D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting

[noparlpf]

Now it's been awhile since I've read good old LotR, but I don't remember Aragorn doing anything remotely magical enough to be a Paladin. Now, he might have multiclassed Fighter a bit, though.

Why bother? Ranger is better.

[Loki_42]

The fighter however is shortshafted. I'm definitely making fighting styles optional since picking whatever feats you want at every odd level seems to be the only way to make the class interesting.

Wait, what? To make the fighter interesting you want to throw more feats at it and make varied choices in combat optional? I'm not following you at all.

[Dienekes]

Why bother? Ranger is better.

Two level dip my friends.

[Yora]

Now it's been awhile since I've read good old LotR, but I don't remember Aragorn doing anything remotely magical enough to be a Paladin. Now, he might have multiclassed Fighter a bit, though.
He knows the medicine for Wraith-Poison. That could be called healing hands, which could be another name for Lay on Hands. Which is a paladin ability. That doesn't do anything like he does when making the medicine.

Pretty sure the correct answer is just "too complicated to really represent as a D&D build". However, Aragorn as Strider from the Fellowship of the Ring has always been the basic inspiration for the D&D Ranger.
How is it too complicated?

He has a sword and a bow, can read trails and knows some medicine.

[Starbuck_II]

Yeah. Aragorn's line was generally superior to ordinary humans, but by the time they got all the way down to him he was basically a slightly above-average human..

Dude, he was 76 years young when he met Frodo. He aged like a D&D 1/2 Elf (they showed how young he looked at 76 in the movie). He also lives till 200 years old.

[lesser_minion]

How is it too complicated?

He has a sword and a bow, can read trails and knows some medicine.

OK, not too complicated. My point is that you wouldn't be able to build him very accurately.

[Yora]

No. Fighter or Ranger who has a sword and a bow and invested in Survival and Healing skills. What aspect of him is not covered?

[Zeful]

Out of curiosity, what differing manifestations? And how would they be different if we called them bloodlines or not.
Because it wouldn't be something that's tied to the character through the class, it's tied to the class through the spells.

Remember the psion's differing bonus spells he got from discipline? Same thing only that select sorcerer spells change based on how his power manifested in his youth; you do remember that bit of fluff from the sorcerer class entry right?

More importantly it doesn't have burden of backstory or setting to explain why by choosing not to explain why. Unlike heritage.

[lesser_minion]

No. Fighter or Ranger who has a sword and a bow and invested in Survival and Healing skills. What aspect of him is not covered?

Quite a few things. For a start, how does this let him take back control over Saruman's Palantir? And shouldn't he be able to use both the sword and the bow well instead of being OK in one and crap with the other?

[TheOOB]

Rereading the playtest document, I have a few opinions on the sorcerer. First I have no problem with the idea of heritages giving the sorcerer new and unique powers, not so long as, when the base book is put out, they put in something like the "arcane" bloodline which is more broad. I don't like the ambiguous roleplay changes they come into effect as your Willpower is spent.

As for the Willpower system, I don't inherently have a problem with it. It's obviously based off of the wizards spell progression, even though sorcerers get new spells one level later, which I can life with. The wizard still remains a much better caster. Sure the sorcerer can use more high level spells per day at the cost of losing their low level spells, but that's the balance. I'm not terribly fond of new passive abilities being gained when you spend willpower, that seems too complex for a class that should be more simple to play than the wizard.(So I get a +2 bonus on my melee attacks, but only when I have spent 3 willpower today. So I get a small numerical bonus, only when I keep track of something I wouldn't normally pay attention to). I think those abilities would work better as sorcerer powers that last a certain duration when activated.

As for the draconic heritage itself, it seems a little powerful, but I'm not waving the OP flag yet. First, wizard doesn't have their, for lack of a better term, path system yet(which they will), so we can't compare the two. Proficiency in all armor and a d8 hit die means a dragon sorcerer will likely be tougher than some clerics, which considering that arcane spells are better than divine spells is a little worrisome. The powers also seem a little strong. The only reason a sorcerer will ever be balanced with a wizard is by having less spells known, and the dragon powers are strong. Dragon strength is a decent first level spells, and dragon scales is actually really good. I think the powers need to be turned down, either turned into utility based abilities, or just made a little weaker than spells. They are a little something extra, not the core focus of the class.

[Doug Lampert]

Quite a few things. For a start, how does this let him take back control over Saruman's Palantir? And shouldn't he be able to use both the sword and the bow well instead of being OK in one and crap with the other?

Palantir: He rolled a 20 on a will save. All we really know about it from the books is that it was a contest of will of some sort and that Aragorn THOUGHT being the actual owner would help. The ownership part could be wrong, the will save to avoid being influenced and your visions controled by Sauron anyone can make 5% of the time. Hence Ranger Aragorn is good.

Aragorn in the books never uses a bow. So how can his ability with a bow not match any and every D&D class? Null information doesn't contradict anything and I must have missed the rule in D&D that REQUIRES a fighter or ranger to carry a bow.

Neither of these offers any contradition to the offered build. (Fighter or Ranger with a few skill points.)

DougL

[Icewraith]

I imagine resisting the control of the main Osgilliath Palan'tir involves a will save or some sort of mental ability check (or the old scrying skill).

We do know Aragorn's got decent CHA, between the ladies falling all over him and armies being willing to march into the jaws of Mordor around him. A dip into paladin for some +saves makes a bit more sense.

Even if he doesn't have a mount at the moment, why wouldn't some Pally levels make sense for Aragorn? He rode with the Riders of Rohan under a different name and guise. The only thing that really doesn't fit is he seems to have command undead, or his Relic sword grants it to him.

Granted what it also might be is elves in this setting all gain timeless body and just rack up the mental stat boosts, and elven descendants gain +6 to stats across the board (except perhaps str).

[Draz74]

As far as the Lord of the Rings stuff goes ... well, the real answer is "D&D mechanics don't simulate LotR well regardless of edition," but the even-more-relevant-to-this-discussion answer is "LotR doesn't describe things with enough mechanical detail for us to be able to pin down."

For example, the process of re-controlling the palantir. Was it a spell? a Will Save? DM fiat based on his heritage? The books certainly don't settle the issue. They just give the "fluff." And any of the mechanical concepts above could be "re-fluffed" to match what's in the book.

This is further complicated by magic in general being subtle in Middle-Earth. How often did Gandalf use magic? We really have no idea. There are a handful of times when it's obvious, but he could have been using very subtle spells all the time without it ever coming up in the text. Was the rope from the elves magical (Rope of Climbing), or just masterwork silk rope? Sam asks that question, and the elves themselves state that the question is faulty, as Middle-Earth's magic is so subtle that they're not sure where the borderline between "magic" and "non-magic" is.

And Aragorn definitely does some stuff in that fuzzy, poorly-defined magical/mundane area. Even if you're sure that his Heal checks with athelas on Frodo's shoulder were entirely mundane (and I always thought they had a magical component to them, even before I played D&D), the implications that some magic was involved become much stronger in the Houses of Healing. And even aside from healing abilities, his ability to hide in the shadows even while being observed sounds pretty magical at some point.

So, I do think that Aragorn is part of the reason that Gygax gave 1e Rangers some minor magical abilities, which carried over to 2e-3e. (4e is Drizzt, though, like Kurald said.) Although I think Gwydion is a better iconic low-level Ranger than Aragorn.

As a final note ... I don't think LotR ever states that Aragorn is "crap" with a bow. I've always imagined he was a pretty good archer, although obviously not compared to Legolas.

EDIT: To get back on topic just a little bit ... anyone taken the new Survey that got emailed out this morning? What's it about?

[Gwendol]

Wait, what? To make the fighter interesting you want to throw more feats at it and make varied choices in combat optional? I'm not following you at all.

Right now the system for the fighters lets them pick a fighting style every odd level, each which gives access to maneuvers. Also, you get to pick a speciality, which gives feats. My point is that for fighters I'm prepared to allow them to pick and choose maneuvers as they wish, (three at every odd level, as it were) rather than having to get a package with partly useless maneuvers. For all classes I'd just scrap the specialities and allow characters to pick any feat they are qualified for at every odd level.

[Dienekes]

Because it wouldn't be something that's tied to the character through the class, it's tied to the class through the spells.

I'm not sure what you mean here.


Remember the psion's differing bonus spells he got from discipline? Same thing only that select sorcerer spells change based on how his power manifested in his youth; you do remember that bit of fluff from the sorcerer class entry right?

Honestly, I rarely read fluff. I prefer to just make my own. But if the sorcerers spell lists change and become limited based on which bloodline he picks I'm all for it, and would suggest placing something very similar for a wizard and all other magic users. I believe Seerow said it best: The Generalist who has the perfect spell for every situation needs to die in a fire.


More importantly it doesn't have burden of backstory or setting to explain why by choosing not to explain why. Unlike heritage.

Unlike the Thieves Cant thing, which is a bit harder to refluff, I really don't see how I can't do that with Bloodlines.

Just going with the dragon blooded one
My character was linked to a dragon spirit at birth. My character was cursed to turn into a monster that is slowly taking affect. My character is a dragon trapped in a humans body and is trying to break free. Or if you're lazy, my character is magical and it's magic is giving it the abilities to hit harder and resist some damage and cast a cone of fire. It's really not that hard.

[TopCheese]

First: LoTR was a horrid movie and borring book, of course I'm a scientist by trade and nature so it isn't like it was written for my type of people.

The greatest thing to come from it was the DM of the Rings webcomic. Greeeeeat webcomic :D

5th ed Sorcerer: Holy crap is this OP?? I showed my DM my high elf fighter acolyte and he thought he was OP with minor magic spells... I showed him the sorcerer and told me sorry for branding my fighter as op.

Warlock: Needs work but they will get it right.

[TheOOB]

Right now the system for the fighters lets them pick a fighting style every odd level, each which gives access to maneuvers. Also, you get to pick a speciality, which gives feats. My point is that for fighters I'm prepared to allow them to pick and choose maneuvers as they wish, (three at every odd level, as it were) rather than having to get a package with partly useless maneuvers. For all classes I'd just scrap the specialities and allow characters to pick any feat they are qualified for at every odd level.

If you listen to the podcasts, they've said that you will be able to pick whatever feats and combat maneuvers you want, the specialties and fighting styles are just there to help people make choices, and serve as a stopgap during the playtest.

[Dienekes]

First: LoTR was a horrid movie and borring book, of course I'm a scientist by trade and nature so it isn't like it was written for my type of people.

The greatest thing to come from it was the DM of the Rings webcomic. Greeeeeat webcomic :D


And I'm a mathematician. And my friends (trying to become anyway) a scientist. We both like LotR. I have no idea why you're implying the false dichotomy that certain types of people cannot like LotR. It is escapist fiction that defined a genre. You may not like it, which is fine, but your reasoning as to why is flawed.

[Gwendol]

Yeah, I don't (and won't) listen to podcasts. Good to know they got that right.

I really like the ability to mix in arcane and/or divine magic with any class/character by the use of a feat. It's very neat.

[JoeMac307]

Could anyone explain to me how Rapid Shot, the Level 1 Feat from the Archer Specialty, and Two-Weapon Fighting, the Level 1 Feat from the Dual Wielder Specialty, are not complete wastes of a feat?

Why would I ever want to make two attacks in one round, where allthe damage of each attack is halved (which I assume includes damage from ability bonuses)?

That is just silly.

Take the pre-gen human fighter as an example. He has the Rapid Shot feat, a +7 to hit with his Longbow, and can do 1d8 piercing damage with the Longbow. (I thought it should be 1d8+4 damage, since his Dex bonus of +4 should apply to the damage inflicted by the longbow, but maybe I misinterpretted that somehow).

Let's say he is fighting a monster or group of monsters with AC 18, so he needs to roll an 11 or better on a d20 to successfully hit them (i.e. 50/50 chance). If he hits an enemy, he can do 1 to 8 points of damage, for an average of 4.5 damage on a successful hit. Since he hits half the time, his average damage per round works out to 2.25. (If you also consider that a natural 20 automatically does max damage, this increases to 2.425)

Now let's say he decides to use Rapid Shot. He still has the same chance to hit with each attack (50/50), but each attack only does half damage. I couldn't find any guidance on whether damage rounds up or rounds down when halved, but let's assume it rounds up. Now if he hits an enemy, he has an equal chance to do 1, 2, 3 or 4 points of damage, for an average of 2.5 damage on a successful hit. He hits half of his shots, and gets two shots a rounds, so that comes out to an average damage per round of 2.5. (If you consider that a natural 20 automatically does max damage, this increases to 2.65).

So, this great and powerful feat increases your damage per round by 0.25 (or only 0.225 if you factor in critical hits) when you have a 50/50 chance to hit a monster and you are using a weapon that does 1d8 damage, assuming damage is rounded up when halved. (Otherwise, the average damage per round would actually be decreased, if you rounded down). Any additional damage from your ability score is irrelevant to the differences between average damage per round, since you still divide that in half as well, and it works out to a wash when comparing how much damage per round increases or decreases when using Rapid Shot / Two-Weapon Fighting.

That is a pretty underwhelming advantage to use up a Feat on, IMHO.

The only other benefit is that your chance of doing no damage at all is greatly reduced; however, is tempered mightily by the fact that your chance of doing high damage is reduced even more.

In the same example above, if you use Rapid Shot, since you only miss half the time, the chances of you missing both shots in one round is only 25%, so you have a 75% chance of doing some damage each round, whereas if you don't use Rapid Shot, you only have a 50% chance of doing some damage each round.

However, without Rapid Shot, you have a 10.625% chance of doing 8 points of damage (5% chance of rolling a natural 20, plus 5.625% chance of rolling between an 11 and 19 on your attack roll and an 8 on your damage roll); but with Rapid Shot, you only have a 2.641% chance of doing 8 points of damage, since you have to hit and roll a 7 or 8 on the d8 damage roll (if you are rounding halved damage up) or roll a critical hit on both attacks that round.

I guess if you are fighting a bunch of kobolds or something that you know have only 4 hit points, then Rapid Shot / Two-Weapon Fighting could be quite useful, since it will greatly increase the rate at which you kill these one hit wonders. Otherwise, if you are fighting anything with any decent amount of hit points, these two feats just make it much, much likelier that you will continuously inflict mediocre amounts of damage against them each round, but won't really help you kill them all that quicker. (In the example above, incorporating critical hits on natural 20s and dealing straight 1d8 damage with no bonuses, a monster with 25 hit points and AC 18 would take an average of 10.3 rounds to kill without Rapid Shot / Two-Weapon Fighting and 9.4 rounds to kill using Rapid Shot / Two-Weapon Fighting. Not that impressive).

[Starbuck_II]

Could anyone explain to me how Rapid Shot, the Level 1 Feat from the Archer Specialty, and Two-Weapon Fighting, the Level 1 Feat from the Dual Wielder Specialty, are not complete wastes of a feat?

Why would I ever want to make two attacks in one round, where allthe damage of each attack is halved (which I assume includes damage from ability bonuses)?

Are you saying apply sneak attack to both attacks?
Plus, two attacks kills two kobolds/goblins/minion (aka low health) races.
It is useful when outnumbered then.

[Loki_42]

Could anyone explain to me how Rapid Shot, the Level 1 Feat from the Archer Specialty, and Two-Weapon Fighting, the Level 1 Feat from the Dual Wielder Specialty, are not complete wastes of a feat?

