighter's sheet even further by, instead of saying he gets unique abilities, that he gets an advantage when trying to perform combat maneuvers from the combat chapter. He's not the only one who can use his ax to sunder a foe's weapon, but he's better at doing it.

RedWarlock

2012-07-10, 12:55 PM

800? There were only about 25 of them. And only so many of them could get into such a closed area at any given moment. Remember? Narrow chokepoint?

No moving of goalposts!

It's hyperbole, but it's still true. The rules say you can move before and after your action. Nothing is stopping all five massed hobgoblins over there from moving up, attacking, and then moving back out of reach. You'll get one. The next four are still there, dealing damage.

obryn

2012-07-10, 12:56 PM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 12:57 PM

800? There were only about 25 of them. And only so many of them could get into such a closed area at any given moment. Remember? Narrow chokepoint?

I think you don't quite understand.

Hobgoblin starts his turn 2 spaces away from you. He moves in two spaces, attacks, then moves back two spaces.

Assuming chebyshev distances (I forget the actual diagonal movement rule), even if they can only attack you from a single square then up to 14 hobgoblins can do this against you every turn.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 12:59 PM

I want a more robust rule-set in which the DM doesn't need to adjudicate every bit of interesting tactics beyond attack and damage rolls. I don't expect 5e Fighters to have a 4e-like list of powers. What I expect is for them to be able to do interesting, Fighter-y stuff based on their actual class features.

Like I said - I am not making a "good" or "bad" value judgment.
-O

We're missing each other here.

I wasn't on you about hyperbole, just pointed it out. And yeah, I employed some in response. It's a rhetorical strategy they teach you day one in debate team you know.

But, to the point.

I don't want the DM to have to adjudicate everything. That's defeating the purpose of having a system of rules at all.

I want, instead, to have a list of some things that are interesting and guidlines on how to improvise more of them.

And I don't want what's special about the fighter being a long list of unique things that only he can do, but a short list of what he's able to do best. All those "combat maneuvers" shouldn't just be the providence of a fighter because that just opens the doors up to "well why can't my thief or cleric do those things?" Instead, it'd be better, I think, if the fighter were just better at doing them, being that he's the professionally trained fighter after all.

I want what goes on the character sheet itself to be short, sweet, and to the point. The rest of it just doesn't belong there. It defeats the purpose, actually, of a unified system, really.

I want the same for wizards and clerics, too, actually, but the problem with that is what makes them unique is magic, and that requires a chapter describing how magic works in general and then another chapter at least describing how the spells work since, you know, that's something that needs to be described more closely in the game world since it doesn't exist in ours.

The fighter is, really, a golden opportunity for good game design. It's the chance you have to make a memorable, interesting, awesome character without all the clutter that comes with playing a wizard or a cleric. As I describe it to my player characters, "the fighter is easy to play, but impossibly difficult to master." It is, at once, very simple to get the gist of, but very difficult to pull off very well because it demands lot of your imagination as opposed to your book keeping skills.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 01:02 PM

I think you don't quite understand.

Hobgoblin starts his turn 2 spaces away from you. He moves in two spaces, attacks, then moves back two spaces.

Assuming chebyshev distances (I forget the actual diagonal movement rule), even if they can only attack you from a single square then up to 14 hobgoblins can do this against you every turn.

The readying a reaction rule. His initiative is first. He readies saying "when the first hob steps into range, I thwack him." According to my understanding of the rules, his reaction interrupts the hob's action since the trigger is not waiting for the enemy to attack, but for him to get close enough. The hob doesn't get a chance to step back.

Yeah, a couple of his buddies do get to make swings at him, but they're not always hitting him and through a combination of luck, a healing spell or two, the cleric's shield, and just flat out balls out bravery, he was able to win the day.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 01:11 PM

The readying a reaction rule. His initiative is first. He readies saying "when the first hob steps into range, I thwack him." According to my understanding of the rules, his reaction interrupts the hob's action since the trigger is not waiting for the enemy to attack, but for him to get close enough. The hob doesn't get a chance to step back.

Yeah, a couple of his buddies do get to make swings at him, but they're not always hitting him and through a combination of luck, a healing spell or two, the cleric's shield, and just flat out balls out bravery, he was able to win the day.

Assuming you haven't upgraded his armor (have you?), the Fighter has 18 AC. Your basic hob has +3 to hit, and does 1d8+1 damage on a hit.

Ignoring critical hits (can't remember the exact numbers and cba to look them up), that's 2.48 damage per round. For 13 hobs (assuming you kill the first one) 32 damage, on average. Even if your fighter starts with full health, you have only a 13% chance of survival on the first round.

Edit: Just looked them up and redid the numbers. Allowing for crits means you have only a 10% chance of surviving round 1. Assuming you get healed back to full health by your clerics (unlikely) and you all kill 1 hob each (by readying your action again), your chances of surviving round 2 are 44.8% (and that's only if you survived round 1).

Fatebreaker

2012-07-10, 01:12 PM

hamlet, I cut my teeth way back when. And D&D wasn't my first game -- I come from a much more free-form background than all this leveling and class nonsense. So I get where you're coming from, and I rather enjoy improve games with free-form elements.

But the thing is, mechanics influence play. I say this and I say it often because it is true. When you change how the game works, you change how people play it. Examining the mechanics can tell you a lot about a game, even if that disagrees with your personal experience.

So, all that said, let's go back to your original objection:

The fighter "doesn't do anything else"? What the heck is that supposed to mean?

No, really, that one just puzzles me. Especially since the fighter was, even outside of combat, one of the most active characters at our table. He did a lot above and beyond "hit it with a stick."

I simply cannot fathom this particular meme of "the fighter can't do anything but fight and is thus boring." Really seems to me like bad players.

There's a lot going on here, so I'm going to break it down a bit. First:

The fighter "doesn't do anything else"? What the heck is that supposed to mean?

If the fighter's only abilities are related to fighting, then the fighter, by definition, does not have abilities related to anything else. When other classes have abilities which relate to combat and non-combat, then you have a class whose utility outside of combat is limited. Hence, the fighter "doesn't do anything else."

This might be acceptable... if the fighter is so good at fighting that it makes up for their lack of other abilities. As the past twelve years (the release of 3rd edition taking place in 2000) have shown us, the fighter as the dominant class in a fight is no longer a thing. And, playtest results from groups besides yours, including an excellent set of write-ups by Saph here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13334306&postcount=103) and here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13373066&postcount=173), show us that the fighter as the dominant fighting class may not actually be a thing in 5e, either.

When a class has one option, and that option is outpaced by other classes who also have other options, this is a Bad Thing.

No, really, that one just puzzles me. Especially since the fighter was, even outside of combat, one of the most active characters at our table. He did a lot above and beyond "hit it with a stick."

The player might have been able to do things at your table which are not related to the mechanics of the class. However, there is nothing which prevents him from putting his "make stuff up" skills to use while playing another class which also has more mechanical options.

Or, put another way, two equally skilled improvisers are each given a different class. One has one mechanical option. The second has dozens of options which cover myriad potential uses. The second player now has, not only more mechanical options, but also more options to improvise, because he can use his mechanical abilities to set up creative ideas which the first player cannot.

Creativity is limited by your imagination, yes, but it's also limited by your limitations. Wacky, but true. If I cannot fly, it doesn't matter how many creative uses for flying I can imagine. I cannot fly. Of course, if suddenly I can fly... well, now things just got a lot more interesting.

I simply cannot fathom this particular meme of "the fighter can't do anything but fight and is thus boring." Really seems to me like bad players.

If a player wants to play a fighting-man, but they want a class which supports a different style of fighting-man than the one presented by the fighter, that's not a bad player.

If a player wants to play a fighting-man, but they want to play a fighting-man who is also good outside of fighting, that's not a bad player.

If a player wants to play a fighting-man, but has nothing to do outside of combat because they are mechanically unsuited to anything but fighting, that's not a bad player.

The fighter-class is, mechanically speaking, very boring compared to other classes. They get unique abilities. The fighter gets... feats? Which anyone else can take? Hooray? That's pretty weak class design.

The simple fact is, nothing about the current fighter offers a creative player more than what another class does. If you can be successful with a fighter, you can be more successful with another class. There's no reason to specifically take a fighter, mechanically speaking.

-------

The simple fact is that the game you played 20 years ago is very, very, very different from the games of the past decade. The game has grown and evolved and improved. So have game designers. So have players. So have DMs. So have the resources available to all of those groups. So have all the things competing for the time and money of hobbyists.

What's worth considering is that the things which made your game work no longer hold true. Paying $40 for a book (or $120 for three!) whose rules boil down to "ask the DM for permission" is not going to fly.

Improvisation and creativity aren't bad things. They're part of what makes this hobby attractive. There are plenty of other hobbies out there if you don't want to be creative. But not everyone is equally creative, or has friends (or DM's!) who are equally creative. Creative players are going to be creative with or without mechanics. But some folks need a helping hand. Other folks don't need the help, but enjoy mechanics for what they do. Others don't want to be reliant on the whims of the DM -- they want to have some knowledge beforehand of what options are available to them. And none of that is wrong or indicative of a bad player.

You don't need a new edition of D&D to do the things you want to do. You already have that, and you don't need our permission, Wizards permission, or anyone else's to play that way. But for folks who want something different, something which they cannot yet get out of the current editions of D&D (and, full disclaimer, I have neither the need nor interest to move away from 4e, so I'm not arguing on my behalf), then a 5e which supports a fighter who can fight and do other things on par with classes who traditionally outclass them is something which is worth building towards. 4e allowed for that, but much as I love it, I get why other folks don't. I get that they want an experience which isn't yet provided. But the 1e/2e style? That's already a thing. You can already do that. Heck, you can use your old books, or you can improvise and make believe as much as you like. That costs you nothing. But a game which is new and costs money should be more than that.

-------

Sidenote: Your fighter in the "chokepoint" is not actually in a chokepoint. I believe Saph's writeups (cited further up-post) include a description of how the rules allow vast numbers of attackers to move, attack, and move back, which in turn allows many, many attackers to strike at a single defender in the same turn. Your fighter was not using smart tactics -- under a DM who knew how the rules worked, he would have been slaughtered.

Menteith

2012-07-10, 01:14 PM

1) It's not a system that they've released. It's the very first iteration of the playtest. The very first release of any rules. It's not a complete anything.

2) Why do these abilities need to be unique to the fighter? Why does one need to be a fighter in order to trip somebody with a weapon? Or attempt to push past? Why? Actually, I have no problem with simplifying the fighter's sheet even further by, instead of saying he gets unique abilities, that he gets an advantage when trying to perform combat maneuvers from the combat chapter. He's not the only one who can use his ax to sunder a foe's weapon, but he's better at doing it.

True, it's not a complete system, but from what has been shown, there are classes that have very clearly spelled out mechanics (such as Spells), while the Fighter does not have similarly specified mechanics. I understand that this is an incomplete version, and that more interesting maneuvers will likely surface, but right now, it's what we have to discuss.

When I say unique options, I mean options that differentiate the Fighter from other people. Right now, anyone with comparable Strength scores is just as capable of doing anything a Fighter can, and occasionally, they're capable of doing it "better" than the Fighter. This is what bothers me.

Kurald Galain

2012-07-10, 01:16 PM

It's hyperbole, but it's still true. The rules say you can move before and after your action. Nothing is stopping all five massed hobgoblins over there from moving up, attacking, and then moving back out of reach. You'll get one. The next four are still there, dealing damage.

Nothing except that players and DMs might realize that this is a loophole and clearly not the intent of the rules, and try to playtest the spirit of the game by avoiding the loophole (plus, of course, asking WOTC to fix it).

hamlet

2012-07-10, 01:25 PM

Assuming you haven't upgraded his armor (have you?), the Fighter has 18 AC. Your basic hob has +3 to hit, and does 1d8+1 damage on a hit.