Why would I ever want to make two attacks in one round, where allthe damage of each attack is halved (which I assume includes damage from ability bonuses)?

That is just silly.

*cut for length and math*

I guess if you are fighting a bunch of kobolds or something that you know have only 4 hit points, then Rapid Shot / Two-Weapon Fighting could be quite useful, since it will greatly increase the rate at which you kill these one hit wonders. Otherwise, if you are fighting anything with any decent amount of hit points, these two feats just make it much, much likelier that you will continuously inflict mediocre amounts of damage against them each round, but won't really help you kill them all that quicker. (In the example above, incorporating critical hits on natural 20s and dealing straight 1d8 damage with no bonuses, a monster with 25 hit points and AC 18 would take an average of 10.3 rounds to kill without Rapid Shot / Two-Weapon Fighting and 9.4 rounds to kill using Rapid Shot / Two-Weapon Fighting. Not that impressive).

I believe the common consensus is that they help crowd control, and any rider effects you may have on your attacks(which I'm sure will be released at some point). I agree with you though, and I've been tentatively running it as regular damage on the first hit and half damage on the second. Feats should be a solid benefit, not just a different way of doing the same thing.

[JoeMac307]

Are you saying apply sneak attack to both attacks?
Plus, two attacks kills two kobolds/goblins/minion (aka low health) races.
It is useful when outnumbered then.

I'm not sure what you mean about sneak attacks? I didn't mean to reference sneak attacks.

So, I guess these feats are only useful when taking out large numbers of minions. I suppose that could be helpful, but it seems pretty limited to me.

[Menteith]

Are you saying apply sneak attack to both attacks?
Plus, two attacks kills two kobolds/goblins/minion (aka low health) races.
It is useful when outnumbered then.

It's useful when you're outnumbered, you have multiple enemies within reach, and all of the enemies have a low enough health that the small amount of damage dealt will be enough to drop them (otherwise, you're better off dropping a single target instead of reducing two targets to half HP, barring an optional "Wounded" module). Sneak Attack can only trigger once/round, and I'm guessing most bonus damage sources will have similar caps.

[Zeful]

Honestly, I rarely read fluff. I prefer to just make my own. But if the sorcerers spell lists change and become limited based on which bloodline he picks I'm all for it, and would suggest placing something very similar for a wizard and all other magic users. I believe Seerow said it best: The Generalist who has the perfect spell for every situation needs to die in a fire.It's not that the spell list changes, it's that the function of certain spells change. It'd be a simple addendum at the end of the spell that reads something like "For [x] sorcerer change [parameter] to [y]".



Unlike the Thieves Cant thing, which is a bit harder to refluff, I really don't see how I can't do that with Bloodlines.
I'm looking at this from a DM's perspective. If I want to do a non-"standard" D&D setting, the inclusion of Sorcerers is a more work than any other class, for no good reason. I'm better off axing the entire class from all my games and replacing it wholesale with something better in terms that doesn't require me to bend over backwards to shoehorn something in. As for a player, I could refluff it, if I considered the system as a legitimate way to expand a class.

[kyoryu]

It's useful when you're outnumbered, you have multiple enemies within reach, and all of the enemies have a low enough health that the small amount of damage dealt will be enough to drop them (otherwise, you're better off dropping a single target instead of reducing two targets to half HP, barring an optional "Wounded" module). Sneak Attack can only trigger once/round, and I'm guessing most bonus damage sources will have similar caps.

It's also useful in that it gives you two chances to hit. If hitting is what's important, more than the damage done per turn (applying an effect, etc.), then the additional likelihood of hitting is useful.

I'm personally okay with it being semi-situational. I like mechanics where things aren't just overall better, but often better situationally or better based on what the opponent does or is planning.

[Dienekes]

It's not that the spell list changes, it's that the function of certain spells change. It'd be a simple addendum at the end of the spell that reads something like "For [x] sorcerer change [parameter] to [y]".

Ok that could be weird, and could complicate balance somewhat.


I'm looking at this from a DM's perspective. If I want to do a non-"standard" D&D setting, the inclusion of Sorcerers is a more work than any other class, for no good reason. I'm better off axing the entire class from all my games and replacing it wholesale with something better in terms that doesn't require me to bend over backwards to shoehorn something in. As for a player, I could refluff it, if I considered the system as a legitimate way to expand a class.

Even then, not really. So long as the setting has magic and you want to keep the spontaneousness of the class intact all that would need saying is: Your natural magic affects you in weird ways and no one knows why (if you want the mystery as lesser_minion seems to), or for any other reason that would make sense in your setting: being born the sixth son of a sixth son, being a descendant of the original cursed magi, having a spirit within you, or anything else that would take half a second to think up. Sure, it's an incredibly boring description but I have yet to see anything presented from the sorcerer class or any bloodline ability that could not be refluffed in such a way.

[TheOOB]

Could anyone explain to me how Rapid Shot, the Level 1 Feat from the Archer Specialty, and Two-Weapon Fighting, the Level 1 Feat from the Dual Wielder Specialty, are not complete wastes of a feat?

This has been discussed before.

While it is true Two-Weapon Fighting and Rapid Shot don't increase your damage output, that are stiff useful feats for three reasons

1) You can attack multiple opponents potentially letting you finish off more than one foe in a round.

2) If you have any non-damaging secondary effects of an attack, you will be able to apply said effect twice(can't think of any right now, but some will exist I am sure)

3) It increases the chance you will cause damage to the foe at the cost of giving you a chance to only do half damage. When rolling two attacks, if one attack misses, the other attack might still hit, thus you are more likely to do some damage on your turn.

The feats are not for everyone, but they do have usefulness.

[Zeful]

Ok that could be weird, and could complicate balance somewhat. Only if you tried to keep sorcerers and wizards on the same spell list. You build a different spell list.


Even then, not really. So long as the setting has magic and you want to keep the spontaneousness of the class intact all that would need saying is: Your natural magic affects you in weird ways and no one knows why (if you want the mystery as lesser_minion seems to), or for any other reason that would make sense in your setting: being born the sixth son of a sixth son, being a descendant of the original cursed magi, having a spirit within you, or anything else that would take half a second to think up. Sure, it's an incredibly boring description but I have yet to see anything presented from the sorcerer class or any bloodline ability that could not be refluffed in such a way.
Fine, I'll put it this way; unless WoTC is making game like Exalted or Shadowrun with an explicit setting packed into the game, players and DMs should not have to refluff anything. I shouldn't have to waste my time bothering with sorcerer bloodlines because the designers were too lazy to come up with something unique and general. Because every other edition, you could interpret the class literally almost any way you wanted and it would fit in the general fluff in the PhB. This sorcerer: I have to waste time rebuilding the fluff rather than building the character or the setting. Moreover, how the **** are your examples not shoehorning it in?

Odds are, if 5e gets me back into the game as a DM, I'm just outright banning the sorcerer in total, and just moving on.

[Flickerdart]

WotC fluff has always been awful. No big deal.

Also, the title of the thread spelled "Edition" wrong.

[AgentPaper]

I don't see what's so restrictive about bloodlines. Just because bloodlines exist in the world doesn't mean they have to be at all common. It's not like none of the other classes put restrictions on your setting either. The Cleric, and by proxy all the other divine casters, require that there be gods in the world that grant powers to mortals that follow them. The Warlock similarly requires that there be powerful beings that grant boons and powers in exchange for...actually, what do they get in exchange for granting a warlock their powers? I guess I never really understood that.

They're also extremely easy to re-fluff. For example, instead of having "the blood of a dragon", you could say that they were corrupted by some artifact, which gave them magical powers. Or maybe becoming a sorcerer is something you learn, and the various powers you get are just more things that a sorcerer learns how to do as they progress. If you don't like dragons, you could swap out the fluff for, say, elementalist fluff. Instead of dragon scales, your skin hardens like rock. Instead of breathing fire, you shoot a jet of flame from your eyes. And so on.

[Dienekes]

Only if you tried to keep sorcerers and wizards on the same spell list. You build a different spell list.

That's fair. Don't care much either way on who has which spell list though.


Fine, I'll put it this way; unless WoTC is making game like Exalted or Shadowrun with an explicit setting packed into the game, players and DMs should not have to refluff anything. I shouldn't have to waste my time bothering with sorcerer bloodlines because the designers were too lazy to come up with something unique and general. Because every other edition, you could interpret the class literally almost any way you wanted and it would fit in the general fluff in the PhB. This sorcerer: I have to waste time rebuilding the fluff rather than building the character or the setting. Moreover, how the **** are your examples not shoehorning it in?

Odds are, if 5e gets me back into the game as a DM, I'm just outright banning the sorcerer in total, and just moving on.

But they already have had to. Monks I don't think have had a real place in any one of my campaigns unless I completely refluff them. Druids, Paladins, and Barbarians have also had a bit of problem with some of my campaign ideas.

But then, like I said. I more or less ignore fluff I don't like to begin with and have I higher tolerance for it. So to me, I doubt Bloodlines will ever actually bother me because I trust in my ability to refluff just about anything my players want to do so long as the mechanics work out.

And as to my examples, they're off the top of my head without working in any real structure litterally spitballing ways to refluff random crap. Give me a setting and I'll make something make more sense.

Or if you really don't feel like putting any effort in it at all. They learn it just because. That's seriously the only information we're given about them in 3.5 they just naturally learn it that way. For the record, that fluff still works for every single bloodline, admittedly mostly because it's **** reasoning to begin with, but that seems to be the fluff you're arguing for. So if it worked then, it should still work now.

Now by all means don't let you're players use the sorcerer. I won't tell you how to run your games, but I will defend my belief that the bloodline fluff is an easy thing to replace or ignore for the class.

[Dublock]

Could anyone explain to me how Rapid Shot, the Level 1 Feat from the Archer Specialty, and Two-Weapon Fighting, the Level 1 Feat from the Dual Wielder Specialty, are not complete wastes of a feat?

This post is more of a collective thought process of a group I play with which is different then the majority of the players on the board.

I normally DM, but when I play I am the most optimized player at the table, hands down. When I showed my friend my level 3 (4e) rogue, he looked like it was really optimized because I could be getting sneak attack every single round which with all the splat books is now (almost) a given.

The group picks classes, feats, and whatever else to fit their character concept if they have any or whatever sounds good. They don't go online, don't look at numbers, they don't compare classes, they don't do any of that sort of stuff.

I know they would be upset if the new version didn't have any sort of duel attacking.

Now I do agree that I would like more sort of benefit to take the feats in question, but I honestly don't have any good idea yet of what to suggest. Doubling the bonus damage is way to much, only doing 75% damage can get to..."mathy" for their goal, etc.

Also I have always used WotC fluff as a basis, but changed whatever I saw fit, I doubt I will change that now.

I still hold out hope that the fluff is still a "filler" and they will have radically different fluff for release as they don't need to play test the fluff.

Fluff on the sorc's dragonic bloodline? I don't like it being the only option, but I hold out hope that they will have enough options that will satisfy most people.

[kyoryu]

Fine, I'll put it this way; unless WoTC is making game like Exalted or Shadowrun with an explicit setting packed into the game, players and DMs should not have to refluff anything. I shouldn't have to waste my time bothering with sorcerer bloodlines because the designers were too lazy to come up with something unique and general. Because every other edition, you could interpret the class literally almost any way you wanted and it would fit in the general fluff in the PhB. This sorcerer: I have to waste time rebuilding the fluff rather than building the character or the setting. Moreover, how the **** are your examples not shoehorning it in?


How is "sorcerors get their powers through their Draconic bloodline" any more or less fluff-integrated than "clerics get their powers from their deities"?

[Zeful]

I don't see what's so restrictive about bloodlines. Just because bloodlines exist in the world doesn't mean they have to be at all common. It's not like none of the other classes put restrictions on your setting either. The Cleric, and by proxy all the other divine casters, require that there be gods in the world that grant powers to mortals that follow them. The Warlock similarly requires that there be powerful beings that grant boons and powers in exchange for...actually, what do they get in exchange for granting a warlock their powers? I guess I never really understood that. Not particularly. Clerics and Warlocks are part of the traditions that literally made D&D. Making a setting of any real depth will include those traditions anyway, as there will be religion and myth. It's not much more effort to include them. 5e sorcerers, most notably, aren't, and thus will either dictate setting elements to include them, or make you waste time rebuilding their fluff. This is bad design for a game that doesn't come with an explicit setting, 2e, 3.5 and 4e all had implicit settings, vauge guidelines that took quite a bit of effort to move outside of.


But they already have had to. Monks I don't think have had a real place in any one of my campaigns unless I completely refluff them. Druids, Paladins, and Barbarians have also had a bit of problem with some of my campaign ideas.And those classes also suffer from what I'm talking about.


But then, like I said. I more or less ignore fluff I don't like to begin with and have I higher tolerance for it. So to me, I doubt Bloodlines will ever actually bother me because I trust in my ability to refluff just about anything my players want to do so long as the mechanics work out.and for me, the mechanics don't work out. I've been against this idea since Szantany wrote his Ultimate classes, roughly 10 years ago. Not just because of the inherent fluff, but because all of this stuff is focused on changing the character rather than the feel or playstyle of the class. Rather than giving me options that are essentially different playstyles (like Wizard Schools, only you know, better), I'm stuck with terribly designed and random buffs to crap I do not want. Pathfinder's Arcane bloodline, as lazy and terrible as it is is the least offensive implementation of the idea and it still fails to make the choice feel meaningful and different rather than some crap tacked on as an afterthough and given terrible as hell justification. Which, if you pan back a couple of pages, you'll note I've already said.

[navar100]

It is when before it was possible to make a Sorcerer that did not possess any BS magical heritage and was a Sorcerer literally "just because". The set of assumptions that are inherent to these kind of classes (all of them because everyone's been doing this since as long as I've been in D&D) pretty much makes any other origin pretty much non-viable. Hell it makes generally divergent settings impossible with the class and one of those things that you have to spend time to address with the setting rather than just having plug and play classes like almost every other edition of D&D. Bloodline classes dictate quite a bit of setting fluff that while you can change is just another thing that you have to document that can push players away from the setting and the game it's in.

And more importantly it is just aping Pathfinder and every homebrewer that has ever decided to "fix" the Sorcerer, they couldn't have figured something that was, while not unique, somewhat creative? They have to go down one of the most well-worn and cliche paths for the sorcerer that exists? Really?

I disagree and find the bloodline concept a nice idea. Pathfinder was smart to offer many different kinds each with their own class features. Sorcerer started out as bland in 3.0 beginnings as just another way to do arcane magic. As the game developed Heritage feats were offered to offer crunch flavor. It wasn't much, only dragon and fey (which was catered for warlocks anyway), but it was something. 5E is a chance to start fresh, and giving Sorcerers crunch flavor from the beginning is fine design choice. Dragon is stereotypical but not bad wrong idea. It would be a bad idea if the final product is only dragon, so hopefully 5E will offer enough backgrounds for different magic ties. The basics will suffice for the 5E PHB - dragon, arcane, fey, celestial, devilish, demonic, and possibly genie. Obligatory splat books would offer more.

[navar100]

I agree that the sorcerer isn't iconic, but not because it wasn't in second edition.

Rather, the sorcerer isn't iconic (1) because fiction in general does not distinguish between sorcerers and wizards, so there aren't any major fictional characters that can be archetypically thought of as "sorcerer but really not wizard"; and (2) because it hasn't had a consistent role so far along D&D editions.

In 3.0, the sorcerer is the same as the wizard, only spontaneous. In 4.0, the sorcerer is a blaster wizard, except that regular wizards can also be blasters, and drawing its power from dragons, storms, chaos, or the cosmos (just like wizards, really). In 4.4, the sorcerer instead is an elementalist, except that wizards also have elemental spells, as well as a pyromancer specialty.

The bottom line is that WOTC has failed, so far, to create a meaningful and consistent difference between sorcerers and wizards. And this is why they're not iconic.

Well then, having Sorcerers get their magic through bloodlines and developing class features based on the bloodline could be that difference.

[Dienekes]

Not particularly. Clerics and Warlocks are part of the traditions that literally made D&D. Making a setting of any real depth will include those traditions anyway, as there will be religion and myth. It's not much more effort to include them. 5e sorcerers, most notably, aren't, and thus will either dictate setting elements to include them, or make you waste time rebuilding their fluff. This is bad design for a game that doesn't come with an explicit setting, 2e, 3.5 and 4e all had implicit settings, vauge guidelines that took quite a bit of effort to move outside of.

Ehhh, I've made plenty of campaigns without gods or demons.


and for me, the mechanics don't work out. I've been against this idea since Szantany wrote his Ultimate classes, roughly 10 years ago. Not just because of the inherent fluff, but because all of this stuff is focused on changing the character rather than the feel or playstyle of the class. Rather than giving me options that are essentially different playstyles (like Wizard Schools, only you know, better), I'm stuck with terribly designed and random buffs to crap I do not want. Pathfinder's Arcane bloodline, as lazy and terrible as it is is the least offensive implementation of the idea and it still fails to make the choice feel meaningful and different rather than some crap tacked on as an afterthough and given terrible as hell justification. Which, if you pan back a couple of pages, you'll note I've already said.

But this argument is not about the concept of bloodlines but by poor mechanics which is not what we were arguing. Yes, I would like if bloodlines forced the class into varied different roles and left the generalist to go die rather than give useless benefits. I didn't think it needed saying that useless benefits are useless and I dislike the all powerful mage concept.

[Zeful]

But this argument is not about the concept of bloodlines but by poor mechanics which is not what we were arguing. Yes, I would like if bloodlines forced the class into varied different roles and left the generalist to go die rather than give useless benefits. I didn't think it needed saying that useless benefits are useless and I dislike the all powerful mage concept.

No one has managed it in ten years. Even legitimately good homebrewers have yet to make bloodlines not be anything other than changing the character rather than the class. Excuse me if I choose to interpret this as evidence that it's a bad idea from the outset rather than wait for the proverbial lightning to strike.


I disagree and find the bloodline concept a nice idea.My beef is with the universal crap implementation. Not the idea.

Pathfinder was smart to offer many different kinds each with their own class features.They're also all useless and boring buffs to random crap rather than anything interesting or meaningful. They're interchangeable, and that's terrible.

Sorcerer started out as bland in 3.0 beginnings as just another way to do arcane magic.All the classes were bland. That's what you do when you aren't packaging a setting with the game.

As the game developed Heritage feats were offered to offer crunch flavor. It wasn't much, only dragon and fey (which was catered for warlocks anyway), but it was something.It was also optional.

5E is a chance to start freshAgreed, and they don't.

giving Sorcerers crunch flavor from the beginning is fine design choice.Strawman.

Dragon is stereotypical but not bad wrong idea. It would be a bad idea if the final product is only dragon, so hopefully 5E will offer enough backgrounds for different magic ties. The basics will suffice for the 5E PHB - dragon, arcane, fey, celestial, devilish, demonic, and possibly genie. Obligatory splat books would offer more.It would be a bad idea if it delivered a bunch of arbitrary and random bonuses rather than significant gameplay changes based on your choice. Oh, wait...

[Lanaya]

It's also useful in that it gives you two chances to hit. If hitting is what's important, more than the damage done per turn (applying an effect, etc.), then the additional likelihood of hitting is useful.

I'm personally okay with it being semi-situational. I like mechanics where things aren't just overall better, but often better situationally or better based on what the opponent does or is planning.

Which would be fine if two weapon fighting were an option anyone could use at any time, but feats are supposed to make your character stronger. If TWF and rapid shot require you to permanently invest limited resources before you can use them, they should be better than their free alternatives, not just different.

[JoeMac307]

This has been discussed before.

While it is true Two-Weapon Fighting and Rapid Shot don't increase your damage output, that are stiff useful feats for three reasons

1) You can attack multiple opponents potentially letting you finish off more than one foe in a round.

2) If you have any non-damaging secondary effects of an attack, you will be able to apply said effect twice(can't think of any right now, but some will exist I am sure)

3) It increases the chance you will cause damage to the foe at the cost of giving you a chance to only do half damage. When rolling two attacks, if one attack misses, the other attack might still hit, thus you are more likely to do some damage on your turn.

The feats are not for everyone, but they do have usefulness.

I believe it has been discussed before, I didn't notice it discussed in this thread. Maybe I overlooked it?



Which would be fine if two weapon fighting were an option anyone could use at any time, but feats are supposed to make your character stronger. If TWF and rapid shot require you to permanently invest limited resources before you can use them, they should be better than their free alternatives, not just different.

That is exactly my feelings on the subject. As rare and costly Feats, they just don't seem worthwhile to me.

[1337 b4k4]

EDIT: To get back on topic just a little bit ... anyone taken the new Survey that got emailed out this morning? What's it about?

it's a very comprehensive "what do you like about the playtest" survey. If you've been looking to give more feedback than just "what area your favorite D&D icons, this is the survey, go fill it out.

[kyoryu]

Which would be fine if two weapon fighting were an option anyone could use at any time, but feats are supposed to make your character stronger. If TWF and rapid shot require you to permanently invest limited resources before you can use them, they should be better than their free alternatives, not just different.

And in some cases, they are.

I like the idea of getting options that increase decision-making. I understand that might not be everyone's preference.

(Now, if other options *are* simply better in all cases, then that might be worth looking at as a comparison point).

[TheOOB]

Fine, I'll put it this way; unless WoTC is making game like Exalted or Shadowrun with an explicit setting packed into the game, players and DMs should not have to refluff anything.

You're complaining about something that is silly and impossible. For the record, D&D has a setting built in, and it always had. D&D assumes you are in a world if magic and heroes, with dwarves and elves, where people go into dungeons and fight dragons for money. Just because they paint their setting in broad strokes(and further define it in specific campaign settings) doesn't mean a setting isn't there.

The sorcerer is a class that gains their power through inborn abilities. No one seemed to have a problem with that when the sorcerer originally came around. A draconic heritage was always a common possibility for said power. In 5e, they are just making it so a sorcerer plays a little differently depending on your heritage. I really don't see whats wrong with that. If you don't like draconic sorcerers, don't allow that bloodline. There will be more(I'd be suprised if there are not at least 4 in the main book when it comes out).

You know, I hate gnomes as a race, they never exist in my campaign settings, but I don't think less of the game as a whole because the books present the rules for playing as one.

[noparlpf]

You're complaining about something that is silly and impossible. For the record, D&D has a setting built in, and it always had. D&D assumes you are in a world if magic and heroes, with dwarves and elves, where people go into dungeons and fight dragons for money. Just because they paint their setting in broad strokes(and further define it in specific campaign settings) doesn't mean a setting isn't there.

The sorcerer is a class that gains their power through inborn abilities. No one seemed to have a problem with that when the sorcerer originally came around. A draconic heritage was always a common possibility for said power. In 5e, they are just making it so a sorcerer plays a little differently depending on your heritage. I really don't see whats wrong with that. If you don't like draconic sorcerers, don't allow that bloodline. There will be more(I'd be suprised if there are not at least 4 in the main book when it comes out).

You know, I hate gnomes as a race, they never exist in my campaign settings, but I don't think less of the game as a whole because the books present the rules for playing as one.

The complaint is just that THUS FAR they've only given us the Draconic sorcerer. We want more than just that later.

[1337 b4k4]

Spending some time listening to the 3rd PA Podcast (http://media.wizards.com/podcasts/PAPVP_Next3.mp3)

Three things that stood out. Seerow rejoice, they have heard your plea for multi die powers, and have such things envisioned as "riposte" which will allow for attacking enemies who miss you for a cost of 3 cs dice. Whether there's more to it than just a basic attack they didn't say, I guess we'll have to wait and see. It also appears that as predicted, you will be allowed to spend multiple cs powers per round so long as you have dice. They explicitly said the fighter could spend multiple dice to protect against multiple attacks. Clearly this means they need to clarify the reaction rules. If someone is filling out the newest survey, be sure to include that on your feedback. Lastly, they stated that a 10th level fighter will have 4d12 cs dice available to them, so we can probably extrapolate the progression now. Still not sure that it shouldn't be replaced with more smaller dice, but we'll see.

[Stubbazubba]

That is exactly my feelings on the subject. As rare and costly Feats, they just don't seem worthwhile to me.

They're not. When you only get a handful of these over the course of 20 levels - while the casters are getting new, interchangeable spells every single level - Feats have to be way more useful than semi-situational. They have to be as powerful as several spells combined, or they scale up with you to become that powerful.

[Now]

Can anyone tell me when the playtest packet was first released? As in, the date the playtest begain?

[Zeful]

You're complaining about something that is silly and impossible. For the record, D&D has a setting built in, and it always had. D&D assumes you are in a world if magic and heroes, with dwarves and elves, where people go into dungeons and fight dragons for money. Just because they paint their setting in broad strokes(and further define it in specific campaign settings) doesn't mean a setting isn't there.

The sorcerer is a class that gains their power through inborn abilities. No one seemed to have a problem with that when the sorcerer originally came around. A draconic heritage was always a common possibility for said power. In 5e, they are just making it so a sorcerer plays a little differently depending on your heritage. I really don't see whats wrong with that. If you don't like draconic sorcerers, don't allow that bloodline. There will be more(I'd be suprised if there are not at least 4 in the main book when it comes out).

You know, I hate gnomes as a race, they never exist in my campaign settings, but I don't think less of the game as a whole because the books present the rules for playing as one.

What I want you to do is scroll up like 6 posts. I've gone over this, but since you seem to have skipped it: I don't like the bloodline concept period, because this draconic sorcerer, like every draconic sorcerer, is simply a bunch of random bonuses tied together with a vauge theme that I find dumb and limiting as hell. I've looked over this concept for nearly ten years, and every time it's a bunch of random pluses tied together with one of the following words: draconic, angelic, demonic, elemental, undead, arcane.

No one has ever done anything meaningful with the concept to change my mind about heritage's place in the game as a feat-tree.

[Starbuck_II]

They're not. When you only get a handful of these over the course of 20 levels - while the casters are getting new, interchangeable spells every single level - Feats have to be way more useful than semi-situational. They have to be as powerful as several spells combined, or they scale up with you to become that powerful.

True, I perfer -3 penalty to damage or 1/2 damage to each attack when dual wielding whichever is higher.

So if you deal 1d6+3, you deal 1d6 with each.
If you deal 1d6+1 then you deal 1/2 damage as -3 (is lower).

It works better with Sneak attack as well.

[TheOOB]

What I want you to do is scroll up like 6 posts. I've gone over this, but since you seem to have skipped it: I don't like the bloodline concept period, because this draconic sorcerer, like every draconic sorcerer, is simply a bunch of random bonuses tied together with a vauge theme that I find dumb and limiting as hell. I've looked over this concept for nearly ten years, and every time it's a bunch of random pluses tied together with one of the following words: draconic, angelic, demonic, elemental, undead, arcane.

No one has ever done anything meaningful with the concept to change my mind about heritage's place in the game as a feat-tree.

Except it's not random. Mechanics always inform role play, and role play informs mechanics, any player who has been playing for any length of time should know that. Do you have a problem with clerics getting their spells through gods, or fighters performing their maneuvers through swords? If you don't have a problem with those, why do you have a problem with a sorcerer using powers via dragon blood, or any other heritage. You just don't make any sense.


The complaint is just that THUS FAR they've only given us the Draconic sorcerer. We want more than just that later.

The complaint is that the thing they scraped together right before GenCon is incomplete. People have to think a little. They wanted something new to show for GenCon, but since they are not done with the fighter and wizard yet, that means that whatever they show will be incomplete. Considering PAX Prime is in just over a week, it will likely be incomplete for a little while. They have already shown way more transparency than with any other edition, which i praise and enjoy. What you're all getting is a rare glimpse into the design process, and many of you may be learning for the first time that the design process is a weird, disfigured, and often slow mess that slowly begins to resemble a completed product.

I'm all for critiquing what is there, but don't complain about what's not there.

And by all means, please everyone listen to the podcasts. They explain a lot about what's going on and what's planned.


True, I perfer -3 penalty to damage or 1/2 damage to each attack when dual wielding whichever is higher.

So if you deal 1d6+3, you deal 1d6 with each.
If you deal 1d6+1 then you deal 1/2 damage as -3 (is lower).

It works better with Sneak attack as well.

The problem is, the way 3e did it is that they couldn't measure the power level of TWF. Every time they made an ability that added damage, they had to worry about the fact that it could be doubled with TWF, which oftentimes meant an ability was either overpowered with TWF, and balanced without it, or balanced with TWF, and a weak without it. That's not a good way to design things.

[Gwendol]

What is good about TWF this time around is that with the feat you get to attack with both weapons using one action, period. No wrangling to trigger full attacks, no to hit penalties. The half damage is too harsh though, especially in light of the monstrous multiattack ability, which deals full damage. I expect that to change.

[Zeful]

Except it's not random. Mechanics always inform role play, and role play informs mechanics, any player who has been playing for any length of time should know that. Do you have a problem with clerics getting their spells through gods, or fighters performing their maneuvers through swords? If you don't have a problem with those, why do you have a problem with a sorcerer using powers via dragon blood, or any other heritage. You just don't make any sense.

I'm quite aware of how mechanics influence play, that's why I'm saying it's random. It's also why I'm saying it's bad. The draconic abilities present in the 5e playtest are a boost to your strength score, a boost to your AC, and a "special attack", all given "dragony" names to make the "theme". Strip away the word "dragon" everything and suddenly the abilities lose literally all their context, and become nonsensical. If you strip away "god" or "divine" from the cleric, his spell list and abilities still informs his niche, as his identity as a class is defined by playstyle and abilities, not random pluses that require the fluff to maintain context.

That's just bad design. It's not interesting, it's not unique, and it's not even good writing.

Also your last lines are a pretty basic false equivalence. So I'm not going to bother answering outside of "X ≠ Y".

[Madfellow]

Alright, since arguing with you is clearly getting nobody anywhere, Zeful,

what do you want from the sorcerer?

[Gwendol]

The changes made to the sorcerer make perfect sense: the more they tap their innate magical powers the more the source of that power becomes evident. What I miss is some threshold over which the sorcerer may lose control completely and may be consumed by this raw power. Kind of a last ditch effort, if you will.

[Zeful]

Alright, since arguing with you is clearly getting nobody anywhere, Zeful,

what do you want from the sorcerer?


Remember the psion's differing bonus spells he got from discipline? Same thing only that select sorcerer spells change based on how his power manifested in his youth; you do remember that bit of fluff from the sorcerer class entry right?