Ignoring critical hits (can't remember the exact numbers and cba to look them up), that's 2.48 damage per round. For 13 hobs (assuming you kill the first one) 32 damage, on average. Even if your fighter starts with full health, you have only a 13% chance of survival on the first round.

Well, not all 25 get to attack every round. Limited space. If you let all 25 have a go at once, then you're doing it incorrectly.

And yeah, luck played a significant role in this.

But the thing is, mechanics influence play. I say this and I say it often because it is true. When you change how the game works, you change how people play it. Examining the mechanics can tell you a lot about a game, even if that disagrees with your personal experience.

I have said as much here, except that I said that having more rules, more concretely defined lines of action, tends to push people to lean more heavily on the rules rather than improvising and coming up with unique and interesting courses of action.

If the fighter's only abilities are related to fighting, then the fighter, by definition, does not have abilities related to anything else. When other classes have abilities which relate to combat and non-combat, then you have a class whose utility outside of combat is limited. Hence, the fighter "doesn't do anything else."

By this logic, no other class should be capable of physical combat.

When a class has one option, and that option is outpaced by other classes who also have other options, this is a Bad Thing.

Agreed, except that the fighter in the playtest is not outpaced by other classes in terms of physical combat. He hits most reliably (barring magic missile), does the most damage reliably when he hits, is strong enough to push enemies around the field of battle, sturdy enough to take the most damage, strong enough to wear the heaviest armor and biggest weapons, etc. In the playtest, aside from a nifty ability of one of the clerics and the backstab of the thief, when it comes right down to it, he's the best when it comes to physical combat.

True, it's not a complete system, but from what has been shown, there are classes that have very clearly spelled out mechanics (such as Spells), while the Fighter does not have similarly specified mechanics. I understand that this is an incomplete version, and that more interesting maneuvers will likely surface, but right now, it's what we have to discuss.

And I"m saying the fighter doesn't need more clearly spelled out "options." They're not neccessary. All you need to do is make him better at doing them. Yeah, just about anybody else could do these things, but not as well as the fighter does them.

I'm also saying that it's too complicated for the base system, the simple line of the game that's supposed to appeal to all the old grognards who stuck with AD&D. It just doesn't. Adding more rules, more and more rules and "options" doesn't appeal to them.

Ashdate

2012-07-10, 01:26 PM

I would argue the same, excpet that the general thrust of every argument I've seen on the topic has been the opposite, that the fighter needs more. Period.

I presume it's because it's easier to "bring the fighter up" than to bring "everyone else down".

1) It's not absurd, actually. In my experience, players with less concretely defined abilities on the page tend to improvise more rather than spending time searching their sheet and searching their rules for an option. They come up with better ideas, more ideas, and more improvisation when they're not propped up with hard and fast rules. For example, I'd rather not have social skills spelled out. I don't need to have a skill modifier for my character to try to convince a guard to look the other way. I can do that all on my own and improvise all along. But if the skill is there, the default becomes just rolling a die and figuring the result by the numbers.

Well, I've got experience with players who are perfectly willing to improvise in a system like 4e, despite a number of concretely defined abilities. I also played with 2e players back in the day who rarely improvised, if at all. I know there are people who agree with you, and I know there are people who agree with me. I would suggest that neither of us will get anywhere by trying to play the "in my experience..." card.

Rather than blaming the system for giving players a lot of things they can do by the book, I would suggest that some players have a natural inclination to try improvising, and a hallmark of a good game (not system!) is one that can reward such improvising, when appropriate. The problem (in my opinion) is that few system (and I would include all versions of D&D) do not teach DMs how to accept improvisation constructively, and a DM that does not properly handle improvisation will him/herself, be the actual source of it's discouragement. In such an absence, it's no wonder that players would rely on "what's written on their sheets" to play the game.

(I would also say that the 5e playtest DM guidelines do a poor job of teaching DMs how to improvise, particularly in regard to when/when not to give out advantage/disadvantage, which should have been a focus in my opinion.)

At the same time, there is nothing wrong with having a clearly defined, hard and fast rule to describe certain actions. If we can agree that a hard and fast rule for "hitting things with a sword" is desirable, and that it's okay if the strength of "hitting things with a sword" outweighs a fighter making a called shot to bounce a rock off of three objects to hit a precariously placed boulder that, when hit perfectly, falls onto a threatening kobold. Even if the latter is cooler, the former still works a lot better in terms of efficiency.

On that note, while I don't know if any system will "perfect" social skill use, it's important to realize that the idea that players can have a number representing how good they are at diplomacy comes from a few areas:

1) That if people in real life can "train" to be mediators, negotiators, etc. just as much as people can "train" to be sneaky and run marathons, there should be rules to represent that training that exists outside of the Charisma score.

2) that some players just aren't good at roleplaying when put on the spot (see my earlier argument of how some players require what their character can do to be spelt out for them). We can agree that most players can't actually use a medieval weapon properly, yet let them pretend they can in D&D. Why not extend that to social skills?

Thank you. And yeah, if they do that, great. But, again, I don't think that's going to happen based on what I've seen of Mearls' comments and the general thrust of the playtesters' statements on WOTC and other forums.

My prediction? When 5e comes out, you'll still be playing 2nd edition (or which ever pre-3e system you prefer) and I'll still be playing 4th edition.

Ashdate

2012-07-10, 01:30 PM

(sorry for the double post)

Well, not all 25 get to attack every round. Limited space. If you let all 25 have a go at once, then you're doing it incorrectly.

I think this is the source of confusion.

As per the 5e games rules (i.e. RAW) all 25 absolutely can attack every round, because they can split their movement up before and after they attack (not to mention that each hobgoblin carries three spears to throw). Suggesting otherwise is DM intervention, not DMs/players doing it "incorrectly".

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 01:32 PM

Well, not all 25 get to attack every round. Limited space. If you let all 25 have a go at once, then you're doing it incorrectly.

I *specifically* stated you were being attacked by 14, due to my earlier assumptions about the play area (you've provided no map) and the metric used to measure distances.

And yeah, luck played a significant role in this.

A lot more than luck, you had a <4% chance of surviving 2 rounds of this, being as generous as I possibly can. Keep in mind my calculations assumed new hobs didn't arrive from the bulk of the horde to replace the fallen, so your real chances of survival are even lower. No way this really happened and your DM wasn't fudging things to keep you alive.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 01:32 PM

My prediction? When 5e comes out, you'll still be playing 2nd edition (or which ever pre-3e system you prefer) and I'll still be playing 4th edition.

Most likely.

Unless I win the lottery and get $100 million and then walk around to HASBRO/WOTC and try to buy the property out from under them.

obryn

2012-07-10, 01:33 PM

I don't want the DM to have to adjudicate everything. That's defeating the purpose of having a system of rules at all.

I want, instead, to have a list of some things that are interesting and guidlines on how to improvise more of them.
This far, we agree.

And I don't want what's special about the fighter being a long list of unique things that only he can do, but a short list of what he's able to do best. All those "combat maneuvers" shouldn't just be the providence of a fighter because that just opens the doors up to "well why can't my thief or cleric do those things?" Instead, it'd be better, I think, if the fighter were just better at doing them, being that he's the professionally trained fighter after all.
And that's where we lose our agreement. :smallsmile:

I am not interested in Fighters just being strong Commoners, basically. I don't mind a list of maneuvers or whatnot that anyone can do - but I want there to be unique things about the Fighter. That could be the OA mechanic. It could be the ability to make sure some of those maneuvers go off well. But I also want to get the truly epic stuff that mere commoners couldn't do - stuff that the Fighter can do because he's so outstanding in his martial prowess.

The same argument about "why can't my thief or cleric" do that works with Fighters, too. Rogues get sneak attacks and skill mastery - Why can't the fighter do that. Clerics cast spells - why can't the Fighter do that? I want the Fighter in Next to be a pretty special thing in its own right, along with the other classes, not just doing what anybody else with a sword could do.

I want the same for wizards and clerics, too, actually, but the problem with that is what makes them unique is magic, and that requires a chapter describing how magic works in general and then another chapter at least describing how the spells work since, you know, that's something that needs to be described more closely in the game world since it doesn't exist in ours.
This is really edging into one of my personal pet peeves where Clerics and Wizards get to do all the neat stuff because MAGIC.

The fighter is, really, a golden opportunity for good game design. It's the chance you have to make a memorable, interesting, awesome character without all the clutter that comes with playing a wizard or a cleric. As I describe it to my player characters, "the fighter is easy to play, but impossibly difficult to master." It is, at once, very simple to get the gist of, but very difficult to pull off very well because it demands lot of your imagination as opposed to your book keeping skills.
Again, I just don't see it. I simply don't think that this is interesting game design, and I don't think a class whose sole special ability is "more DM fiat" is viable. And I don't think we're going to see eye to eye here.

So another thought experiment. Make a cleric. Give him good Strength and Constitution. (Are you rolling randomly? Even better.) Give him the Guardian theme. Now, he's as good as the Fighter, but with the added perk of spells. Why pick the Fighter? So you get to play on Hard mode?

-O

hamlet

2012-07-10, 01:36 PM

I *specifically* stated you were being attacked by 14, due to my earlier assumptions about the play area (you've provided no map) and the metric used to measure distances.

A lot more than luck, you had a <4% chance of surviving 2 rounds of this, being as generous as I possibly can. Keep in mind my calculations assumed new hobs didn't arrive from the bulk of the horde to replace the fallen, so your real chances of survival are even lower. No way this really happened and your DM wasn't fudging things to keep you alive.

Not even 14 will manage to get in attacks in a single round, unless they're firing missile weapons, which they were to a limited extent.

And it's been my experience that all the number crunching in the world doesn't really reflect what happenes at the table msot of the time. Probability and statistics like that don't really cut it in the end.

And yeah, I'll just explain to the IT group that I need the ability to upload maps here in order to continue this argument, which I'm sure they'd LOVE to facilitate.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 01:39 PM

And that's where we lose our agreement. :smallsmile:

I am not interested in Fighters just being strong Commoners, basically. I don't mind a list of maneuvers or whatnot that anyone can do - but I want there to be unique things about the Fighter. That could be the OA mechanic. It could be the ability to make sure some of those maneuvers go off well. But I also want to get the truly epic stuff that mere commoners couldn't do - stuff that the Fighter can do because he's so outstanding in his martial prowess.

The same argument about "why can't my thief or cleric" do that works with Fighters, too. Rogues get sneak attacks and skill mastery - Why can't the fighter do that. Clerics cast spells - why can't the Fighter do that? I want the Fighter in Next to be a pretty special thing in its own right, along with the other classes, not just doing what anybody else with a sword could do.

-O

That list of abilities for fighters you want adds nothing to the game for me.

In fact, it detracts. In 4th edition, they did that, but ended up with character that, no matter what they were, were essentially the same thing. Or at least doing things that were virtually the same, but merely called by different names.

Special and unique does not, in my opinion, add up to a list of unique to them abilities.

EDIT: Also, the old canard about "fighters can't sneak in AD&D" is really wasted on me.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 01:43 PM

I'm changing the topic now, as this arguing in circles is starting to depress me.

So, what would you all like to see out of an improvisation-based d20 spellcasting mechanic?

Menteith

2012-07-10, 01:45 PM

That list of abilities for fighters you want adds nothing to the game for me.

In fact, it detracts. In 4th edition, they did that, but ended up with character that, no matter what they were, were essentially the same thing. Or at least doing things that were virtually the same, but merely called by different names.

Special and unique does not, in my opinion, add up to a list of unique to them abilities.