That. I want a caster that is different from the Wizard, but has the same kind of decision making at character creation that shapes it's play style and capabilities. I want a class that incites the imagination so a player can define what it means to him. I want something that doesn't take me two hours to port into a setting because I have to rewrite it's entire background. And I want to see something new.

[Gwendol]

That. I want a caster that is different from the Wizard, but has the same kind of decision making at character creation that shapes it's play style and capabilities. I want a class that incites the imagination so a player can define what it means to him. I want something that doesn't take me two hours to port into a setting because I have to rewrite it's entire background. And I want to see something new.

So, domain spells? How is that new?

[navar100]

What I want you to do is scroll up like 6 posts. I've gone over this, but since you seem to have skipped it: I don't like the bloodline concept period, because this draconic sorcerer, like every draconic sorcerer, is simply a bunch of random bonuses tied together with a vauge theme that I find dumb and limiting as hell. I've looked over this concept for nearly ten years, and every time it's a bunch of random pluses tied together with one of the following words: draconic, angelic, demonic, elemental, undead, arcane.

No one has ever done anything meaningful with the concept to change my mind about heritage's place in the game as a feat-tree.

You responded to me you had a problem with the implementation but not the idea. Now you are saying you hate the idea.

You don't like it, fine. I have my own pet peeves of implementations and ideas that would have me declare "I hate this" no compromise at all. So far they have not been shown, and I hope they never will. I'm still pleased 5E is working on introducing sorcerer bloodlines and hope they will offer more than just dragon. If such an idea is a take your ball and go home deal-breaker, shucks.

[TheOOB]

That. I want a caster that is different from the Wizard, but has the same kind of decision making at character creation that shapes it's play style and capabilities. I want a class that incites the imagination so a player can define what it means to him. I want something that doesn't take me two hours to port into a setting because I have to rewrite it's entire background. And I want to see something new.

You're contradicting yourself.

First, the sorcerer is different from a wizard. A wizard(currently), just has spells, background, and feats to help you shape them. A sorcerer has all that, plus a bloodline.

I'll admit the draconic bloodline gives you a little less wiggle room, but it still gives you unique abilities and has a flavor that is internally consistent with the setting present in D&D. Forgetten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Dragon Lance, heck even Ravenloft could accommodate someone who is of draconic blood and gains some magical powers from it. If your setting can't accommodate a Dragon Sorcerer, maybe D&D isn't the game system for you. If you can't fit a Dragon Blooded Sorcerer in your setting, that's your problem, not the games. And if you can't make an interesting character with that blood line, that is also your problem.

[Madfellow]

Forgetten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Dragon Lance, heck even Ravenloft could accommodate someone who is of draconic blood and gains some magical powers from it. If your setting can't accommodate a Dragon Sorcerer, maybe D&D isn't the game system for you. If you can't fit a Dragon Blooded Sorcerer in your setting, that's your problem, not the games. And if you can't make an interesting character with that blood line, that is also your problem.

This.

OK, WotC came up with something you find restrictive and that happens to not fit with your campaign setting. OK, similar things have been done before with the sorcerer. That makes them iconic, not cliched. There is a difference. You don't want bloodlines in your campaign setting? You don't need them. You don't like the idea of bloodlines in general? Tell that to Wotc in the next questionnaire. Maybe a lot of people agree with you and they'll change it. But most of the people on this thread are happy to see them back and are looking forward to them, and your whining about it is not going to change their minds. So can you give it a rest already?

[Zeful]

So, domain spells? How is that new?
Strawman.


You responded to me you had a problem with the implementation but not the idea. Now you are saying you hate the idea.Because writing out "The bloodline concept as espoused by the current implementation of the concept" for the third time is annoying as hell. Forgive me for attempting to be concise with something I had said twice previously, in a response to a general statement I have, in my entire participation in this thread, have expressed disapproval for.


You're contradicting yourself.Am I? I see it as having to deal with several people asking innane questions and then forgetting the answers I give them.


First, the sorcerer is different from a wizard.Which is a good start, you'll notice I have made no mention of that in any of my complaints.

A wizard(currently), just has spells, background, and feats to help you shape them. A sorcerer has all that, plus a bloodline.A bloodline that does not fit in with any of what I said, if you've been paying attention.

[Knaight]

So, domain spells? How is that new?

The comparison was to the Psion, which involves a distinct spell list, a distinct non-vancian casting style, and mandatory specialization within a broad field that informs character capabilities in a large way. This is somewhat more than just domain spells.

[TheOOB]

Strawman.

Quoting the name of a logical fallacy without going into details doesn't make you sound smart, and defiantly doesn't win you an argument, it makes you sounds like a jerk. You keep saying how people are ignoring what you are saying, but you are failing to make a coherent argument. About the only thing you have made clear is that you really don't like characters having draconic themed abilities. That's definatly a big no for you.

Of course now you'll reply that you have no problems with draconic themed abilities, thus muddling up your arguments even further.

[AgentPaper]

He doesn't have anything against bloodlines for sorcerers, he just hates every single implementation of bloodlines for sorcerers, and doesn't have any better ideas.

So, yes, he doesn't like bloodlines for sorcerers.


Anyways, I remember some discussion earlier on how Expertise Dice (for the fighter) should regenerate at the end of the fighter's turn, instead of the beginning. Everyone seemed to have come to a consensus, but on thinking about it further, I have an opposing argument to bring forward:

Specifically, the crux of the argument seems to be that if you decide to save your dice to parry, there's a chance you don't get hit by any attacks, and thus waste your dice.

However, I would say that while having combat dice regen at the end of your turn does increase the power of Parry, it also reduces the amount of decision-making you have when using the dice. If combat dice regen at the end of your turn, and you get hit by a monster, using those dice to reduce the damage you take will be the correct choice 99% of the time, because your hit points are much more valuable than the hit dice of enemies, and even if you do save your dice, there's a decent chance that you won't even hit with your attack, thus wasting your combat dice.

On the other hand, if combat dice regen at the start of your round, you have a much tougher decision to make. Do you spend your dice to deal extra damage and maybe kill the monster faster, or do you save them to potentially reduce the amount of damage you take? In this case, the current situation you're in has a huge effect on your decision-making process. If you're low on life, and surrounded by monsters, then you absolutely want to save your dice to parry and quite likely save your life. On the other hand, if you're facing a single monster, and it's likely to attack someone else, then you definitely want to use your dice for damage, to hopefully kill the monster and save your friend from getting hit.

These are fairly clear-cut situations, but it can also be much more complicated. For example, say you're surrounded by 5 orcs, but there's also 3 more orcs closing in on your friend. Do you use your dice to deal more damage, and hopefully come to your friend's rescue, or do you fight defensively, and hope that your friend can handle himself? Or maybe you have other abilities to use, such as Shift and Jab, and instead you decide that you want to shift, move to your friend, and jab at one of the orcs, leaving one of your dice open to parry any incoming attacks.

All of this adds immensely to the depth of strategy for Expertise Dice, with parry. The only reason I could see for having combat dice regen at the end of your turn would be to make parry or similar out-of-turn options more powerful, but parry already seems like a fairly powerful ability, so making it even more of a no-brainer doesn't sound like a good idea.

[MukkTB]

Aragon is a pathfinder switch hitter. He may have traded his spellcasting out for some other class feature or he may be in an e6 world where ranger spellcasting never manifests results that couldn't appear to be fairly mundane in nature. He also traded his pet class feature away.

[Zeful]

Quoting the name of a logical fallacy without going into details doesn't make you sound smart, and defiantly doesn't win you an argument, it makes you sounds like a jerk. You keep saying how people are ignoring what you are saying, but you are failing to make a coherent argument. About the only thing you have made clear is that you really don't like characters having draconic themed abilities. That's definatly a big no for you.

Of course now you'll reply that you have no problems with draconic themed abilities, thus muddling up your arguments even further.

I've been infracted by the mods for doing so. I don't have the option to elaborate without getting banned. If he can't figure out why he's getting that response, which has now been posted by Knaight, then there's no point responding to him further at all.

But fine you want me to be clear and unambiguous about my position:

Bloodline abilities, as implemented by ****ing everyone writing a sorcerer fix, have universally been focused around adding marginal, useless bonuses that fail to differentiate the class outside of shoestring justification attching it to a theme. Thus they all fail to add any meaningful weight to any decision in choosing a bloodline comparable to Psionic disciplines and Wizard schools. This design paradigm, with it's remarkable lack of impact towards any core feature of the sorcerer can, and in my opinion, should be removed and replaced with something fitting the design direction of Psionic disciplines and Wizard Schools, which restrict and inform playstyle and add choice in a meaningful way.

Further, the addition of racial traits to a class, rather than a line of feats or advanced classes creates one of two detrimental situations: first being the heavy handed direction of the inherent fluff to an unprecedented degree, and is unsupported by the fluff of every other class. Choosing to ignore this by saying that "fluff can be changed" is equivalent to saying "the game isn't broken, the game master can fix it", and thus is a fallacious argument and must be discarded. The second being the arbitrary restriction of the associated racial traits, making adding heritage options for other classes unlikely, or making the racial options presented by the class seem nonsensical in the face of heritage options for other classes in the form of feats or advanced classes.

Moving on, it is only the bloodline abilities that are part of the set "as implemented by ****ing everyone writing a sorcerer fix", that are in contention, as stated above they do not fit with the existing design of other classes, either mechanically or with regards to fluff, and attributing arguments toward that set to the set of "bloodline abilities" is failing to grasp the scale of the argument as the general set of "bloodline abilities" are not, nor ever have been, in contention.

There, is that clear enough for you?

[AgentPaper]

There, is that clear enough for you?

Actually, yes. I think we can have a meaningful discussion now. Speaking of which:


Bloodline abilities, as implemented by ****ing everyone writing a sorcerer fix, have universally been focused around adding marginal, useless bonuses that fail to differentiate the class outside of shoestring justification attching it to a theme. Thus they all fail to add any meaningful weight to any decision in choosing a bloodline comparable to Psionic disciplines and Wizard schools. This design paradigm, with it's remarkable lack of impact towards any core feature of the sorcerer can, and in my opinion, should be removed and replaced with something fitting the design direction of Psionic disciplines and Wizard Schools, which restrict and inform playstyle and add choice in a meaningful way.

If the bonuses are marginal and useless, then the solution is to simply make them more powerful and significant. This is a matter of balance, not an inherent issue with the design of the class or the features.

I would also say that it's hard to say, as of yet, whether choosing between each bloodline will have "meaningful weight", simply because we only have one option to look at so far. However, even with just the one, it looks fairly likely that the bloodlines will be fairly important to how the sorcerer plays. Specifically, I would point out how the Hit Dice and armor and weapon proficiencies are listed under the Draconic Heritage, which implies that other heritages will have completely different amounts of HP and use different weapons. The Draconic Sorcerer has good HP, can use heavy armor (even while casting), and can wield martial melee weapons, but another Sorcerer might have d4 hit dice and no proficiencies to speak of, but instead get other bonuses like extra spells, extra willpower, etc. If this is the case, I would say that that is in fact a very weighty decision to make.


Further, the addition of racial traits to a class, rather than a line of feats or advanced classes creates one of two detrimental situations: first being the heavy handed direction of the inherent fluff to an unprecedented degree, and is unsupported by the fluff of every other class. Choosing to ignore this by saying that "fluff can be changed" is equivalent to saying "the game isn't broken, the game master can fix it", and thus is a fallacious argument and must be discarded. The second being the arbitrary restriction of the associated racial traits, making adding heritage options for other classes unlikely, or making the racial options presented by the class seem nonsensical in the face of heritage options for other classes in the form of feats or advanced classes.

As we've said before, Bloodlines don't make any more assumptions of your setting that most of the other classes (with fighters and rogues being the obvious exceptions). In addition, if you're making your own setting that doesn't line up with the standard DnD fare, then you're going to need to make and alter a LOT of fluff, depending on how much different your campaign is, so changing a few bits of fluff to make sorcerers fit better isn't a big deal, and likely is something you'll have to do for many of the races, classes, spells, abilities, items, monsters, and so on.

As to arbitrary restrictions on other types of racial heritage, I call baloney. The sorcerer as a class represents a certain type of bloodline heritage, which grants extremely powerful abilities such as spellcasting. It's not a race, because you can have dragon-blooded humans, or halflings, or elves, or kobolds, or whatever else you wish.

If you want to add in your own heritage options, the sorcerer doesn't do anything to prevent that. Just because the bloodline heritage that creates a sorcerer is so powerful, doesn't meant that all heritage feats/backgrounds/etc have to be just as powerful. This is magic we're talking about, after all, and genetics isn't exactly a straightforwards science, either, so you could easily have a dragon-blooded sorcerer and also have another character, say a fighter, who has some dragon blood in him as well, and takes feats to represent those.

It's already explicitly stated that draconic heritage doesn't always result in a sorcerer, for example a sorcerer character doesn't necessarily have sorcerer parents, so it's not hard to imagine that there might be degrees in how much the dragon heritage manifests in different people, or what traits specifically are manifested.


Moving on, it is only the bloodline abilities that are part of the set "as implemented by ****ing everyone writing a sorcerer fix", that are in contention, as stated above they do not fit with the existing design of other classes, either mechanically or with regards to fluff, and attributing arguments toward that set to the set of "bloodline abilities" is failing to grasp the scale of the argument as the general set of "bloodline abilities" are not, nor ever have been, in contention.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you saying that the sorcerer is too different from the other classes? Well, of course it's different, that's the whole point of different classes. The wizard is also very different from the fighter, which is very different from the warlock, which is different from the cleric, and so on. Or do you mean that the sorcerer is different in that he is born into his abilities, rather than obtaining them at some later date? Well, this is true, but it has always been true of the sorcerer, even when the specific source of those born-in talents weren't as explicitly stated, so I don't know why you think this is a problem of 5E style sorcerers.

[TheOOB]

I would made an in depth point by point post, but AgentPaper said most of what I was going to say just as good if not better than I could have said it.

I want to reiterate how significant the powers of the presented bloodline are. I am honestly a little worried that if bloodlines are all as powerful as the draconic bloodline, than bloodline might overshadow the sorcerers spell casting abilities. Their activated powers are every bit as good as spells, and the passive benefits turn them into a really good melee warrior. It's a very significant part of a character.

I also want to reiterate that fighter and rogue are pretty much the only classes whose abilities are setting independent, and even then they assume a high fantasy setting at that. D&D has shapeshifting tree huggers and martial artists who can heal their wounds and kill someone with a strike. Dragon Sorcerers are not a stretch.

As far as racial elements in a class. You have to understand that in this case, game mechanics are king. The mechanics of a game always take priority over fluff, and this is especially true for D&D, which is essentially a small group war game.(not saying you have to play it as a war game, but it's a chainmail spin off whether anyone likes it or not). The single most influential part of your characters mechanics is your class, your race and feats are very minor compared to your class. So if you want a character with a strong draconic magic theme to them that is represented by mechanics, it needs to be a class. That's your only option. Making a series of draconic magic feats will just feel like a feat tax for people who want them, and ignored by everyone else, and balancing a draconic magic race will be a nightmare. If a dragon sorcerer is going to exist, it has to be a class.

[lesser_minion]

WotC fluff has always been awful. No big deal.

Incorrect. WotC are attempting to write and publish a roleplaying game. They have just as great a responsibility to provide competent fluff, irrespective of whether or not they're likely to pull it off.

Forcing an overused trope down people's throats when there are alternatives is a betrayal of those responsibilities. And there are alternatives to making the sorcerer pick a bloodline. Among them:

Pick three 'gifts' from a list. Each grants you a minor bonus power. This is no better crunch-wise, but it covers everything that the bloodlines do, without forcing them down our throats.
Pick ten 'gifts' from a list, which determine which spells and other powers you receive. Each gift offers at least one spell or power that isn't otherwise available. Fluff as desired.
Don't give the sorcerers anything like this, and instead differentiate them by making their magic genuinely and radically different -- a sorcerer could make up spells on the fly, for example.

[TheOOB]

Incorrect. WotC are attempting to write and publish a roleplaying game. They have just as great a responsibility to provide competent fluff, irrespective of whether or not they're likely to pull it off.

Forcing an overused trope down people's throats when there are alternatives is a betrayal of those responsibilities. And there are alternatives to making the sorcerer pick a bloodline. Among them:

Pick three 'gifts' from a list. Each grants you a minor bonus power. This is no better crunch-wise, but it covers everything that the bloodlines do, without forcing them down our throats.
Pick ten 'gifts' from a list, which determine which spells and other powers you receive. Each gift offers at least one spell or power that isn't otherwise available. Fluff as desired.
Don't give the sorcerers anything like this, and instead differentiate them by making their magic genuinely and radically different -- a sorcerer could make up spells on the fly, for example.


Honestly, the gift idea can be problematic, and here is why.

People who played a lot of D&D 3/3.5 know that D&D can be very unbalanced. Certain choices a character can make can make one character vastly more powerful than another character, and the game was worse off for it.

Here's the thing, the more different abilities you give a player to choose from, the more unbalancing it is. In other words, the more choices a player has, the exponentially more difficulty balancing all those possible choice together are.

This is why most game systems either tend to create boring, generic characters, or tend to be wildly unbalanced.

Using a class based system like D&D gives the designers an advantage though. Classes are basically pre-selected ability sets that have been carefully balanced to work together. You are able to give a player more powerful and more interesting abilities if you know what other abilities they will have.

Creating a build your own class set up, on the other hand, makes the balance problem pop up again.

Another thing you have to remember are casual players. As a rule, casual players don't want to make tough choices. As it is essential the the game is accessible to casual players, they need to make options for them. Sorcerer is supposed to be more simple to play than the wizard. Other than the blood line choice, a sorcerer only gains 1 or 2 more spells every level, otherwise their class is laid out for them. This is a good thing, the game needs casual player classes. Making a simple to build and play class overly complex by making a player build their own class will scare away casual players.

Besides, I'm not buying WotC products to make my own game :) I'm already working on my own system, I don't need to make classes for D&D on top of it.

I still don't get how sorcerer's are ruining roleplay or forcing an overused trope down peoples throats. Fighters are an overused trope, I've seen tons of characters run up to monsters and kill them with swords, and people don't have a problem with the class existing or roleplaying good fighters. Why can't someone role play a good sorcerer, whatever bloodline they are?

[Gwendol]

The comparison was to the Psion, which involves a distinct spell list, a distinct non-vancian casting style, and mandatory specialization within a broad field that informs character capabilities in a large way. This is somewhat more than just domain spells.

Yes, but not so much in Zeful's own words. And besides, why would he want the sorcerer to be like the psion; that's not exactly unique either. It looks to me like heritage can play a big role in how the sorcerer takes shape, impacting a number of things including spells. And they get a more spontaneous spellcasting system.

His arguments for not liking the bloodlines are pretty much that; he doesn't like them and he's being quite insulting about those who address his (evolving) reasons.

[Yora]

Then why are you talking about it?!

I don't like bloodlines. I have no good reason than that I want sorcerers to be something else. So what, that's not worth debating for four pages.

[Stubbazubba]

The problem is, the way 3e did it is that they couldn't measure the power level of TWF. Every time they made an ability that added damage, they had to worry about the fact that it could be doubled with TWF, which oftentimes meant an ability was either overpowered with TWF, and balanced without it, or balanced with TWF, and a weak without it. That's not a good way to design things.

I don't think that's really a problem. Every single ability in the game can be Blessed or augmented by a variety of spells already; they should be able to account for TWF the same way they account for those. It costs a Feat, it should be a distinct bump in power. If it was a free option like fighting defensively or charging, then being situational is perfect. But this costs character creation resources and so it really needs to advance your power in visible ways, like learning a new spell or increasing Skills or BAB, etc., etc.

[Togath]

I'm sorry about having misses this week's skype playtest, it took longer to get my computer 100% funtioning then i thought it would, and I only today managed to fix it so it can open the playtest documents again

[Gwendol]

Then why are you talking about it?!

I don't like bloodlines. I have no good reason than that I want sorcerers to be something else. So what, that's not worth debating for four pages.

Last I checked, I wasn't the only one debating, nor have I debated you. In fact this debate hasn't been about your opinion of sorcerer bloodlines at all.

[Gwendol]

It costs a Feat, it should be a distinct bump in power.

Hear, hear. The half damage part of TWF is too much of a penalty, likewise the +1 AC is a little light.

[JoeMac307]

Hear, hear. The half damage part of TWF is too much of a penalty, likewise the +1 AC is a little light.

I also find it a bit limiting that both weapons have to be finesse weapons to use TWF. Unless you use a Quarterstaff (can you use both ends of the Quarterstaff to attack if you have TWF?), there are no d8 weapons. (I don't think you can use a katana for TWF, since that is two-handed, but only has one dangerous end, unlike the Quarterstaff). At a cost of 2 sp and 1d8 damage, every dual wielder will be running around with a Quarterstaff.

On the other hand, Sniper, the Level 3 Feat in the Archer Speciality, seems pretty cool. Giving up an action to gain advantage and ignore cover can be worthwhile, I think, especially if you can sneak attack.

[Alejandro]

I apologize if I am asking something that has already been discussed, but: If I am reading the packet correctly, no PC actually picks and chooses what feats they want. You choose a specialty, and after you do so, your feats have already been picked for you and you simply gain them as you level. Right?

[Knaight]

I apologize if I am asking something that has already been discussed, but: If I am reading the packet correctly, no PC actually picks and chooses what feats they want. You choose a specialty, and after you do so, your feats have already been picked for you and you simply gain them as you level. Right?

For now, yes, but this is theoretically a stopgap measure to be replaced by actual feats eventually. I'm guessing that the idea is to get the classes fully functional prior to introducing feats.

[Madfellow]

Based on what they've been saying in press releases and such, backgrounds and specialties will be part of the finished product, but the rules will include an option to instead pick and choose skills, feats, and traits for yourself. The idea is that 3.5 fans and character optimizers will have maximum customization capacity, while fans of other editions and casual players will have simpler character creation options.

[huttj509]

I also find it a bit limiting that both weapons have to be finesse weapons to use TWF. Unless you use a Quarterstaff (can you use both ends of the Quarterstaff to attack if you have TWF?), there are no d8 weapons. (I don't think you can use a katana for TWF, since that is two-handed, but only has one dangerous end, unlike the Quarterstaff). At a cost of 2 sp and 1d8 damage, every dual wielder will be running around with a Quarterstaff.

On the other hand, Sniper, the Level 3 Feat in the Archer Speciality, seems pretty cool. Giving up an action to gain advantage and ignore cover can be worthwhile, I think, especially if you can sneak attack.

Racial modifiers to weapon damage.

For example, a halfling TWF could use short swords for 1d8 each.

[Alejandro]

OK, thanks. That sounds good. All I had to go on was the playtest packet.

[ShriekingDrake]

I decided to play a halfling rogue in the our play test. I found myself completely outclassed by the other party members. I'm just wondering if others also think the rogue might be a bit under balanced.

[Gwendol]

Could you give a little more info on your character?

[huttj509]

I decided to play a halfling rogue in the our play test. I found myself completely outclassed by the other party members. I'm just wondering if others also think the rogue might be a bit under balanced.

I find that a little odd, as my rogue (as previously stated) tore @#$% apart.

How many other meleers did you have? Did you use stealth to get advantage (and thus SA)? Did you use the array, or roll for stats? Did you realize that for any skill check you cannot roll below a 10 (At GenCon I was apparently the first person all weekend to USE Take 10 at that GM's table for the playtest)?

[Draz74]

New Penny Arcade podcast is up.

Not much in the way of new mechanical information. The biggest thing was probably just a reaffirmation that WotC is trying to stay away from Encounter-based resources. Which isn't a good sign for my personal enthusiasm for 5e; I like Tome of Battle-style resource management.

But what actually struck me about the podcast was a non-mechanical element that makes me like 5e MUCH MUCH more than 4e: the frank admission that there's nothing wrong with you if a previous edition of D&D already works perfectly for you. You're not "dooin it rawng!" You're free to keep playing that edition rather than buying into 5e, and some of you will actually do so!

After 4e-previews' bashing of 3e and everyone who loved it, this approach is EXTREMELY REFRESHING. Up until now, while 5e previews have refrained from insulting previous editions, they've also made somewhat ridiculous claims about how 5e will be the best edition for any player, any playstyle. Now Mearls is putting a more realistic vision forward. I'm not sure what my opinion of Mearls as a game designer is, but he just won major points in my book as a marketer and as a human being.

[Ziegander]

The biggest thing was probably just a reaffirmation that WotC is trying to stay away from Encounter-based resources. Which isn't a good sign for my personal enthusiasm for 5e; I like Tome of Battle-style resource management.

But the bulk of a Warlock's power is Encounter-based. So, while they may be trying to stay away from it with "the big four," they've already given us a class that will, supposedly, be as well supported as all of the other classes which plays per-Encounter (or, rather, per short rest which is equivalent).

[Zombimode]

But the bulk of a Warlock's power is Encounter-based. So, while they may be trying to stay away from it with "the big four," they've already given us a class that will, supposedly, be as well supported as all of the other classes which plays per-Encounter (or, rather, per short rest which is equivalent).

I think thats just the specific "keep on going" shtick of Warlocks they had in 3e.

[AgentPaper]

After 4e-previews' bashing of 3e and everyone who loved it, this approach is EXTREMELY REFRESHING. Up until now, while 5e previews have refrained from insulting previous editions, they've also made somewhat ridiculous claims about how 5e will be the best edition for any player, any playstyle. Now Mearls is putting a more realistic vision forward. I'm not sure what my opinion of Mearls as a game designer is, but he just won major points in my book as a marketer and as a human being.

They're not saying that 5E will be the best edition for any player, they're saying that making it the best edition for any player is the primary goal of the system. Of course, it's impossible to please absolutely everyone, but they're doing their damndest to make it a great system for as many people as possible. That sounds like a laudable goal to me, and I doubt even they think they'll be able to pull it off 100%.

[Draz74]

They're not saying that 5E will be the best edition for any player, they're saying that making it the best edition for any player is the primary goal of the system. Of course, it's impossible to please absolutely everyone, but they're doing their damndest to make it a great system for as many people as possible. That sounds like a laudable goal to me, and I doubt even they think they'll be able to pull it off 100%.

Absolutely. I just think their chances of succeeding are a little higher now that they've admitted that they won't be able to pull it off 100%.

[TheOOB]

It costs a Feat, it should be a distinct bump in power.

It gives you versatility, and versatility is power. That said, I think the feat is a little underpowered. I like what it does, but I think a little something extra needs to be folded in. If it was me, I'd fold Two-Weapon defense into Two-Weapon Fighting. That way, in addition to the increased options, it does give you a statistical benefit.

[AgentPaper]

What about this:

Two-Weapon Fighting
Whenever you attack, if you have a finesse weapon in your off-hand, you may make a off-hand attack using that weapon against any target within reach, in addition to your normal attack. Do not apply any bonus damage or effects to that attack other than those granted by the weapon itself.

So, basically, you get a "free" attack that deals less damage, but your main attack remains unaffected. Since it has to be a finesse weapon, you'll only be able to deal an extra 1d6 damage (quarterstaff should be made to deal 1d6 damage for the off-hand portion). Assuming a 75% chance to hit, that's on average an extra 2.625 damage per turn. It also means you can wield a strength weapon in your main hand and a finesse in your off hand, but if your dex is low then you're less likely to hit with the off-hand attack.

From there, I could definitely see adding on more feats to improve the off-hand swing's power, such as allowing strength weapons, allowing ability modifiers, and so on.

I'm undecided on whether it should allow sneak attack or expertise dice to be added to the damage. I suppose it basically comes down to how powerful and plentiful other feats are. If nothing else, it could probably be included in a later feat.

Edit: Some example further feats:

Ambidexterity
Requires: Two-Weapon Fighting, 13 dexterity
You may wield any one-handed weapon in your off-hand. Additionally, you may apply your strength or dexterity score to off-hand attacks, as appropriate.

Two-Weapon Mastery
Requires: Ambidexterity, 15 dexterity
Your off-hand attack is treated as a normal attack for all purposes, such as adding bonuses and allowing the use of class features such as Sneak Attack and Combat Expertise bonus damage.

Twin Strike:
Requires: Two-Weapon Mastery, 17 dexterity
If you hit a target with both attacks, treat both hits as critical strikes.
(If they buff criticals a lot, probably change it to make just your main-hand attack a crit)

[Lanaya]

It gives you versatility, and versatility is power. That said, I think the feat is a little underpowered. I like what it does, but I think a little something extra needs to be folded in. If it was me, I'd fold Two-Weapon defense into Two-Weapon Fighting. That way, in addition to the increased options, it does give you a statistical benefit.

I agree with your general idea here, but sometimes versatility just isn't enough. Yeah, it's nice that you still have the option use one weapon to hit things while admiring your reflection in the other, but... Well, let's look at the three main fighting styles. Two-handed weapons deal more damage, sword and board gives more AC, two-weapon fighting deals less damage, thanks to everything rounding down, costs twice as much money, AND requires a feat to use. It's not even better at mook-killing, since even the most basic of mooks have enough health that you'll need both attacks to kill them anyway. If the best thing you can say about TWF is that a character who revolves around that fighting style doesn't actually have to use it and can just pretend to be a standard sword and board warrior, it needs some serious reworking.

[Now]

Can anyone tell me when the playtest packet was first released? That is, when the playtest began?

[Knaight]

I agree with your general idea here, but sometimes versatility just isn't enough. Yeah, it's nice that you still have the option use one weapon to hit things while admiring your reflection in the other, but... Well, let's look at the three main fighting styles. Two-handed weapons deal more damage, sword and board gives more AC, two-weapon fighting deals less damage, thanks to everything rounding down, costs twice as much money, AND requires a feat to use. It's not even better at mook-killing, since even the most basic of mooks have enough health that you'll need both attacks to kill them anyway. If the best thing you can say about TWF is that a character who revolves around that fighting style doesn't actually have to use it and can just pretend to be a standard sword and board warrior, it needs some serious reworking.
Given that you can hold two weapons and just attack with one of them, the damage loss is relatively minor. That said, with the feat cost it should be more powerful than it is, though being less powerful against single opponents and better against groups is fine in concept.

[DrBurr]

The problem with Two-Weapon Fighting and the Rapid Shot feats in the packet are really based on the new design philosophy of feats. If you listened to some of the podcasts and recordings from GenCon you would have heard that the idea of Combat feats in Next is not to make you stronger but to give you more options in Battle. (I believe it was the Making of the Core Panel)

The reason for this is to make spending feats on Interaction or Exploration worthwhile because we all know from a meta game perspective learning Elven will not be as useful to you then an extra +2 to attacks every turn. This boils down that theres no way to keep them balanced and please at the same time. (At least not from what I can see) You could make the second attack from TWF be the penalized attack but then theres no reason not to use the feature.