That's great, and I agree that the highly regulated and tactical feel of 4E isn't inherently what they should go for. At the same time, I can tell you that the absence of maneuver rules significantly detracts from the game for me. Putting in specific actions the Fighter can take does not stop you from creatively finding new solutions. Removing specific actions will actively inhibit the style of play that I find enjoyable.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 01:49 PM

That's great, and I agree that the highly regulated and tactical feel of 4E isn't inherently what they should go for. At the same time, I can tell you that the absence of maneuver rules significantly detracts from the game for me. Putting in specific actions the Fighter can take does not stop you from creatively finding new solutions. Removing specific actions will actively inhibit the style of play that I find enjoyable.

I've not said anywhere that I'm arguing other than my opinion and own experience here. I'm not trying to invalidate your own opinion, merely state mine and defend it.

Hence, my repeated and frequent use of terms such as "in my experience" and "in my opinion" and "for me."

obryn

2012-07-10, 01:51 PM

That list of abilities for fighters you want adds nothing to the game for me.

In fact, it detracts. In 4th edition, they did that, but ended up with character that, no matter what they were, were essentially the same thing. Or at least doing things that were virtually the same, but merely called by different names.

Special and unique does not, in my opinion, add up to a list of unique to them abilities.
Fair enough. For me, giving the Fighter its own special Fighter-y stuff to do is absolutely essential. I don't want it to be just a baseline class that lacks its own shtick beyond "well, its numbers are a little better... and that stuff that everyone else can do? yeah, they can do that too. with, you know, bigger numbers... sometimes."

(I will leave aside the 4e discussion and just note that that's so different from my own experiences running the game for 4 years that it's utterly baffling. :smallsmile: We're talking Next here.)

In Next, I honestly don't expect or even want a list of 4e powers. Why should I? Just like with the DM-Fiat Fighter, I already have that Fighter in a perfectly good game I can play any time I want.

-O

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 02:03 PM

I'm changing the topic now, as this arguing in circles is starting to depress me.

So, what would you all like to see out of an improvisation-based d20 spellcasting mechanic?

Thank you. It was giving me a headache. I don't have anything constructive to say about an improvisation-based d20 spellcasting mechanic, but thank you for at least trying to bring up a new subject. :smallamused:

Drazik

2012-07-10, 02:09 PM

I'm changing the topic now, as this arguing in circles is starting to depress me.

So, what would you all like to see out of an improvisation-based d20 spellcasting mechanic?

i would LOVE to see one, i think that sounds really cool. but other than a huge long list of various circumstances and effects with DC's, i can't think of a good way to do it.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 02:10 PM

Fair enough. For me, giving the Fighter its own special Fighter-y stuff to do is absolutely essential. I don't want it to be just a baseline class that lacks its own shtick beyond "well, its numbers are a little better... and that stuff that everyone else can do? yeah, they can do that too. with, you know, bigger numbers... sometimes."

You want all those, fine. But they shouldn't be a part of the simple base which is meant to appeal to the Old Schoolers and Grognards. That's like trying to appeal to the Amish by offering the new Corvette in a Buggy Black Trim.

In Next, I honestly don't expect or even want a list of 4e powers. Why should I? Just like with the DM-Fiat Fighter, I already have that Fighter in a perfectly good game I can play any time I want.

-O

Yeah, but we're talking about D&D Next here!:smallwink:

And, for the record, in AD&D, fighters did have something that only they could do. Specialization. Weapon specialization (in 2nd edition) was restricted only to fighters, and fighters and ragners (in 1st edition). It was, really, quite a powerful ability, ESPECIALLY at those first few levels when an extra +1 or +2 really made the difference more often than not (i.e., not that a +1 was any more than a +5% probability, but that it was, when figuring a result for a 1st level character, more likely to make the difference than for a higher level character to whom a +1 to hit an AC7 was fairly meaningless). And those extra attacks . . . whoa man I can tell you those are great to have.

But that's AD&D, not D&D Next.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 02:12 PM

So, what would you all like to see out of an improvisation-based d20 spellcasting mechanic?
Best I've seen is oWoD Mage and it was awful. I tried to improve it and while I think my system works much better it is still sufficiently complex that any game where it is used had better be all about magic-users.

The real issue with "improv magic" is it just makes "mundane improv" worse since "magic" is easier to manipulate than "reality" -- at least in the narrative sense.

Probably the best way to balance the two is for magic to have a rigid framework (with checks and such) while mundane classes basically get to do anything they describe within a particular purview.

For example, Fighters might have
Physical Prowess: any unopposed Strength-based improvised action automatically succeeds. In opposed checks, the Fighter still automatically succeeds if he has a higher STR than his opponent. Otherwise, both sides make opposed STR rolls.

while Rogues would have one for DEX and so forth. Casters cannot ever get these or similar, even through multiclassing.

This way Magic can do extraordinary things, but for mundane (even if supremely difficult) actions the Fighters and Rogues of the world are supreme.

hamlet

2012-07-10, 02:13 PM

Thank you. It was giving me a headache. I don't have anything constructive to say about an improvisation-based d20 spellcasting mechanic, but thank you for at least trying to bring up a new subject. :smallamused:

Lightweight.:smallbiggrin:

You haven't seen headache inducing until you've seen the political thread over on another forum that I frequent that lasted for over 2000 posts (at which the board software automatically killed it) on whether or not Rush Limbaugh was a fair representative of conservative thought or not.

That discussion was stroke inducing!

And no, I have no opinion on a wholly impovisation-based d20 spellcasting mechanic other than to say I don't think it'd be deisreable. There have to be some hard and fast rules. A balance between them and free form.

Seerow

2012-07-10, 02:14 PM

I'm changing the topic now, as this arguing in circles is starting to depress me.

So, what would you all like to see out of an improvisation-based d20 spellcasting mechanic?

I'd like to see a few discrete options that get expanded upon as the character levels. They should be simple and broad.

Good: Frost spell. Freezes things and can deal ____ damage to opponent when targeted.
Bad: Ray of Frost. Deals ____ damage to opponent and immobilizes for one round.

Basically, have the spells as broad and simple as possible, and let the player try to use it creatively both in and out of combat. The Player may freeze a section of water to make a makeshift raft or bridge to get across the river. He might try to freeze the opponents feet to the ground to immobilize them. He might freeze the enemy casters' mouth to disrupt casting.

Higher level abilities might open up new options for this. For example being able to affect a wider area with a frost spell might be used for a generic cone of cold, or might be usable to create a snowstorm in a small area. A higher powered targeted cold effect may act as a save or die.

But in the end it all comes down to what both player and DM feel is reasonable, you get a lot of potential effects from a single spell, so you might only ever need 1-3 spells throughout your campaign, it all comes down to what your DM will let you improvise.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-10, 02:16 PM

Thank you. It was giving me a headache. I don't have anything constructive to say about an improvisation-based d20 spellcasting mechanic, but thank you for at least trying to bring up a new subject. :smallamused:

Personally, I'd like to see a spell point mechanic similar to the one I've been using in FATE for a while now.

- You can buy an Extra (sorta like a feat), "Magical Reserves." Each rank of Magical Reserves brings up your total mana by 5. You get a single copy of Magical Reserves for free when you take the Spellcaster aspect (sorta like a class feature).

- You can invoke your ranks of Magical Reserves to roll a d6, then add the result to your current pool of mana. So let's say you have 5 ranks of Magical Reserves, so you check off 3 of them and add 3d6 mana. This can go over and above the cap, however when your aspects refresh (think an Extended Rest) you lose any excess mana over your base Reserves * 5 value.

- Now here's the unusual part: Normally, it doesn't cost mana to cast a spell. If you succeed at your spellcasting check, you cast the spell without expending any. However, if you fail your check, you can succeed by rolling that many d6 and subtracting it from your mana total. If this causes you to run out of mana, your mana becomes 0 and you lose HP equal to the difference.

So let's say you wanna cast a spell of DC 8, but you roll a 4. You can either accept the failure, or roll 4d6 and lose that many mana. You roll a 21, but you only have 20 mana, so you take 1 point of damage.

EDIT: I suppose I should explain why I invented the system - FATE has very low scaling without gutting and replacing the dice mechanic. A DC of 8 in FATE is roughly equivalent to a DC 50 or 60 in D&D terms. Improv systems work better the more detailed the situational DC modifiers are, so systems with sane scaling where you can actually cast spells that are somewhat useful with reasonable chances of success before level 20 tend to be very bland and not have much room, while detailed systems make for overblown DCs that are impossible to achieve. The system lets you cast spells that are above your level with guaranteed certainty, but instead with an element of risk. Weaker spells are less risky.

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 02:16 PM

I have an question somewhat unrelated to but perhaps inspired by the "vanilla-Fighter" argument that's been raging the past 30 or 40 posts...

I have a mixed bag when it comes to my players and their abilities / interests.

Some of my players are very bright, highly educated individuals with a capacity to pay attention for long spans of time and notice (and take advantage of) minute details both in terms of gaming mechanics and the environment I create for them as a DM / storyteller.

On the other hands, some of my players are less educated individuals with shorter attention spans, and less capacity to really dive deeply into the mechanics behind optimization [mid-range INT scores in real life]. They are all still quite imaginative and able to think on their feet [high WIS scores in real life] (otherwise, they would be exceedingly dull to play with) but they aren't going to really care for or learn how to play highly detailed character classes.

All my players are good friends with each other and really enjoy playing as a team. I would not consider for a moment breaking them apart into two or more seperate parties.

So, how do I go about making both of them happy? What type of class is appropriate for someone who really wants to understand the mechanics of the game and optimize their character, and what type of class is appropriate for someone who just wants to come up with actions on the fly and let me as DM worry whether or not they can pull it off, without having to learn a lot of rules or special abilities?

Any advice? I'm hoping that 5e can better tackle this problem for me, with "vanilla" fighters (and maybe other "core" classes) for the more straightforward players, and more "complicated" optional modules for players who want to add in more advanced tactics, abilities, etc... Don't know if this is even possible.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 02:29 PM

Any advice? I'm hoping that 5e can better tackle this problem for me, with "vanilla" fighters (and maybe other "core" classes) for the more straightforward players, and more "complicated" optional modules for players who want to add in more advanced tactics, abilities, etc... Don't know if this is even possible.
This is the stated goal of 5e -- to have "dumb classes" and "thinky classes." In theory they should be of equal utility but they haven't succeeded in their past attempts so...

IMHO it's better to take everyone into a rules-light or narrative based system and have at it. Fewer rules to worry about and people understand "narratives" more easily than "encumbrance tables" as a rule :smallbiggrin:

Draz74

2012-07-10, 02:31 PM

And it's been my experience that all the number crunching in the world doesn't really reflect what happenes at the table msot of the time. Probability and statistics like that don't really cut it in the end.
Hamlet, you've had some interesting points in the past few pages, but ... this right here makes it hard for me to take anything you say in the context of game design seriously.

Probability and statistics by definition is the analysis of what is happening "most of the time."

And while random factors will certainly make it so that the experiences of individual play tables will vary (which is a good thing; it keeps things interesting), when you're designing a game for a large number of play tables, it is not only wise but absolutely necessary to couch decisions in terms of probability and statistics. In fact, assuming the game involves any math and random chances, there is simply literally no alternative way to analyze balance than to use probability and statistics.

[/scientist soapbox]

So, what would you all like to see out of an improvisation-based d20 spellcasting mechanic?

Hmmmm, very interesting and difficult question. I haven't seen anything that I really like, ever. So it's hard to know where to even start. I suppose I'd probably want a "noun-verb" aspect to it. "Noun"-based improvisation alone just makes casters too dang omnipotent, while "verb"-based improvisation alone loses a lot of the flavor that people expect from fantasy.