[Roguenewb]

See, that's the kind of philosophy I hate. Because with that kind of philosophy, you have the standard combat options available to anyone, and then beyond those, there is this whole nebula of "premium" combat options that you can't even begin to try without a feat =(

I much preferred the 3.5 methodology of, here are a bunch of combat options, anyone can try them. But, they're hard to succeed at. If you succeed, good work. If you have the feat, woosh, +4 on the check and no AoO. This tended to make it significantly easier. Now, you're *expected* to pull it off as opposed to it being a lucky shot.

I don't like the premium option mentality. I have absolutely *no* training with a sword. Yet, in 3.5 I can try to disarm someone. My chances aren't great, and when I botch it, they have a chance to take my sword. In 5e, I can remember seeing Bob disarm, and I can't even *try* what Bob did. It's like there is an invisibile reality wall saying "NO DISARMING WITHOUT A FEAT". It breaks immersion and hurts versatility.

[AgentPaper]

I also have some reservations for the "feats provide options, not increase power" idea. I think in the end, you're going to end up with most of the feats being rather worthless, to the point that getting a feat just doesn't feel very cool anymore.

What I'd rather see, is for them to accept that Feats are, in general, combat-focused. Instead of trying to pull down combat feats so non-combat feats can have a chance, they should either buff non-combat feats to be powerful enough that they're competitive, or remove non-combat feats completely and add those effects in some other way.

[Knaight]

What I'd rather see, is for them to accept that Feats are, in general, combat-focused. Instead of trying to pull down combat feats so non-combat feats can have a chance, they should either buff non-combat feats to be powerful enough that they're competitive, or remove non-combat feats completely and add those effects in some other way.
Alternately, you could get a combat feat every 2 levels, and a non-combat feat every level you don't get a combat feat. That way, they don't directly compete with each other.

[DrBurr]

The problem with buffing Noncombat feats is even if you say gain 3 languages instead of 1 you still aren't as likely to use that feature then you feel like an idiot for not grabbing that +2. Unless Social and Exploration feats become incredibly powerful like Advantage in all social encounters or something like that.

Really I like the idea of feats being a path for more options especially because I don't like the idea of now your level 3 pick a +1 to Accuracy or a +1 to damage that most combat feats result in. But the current method leads much to be desired. Of course I could be an idiot and miss interpreting their attentions so take my relying of this philosophy with a grain of salt ;P

[AgentPaper]

The problem with buffing Noncombat feats is even if you say gain 3 languages instead of 1 you still aren't as likely to use that feature then you feel like an idiot for not grabbing that +2. Unless Social and Exploration feats become incredibly powerful like Advantage in all social encounters or something like that.

Really I like the idea of feats being a path for more options especially because I don't like the idea of now your level 3 pick a +1 to Accuracy or a +1 to damage that most combat feats result in. But the current method leads much to be desired. Of course I could be an idiot and miss interpreting their attentions so take my relying of this philosophy with a grain of salt ;P

Why couldn't non-combat feats be that powerful? Is it really going to break the game if you allow a player to have advantage in social situations? Some other ideas:

Master of Language
Requirement: 15 intelligence
You can read, write, and speak all common languages fluently. You can also read and write most uncommon languages, and have at least a rough understanding of many rare and dead languages. You gain advantage on any checks related to understanding or deciphering written or spoken text.

Blacksmith
Requirement: 15 strength
You can create weapons, armor, and other metal items. To do so, you must use materials equal to 20% of the normal cost of the item, and spend a day creating that item. You can also craft masterwork weapons and armor using rare materials worth ten times the item's normal value, and by spending a week crafting that item. Masterwork weapons have their weapon dice size increased by 1 (d6 to d8, d8 to d10, etc). Masterwork armor weighs half as much, and grants and additional 1 AC.

Enchanter
Requirement: 17 intelligence
You can enchant weapons and armor with magical properties. To do so, you must obtain the item you wish to enchant, as well as rare resources equal to the value of the enchantment, and spend a week creating and enchanting that item. Your DM may also require that you gather rare, specific materials based on the item you wish to create, especially for more powerful items.


Edit: Also, feats should never be "+X damage with your attacks." Or at least, those types of feats should be rare and (slightly) less powerful than more complex and interesting feats.

[Ziegander]

remove non-combat feats completely and add those effects in some other way.

I've been thinking about working on some kind of "utility" system like this myself recently. Every character would get an array of "utilities," perhaps at different rates, perhaps not, and every class would have their own list of utilities which are always non-combat actions.

Maybe each class could even have its own unique mechanics for resolving utilities (Clerics pray for divine miracles, Wizards cast arduous rituals, Rogues just use specialized skill checks, Fighters appropriate battlefield insight for "civilian" use, etc).

The concept might be a little too "4e-esque" to some people, but I thought 4e's introduction of utilities was interesting, although, too often, 4e's utilities were just moar combat boost! effects. For Next, I would want and expect utilities to only ever be useful outside of combat.

[MukkTB]

Feats are valuable. If combat feats don't add any mechanical bonus over someone who doesn't have them then I wont touch them.

[Nu]

I've been thinking about working on some kind of "utility" system like this myself recently. Every character would get an array of "utilities," perhaps at different rates, perhaps not, and every class would have their own list of utilities which are always non-combat actions.

Maybe each class could even have its own unique mechanics for resolving utilities (Clerics pray for divine miracles, Wizards cast arduous rituals, Rogues just use specialized skill checks, Fighters appropriate battlefield insight for "civilian" use, etc).

The concept might be a little too "4e-esque" to some people, but I thought 4e's introduction of utilities was interesting, although, too often, 4e's utilities were just moar combat boost! effects. For Next, I would want and expect utilities to only ever be useful outside of combat.

If they do this, they should also make it apply for spells imo. Though I suppose that could irritate a lot of 3rd edition fans, but I would much prefer for combat abilities and utilities be in two different categories myself.

And yes, keep the stuff that's 4E-ish utility that actually is mostly for combat in the combat category. Utility stuff should be focused on skills or other things that might happen out of combat (but could still happen in combat).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

If they do this, they should also make it apply for spells imo. Though I suppose that could irritate a lot of 3rd edition fans, but I would much prefer for combat abilities and utilities be in two different categories myself.

And yes, keep the stuff that's 4E-ish utility that actually is mostly for combat in the combat category. Utility stuff should be focused on skills or other things that might happen out of combat (but could still happen in combat).

I'd rather they didn't split up combat and utility. Partly because it can be hard to define what's utility--it's not hard to define combat, because anything can have a combat use given creativity and preparation, but most of the time people try to force noncombat stuff by making it take too long or some other arbitrary distinction, and that takes the fun out of using noncombat stuff in combat. Partly because having them both in the same slots means you can build an entirely-utility character just as much as an entirely-combat character, and that's the kind of caster that tends to get neglected. Partly because I honestly don't trust WotC to do utility magic well; look at how 4e rituals turned out. And partly because the main reason to use Vancian magic at all is to encourage preparation and planning, and deciding how to divvy up combat and utility slots is part of that.

[Ziegander]

And yet I'm not talking about "utility magic." I'm talking about a system of non-combat effects for characters regardless of class. Okay, sure, I'm all for allowing utilities to be used in combat, and, with creativity, generate a positive, mechanical effect on the encounter. BUT, utilities shouldn't be stuff like, "ENCOUNTER POWER: you move without provoking opportunity attacks this turn." 4e was filled with "utilities" like that, which were strictly combat-only effects.

I'm not selling it as a 100% good idea, I just think that it's worth exploring the design space of. And, yes, in doing so, spells without direct attack/defense applications would be shunted over to "miracle/ritual" design space, and that's not necessarily so bad. So long as every character has access to out-of-combat utility with equal effectiveness (even if not always equal versatility).

Your concept of a character that is strictly utility only works for certain classes. For example, it flies in the face of the Fighter class. Clearly, by name alone, the Fighter is meant to kick butt in combat. Having the option to be a utility-only Fighter makes absolutely no sense. Having the option to be a utility-only Rogue? Sure. A utility-only Wizard? Yeah, why not? As long as it's always an option, and as long as choosing to focus on utilities takes something away from a character's combat effectiveness, then there isn't really a problem.

And this brings me to the "three pillars design" that Mearls and company keep touting, but ultimately, I predict, will fail horribly to deliver. If each of the three pillars (Combat, Social, Exploration) were given equal weight with regards to design as well as importance to character and inter-party balance, then sacrificing combat effectiveness for utility in one of the other areas would be acceptable. However, nothing we have seen thus far indicates that the Social and Exploration pillars hold any significance to player characters whatsoever. Which is sad, especially when you consider that the Rogue was originally imagined as, and continues to be designed as if it were, the "out-of-combat guy." We have the Rogue set up to be the skills master, except, just like in 3.5 and 4e, skills don't matter. Maybe they matter a little bit more than in 3.5 or 4e, or maybe they matter even less it's really hard to tell so far. But in the first playtest, because of this, the Rogue was the weakest class. In the second playtest, we didn't get an increased importance to the non-combat "pillars" of adventuring, no, we got a Rogue with increased combat power.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

And yet I'm not talking about "utility magic." I'm talking about a system of non-combat effects for characters regardless of class.

[...]

Your concept of a character that is strictly utility only works for certain classes.

I was responding specifically to Nu's suggestion to split spells by combat vs. utility, hence the reference to Vancian magic and 4e rituals, not to your general suggestion of giving everyone utility abilities. I'm fully in favor of spreading the noncombat ability love around to every class, though as I said I doubt WotC will deliver. They did a pretty good job of it in SWSE, but that was a different team at the helm and they didn't learn anything from it for 4e.


And this brings me to the "three pillars design" that Mearls and company keep touting, but ultimately, I predict, will fail horribly to deliver. If each of the three pillars (Combat, Social, Exploration) were given equal weight with regards to design as well as importance to character and inter-party balance, then sacrificing combat effectiveness for utility in one of the other areas would be acceptable. However, nothing we have seen thus far indicates that the Social and Exploration pillars hold any significance to player characters whatsoever. Which is sad, especially when you consider that the Rogue was originally imagined as, and continues to be designed as if it were, the "out-of-combat guy." We have the Rogue set up to be the skills master, except, just like in 3.5 and 4e, skills don't matter. Maybe they matter a little bit more than in 3.5 or 4e, or maybe they matter even less it's really hard to tell so far. But in the first playtest, because of this, the Rogue was the weakest class. In the second playtest, we didn't get an increased importance to the non-combat "pillars" of adventuring, no, we got a Rogue with increased combat power.

I hate to jump on the "SWSE is the direction 4e/5e should have taken" bandwagon, but...yeah, SWSE did a good job with the utility abilities. Skills actually do stuff (hello, Use Computer, Mechanics, Persuasion, Knowledge [Tactics], Pilot, Use the Bleepin' Force...), most of the Noble, Scout, and Scoundrel talents are noncombat-related, you can build a character of any class (except Soldier, really, and even then it has some good noncombat abilities to splash in) as an all-utility character, and the exploration and interaction portions of the game just generally were better mechanically supported.

I liked the suggestion someone made right after the first playtest packet came out, when some people were complaining about themes and backgrounds not doing enough for noncombat situations, that class should give you combat abilities, specialty/theme should give you utility/exploration abilities, and background should give you interaction abilities. On the magic side, you might pick the Wizard or Sorcerer class for your typical warmage blaster spells and features, the Conjurer theme/specialty for transportation (or Illusionist for illusions or Transmuter for terrain shaping and so forth), and the Court Magician (or Hedge Witch or Spell-for-Hire) background for various social abilities and features; on the nonmagic side, your Fighter or Barbarian class might give you tanky front-line combat feats and features while your theme/specialty of Scout gave you exploration and movement abilities (or teamwork stuff from Warlord or wilderness stuff from Ranger or whatever) and your background of Knight (or Mercenary or Samurai) accounted for social stuff.

Instead, we get backgrounds that are just a package of the same dubiously-useful-for-social-stuff skills and specialties that don't even pretend to be noncombat-focused. Not very promising.

[AgentPaper]

I would generally shy away from dividing the game into discreet areas such as combat/utility/social. If you do that too much, you end up playing three different games with very little interaction between them. For example, you might end up playing a character who fights in-combat with swords, but then once they're out of combat their only notable skill is casting illusions and teleporting around.

Not that I have anything wrong with a warrior-mage/gish character, but if you're able to use magic, it makes sense that you should be able to use it in combat applications, while if you're a strong fighter, you should be good at climbing and other physical tasks. If you're a sneaky rogue in combat, but don't take the scout theme, does that mean you're suddenly no good at sneaking around if you're not in combat? What defines in and out of combat at that point?

I don't think that there's an inherent issue with feats or other character options offering both combat and out of combat options. In 3.5, the in-combat options were definitely the right choice, but I think this is simply because the non-combat options that were presented were so weak and worthless.

There's also a lot of room for stuff that toes the line between combat and non-combat. Blacksmithing, for example, and other item-creation feats, are all about stuff you do out of combat, but it can have very big effects on what happens in combat, too. For example, the Master Blacksmith feat I suggested, would allow you to save a lot of gold with normal items, or spend a lot of gold to get superior weapons and armor. These are things you do outside of combat, but they have effects in combat. Another example:

Baleful Gaze
Requirements: 15 charisma
You gain advantage when attempting to intimidate people or monsters. If you successfully intimidate an enemy in combat, that creature become shaken until the end of it's next turn.

This has plenty of out of combat use (intimidating people for fun and profit!), but it also has a distinct in-combat use, making Intimidation a very real and very useful action for you to use in combat. If you separate feats to combat feats and utility feats, which would this be? Where do you draw the line? The player who wants to be a combat powerhouse will simply pick the utility feats that grant them the most options in-combat, while the player who wants to focus on non-combat abilities would arbitrarily be forced to choose some combat feats, rather than being able to choose tons of utility feats that might also have some effect on what they can do in combat.

[TheOOB]

I also have some reservations for the "feats provide options, not increase power" idea. I think in the end, you're going to end up with most of the feats being rather worthless, to the point that getting a feat just doesn't feel very cool anymore.

What I'd rather see, is for them to accept that Feats are, in general, combat-focused. Instead of trying to pull down combat feats so non-combat feats can have a chance, they should either buff non-combat feats to be powerful enough that they're competitive, or remove non-combat feats completely and add those effects in some other way.

The problem with feats power increasing is inevitably players will find a way to combine them to make their characters really powerful, also boring. Anyone who plays Shadowrun 4e will know that having bonuses to your rolls can get out of hand really quick.

[Kurald Galain]

I also have some reservations for the "feats provide options, not increase power" idea. I think in the end, you're going to end up with most of the feats being rather worthless, to the point that getting a feat just doesn't feel very cool anymore.

Sure, but the opposite doesn't work either. 4E went mostly with "feats povide numerical bonuses, not options", and most feats there aren't exciting either. Although a +4 to initiative isn't worthless, it isn't very cool either.

I don't like the notion of splitting between "combat" and "utility" feats or powers, because that implies that the latter don't work in combat and the former don't work outside combat. You end up with two non-compatible subsystems, and that's just weird.