I have an question somewhat unrelated to but perhaps inspired by the "vanilla-Fighter" argument that's been raging the past 30 or 40 posts...

I have a mixed bag when it comes to my players and their abilities / interests.
In theory, a system with a group of simple classes and a group of complex classes that are equal in overall power would work. I'll ignore for now the difficulty of actually writing such a thing (which is immense) and just assume WotC can actually pull it off -- in which case I just want to say that, if they want the game to appeal to me, they need to avoid the borderline between simple/complex classes to be drawn along the mundane/magical divide. There have to be simple casters and optimizable mundanes.

Or, another way to go about it (the way I hope to accomplish in CRE8) is to have a complex system for everyone, but have strong "pre-packaged" builds available for the players with less attention span to select. These "recommended" builds should have relatively simple special abilities, too. (But not weak abilities like 3e's "recommended" packages.) Then those players can just pick a build they like and start playing, letting their creativity take over in the actual playing.

obryn

2012-07-10, 02:49 PM

You want all those, fine. But they shouldn't be a part of the simple base which is meant to appeal to the Old Schoolers and Grognards. That's like trying to appeal to the Amish by offering the new Corvette in a Buggy Black Trim.
Done right, they don't have to be particularly complicated.

And, for the record, in AD&D, fighters did have something that only they could do. Specialization. Weapon specialization (in 2nd edition) was restricted only to fighters, and fighters and ragners (in 1st edition). It was, really, quite a powerful ability, ESPECIALLY at those first few levels when an extra +1 or +2 really made the difference more often than not (i.e., not that a +1 was any more than a +5% probability, but that it was, when figuring a result for a 1st level character, more likely to make the difference than for a higher level character to whom a +1 to hit an AC7 was fairly meaningless). And those extra attacks . . . whoa man I can tell you those are great to have.

But that's AD&D, not D&D Next.
In AD&D - originally - they didn't even have that. They had to wait 6-7 years or so. Specialization was one of the better rules in Unearthed Arcana, and was available to Fighters and both of their subclasses. (There was a lot of crazy/broken stuff in UA, too, mind you - but specialization was one of the good parts. It was one of only two things I used from the book when running AD&D a few years back.)

And yes, it made a huge difference - particularly the # of attacks. And that's awesome. For AD&D. But I have no interest in purchasing AD&D warmed over (er... except for those awesome-looking reprints). I want Next to build off of stuff learned in all the editions.

-O

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 02:53 PM

This is the stated goal of 5e -- to have "dumb classes" and "thinky classes." In theory they should be of equal utility but they haven't succeeded in their past attempts so...

IMHO it's better to take everyone into a rules-light or narrative based system and have at it. Fewer rules to worry about and people understand "narratives" more easily than "encumbrance tables" as a rule :smallbiggrin:

I'm currently playing 3.5, and I find the huge number of modifiers and status effects hard to deal with.

I created a relatively in depth excel file to serve as a character sheet, with a lot of vlookups and hidden formulas and tables, to help keep track of it all.

This way, if our barbarian goes into a rage while being buffed with an Enlarge Person spell but then gets hit with a Slow spell, I don't have to do all the math on the fly. I just go to the worksheet with status modifiers and buffs / debuffs, set Status 1 to Slow, set Status 2 to Enraged, change current size to Large, change all his weapon sizes to Large, and give a Size Modifier to Str of +2 and a Size Modifier to Dex of -2, and the sheet does all the math for me.

It recalculates how the attack bonus for each of his weapons based on his new size and STR, determines the damage for the new sized weapon, adjusts the damage bonus for each weapon based on the new STR score and which hand he is wielding it in (or both hands), adjusts his AC based on his new Dex and size, locks out all the skills he can't use while raging, and modifies all the others based on new Dex and Str and Size as appropriate, and tells him his new Max HP based on his increased Con, and how many of those hit points come from his new max Con (so he can remember to "lose" them from his current total HP when he stops raging). On the equipment tab, it also recalculates how much a light load, medium load and heavy load is based on his new size and STR. It adds up how much weight he is carrying (adjusting it for his equipment being enlarged as well as himself), and determines what encumberance category this comes out to. It simultaneously compares his encumberance category to his armor category (light, medium or heavy) and makes the approriate adjustments to his speed and armor penalty, if any. It also adjusts his movement rate, attack rolls, AC and Reflex save for being slowed, and also notes on his Combat tab that he can only take one action per round.

That would be a tremendous amount of math to do on the fly, and it still takes a few minutes for my less than excel-savvy players to enter into their sheets even with drop down lists and vlookups and the rest.

I long for the old days when you just needed a pen and paper for a character sheet. But I also love the nuance and detail that 3.5 and later editions bring to the game, particularly to combat.

This seems to me to be an exceedingly hard nut to crack.

Yora

2012-07-10, 02:57 PM

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 03:00 PM

I long for the old days when you just needed a pen and paper for a character sheet. But I also love the nuance and detail that 3.5 and later editions bring to the game, particularly to combat.

This seems to me to be an exceedingly hard nut to crack.
Yup, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Tactical combat requires a lot of numbers to have any depth, and more numbers means more bookkeeping. IMHO 3.X is more complicated than it needs to be (4e is the superior tactical combat system) but any tactical combat system is going to require more bookkeeping than AD&D.

Notably, 5e's tagline is, essentially, "D&D Next: have your cake and eat it too" which is why I assumed it would be a mess. This playtest's ability to seduce 3.Xers has caused me to reevaluate this position, but we'll see how they feel by the end.

Personally? While I've seen one nice new fix (Advantage/Disadvantage) the rest of 5e leaves a lot to be desired. My Players are still hopeful, so it is "wait and see" over in my neck of the woods.

Also: Nobody wanted to hear about my oWoD Mage system homebrew :smallfrown:

hamlet

2012-07-10, 03:01 PM

Hamlet, you've had some interesting points in the past few pages, but ... this right here makes it hard for me to take anything you say in the context of game design seriously.

Probability and statistics by definition is the analysis of what is happening "most of the time."

And while random factors will certainly make it so that the experiences of individual play tables will vary (which is a good thing; it keeps things interesting), when you're designing a game for a large number of play tables, it is not only wise but absolutely necessary to couch decisions in terms of probability and statistics. In fact, assuming the game involves any math and random chances, there is simply literally no alternative way to analyze balance than to use probability and statistics.

[/scientist soapbox]

Yes, I understand statistics (better than some other people I fancy) and acknowledge it's validity in game design. The problem is, it's not something that should be the sole crutch of game design. At some point, you have to take it for a spin and honestly analyze what's going on. Statistically, yeah, there's no way my characters should have won the fight they did. But they did win it. And they won several others that were statistically unlikely. And they lost a couple that should have been cakewalks.

At some point, you have to really look at how your statistically balanced game functions in the field and figure out why, despite what the number crunching tells you should be, isn't. And it happens all the time and is ignored all the time. The reason why wizards are over powered in 3.x is, really, because their restrictions got yanked in tandem with what made fighters powerful getting yanked, spread out among everybody, or made pointless, and then latching on to all the wrong reasons when realizing it needed to be addressed. Shortly, fighters didn't need to be brought up when the simpler, one might argue better, fix was to bring the others back down.

It's an argument I have with people all the time about AD&D. A lot of those seemingly byzantine, sensless rules make a lot of sense when you consider things across the whole spread of the game. They were not just random quirky things thrown in willy nilly, they're there, for the most part, for very concrete reasons, though you can disagree with their effectiveness or the issues they address.

My point here has been that I think adding more complexity to the base of hte fighter in D&D Next is the wrong way to go. The fighter doesn't need to be "brought up." The other classes need to be brought down. Or, actually, some assurances have to be taken to make sure that the other classes don't outstrip the fighter.

kyoryu

2012-07-10, 03:08 PM

I long for the old days when you just needed a pen and paper for a character sheet. But I also love the nuance and detail that 3.5 and later editions bring to the game, particularly to combat.

This seems to me to be an exceedingly hard nut to crack.

I find an interesting way to look at it is to figure out what player skills you want to engage, and which should be the most important in combat.

3.x, for instance, is *heavily* biased towards character creation/optimization as a primary skill, while 4e, for instance, is more biased towards strategic use of abilities during battle. (this doesn't say that the other skills don't exist in the contrary version, just which skills are most emphasized).

A simple fighter rewards the player skills of tactical (spatial) thinking and improvisation (outside of statted abilities), since that's really all you have available. A more complex fighter would reward appropriate use of statted abilities more, and arguably character optimization.

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 03:09 PM

Also: Nobody wanted to hear about my oWoD Mage system homebrew :smallfrown:

Sorry, I never played oWoD Mage.

I own Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse, but I never found anyone willing to play them with me, and now they seem a bit antiquated.

Other games I own and never got to play: TSR's Top Secret: SI, and Diplomacy (not an RPG, I know, but still I really want to play but can't find a group to play with).

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 03:28 PM

Sorry, I never played oWoD Mage.
Aw :smallfrown:

Well, they stole/bought/borrowed Ars Magicia's system which actually did a good job of making a system for improvised magic. In short there were 9 "Spheres" which covered (and sometimes overlapped) with basically every type of effect you could imagine. You could have between 0-5 Ranks in each Sphere and each Rank gave you access to a certain level/category of effect. By mixing Spheres you could make any effect you wanted with DC and Number of Successes determined by an overly simplistic guide.

For example "Transmute Pants to Fire" would be a Matter2/Forces3 Effect; a small fireball (like a Burning Sphere) would be Forces3/Prime2; a large fireball (like Fireball) would be Forces5/Prime2; creating a novel life form would be Mind5/Life5.

The real problem is that it was a system of holes rather than a whole system -- some Spheres had special rules that clashed with other Spheres and the guidelines on DCs were so vague and self-contradictory that you would never know how hard it would be to produce a given effect.

By far the best "improv magic" system I've seen, but as you can see, it had a lot of problems too.

JoeMac307

2012-07-10, 03:50 PM

Aw :smallfrown:

Well, they stole/bought/borrowed Ars Magicia's system which actually did a good job of making a system for improvised magic. In short there were 9 "Spheres" which covered (and sometimes overlapped) with basically every type of effect you could imagine. You could have between 0-5 Ranks in each Sphere and each Rank gave you access to a certain level/category of effect. By mixing Spheres you could make any effect you wanted with DC and Number of Successes determined by an overly simplistic guide.

For example "Transmute Pants to Fire" would be a Matter2/Forces3 Effect; a small fireball (like a Burning Sphere) would be Forces3/Prime2; a large fireball (like Fireball) would be Forces5/Prime2; creating a novel life form would be Mind5/Life5.

The real problem is that it was a system of holes rather than a whole system -- some Spheres had special rules that clashed with other Spheres and the guidelines on DCs were so vague and self-contradictory that you would never know how hard it would be to produce a given effect.

By far the best "improv magic" system I've seen, but as you can see, it had a lot of problems too.

That is pretty intriguing... for me, it brings to mind Materia from Final Fantasy VII for some reason (maybe I'm remembering that incorrectly?).

As you point out, it seems like a system that would really need to be reigned in to make it practical and easy to apply... I could see a lot of arguing and DM Fiat-type problems otherwise.

Draz74

2012-07-10, 04:51 PM

Yes, I understand statistics (better than some other people I fancy) and acknowledge it's validity in game design. The problem is, it's not something that should be the sole crutch of game design. At some point, you have to take it for a spin and honestly analyze what's going on.
OK, that's a very different message than I was getting from your earlier statement. This, I can agree with.

Statistically, yeah, there's no way my characters should have won the fight they did. But they did win it. And they won several others that were statistically unlikely. And they lost a couple that should have been cakewalks.
If this is true, than either your group is such an extreme outlier of sheer luck that their experience shouldn't really count for anything, or the "statistics" involved weren't done right. I suspect the latter.

If your group was consistently convincing the DM to give them Advantage on most rolls, then that should be factored into the statistics.

If your group was houseruling away the ability for the hobgoblins to use the "free spring attack" movement rules to gang-beat your party, that should be factored into the statistics.

If the system is just that swingy, with wild outcomes that are far away from "normal" in both directions on a regular basis, then that should be factored into the statistics. (Statistics is about more than just figuring out the average or most likely scenario; it's also figuring out how far away from that norm in either direction is reasonably likely to happen.)

At some point, you have to really look at how your statistically balanced game functions in the field and figure out why, despite what the number crunching tells you should be, isn't. And it happens all the time and is ignored all the time.
If that's true, the statistics aren't being done right.

The reason why wizards are over powered in 3.x is, really, because their restrictions got yanked in tandem with what made fighters powerful getting yanked, spread out among everybody, or made pointless, and then latching on to all the wrong reasons when realizing it needed to be addressed. Shortly, fighters didn't need to be brought up when the simpler, one might argue better, fix was to bring the others back down.
Well, that's not the only reason for the class balance problems in 3.x. Some of it is also the stuff you didn't want to read from Seerow; combat is more than just who can crank out the most damage with their attacks. It's also about mobility vs. terrain control, adaptability, insta-win effects and defenses against said effects.

But on the whole, I agree with what you've said here.

My point here has been that I think adding more complexity to the base of hte fighter in D&D Next is the wrong way to go. The fighter doesn't need to be "brought up." The other classes need to be brought down. Or, actually, some assurances have to be taken to make sure that the other classes don't outstrip the fighter.
Yeah, at the beginning of the thread, you didn't do a good job explaining this viewpoint. Your emphasis on not improving the Fighter made it sound like you didn't think there was a discrepancy in the playtest classes that needs to be fix. But somewhere along the way, I caught on to your desire that the spellcasters get nerfed/simplified, and I agree with you that this is potentially just as good of a solution as making the Fighter more powerful. I did say, after all, that you've made some good points (before you made the one statement that sounded like you were saying math was useless for analysis).

Sorry, I never played oWoD Mage.
Same here. Nor anything else by White Wolf. Sorry Oracle Hunter ... I don't have the background to be very interested in what you were talking about.

Diplomacy (not an RPG, I know, but still I really want to play but can't find a group to play with).

Awww. I sympathize. Great game; played it a lot in high school, but haven't found a chance (equipment + players) to get into it in many years myself. Sadly.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-10, 05:12 PM

That is pretty intriguing... for me, it brings to mind Materia from Final Fantasy VII for some reason (maybe I'm remembering that incorrectly?).

As you point out, it seems like a system that would really need to be reigned in to make it practical and easy to apply... I could see a lot of arguing and DM Fiat-type problems otherwise.
Most of oWoD involved a lot of arguing with the ST and ST Fiat :smalltongue:

Well, in short what I did was re-write the Spheres to eliminate obvious overlap, idiosyncrasies (Transmute Simple Matter = Matter2; Transmute Simple Forces = Forces3), and poor description and then introduced "Effect" Spheres to govern things like size of effect, duration of effect and damage. I still haven't resolved the "Coincidental" and "Vulgar" effect problem, but I am leaning towards the "omniscient third person" approach. This still makes most Mind Effects coincidental ("I just happened to know the guy's password") but it's a work in progress.

But yeah, you want an improv magic system? Start with oWoD Mage and work from there.

Clawhound

2012-07-11, 09:06 AM

I created a relatively in depth excel file to serve as a character sheet, with a lot of vlookups and hidden formulas and tables, to help keep track of it all.

I played the original 3.0 Bear Warrior. Imagine all that, plus BEAR FORM. Yeesh.

Having to using a spreadsheet to manage your character = EPIC DESIGN FAIL.

obryn

2012-07-11, 09:25 AM

Yeah... The math-intensive cascades of buff/debuff/dispel/polymorph in 3.x are something I really hope to avoid in Next. I'd go so far as to say it would be a deal-breaker for me.

-O

Menteith

2012-07-11, 10:47 AM

Yeah... The math-intensive cascades of buff/debuff/dispel/polymorph in 3.x are something I really hope to avoid in Next. I'd go so far as to say it would be a deal-breaker for me.

-O

True that. (Dis)Advantages will hopefully simplify it significantly, even if there do need to be a few situational modifiers on top of that.

Clawhound

2012-07-11, 12:44 PM

obryn

2012-07-11, 12:50 PM

I think that backgrounds will occupy the same place as advantages.

I never quite like disadvantages in D&D. That idea never worked for me. Levels and/or magic usually end up compensating for them. Smart players also take disadvantages that give them the fewest real penalties.
I believe he was speaking of the Advantage/Disadvantage system in Next.

Like: "Ray of Enfeeblement: You have disadvantage on all your melee attacks" or something of that nature.

-O

Menteith

2012-07-11, 03:23 PM

I believe he was speaking of the Advantage/Disadvantage system in Next.

Like: "Ray of Enfeeblement: You have disadvantage on all your melee attacks" or something of that nature.

-O

Yeah. Although it's going to run into problems when multiple sources are trying to apply modifiers - Ray of Enfeeblement on a target who's fighting in dim light, for example.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-11, 04:28 PM

Yeah. Although it's going to run into problems when multiple sources are trying to apply modifiers - Ray of Enfeeblement on a target who's fighting in dim light, for example.
Quite the opposite. It just means that multiple disadvantages aren't meaningful -- therefore, fewer modifiers to track.

In the alternative, each additional net AD/DA can add a +1/-1 to the result up to some cap.

Kurald Galain

2012-07-11, 04:38 PM

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-11, 04:51 PM

Well, it certainly leads to weird situations. Suppose that long-range attacks suffer disadvantage; and a ranged attack gets disadvantage if someone is in melee range of you; then suddenly if you are engaged in combat it doesn't matter any more whether you shoot at normal or at long range, becaus you have already disad anyway. Heck, at this point it doesn't matter if you're trying to hit a phasing target in the darkness while drunk.

If adv/disadv are common (and they should be) then things like this will often occur.
True, but this is the common problem with any abstraction -- it fails to fully reflect the way the world works. Ultimately you have to decide whether you want the flip-side problem (adding up countless modifiers for every action) or just accept that some things are more trouble than they're worth.

I mean, nobody complains that getting crushed by a giant's hammer impairs your ability to fight as much as a knife wound, do they?

Kurald Galain

2012-07-11, 04:59 PM

Ultimately you have to decide whether you want the flip-side problem (adding up countless modifiers for every action) or just accept that some things are more trouble than they're worth.

And this is why 5E will never live up to the idyllic claims of its marketing department :smallamused:

Of course, there is always a middle road. For example, you could rule that having disadvantage twice requires you to roll three dice and pick the worst; or that having disadvantage twice is an automatic failure on what you're trying to do.

JoeMac307

2012-07-11, 05:06 PM

Seerow

2012-07-11, 05:08 PM

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-11, 05:09 PM

And this is why 5E will never live up to the idyllic claims of its marketing department :smallamused:

Of course, there is always a middle road. For example, you could rule that having disadvantage twice requires you to roll three dice and pick the worst; or that having disadvantage twice is an automatic failure on what you're trying to do.
It's more a problem of selecting what counts as a disadvantage than trying to account for everything.

Look at my Ogre Club example. When an Ogre hits a human with a club you would expect them to be substantially impaired -- fractured if not broken bones, a concussion, shock -- and yet D&D has traditionally handled this situation with two methods. The first is HP, in which people are "not really hit" when an attack "hits" them; a large if comfortable abstraction for most people here. The second, introduced in 3.X, was "Conditions" in which some things imposed additional penalties but other things did not. Getting hit with an Ogre Club would not Daze (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#dazed) you, but getting hit with a spell might. Likewise, running around all day in heavy armor would not leave you Fatigued (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#fatigued) but sleeping (not resting!) in armor would. The system assumed that certain strains were normal and that only things above a given threshold needed additional compensation in the system.

Obviously, these lines are not easy to draw but they can be drawn. Likewise you can tweak the basic AD/DA system with Result Modifiers or auto-fails if you desire although you need to weigh each additional layer of complicatedness against the benefit gained.

Kurald Galain

2012-07-11, 05:10 PM

Personally Id make advantage/disadvantage +/- 2,

The point of ad/disad is that they actually matter. They're supposed to be a big difference, not something you don't notice 90% of the time.

Lots of tiny fiddly modifiers is the 4E model that they're trying to move away from; the 5E model is having fewer and bigger modifiers.

Menteith

2012-07-11, 05:12 PM

True, but this is the common problem with any abstraction -- it fails to fully reflect the way the world works. Ultimately you have to decide whether you want the flip-side problem (adding up countless modifiers for every action) or just accept that some things are more trouble than they're worth.

A robust way of modeling common situations is worth including in a game. Something as simple as weather could potentially give out Disadvantage, and a system being fundamentally unable to penalize a roll further is a problem. While it's been made clear the huge amount of modifiers in D&D3.5 aren't the most optimal way to dealing with the problem, over simplification can be just as bad. As Kurald Galain has pointed out, and what I was alluding to earlier, multiple instances of (dis)advantage do nothing to actually better a roll - in a system where (dis)advantage is common, this is a pretty serious problem. Adding additional dice could work, but it has it's own problems, and simply adding in circumstance bonuses/penalties raises the same potential problems that were seen in D&D3.5.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-11, 05:18 PM

A robust way of modeling common situations is worth including in a game. Something as simple as weather could potentially give out Disadvantage, and a system being fundamentally unable to penalize a roll further is a problem. While it's been made clear the huge amount of modifiers in D&D3.5 aren't the most optimal way to dealing with the problem, over simplification can be just as bad. As Kurald Galain has pointed out, and what I was alluding to earlier, multiple instances of (dis)advantage do nothing to actually better a roll - in a system where (dis)advantage is common, this is a pretty serious problem. Adding additional dice could work, but it has it's own problems, and simply adding in circumstance bonuses/penalties raises the same potential problems that were seen in D&D3.5.
Line drawing, sir.

IMHO, keeping Advantages and Disadvantages from stacking is a worthwhile level of abstraction. Mechanically, it limits the possibility of sicknasty combos which render opponents impotent with abilities that aren't supposed to be able to do that; helpful when trying to design a system amenable to expansion. Additionally, it keeps the action crisp -- people don't need to spend a lot of time thinking of every little thing that can aid them and hinder their enemies before making an attack; they just attack.

What, really, are the benefits to counting up countless modifiers for any given role? "Realism" is not a virtue, IMHO, when it comes to Fantasy Heroics -- foreseeability is. It matters less whether your rules accurately model the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow and more whether it is clear to the Players beforehand what things can fly and what things cannot.

Seerow

2012-07-11, 05:19 PM

The point of ad/disad is that they actually matter. They're supposed to be a big difference, not something you don't notice 90% of the time.

Lots of tiny fiddly modifiers is the 4E model that they're trying to move away from; the 5E model is having fewer and bigger modifiers.

First, you cut out literally half a sentence and responded to that rather than the whole post. That's really ****ing annoying.

Second, frankly, Advantage/Disadvantage isn't notably better than +2. If your average hit is on a 10, it's worth about +3-4, if you require a 20 to hit anyway, it's worth about the same as +1. If you hit on a 2 anyway, neither is really significant, though the extra die is marginally better.

Having just the single bonus die is easier, but it also has huge limitations as far as how it can apply and stack. If advantage is your only method of providing bonuses/penalties, that makes the system ultimately very boring because there is no granularity. Once you get your advantage/disadvantage that's it, you're done. It makes it practically impossible to have someone in a buffing or debuffing role, it makes most status conditions redundant, etc.