[Yora]

I think the goal of feats should be to emphazise certain aspects of the character and focus on things that everyone can do but are of greater importance for the character.

When I play a campaign from 1st to 6th level, I don't want to have for my 3rd feat before my character becomes what I want it to be. Any action should be possible regardless of feats. A feat should increase the likelyhood and degree of success.

I think that's the biggest problem with pretty much all d20 games, that you have to wait for high levels until your character can actually do what you want him to do. So far, changing this seems to be the main issue that 5th Edition is adressing.
I like the Archery specialization. It doesn't enable you to do anything new. You still shot a single arrow at a single target. But with the feats, you shot more often and have a good chance at incredibly difficult shots.
Or the Lurker specialization, which does not affect your sneak attacks at all. But it significantly decreses the chance that you become unable to exploit it.

Those are great feats! You still can only do the same things you can do without them. But you have really good chance to succeed in situation that would normally be highly unlikely.

Ambusher is possibly the coolest feat I've ever seen! You attack from shadow and make a sneak attack. Yes, any rogue can do that. But most rogues have to wait for the target to walk right next to their hiding spot. An Ambusher can crash through a window or bolt out of a crowd and cross the room to stab the king in the heard while everyone is watching and still reaching for their weapons. That's awesome! And still you just get a single sneak attack like any rogue who sneaked up behind the throne and slit the kings throne from the behind him.

[noparlpf]

And this brings me to the "three pillars design" that Mearls and company keep touting, but ultimately, I predict, will fail horribly to deliver. If each of the three pillars (Combat, Social, Exploration) were given equal weight with regards to design as well as importance to character and inter-party balance, then sacrificing combat effectiveness for utility in one of the other areas would be acceptable. However, nothing we have seen thus far indicates that the Social and Exploration pillars hold any significance to player characters whatsoever. Which is sad, especially when you consider that the Rogue was originally imagined as, and continues to be designed as if it were, the "out-of-combat guy." We have the Rogue set up to be the skills master, except, just like in 3.5 and 4e, skills don't matter. Maybe they matter a little bit more than in 3.5 or 4e, or maybe they matter even less it's really hard to tell so far. But in the first playtest, because of this, the Rogue was the weakest class. In the second playtest, we didn't get an increased importance to the non-combat "pillars" of adventuring, no, we got a Rogue with increased combat power.

Of course, that balance also depends on the DM. I had one DM who would make combat much less of a thing and exploration and social interaction much bigger things. Skills actually happened, frequently. Role-playing happened more. Other DMs just make a series of combat encounters with maybe a trap or two to appease the Rogue, and most of the game is fighting.

[Seerow]

The problem with Two-Weapon Fighting and the Rapid Shot feats in the packet are really based on the new design philosophy of feats. If you listened to some of the podcasts and recordings from GenCon you would have heard that the idea of Combat feats in Next is not to make you stronger but to give you more options in Battle. (I believe it was the Making of the Core Panel)

The reason for this is to make spending feats on Interaction or Exploration worthwhile because we all know from a meta game perspective learning Elven will not be as useful to you then an extra +2 to attacks every turn. This boils down that theres no way to keep them balanced and please at the same time. (At least not from what I can see) You could make the second attack from TWF be the penalized attack but then theres no reason not to use the feature.

Which is why learning elven shouldn't be a feat. So you don't have to balance those against each other.

[JoeMac307]

Which is why learning elven shouldn't be a feat. So you don't have to balance those against each other.

I thought in 3.5e it only costs a skill point (or 2?) to learn elven, not an entire feat? Is it different in 4e?

[Seerow]

I thought in 3.5e it only costs a skill point (or 2?) to learn elven, not an entire feat? Is it different in 4e?

You're right about 3.5, and I don't know about 4e. I was just responding to the example provided.

If we're going to be balancing feats against the ability to speak a new language, we may as well get rid of feats completely, because that is a near-useless baseline.

[obryn]

I thought in 3.5e it only costs a skill point (or 2?) to learn elven, not an entire feat? Is it different in 4e?
It's a feat for 3 languages, and even when 4e was released and feats were essentially worthless, it was a weird option. There's only 10 basic languages in the game. Most starting characters have from 2 to 3. (2 is the default, but you can pick up another with your theme.)

4e doesn't have skill points, so that's not an option. You can learn new languages with a feat, as parts of paragon paths, or via items/ritual casting.

Telepathy is a popular way around it, too. :)

-O

[Yora]

Well, currently there are skill increases. You could use those.

[Ziegander]

Of course, that balance also depends on the DM. I had one DM who would make combat much less of a thing and exploration and social interaction much bigger things. Skills actually happened, frequently. Role-playing happened more. Other DMs just make a series of combat encounters with maybe a trap or two to appease the Rogue, and most of the game is fighting.

If Social and Exploration aren't given actual design space and rules to play with that make them more important, then, when the DM decides to do a combat-light game and focus on the Social and Exploration pillars, what the DM is actually doing is either mostly freeform roleplaying (because currently ability checks with skill training bonuses are the only rules attached to those pillars), or homebrewing his own rules to support the playstyle.

Either way, regardless of whether that DM can make that game fun, it's a failing on the part of Mearls and his design/development team. They keep coming back and mentioning the three pillars, and I think that's a very novel approach, especially to D&D design which has sorely lacked Social and Exploration mechanics, yet we have seen no evidence that D&D Next will actually provide mechanics to run a deep Social and/or Exploration game.

[DrBurr]

Which is why learning elven shouldn't be a feat. So you don't have to balance those against each other.

Yeah I've always felt that way too but just giving an example of poor feat options from 4th. Languages should revert to how they kinda worked in 1st where increasing your intelligence past a certain point allows you to learn a new language. I think the threshold was 16.

[oxybe]

honestly speaking, i don't feel like languages should take up any real resources since IME how many languages you know is generally cultural, when you're young you learn the languages of your people and neighbours: i grew up in a french canadian community surrounded by english-speaking everywhere else... i am bilingual by default. and i know in europe you have areas where people are natural polyglots, speaking 3+ languages due to them simply being in close proximity to so many different cultures/countries/whatnot.

it's also moot for the most part, IMO, unless you have a campaign where language is extremely important (IE: the PCs are thrown halfway across the world... culture shock!) or it's used as a one-off plot point, everyone in the party will be communicating in a common language (be it common, elven, dwarves, gaelic, swahili, pig-latin).

at that point your character will need to apply himself in a way that levelling really doesn't do justice to if he wants to be fluent.

i don't remember ever being in a campaign where language was ever a serious problem:

at best it was a "really foreign" or "ancient" language used as a plot point where we had to find that one scholar who is deemed crazy for specializing in it.

at worst it's "one PC interprets what we say for every other PC when we're in elfland/dwarfsylvania/orcsburgh/halflington/dragonbornia/etc..."

were it up to me i'd just say "you start knowing 2 languages" and allow for a polyglot/world traveller/trader background where they know more languages or enough to get by or just go "you know as many languages as your GM will allow you and after being immersed in a culture for a while, you can learn it's language."

[1337 b4k4]

Language is a hold over from (and was more important in) the older editions of D&D, where one of the expectations was that players would try to talk their way out of fights and combat. Suddenly, knowing "Draconic" or "Goblin" is really important when you're staring down the spears of 30 Kobolds wondering what you're doing in their home, even more so if the reason you're in their home is because you were fleeing the Ogre one floor down.

[JoeMac307]

If Social and Exploration aren't given actual design space and rules to play with that make them more important, then, when the DM decides to do a combat-light game and focus on the Social and Exploration pillars, what the DM is actually doing is either mostly freeform roleplaying (because currently ability checks with skill training bonuses are the only rules attached to those pillars), or homebrewing his own rules to support the playstyle.

Either way, regardless of whether that DM can make that game fun, it's a failing on the part of Mearls and his design/development team. They keep coming back and mentioning the three pillars, and I think that's a very novel approach, especially to D&D design which has sorely lacked Social and Exploration mechanics, yet we have seen no evidence that D&D Next will actually provide mechanics to run a deep Social and/or Exploration game.


So far, this is true. What mechanics have D&D Next give us for Social? Charisma check vs. Wisdom check? That's not very robust.

[Ashdate]

Language is a hold over from (and was more important in) the older editions of D&D, where one of the expectations was that players would try to talk their way out of fights and combat.

I think you're myth-building here. It has never been the expectation, as far as D&D has been concerned, that player would "talk their way out of fights". Not even in 3e, which arguably had the most PCs with "languages" running around (thanks to being granted bonus languages for a high intelligence). Certainly, certainly modules/DMs included diplomacy as option, but those were the exception, not the rule.

[noparlpf]

If Social and Exploration aren't given actual design space and rules to play with that make them more important, then, when the DM decides to do a combat-light game and focus on the Social and Exploration pillars, what the DM is actually doing is either mostly freeform roleplaying (because currently ability checks with skill training bonuses are the only rules attached to those pillars), or homebrewing his own rules to support the playstyle.

Either way, regardless of whether that DM can make that game fun, it's a failing on the part of Mearls and his design/development team. They keep coming back and mentioning the three pillars, and I think that's a very novel approach, especially to D&D design which has sorely lacked Social and Exploration mechanics, yet we have seen no evidence that D&D Next will actually provide mechanics to run a deep Social and/or Exploration game.

Granted. We mostly did combinations of skill checks, combined with role-playing. Which the game provides bare bones for.

[1337 b4k4]

I think you're myth-building here. It has never been the expectation, as far as D&D has been concerned, that player would "talk their way out of fights". Not even in 3e, which arguably had the most PCs with "languages" running around (thanks to being granted bonus languages for a high intelligence). Certainly, certainly modules/DMs included diplomacy as option, but those were the exception, not the rule.

I think you might need to go back and read up a little bit on your Dungeons & Dragons history. What do you think the DM was supposed to do with the monster reaction tables? How do you square this against the numerous cases in the B2 module describing the conditions under which various monsters will ally with or negotiate with the PCs? For that matter, what pray tell is the purpose of being able to learn monster languages if not to be able to talk to the various monsters.

But here don't take my word for it, open up your copy of the basic rules for Dungeons & Dragons, the Tom Moldvay copy. Turn the page B28 and take a look at the play example there. The players enter room and encounter a bunch of goblins and a player steps forward holds out empty hands and says "Greetings, noble dwellers of deep caverns; can we help you?" The DM then rolls a reaction check for the monsters and decides it's not quite good enough so then the hobgoblin responds "Go away! You're not allowed in this room!" To which the players respond "It's okay; Gary sent us." This particular attempt fails but if that's not attempting to talk your way out of combat and an expectation built into the game I don't know what is.

You might say the B2 module is just one module, but it was the module that many people got their start with Dungeons & Dragons with. In addition the play example from the basic rule book was an example of play by the people who designed the game, this is what they intended players to do. I say it's a pretty safe assumption that any included examples of play in the basic boxed versions of the game are exactly the sort of expectations the designers had for how the game was supposed be played.

[Urpriest]

at worst it's "one PC interprets what we say for every other PC when we're in elfland/dwarfsylvania/orcsburgh/halflington/dragonbornia/etc..."



I prefer dragonborneo.

On the thread topic, since most DMs will make whatever types of encounters are more straightforward and obvious without regard for Social/Exploration/Combat, what if the roles were mixed? What if, by default, combat encounters required some level of social abilities (coordinating with your partymates, for example), and exploration (varied, complicated battlegrounds, encounter-based traps)?

[navar100]

If they do this, they should also make it apply for spells imo. Though I suppose that could irritate a lot of 3rd edition fans, but I would much prefer for combat abilities and utilities be in two different categories myself.

And yes, keep the stuff that's 4E-ish utility that actually is mostly for combat in the combat category. Utility stuff should be focused on skills or other things that might happen out of combat (but could still happen in combat).

As a 3E fan who doesn't like 4E, I don't object to the concept of some 4E-ish stuff in 5E. There are some game mechanics concepts of 4E I like. Having separate feat-like resources for combat and non-combat choices sounds fun to me. It helps to round-out the character and promote the idea of warriors being able to do interesting and useful things outside of combat.

[navar100]

I think the goal of feats should be to emphazise certain aspects of the character and focus on things that everyone can do but are of greater importance for the character.

When I play a campaign from 1st to 6th level, I don't want to have for my 3rd feat before my character becomes what I want it to be. Any action should be possible regardless of feats. A feat should increase the likelyhood and degree of success.

I think that's the biggest problem with pretty much all d20 games, that you have to wait for high levels until your character can actually do what you want him to do. So far, changing this seems to be the main issue that 5th Edition is adressing.
I like the Archery specialization. It doesn't enable you to do anything new. You still shot a single arrow at a single target. But with the feats, you shot more often and have a good chance at incredibly difficult shots.
Or the Lurker specialization, which does not affect your sneak attacks at all. But it significantly decreses the chance that you become unable to exploit it.

Those are great feats! You still can only do the same things you can do without them. But you have really good chance to succeed in situation that would normally be highly unlikely.

Ambusher is possibly the coolest feat I've ever seen! You attack from shadow and make a sneak attack. Yes, any rogue can do that. But most rogues have to wait for the target to walk right next to their hiding spot. An Ambusher can crash through a window or bolt out of a crowd and cross the room to stab the king in the heard while everyone is watching and still reaching for their weapons. That's awesome! And still you just get a single sneak attack like any rogue who sneaked up behind the throne and slit the kings throne from the behind him.

I agree with this concept. Just because a character is 1st level doesn't mean he's not entitled to do cool, awesome things. Details to be worked out.

[Lictor of Thrax]

I prefer dragonborneo.

On the thread topic, since most DMs will make whatever types of encounters are more straightforward and obvious without regard for Social/Exploration/Combat, what if the roles were mixed? What if, by default, combat encounters required some level of social abilities (coordinating with your partymates, for example), and exploration (varied, complicated battlegrounds, encounter-based traps)?

I like that idea a lot but also think it could be applied more directly to abilities/feats. . . categorizing feats into types (each one being of one of the "three pillars") but allowing each one to effect bleed-over into the other.

A combat pillar feat, something that as a direct action might allow improvement to a attack type, might also allow a bonus to your other pillars when used in coordination with them. So a player using their combat feat might, for example, get a bonus to intimidate checks when using said feat, or might get a bonus to terrain when using said feat on poor terrain.

Conversely, using the feat to speak extra languages as an example. At face value it offers extra languages. Perhaps it could also add enhancement bonuses to attempts to identify creatures who's languages fall within that language type. . . so your brainy linguist might be able to gain tips and tricks (or maybe even just a direct bonus) on how to defeat the beast. Somewhat like how rangers have favored enemies.

Of course, this is just shooting from the hip but I think that in the end, any attempt to really achieve their "three pillars" philosophy will have to focus around making all three pillars interact and actually effect eachother mechanically.

[Ashdate]

I think you might need to go back and read up a little bit on your Dungeons & Dragons history. What do you think the DM was supposed to do with the monster reaction tables?

They probably did what most DMs did (such as mine), and ignored them :smalltongue: If a DM wants the PCs to be able to negotiate with monsters, then they shouldn't need a 2d6 roll to decide it, nor should the PCs have a certain level of charisma and need to speak goblin or giant; such thinking comes from an era where the DM was seen as a neutral arbiter, who "let the dice fall where they may". I think most DMs thought the idea that their monsters might randomly like PCs who burst into their home, offer a handshake and say "greetings! Let's be friends!" was stupid (because it is).