Kurald Galain

2012-07-11, 05:27 PM

First, you cut out literally half a sentence and responded to that rather than the whole post. That's really ****ing annoying.
Please don't swear.

And yes, rolling twice is notably better than +2: this is because realistically, the value you need to roll is somewhere within the 7-14 range, and the situation where you can only succeed on a 20 is hypothetical at best. Plus, rolling two dice is a more visceral mechanic than adding a small bonus; WOTC appears to be paying attention to such reactions.

Although I agree that more granularity would be better. I would suggest rolling two dice, then rolling three dice (for double ad/disad), then automatic success or failure (for triple ad/disad).

Knaight

2012-07-11, 05:38 PM

Although I agree that more granularity would be better. I would suggest rolling two dice, then rolling three dice (for double ad/disad), then automatic success or failure (for triple ad/disad).

I don't think that going beyond three dice is really necessary. That implies a double advantage, plus an advantage per disadvantage. Going beyond that seems like enough of an edge case that it doesn't really matter. This is particularly notable as it leaves the extreme of having 3 dice and taking the best while opposing the worst of 3 dice, which is major to say the least.

Ziegander

2012-07-11, 05:45 PM

And yes, rolling twice is notably better than +2: this is because realistically, the value you need to roll is somewhere within the 7-14 range, and the situation where you can only succeed on a 20 is hypothetical at best. Plus, rolling two dice is a more visceral mechanic than adding a small bonus; WOTC appears to be paying attention to such reactions.

The best and most important part of advantage/disadvantage, and the reason I hope they designed the mechanic, is not that it's a "bigger bonus" than +2 circumstance or that it's "more visceral," it is that it provides a significant statistical boost or drawback without ruining the random number generator. Lots of circumstance bonuses/penalties can and do push people up or down to the point that they either can only succeed on a 20 or a fail on a 1. Advantage/disadvantage will never do that, and yet it still produces an effect with a profound impact.

Hopefully they do not cause stacking ad/disad to generate circumstance bonuses/penalties, because that would go counter to the best part of the mechanic. I don't have a problem, per se, with roll 2, then roll 3, then auto-succeed/auto-fail, but I think I would rather it just continue to pile on additional rolls. Auto-success and auto-failure are very strong, very absolute mechanics that can steal the fun out of a game REALLY fast. Of course, they are MUCH faster than trying to roll 7 dice and see which is highest/lowest.

Advantage and Disadvantage should also, definitely cancel each other out. So if a character has advantage to melee attacks and double disadvantage to melee attacks, that character now has simply disadvantage to melee attacks.

Menteith

2012-07-11, 05:55 PM

IMHO, keeping Advantages and Disadvantages from stacking is a worthwhile level of abstraction. Mechanically, it limits the possibility of sicknasty combos which render opponents impotent with abilities that aren't supposed to be able to do that; helpful when trying to design a system amenable to expansion. Additionally, it keeps the action crisp -- people don't need to spend a lot of time thinking of every little thing that can aid them and hinder their enemies before making an attack; they just attack.

Mechanically, it prevents a DM from having mechanically interesting environments, limits what players can accomplish (I throw sand in the goblin's eyes! He now has disadvantage again...which does nothing, as he already had it due to that Ray of Enfeeblement earlier), and flies in defiance to any sort of realism (Sure, the drunk, cursed archer in the middle of a nightly blizzard only has Disadvantage once, and still has a decent chance of hitting that target, mechanically). It's a gross oversimplification that, while functional, makes the game less robust, limits both DM and players, and is incredibly unrealistic.

What, really, are the benefits to counting up countless modifiers for any given role? "Realism" is not a virtue, IMHO, when it comes to Fantasy Heroics -- foreseeability is. It matters less whether your rules accurately model the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow and more whether it is clear to the Players beforehand what things can fly and what things cannot.

I don't want countless modifiers, and I'm not asking for absurd design principles - please stop reducing my argument to an absurdity so you can dismiss it. I want a system that's capable of reflecting the difficultly of firing in melee, or how sprinting on an icy ledge while being shot at is difficult, or that a Ogre slamming me can inhibit me. The current system can lead to these environmental factors being completely ignored, due to its shallowness - I see this as a problem.

EDIT
Kurald Galain's solution is a functional one that could be implemented easily. /support.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-11, 06:03 PM

Mechanically, it prevents a DM from having mechanically interesting environments, limits what players can accomplish (I throw sand in the goblin's eyes! He now has disadvantage again...which does nothing, as he already had it due to that Ray of Enfeeblement earlier), and flies in defiance to any sort of realism (Sure, the drunk, cursed archer in the middle of a nightly blizzard only has Disadvantage once, and still has a decent chance of hitting that target, mechanically). It's a gross oversimplification that, while functional, makes the game less robust, limits both DM and players, and is incredibly unrealistic.
Again, "realism" is not a virtue as far as I'm concerned for a Heroic Fantasy game. Aside from asking when was the last time a 3e or 4e Player actually said "I throw sand in the Goblin's eye" as their Standard Action there needs to be some sort of concrete benefit to including any given mechanic.

As to the point that this limits mechanically interesting environments I issue the counterpoint of 4e. Not all environmental effects need be a + or - on a roll to be interesting: it can restrict or enable movement, move PCs or NPCs around, impose Conditions that restrict or enable actions or even cause damage. These are all mechanically interesting environmental effects that can exist even if you can't figure out exactly how badly the bright sunlight hinders the archer's aim in light of the modest N/NE wind and whether it would be an easier shot if he move 5' to the left.

Menteith

2012-07-11, 06:08 PM

Again, "realism" is not a virtue as far as I'm concerned for a Heroic Fantasy game. Aside from asking when was the last time a 3e or 4e Player actually said "I throw sand in the Goblin's eye" as their Standard Action there needs to be some sort of concrete benefit to including any given mechanic.

My Pathfinder Dirty Fighter, for one. It's hardly optimal, but I wanted to run a low powered character with a new group. Specific examples shouldn't matter, regardless, as literally every instance of stacking (dis)Advantage right now just...fails. It does absolutely nothing.

As to the point that this limits mechanically interesting environments I issue the counterpoint of 4e. Not all environmental effects need be a + or - on a roll to be interesting: it can restrict or enable movement, move PCs or NPCs around, impose Conditions that restrict or enable actions or even cause damage. These are all mechanically interesting environmental effects that can exist even if you can't figure out exactly how badly the bright sunlight hinders the archer's aim in light of the modest N/NE wind and whether it would be an easier shot if he move 5' to the left.

Seriously, please stop getting insanely specific/ridiculous with the examples. I feel like you're coming up with these absurd situations to an attempt to weaken my argument - if this is not your intent, I ask that you avoid putting words in my mouth.

With that out of the way, yes, there are still ways that environments can be tactically interesting. There are also more ways that an environment can be tactically interesting with a functional stacking (dis)Advantage system. Thus, with the current nonfunctional system, the mechanical system is limiting what can be done.

Rummy

2012-07-11, 06:49 PM

I wanted to add my 2 cents to the hamlet/Seerow argument a couple pages back...

Won't 5e appeal to both of you, depending on what modules you use in your game? I suspect that neither of you will truly end up playing the same game because 5e core will play/feel very different than 5e with tactical module.

The true condundrum is JoeMac307's problem (and my problem with my group) of having some players that thrive with tons of rules and others that would do better with a pared down system.

Related thoughts...

1. The more I read hamlet's posts, the more I wish I could play in a group like that sometime. It sounds really fun. My group started with 3.5 and then transitioned to 4e, which we still play. Maybe it is a case of the grass looking greener, but a more narrative game would be awesome to try out.

2. Having powers on cards really does lessen improvisation. Sure you CAN improvise in 4e, but you have this urge to make sure you squeeze in all of your nifty moves into the encounter or day.

3. A more improvisational system with pared down mechanics seems fun to play, but it would take away much of the joy of character optimization. I spend more time and get just as much joy out of creating and optimizing different characters than I do from playing. Part of this stems from the fact that one can only play at the whim of other's schedules, whereas you can tinker with new character builds at your leisure. They also are two different types of fun. Playing Dnd is half social fun and half tactical wargame fun for me. Creating character builds appeals to my Excel spreadsheet creating nerd side.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-11, 06:53 PM

With that out of the way, yes, there are still ways that environments can be tactically interesting. There are also more ways that an environment can be tactically interesting with a functional stacking (dis)Advantage system. Thus, with the current nonfunctional system, the mechanical system is limiting what can be done.
Which is a contrast to your previous statement of "[m]echanically, it prevents a DM from having mechanically interesting environments" (bolded for emphasis) as long as we are having a discussion of words in mouths :smalltongue:

There is no doubt that any rules will limit what Players can do in a game, which is why I have tried to frame this as a line-drawing problem. So far, it does not seem that you want to engage in line-drawing, but in absolutes: AD/DA must stack or the system is worthless. As far as supporting arguments go, what I understand your points to be is that a lack of stacking makes environments mechanically uninteresting (which I addressed) and the novel one of the "Dirty Fighter" requiring stacking AD/DA to be worthwhile.

IMHO, you can design a "Dirty Fighter" that operates just fine without stacking by using Conditions similar to those listed for environmental effects (e.g. hindering movement, restricting enemy actions, moving enemies) particularly if you combine them with existing environmental effects (e.g. moving an enemy into damaging terrain). I find this more satisfying than requiring the Dirty Fighter to invent some way to get +2 on his next attack and use it until the DM gets bored -- or however you interpret it, I suppose.

N.B. If my tone offends you, I apologize but I find it more entertaining to add absurd flourishes to my texts while still addressing the core issues in a serious manner. I hope you can see that this is not intended to be personally insulting in any way.

Seerow

2012-07-11, 07:10 PM

I wanted to add my 2 cents to the hamlet/Seerow argument a couple pages back...

Did that really qualify as an argument? It felt more like trying to talk to a brick wall :(

Won't 5e appeal to both of you, depending on what modules you use in your game? I suspect that neither of you will truly end up playing the same game because 5e core will play/feel very different than 5e with tactical module.

It frankly depends a lot on what the modules are allowed to be. The recent news articles about 5e have indicated that modules won't fundamentally change the rules, but rather just be something layered on top. This combined with the tripe they've been putting out about how Fighters can get maneuvers through a theme (but fighters get an extra theme) makes me more inclined to believe that 5e is not going to be a game for me.

For 5e to be truly modular to the point where it could support everybody, the baseline system would need to be streamlined even further. Right now what we have is a system where mundane classes have no resources, little in the way of special abilities, and extremely limited scaling. Compare to casters who get whatever mundanes get, plus full spellcasting. This is an imbalance being built right into the core of the game. This is not something they can fix with optional rules modules, at least not in the way they're trying to do it now.

To fix the problem, they either need to have a complex fighter as the baseline, with an optional module that removes all resources from all classes in exchange for some flat modifiers, to make classes simple. Or the other way around, where everyone at the baseline is very boring and limited, but there's a module that gives everybody new options.

The true condundrum is JoeMac307's problem (and my problem with my group) of having some players that thrive with tons of rules and others that would do better with a pared down system.

It is a conundrum, but not one that should be solved by designating one set of classes as "Here these are the simple classes. If you don't like mechanics go play with these", while trying to pretend they are equal to the classes that gain actual abilities.

As an aside, my opinion on the whole "rules are bad" mentality, is that you can always improvise and role play regardless of your class or ruleset. Someone inclined towards creative solutions will do just as well with a complex class as a simple class, as long as they have a DM willing to go along with them on it. Someone who's not inclined towards those sorts of solutions or who has a DM who is strict about how things are done or what he considers reasonable however is going to be hurting if given a class that does not have options. So my general rule of thumb is having options > not having options.

Ashdate

2012-07-11, 07:14 PM

2. Having powers on cards really does lessen improvisation. Sure you CAN improvise in 4e, but you have this urge to make sure you squeeze in all of your nifty moves into the encounter or day.

What stops improvisation isn't having 8 different cards that attack and enemy, what stops improvisation is the belief that doing anything that is outside what is written on these 8 different cards will be mechanically weaker than simply following one of those 8 directions. While it's easy to blame a system for it (and by no means do I consider 4e's page 42 to be flawless) the bigger problem is not teaching DMs on how to encourage it. If a player believes that he or she will be rewarded for dropping a chandelier on a goblin (rather than choosing one of the powers in front of them) then you'll see that improvisation. It won't happen however, without the DM being active in encouraging it.

On the subject of advantage/disadvantage, I think it'd be cleaner to simply be able to declare a roll as having advantage or disadvantage, without worrying where there are "two sources of" advantage or whatever. Of course, I'm also of the opinion that advantage/disadvantage should be relatively difficult to obtain; if the rogue can "sneak attack" every round thanks to advantage being easy to get, then I see that as a failure. Counting multiple sources of (dis)advantage seems like needless work to me, as the instances where there are multiple sources should be too rare to have a specific rule.

However, I'd be perfectly happy to add a house rule somewhere near "1's and 20's on skill checks are automatic failures/success" in the book. I just don't think it should be the default assumption.

Talakeal

2012-07-11, 07:22 PM

Eh?

The fighter "doesn't do anything else"? What the heck is that supposed to mean?

No, really, that one just puzzles me. Especially since the fighter was, even outside of combat, one of the most active characters at our table. He did a lot above and beyond "hit it with a stick."

I simply cannot fathom this particular meme of "the fighter can't do anything but fight and is thus boring." Really seems to me like bad players.

In previous editions fighters had terrible skills and saves, not nearly enough feats, and very little use for mental ability scores, thus they have always been very limited in what they could do. If you gave them, say, a handful of ranger or monk saves, skills, and class features on top of their own fighters would be very versatile and fun imo.

huttj509

2012-07-11, 07:23 PM

It is a conundrum, but not one that should be solved by designating one set of classes as "Here these are the simple classes. If you don't like mechanics go play with these", while trying to pretend they are equal to the classes that gain actual abilities.

Well put. Rules complexity and degree of granularity in options can vary by system. It can vary by module. It should not vary by class. Especially if the class divide is along magical/mundane lines, as that prevents the simple mage/complex fighter types.

Something like the 4e essentials idea (whether or not you think it worked in execution) could work, as while you have simple/complex divided by class, the intent was to cover the main archetypes in both options for those who wanted simple/complex as opposed to fighter/wizard.

If it's a module divide, I'd ideally hope it could work with some people using the module and some not, but the execution on that could get REALLY groady. At least in that case it would be highlighted "you're picking the streamlined version, don't complain when the complex rogue's doing flashy stuff and your deliniated options are 'attack again' or 'cast again.'"

Choosing on purpose to be weaker/have less options/less flexible than other people in the party, sure, no problem. As long as it's not tricked onto people, a 'newbie trap,' or the only way to play a sword and board character.

Menteith

2012-07-11, 07:24 PM

Which is a contrast to your previous statement of "[m]echanically, it prevents a DM from having mechanically interesting environments" (bolded for emphasis) as long as we are having a discussion of words in mouths :smalltongue:

There is no doubt that any rules will limit what Players can do in a game, which is why I have tried to frame this as a line-drawing problem. So far, it does not seem that you want to engage in line-drawing, but in absolutes: AD/DA must stack or the system is worthless. As far as supporting arguments go, what I understand your points to be is that a lack of stacking makes environments mechanically uninteresting (which I addressed) and the novel one of the "Dirty Fighter" requiring stacking AD/DA to be worthwhile.

Fair enough - I'll rephrase my argument;

The current Advantage system is, at it's core, more appealing to me than having a large number of static modifiers. I feel that it has potential to be a unique, interesting mechanic that would benefit the game. However, it currently cannot be applied multiple times. As this is the only environmental modifier to dice rolls, I anticipate that there will be many instances where the mechanic's inability to stack will come up. This limits what actions both the players and NPCs will be able to take. Any spell or ability that grants (dis)Advantage is not longer a viable option, as it will have no effect. Additionally, this removes options from a DM by preventing environments from affecting the dice outside of a single roll. Finally, it is is immersion breaking, and leads to comically unrealistic situations (Good thing I'm balancing on slippery ice, or else me being totally drunk would affect my attack rolls!).

It's not your tone, it's just that you were arguing against situations that I was not supporting. By saying things like "countless modifiers" or "how badly the bright sunlight hinders the archer's aim in light of the modest N/NE wind and whether it would be an easier shot if he move 5' to the left" you're painting my opinion into something that it's not. I don't mind it that much, I just want you to be sure about what I'm saying, rather than what you think I said.

JoeMac307

2012-07-11, 08:40 PM

If it's a module divide, I'd ideally hope it could work with some people using the module and some not, but the execution on that could get REALLY groady. At least in that case it would be highlighted "you're picking the streamlined version, don't complain when the complex rogue's doing flashy stuff and your deliniated options are 'attack again' or 'cast again.'"

Choosing on purpose to be weaker/have less options/less flexible than other people in the party, sure, no problem. As long as it's not tricked onto people, a 'newbie trap,' or the only way to play a sword and board character.

This is something I'm concerned about, and I'm not sure WotC will, or even can, accurately address how to balance a mix of characters, some using modules and some choosing not to. Even something as basic as having half a party using themes and backgrounds and he other half choosing not to seems like it would result in a complete mess, regardless of which classes are being played.

As Seerow has pointed out, it would be best to start with stripped down classes for both mundane and magical characters, and building them up from there with modules. The problem I foresee in my party is one player saying they want to play a Fighter because they have an image of at class being "simple" and actively choosing to forego the benefits of a theme and background (or just plain ignoring many of the benefits if they grow too complex/numerous at high levels), while another player chooses a Wizard for the opposite reasons and really dives deeply into making the most of every possible benefit from every possible module to whatever degree the rules allow.

The heart of the matter, from my POV, however, is that even if the "simple" player opts for the Wizard, and the "complex" player opts for the Fighter, as they level, the "complex" player will end up with a character that is more useful than the "simple" player, regardless of class. As a DM, that can be a real challenge, and I don't think WotC, or anyone else for that matter, really has any good advice for how to handle that situation.

Of course, guidelines for this situation could be out there already and I'm just not aware...

navar100

2012-07-11, 09:08 PM

Hopefully they do not cause stacking ad/disad to generate circumstance bonuses/penalties, because that would go counter to the best part of the mechanic. I don't have a problem, per se, with roll 2, then roll 3, then auto-succeed/auto-fail, but I think I would rather it just continue to pile on additional rolls. Auto-success and auto-failure are very strong, very absolute mechanics that can steal the fun out of a game REALLY fast. Of course, they are MUCH faster than trying to roll 7 dice and see which is highest/lowest.

It depends. When earned it's so satisfying. When my Crusader/Master of Nine finally got Aura of Perfect Order stance, it was always a thrill to have an auto-11 to hit with a strike or make a save. It was an additional tactical move to consider. That one roll where I know I can't fail when I need it was a big help.

huttj509

2012-07-11, 10:39 PM

This is something I'm concerned about, and I'm not sure WotC will, or even can, accurately address how to balance a mix of characters, some using modules and some choosing not to. Even something as basic as having half a party using themes and backgrounds and he other half choosing not to seems like it would result in a complete mess, regardless of which classes are being played.

As Seerow has pointed out, it would be best to start with stripped down classes for both mundane and magical characters, and building them up from there with modules. The problem I foresee in my party is one player saying they want to play a Fighter because they have an image of at class being "simple" and actively choosing to forego the benefits of a theme and background (or just plain ignoring many of the benefits if they grow too complex/numerous at high levels), while another player chooses a Wizard for the opposite reasons and really dives deeply into making the most of every possible benefit from every possible module to whatever degree the rules allow.

The heart of the matter, from my POV, however, is that even if the "simple" player opts for the Wizard, and the "complex" player opts for the Fighter, as they level, the "complex" player will end up with a character that is more useful than the "simple" player, regardless of class. As a DM, that can be a real challenge, and I don't think WotC, or anyone else for that matter, really has any good advice for how to handle that situation.

Of course, guidelines for this situation could be out there already and I'm just not aware...

Yeah. I think what we all want to avoid is players being forced to straddle different sides of the simple/complex divide.

Backgrounds and Themes are package deals of skills and feats (which can be player-allocated instead), to my knowledge, so not using them would be like saying "well, I'm not going to take any feats" then wondering why you're lacking.

If players choose to be on different sides of the s/c divide, it can definitely get complicated to DM for and balance (this is what I was trying to get at with the results being 'groady.' I'm really not sure there's an easy answer, as oftentimes options lead directly or indirectly to power. You can have simple just do more base damage than complex, but you need to keep things where complex can keep up with their options, without overshadowing or being overshadowed by simple (how much damage is being able to trip the enemy 'worth'?).

Ideally the choice would come down to player preference for character style, and not strictly mathematical betterness, but that's a really rough ideal to reach.

LibraryOgre

2012-07-11, 11:12 PM

The Mod Wonder: Closed for the moment. Please take this moment to remember to play nice, children, and report people who annoy you, rather than wandering into counter-flaming (or, as we like to call it, flaming)

EDIT: Believe it or not, it was closed while I was working through it. I just did it relatively quickly.

Clawhound

2012-07-13, 09:45 AM

I was playing Fallout: New Vegas recently and I really enjoyed it. In that game, your character has no special powers. None. There are no buttons to push to get a special effect. It's all environment and equipment. In theory, that should lead to a boring game, but in practice, because every situation is different, and you need to understand your advantages, it winds up being quite an engaging game.

This indicates, to me, an order of priority in design.

1. Design rules where the world is highly interactive. The players should always be interacting with the world.

2. Weapon choice only matters when those weapons get you interesting effects. Otherwise, it's just a numbers game that's quickly over. To be valid, you must be competent in each weapon.

3. Powers should push you to act like your archetype. Thieves naturally want to backstab and wizards naturally want to throw spells. A fighter should naturally want to do something that even a battle cleric can't replicate.

4. Payload effects can act like powers. For example: On a 16-20, a hammer whollops your opponent, even if you miss. Opponent may not take voluntary movement that round. Only fighter's get the advantage of weapon payloads. Likewise, armor could have a playload effect. "Any attack that does less than 1d8 against you is automatically at a disadvantage while you wear heavy armor."

A disadvantage of that, of course, is if you put all the powers in the weapons, so that the class looks empty and doesn't do anything.

None of this is any sort of solution, but it is all worth consideration.

obryn

2012-07-13, 09:54 AM

I think part of the reason that works is that it's a solo game.

I'm a huge Skyrim fan, but I don't know that it would translate onto paper that easily. :)

-O

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-13, 09:57 AM

Fallout 3 (and NV) aren't really the best video games to look at for this sort of thing: The RPG mechanics in these games are very, very poorly done, there's little difference between what weapons can do except that some weapons have cheaper ammo than others (and you can't shoot a gun unless you have ammo, so you'd better have decent skill ranks in the common weapons), and even the numbers aren't that compellingly different (depending on how you allocate your skill ranks pistols do more damage than a friggin minigun, except minigun ammo is extremely scarce and pistol ammo is not).

And really your only interactions with the environment are all in the narrative: You can't do anything resembling shenanigans like knock out the support beams and have the ceiling come crashing down on something.

Besides, even though this can work in a game if done well, it sort of leads to the logical conclusion of characters who are completely interchangeable if all they can do is use whatever toys the GM/designer leaves lying around the level. Part of the appeal of RPGs is self-expression through character creation choices, which is antithetical with this kind of design.

1337 b4k4

2012-07-13, 11:48 AM

Part of the appeal of RPGs is self-expression through character creation choices, which is antithetical with this kind of design.

Not picking on you, I just think this quote highlights a potential large gulf between player types, because I always understood the appeal to be self-expression through character play choices, not creation choices. Maybe I've never gotten the joy, but to me character creation is the homework you have to do before you get to play the game. Even games where character creation is a mini game (like say Traveler, and I've spent many an hour rolling up Traveler characters just for fun), it's not the character creation system that I play the game for.

Ziegander

2012-07-13, 12:00 PM

Not picking on you, I just think this quote highlights a potential large gulf between player types, because I always understood the appeal to be self-expression through character play choices, not creation choices. Maybe I've never gotten the joy, but to me character creation is the homework you have to do before you get to play the game. Even games where character creation is a mini game (like say Traveler, and I've spent many an hour rolling up Traveler characters just for fun), it's not the character creation system that I play the game for.

Agreed. RPGs in general, and D&D in particular, need better systems to encourage and reward in-game PLAY choices.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-13, 12:10 PM

You're right: I should have said character customization choices, as that's really what I meant anyhow. A choice that mechanically defines your character before you start playing isn't necessarily privileged over ones made in play.

However, I do make the stipulation that in order to count these have to be mechanical definitions. If all characters are identical as far as the rules are concerned, you don't have a roleplaying game.

Why do I think this?

Well, imagine for a minute that you and two friends have decided to play Monopoly, two of you actually playing against each other and one standing off to the side watching. Also imagine that you decide to do something different in this game: You roleplay the character of an up and coming real estate owner who is appalled by the sorry state of the city's ghettos and want to help make them brighter and more pleasant, while your friend roleplays your rival, a greedy land-grabber who wants to milk the city's citizens for all they're worth. The other friend (who's standing by, watching) roleplays any secondary characters who come up throughout the story. (Essentially, they're the GM.)

Now, you're definitely roleplaying, and you're definitely playing a game, and you might even be having a lot of fun, but you're not playing a roleplaying game. What you say in-character may be different, and your property purchasing and upgrading choices may be different, but the reason you're not playing a roleplaying game is because the in-character aspect is not reflected in the game mechanics at all.

Oracle_Hunter

2012-07-13, 12:29 PM

Now, you're definitely roleplaying, and you're definitely playing a game, and you might even be having a lot of fun, but you're not playing a roleplaying game. What you say in-character may be different, and your property purchasing and upgrading choices may be different, but the reason you're not playing a roleplaying game is because the in-character aspect is not reflected in the game mechanics at all.
So, Mountain Witch is not a roleplaying game then? :smallconfused:
In Mountain Witch each Player makes a Ronin (a disenfranchised Samurai in Feudal Japan) who has agreed to climb Mt. Fuji and try to kill the titular immortal Witch that lives atop it. Your "character sheet" can fit on an index card and contains the following:
- Your Character's Name
- Why You Are a Ronin
- Why You Are on a Suicide Mission
- 3 Powers That You Make Up

these "powers" have no mechanical benefit aside from granting you superhuman abilities you can narrate into your actions. Any clash of narration is settled with a d6 roll-off whose only modifiers come from wounds gained in-game. Powers cannot be used to modify or automatically win any opposed narration.

The one additional mechanic is a "Trust Point" system which allows you to aid other people's rolls or hinder them but this is largely set by the other Players -- it is no more a part of the character than money gained or lost while playing Monopoly.
I think your definition is too reductive. Clearly, you need no dice or character sheets to roleplay and a roleplaying game is surely more than Magical Tea Party; yet the line cannot be that you need some level of mechanical diversity or complexity to separate the Magical Tea Time from the Serious Roleplaying Game. IMHO, a better line would be that a Roleplaying Games needs a system to resolve narrative conflicts.

In Monopoly, you can say your Slum Lord punches the Good Samaritan in the snoot, but if he says otherwise then what actually happened? There are no rules in Monopoly to resolve this conflict of narrations and therefore it is not a Roleplaying Game.

kyoryu

2012-07-13, 01:07 PM

Agreed. RPGs in general, and D&D in particular, need better systems to encourage and reward in-game PLAY choices.

Depends on what they're trying to appeal to. There's a lot of people who prefer an emphasis on the character creation subgame.

I'm not one of them, TBH. But an increased emphasis on in-game actions will not appeal to those people.

Clawhound

2012-07-13, 01:16 PM

I think that Fallout works as an example for all the reasons that you don't.

My concern is WHERE DO THE MECHANICS POINT YOU? Fallout does interesting things without resorting to glitzy powers, and that's a good way to examine our mechanics preconceptions.

What does a power look like? How should it act? Where does it drive your character?

Maneuvers happen before a hit. What about having abilities that work after a hit?

Disarm - You disarm your opponent. His weapon now lies 1d6 squares away.
Smash - You do +extra damage, but you have disadvantage next round.
Trip - 1/2 damage, and your opponent is now prone
Delay Special - Opponent may not use the indicated special attack or ability next round
Threat - For the next round, nearby creatures believe that you are their main threat and will act accordingly.
Hobble - Opponent may move no more than five feet next round.

I'm not saying that this is THE SOLUTION, but the fighter would certainly be acting in a very unique way.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-13, 01:22 PM

So, Mountain Witch is not a roleplaying game then? :smallconfused:
In Mountain Witch each Player makes a Ronin (a disenfranchised Samurai in Feudal Japan) who has agreed to climb Mt. Fuji and try to kill the titular immortal Witch that lives atop it. Your "character sheet" can fit on an index card and contains the following:
- Your Character's Name
- Why You Are a Ronin
- Why You Are on a Suicide Mission
- 3 Powers That You Make Up

these "powers" have no mechanical benefit aside from granting you superhuman abilities you can narrate into your actions. Any clash of narration is settled with a d6 roll-off whose only modifiers come from wounds gained in-game. Powers cannot be used to modify or automatically win any opposed narration.

The one additional mechanic is a "Trust Point" system which allows you to aid other people's rolls or hinder them but this is largely set by the other Players -- it is no more a part of the character than money gained or lost while playing Monopoly.

Hmm, you know, I don't really know what I'd call it. I'll have to chew on that one for a while and get back on that one later.

1337 b4k4

2012-07-13, 01:22 PM

Craft (Cheese)

2012-07-13, 01:45 PM

I'm I to understand that unless the player characters are all mechanically different and that difference is enforced by the rule books, you believe you aren't playing role playing game? That is a surprisingly narrow definition of a role playing game, which would include such things as a D&D party of all fighters is not playing a role playing game. Clearly that is absurd.

I wouldn't really say that, I would say that what really matters is that the game system supports having a diverse group of varied individuals and characters and these character differences (both in personality and their role in the setting) are mechanically reinforced.

A group of all-identical characters (and a group of fighters, technically, need not be identical) is merely failing to take advantage of that aspect of the system, not really playing a different game. Like a game of chess where both players refuse to move their queens: There's something significant missing, but I'd argue that it's still chess.

Fatebreaker

2012-07-16, 02:30 PM

So, the five-minute workday (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd%2F4ll%2F20120716) is the subject of today's Legends & Lore article. It's an interesting read, in the sense that (if accurate) it offers some insight into what the designers believe "balance" means. Two nifty quotes in particular caught my eye. Again, for clarity, note that all comments presume that the article is both a true and accurate description of the intentions of 5e's designers.

Since the game balances the fighter's and rogue's staying power against the wizard's and cleric's spell attrition, it's important that the "workday" last long enough for the rogue and fighter to shine.

This quote basically gives the game away: the fighter and rogue are less powerful than the wizard and cleric. They only "balance" if the DM prods the party to go beyond the caster's limited number of spells.

Of course, not only is this a problem because you have a see-saw of balance (that is, one side is up while one side is down, with only a brief window of actual equality), leaving one group or the other feeling less valuable, but the same group starts, by default, in the position of power, and the other group must wait and hope that their chance comes. Note that they have no way to facilitate this.

Learning, apparently, has not occurred.

The important thing from an R&D perspective is that both extremes, and all the points in between, are options for DMs. If that's how you want to run D&D, that's your call. Our job as designers is not to tell you how to play, but to give you the ability to run a game that matches what you want out of D&D. If the five-minute workday bothers you, you have the tools to judge its effect on your game and can take steps to fix it. If you don't care or have never noticed the issue, we don't make it one for you.

I like the last two sentences here (the italicized ones), because I feel like that's a good attitude to have. However, I also feel like it's disconnected from the rest of the article, which (#1) looks at spells as a combat resource, and (#2) misses how the five-minute workday is a player-driven attitude as a result of mechanics.

Let's look at (#2) first. If the mechanics still support limited spells and high-powered casters, then the casters will continue to set the pace of the party. Unless the mechanics change, the problem will not go away. At best, the DM can "force" the party via plot reasons to keep going, which now becomes a test of a DM's skill. If the DM is good enough to construct a reason for the party to keep going when the casters run out, the adventure goes on. If the DM is not, then the adventure grinds to a halt (as the players camp in defiance of the plot-hook) or continues, albeit grudgingly, with hard feelings all around because the party feels (rightly or wrongly) that the game is on rails. As a result, the design shifts the blame from the mechanics to the DM, which is a rather sneaky way of hiding the actual problem. And true, it's not a problem in all games, but it's enough of a problem that it both earned its own name and became the subject of a Legends & Lore article. Clearly, it's a problem for someone! The point, however, is that making the DM "fix" an attitude inspired by the mechanics is the wrong way to go about this.

As for (#1), that's just odd on a lot of levels. If spells are a combat resource only... well, I love 4e, but I was under the impression that spells-as-combat-only was one of the things people objected to. And if spells are intended to be "balanced" around combat, but find use in utility, then that only pushes the gap between fighter/rogue and wizard/cleric further apart by giving wizards and clerics added versatility not available to fighters and rogues.

So, thoughts on this?

-------

Some comments on the fighter discussion awhile back, spoiler'd for length:
RE: Fighters & "Creativity" as a Class Ability

The problem with arguing that creativity is a class ability which substitutes for not having class abilities is that it's supporting an illusion. An illusion of design. An illusion of control. An illusion of power. A blank list of abilities may be, to some, a golden opportunity for creativity, but that creativity is only as effective as the player’s ability to be creative and the DM’s opinion on how effective that creativity should be.

If my character sheet is blank, except for the bit where it says I can fly, my character is objectively superior to a character whose sheet is entirely blank. Maybe the other character can "be creative" and somehow gain the ability to fly (for now), but now he's working just to break even. I don't need anyone's permission to fly -- I just can. I have more opportunities and more options. I can be creative in all the ways the totally-blank character can, and more! The blank character has to ask, beg, wheedle, cajole, and coerce. Maybe he can fly. Maybe he can't. But me? I can. And when the DM-hat changes hands? Suddenly, an entirely new set of criteria are used to determine what abilities a character has.

Instead of stats being on the character sheet, you have a new (secret) set of stats, and it's based entirely on (#1) how open the DM is to creativity, and (#2) how good you, personally, are at convincing the DM that your actions are effective.

Put another way, the designers could assign the following ability to every class:

Creativity: At-Will; at any point during the game, the player may attempt to convince the DM that his character may take an action not specified by other mechanics. The difficulty and results of this action are up to the DM.

But is that really an ability which needs to be printed? You always have that ability, even in games which don’t use abilities. And if you didn’t have it when it wasn’t printed, you still won’t have it when it is.