And I'm sure (despite not owning a copy) if you counted the number of pages in the "Tom Moldvay version" devoted to smoozing with those gnolls, and the number of pages devoted to ways the PCs can shove the gnolls' heads up their butts, you'll see exactly how the people who made D&D expect you to play it.

They could have taken the direction of a White Wolf game, where combat is a relatively small part of the rules, but they didn't. It's a game born from a table-top minatures game whose purpose is to entertain players by putting increasing sizes of monsters and treasure in front of PCs. "Reaction Adjustments" and the like are olive branches to players who would like D&D to be more than a dungeon crawl. And good on those players and the rules for including a way (however random) to do that! I think a D&D game that was nothing but a string of combats would be boring!

But don't take a few examples and a handful of modules to be some indication that the game expects players to talk their problems out with the neighbourhood beholder. As I said, such examples are exceptions, not the rule. D&D has always been a "kick down the door and take names" simulator before a "fantasy" one.


For that matter, what pray tell is the purpose of being able to learn monster languages if not to be able to talk to the various monsters.

To allow the PCs to gain information about the enemy's plans (i.e. by sneaking in and listening to a conversation)?
To allow the PCs to read information the enemy leaves behind?
To allow the PCs to potentially trick the enemy by impersonating or communicating with them?

I'm not saying that talking with them shouldn't be an option, but I think it's an exaggeration to believe that the only reason a Dwarf might want to know Goblin is because they want to sit down and talk about their feelings.

[1337 b4k4]

As I said, such examples are exceptions, not the rule. D&D has always been a "kick down the door and take names" simulator before a "fantasy" one.

We're going to disagree here, it appears to me that given that all low level characters in early D&D were to one degree or another fragile (even the fighter could fall to a lucky errant strike) combat was note supposed to be the first tool in your kit. This is further backed up by the fact that the majority of your experience will come from gold and not monsters killed (at almost 3:1), and by how much of the spells and equipment are not directly offensive combat devices, but exploration and utility devices.

Is combat a large part? Sure, but that doesn't mean that negotiating or talking your way out of a sticky situation wasn't an expected tactic. As for the portion of rules devoted to combat vs negotiations, I imagine that this was an assumption of the game designers that players didn't need rules to have a negotiation at the table.

[noparlpf]

I prefer dragonborneo.

On the thread topic, since most DMs will make whatever types of encounters are more straightforward and obvious without regard for Social/Exploration/Combat, what if the roles were mixed? What if, by default, combat encounters required some level of social abilities (coordinating with your partymates, for example), and exploration (varied, complicated battlegrounds, encounter-based traps)?

I think that leaves too much up to the DM and many people will still just use combat as the primary mechanic. Unless they could somehow force you into it, like flanking requires a Wis check with your partner or something.

[oxybe]

exploration via varied terrain is easy enough to implement in a game. make the floor lava and the reprecussios of bathing in lava harsh enough, and people will be doing their best to not take a dip (or force their enemies to take one).

give the players interesting set-pieces, like a ruined church with loose marble pillars, and obvious uses (squish the zombies!) for them and you'll probably see them interacting with the set itself, as much as the enemies.

the difference between the first scenario and the second is one of subtlety: you don't need much setup or pre-emption to know that lava is kinda dangerous. that a marble pillar can be toppled though? that requires a bit more finesse for some groups and a backhanded slap to others.

for the most part though, good encounter design, however, should not require the use of lava or pillars but take into account their use.

but "social" aspects in combat? those are a bit harder to reinforce. mainly i would go the carrot rather then the stick method and not require it, but rather make it's use a boon.

violence is nothing more then aggressive diplomacy, where a sword between the enemy's ribcage can often lend you the final word in an argument.

combat occurs in one of three scenarios: discussion isn't possible (party VS zombie horde), discussion isn't wanted (party VS necromancer), discussion fails (party VS angry mob for killing their priest without proof. oops.)

if discussion is possible in place of or during combat, it should be hinted at in some fashion by the GM rather then left in the air.

this, again, boils down to encounter design.

now, let's say your character had several ways to bypass some terrain (spider climb or some sort of parkour power), this will let the character interact with the lava floor or the pillars in rather interesting ways, by letting them go to places a "grounded" PC could not.

4th ed's warlord class was technically the battle socializer: he'd shout and point out openings for PCs to take advantage of, raise them from the brink of death with a few strong words and could push them beyond their normal means.

what was neat, is that the warlord was just one big bonus to the group. he wasn't needed for the party success. a party of a fighter, rogue, cleric & wizard works fine as is and no class "needs" a warlord to be useful. the warlord just allowed for better coordination between groups during combat.

that's how i would like to see combat socialization: as like combat exploration, not required for success, but when used is a boon.

[Scowling Dragon]

So. I haven't checked up on 5e for months now. Anything new since that first playtest?

[Starbuck_II]

So. I haven't checked up on 5e for months now. Anything new since that first playtest?

New classes:
Warlock and Sorcerer.
You can actually build a class, you don't have to use playtest character if you don't want to.
We get actual examples of background feat/speciality, etc.
What races give and class give. Stat array is 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8.
We get a new module to run through in the underdark.

[Gwendol]

Well, there is the new playtest.

[Siegel]

I think you're myth-building here. It has never been the expectation, as far as D&D has been concerned, that player would "talk their way out of fights". Not even in 3e, which arguably had the most PCs with "languages" running around (thanks to being granted bonus languages for a high intelligence). Certainly, certainly modules/DMs included diplomacy as option, but those were the exception, not the rule.

Have a Look at moldvay DnD, fighting is Most Times the worst option.

[Lictor of Thrax]

Incorrect. WotC are attempting to write and publish a roleplaying game. They have just as great a responsibility to provide competent fluff, irrespective of whether or not they're likely to pull it off.

Forcing an overused trope down people's throats when there are alternatives is a betrayal of those responsibilities. And there are alternatives to making the sorcerer pick a bloodline. Among them:

Pick three 'gifts' from a list. Each grants you a minor bonus power. This is no better crunch-wise, but it covers everything that the bloodlines do, without forcing them down our throats.
Pick ten 'gifts' from a list, which determine which spells and other powers you receive. Each gift offers at least one spell or power that isn't otherwise available. Fluff as desired.
Don't give the sorcerers anything like this, and instead differentiate them by making their magic genuinely and radically different -- a sorcerer could make up spells on the fly, for example.


Making Sorcerer spells genuinely different would completely ruin the class. Sorcerers are people who harness Vancian magic in a different way from wizards. Give them a new way to harness different magic and...well...they're Psions or something.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Making Sorcerer spells genuinely different would completely ruin the class. Sorcerers are people who harness Vancian magic in a different way from wizards. Give them a new way to harness different magic and...well...they're Psions or something.

Honestly I'd rather see them make the sorcerer into something completely different and just nix the wizard's vancian casting...

[Yora]

As long as we get a spell-point wizard, I don't actually care what they call it.

[Knaight]

Making Sorcerer spells genuinely different would completely ruin the class. Sorcerers are people who harness Vancian magic in a different way from wizards. Give them a new way to harness different magic and...well...they're Psions or something.

Given that sorcerers are distinguished mostly by spontaneous arcane casting, and everything else is largely irrelevant, an entirely different set of spells would fit with the class. If that makes them a lot more like the Psion, I'm entirely okay with that, which appears to be a point of agreement with most of the thread.

[Dienekes]

My one disagreement would be that I'd rather not have a list of spells that all do the exact same thing. But since the direction that WotC is going is that their spell casters get a huge amount of non-scaling spells that's more or less shot all to hell anyway. So why not, bring on the additional spell list.

[Siegel]

Making Sorcerer spells genuinely different would completely ruin the class. Sorcerers are people who harness Vancian magic in a different way from wizards. Give them a new way to harness different magic and...well...they're Psions or something.

Can you prove that?

[DrBurr]

So last night in lieu of our normal session my group agreed to build Next characters to use on our secondary game night.

Built a Human War Cleric, Human Wizard with the Necromancer Specialty, A High Elf Duelist Fighter and Stout Halfling Sorcerer.

Both the Humans have some pretty good stats and I rolled rather Average for them, The Cleric is pulling a 19 in Str and 18 Wis and his lowest stat being a 9 in Dex which he doesn't really need. The Wizard came off pretty good to with 17 Con and 19 Int but as is usual for the player he has one bad dump stat a 7 in Wis. The Elf Fighter went the dual wielder route and picked up detect magic as his cantrip and has average stats.

And bringing up the Rear is the Halfling Sorcerer who is a complete joke character which should liven things up, his stats are average pulling nothing lower than a 10, but man Sorcerer's have a crappy spell list if it wasn't for the Arcane Dabbler feat I don't think there was a point to picking spells

Now I have to make a campaign for this assortment should be amusing got a Heretic, Professor, Merc and Food Critic :smallbiggrin:

[Lictor of Thrax]

Can you prove that?

I don't even understand this question. What part did you want me to prove . . . the part that is a fact (what sorcerers have been in the past) or the part that's my opinion? Because one I shouldn't have to prove and the other would be impossible to.

[Friv]

We're going to disagree here, it appears to me that given that all low level characters in early D&D were to one degree or another fragile (even the fighter could fall to a lucky errant strike) combat was note supposed to be the first tool in your kit. This is further backed up by the fact that the majority of your experience will come from gold and not monsters killed (at almost 3:1), and by how much of the spells and equipment are not directly offensive combat devices, but exploration and utility devices.

Is combat a large part? Sure, but that doesn't mean that negotiating or talking your way out of a sticky situation wasn't an expected tactic. As for the portion of rules devoted to combat vs negotiations, I imagine that this was an assumption of the game designers that players didn't need rules to have a negotiation at the table.

I would generally argue that original D&D was built on two pillars - combat and exploration. Social interaction and negotiation mainly functioned as a tool of exploration, rather than being a pillar in their own right.

[genderlich]

4th ed's warlord class was technically the battle socializer: he'd shout and point out openings for PCs to take advantage of, raise them from the brink of death with a few strong words and could push them beyond their normal means.

what was neat, is that the warlord was just one big bonus to the group. he wasn't needed for the party success. a party of a fighter, rogue, cleric & wizard works fine as is and no class "needs" a warlord to be useful. the warlord just allowed for better coordination between groups during combat.

that's how i would like to see combat socialization: as like combat exploration, not required for success, but when used is a boon.

The Warlord was my favorite class in 4E by far. There was nothing like him in 3.5 (maybe the Marshal, but nobody likes him), and I really hope they keep the Warlord in some form for 5E, even if it's just a specialty for Bards, Fighters, and Paladins.

[hamishspence]

The White Raven school in ToB was pretty warlord-ish- crusaders & warblades got it- so a crusader or warblade heavily investing in that (and maybe Devoted Spirit in the crusader's case) would fit.

[1337 b4k4]

I would generally argue that original D&D was built on two pillars - combat and exploration. Social interaction and negotiation mainly functioned as a tool of exploration, rather than being a pillar in their own right.

Absolutely, but I'm not arguing that social interaction was a pillar in its own right, just that early editions of D&D had an expectation that players would try to avoid combat, and on of the ways of doing that was via negotiation, and therefore languages had more importance in those editions, giving us the holdover of language skills today.

[genderlich]

Oh yeah -. I always forget White Raven because I really only play Swordsages in ToB. And because I've only played Pathfinder for the past couple years.

[RebelRogue]

Indeed, many Warlord powers have "White Raven" in their names as a tip of the hat to ToB.

[TheOOB]

My one disagreement would be that I'd rather not have a list of spells that all do the exact same thing. But since the direction that WotC is going is that their spell casters get a huge amount of non-scaling spells that's more or less shot all to hell anyway. So why not, bring on the additional spell list.

It's a balancing issue. One of the reasons casters were so broken in 3.x was that in addition to the fact that they got new, more powerful abilities every level, their old abilities got more powerful as well, so that by the time they reached double digits they had dozens of spells they could use, while other classes only had one or two abilities.

By making it so spells don't scale up, they have reduced that problem. A level 10 wizard won't have much use for their level 1 spells save beyond a little utility and as a back up when they run out(and the status inducing spells won't even work on foes by then). So while casters to get more and and more abilities, only their highest couple of spell levels will be truly relevant in most situations(but their lower levels spells are still there). I think it's a good balance, it's better than the alternative.

I like the sorcerer so far. I think the willpower system provides an interesting variation on the standard Vancian model, while keeping them similar enough to the wizard so the classes feel a little related. I'm not entirely convinced the draconic bloodline isn't at least a little too strong, but a bloodline will need to provide quite a bit of benefit to make up for the very few spells known a sorcerer has compared to a wizard, and once a wizard gains their, for lack of a better term, path, it might seem more balanced.

[noparlpf]

What do people think about the idea of spell prerequisites? Like how feats have trees, so should spells--lower-level spells lead to higher-level versions of the same theme. I think that would help balance some, and I like the flavour of it better. As it is now, I can spend eight levels practicing throwing fireballs, and then at my next level I can suddenly raise a sizable number of undead, with no previous practice raising even the weakest undead.
This would go better with non-scaling spells, I think.

[Kurald Galain]

By making it so spells don't scale up, they have reduced that problem. A level 10 wizard won't have much use for their level 1 spells save beyond a little utility and as a back up when they run out(and the status inducing spells won't even work on foes by then).

I doubt that'll work out in practice. There are generally some good low-level tricks that remain relevant.

(note how the designers of 4E assumed that low-level powers and low-level items wouldn't be useful any more to a moderate-level character, and how they were dead wrong about that).

[Dienekes]

It's a balancing issue. One of the reasons casters were so broken in 3.x was that in addition to the fact that they got new, more powerful abilities every level, their old abilities got more powerful as well, so that by the time they reached double digits they had dozens of spells they could use, while other classes only had one or two abilities.

By making it so spells don't scale up, they have reduced that problem. A level 10 wizard won't have much use for their level 1 spells save beyond a little utility and as a back up when they run out(and the status inducing spells won't even work on foes by then). So while casters to get more and and more abilities, only their highest couple of spell levels will be truly relevant in most situations(but their lower levels spells are still there). I think it's a good balance, it's better than the alternative.

Oh I understand the balance of it. However, I personally would have preferred fewer scaling spells to a huge amount of non-scaling ones. I don't get excited picking up: Lesser Flame Strike, Flame Strike, Greater Flame Strike, Lesser Fireball, Fireball, and Greater Fireball when it's all really the same thing with bigger numbers. I'd rather pick up just Fireball.

Now there are a few ups and downs to each method. My way, all else being equal, would make Wizards slightly weaker at earlier levels since they won't get a bunch of the weaker spells for their utility instead gaining it as they level up.

Personally I like that unintended consequence as well, but then I've always been up for hitting spellcasters with a nerfbat.


What do people think about the idea of spell prerequisites? Like how feats have trees, so should spells--lower-level spells lead to higher-level versions of the same theme. I think that would help balance some, and I like the flavour of it better. As it is now, I can spend eight levels practicing throwing fireballs, and then at my next level I can suddenly raise a sizable number of undead, with no previous practice raising even the weakest undead.
This would go better with non-scaling spells, I think.

Personally, I have nothing against the idea of prerequisites as long as their fair. But I have to say, I really wish they tone down some of the prereqs for feats from 3.5 (don't remember how it's handled in 4e). A lot of good feats are ruined by the unnecessary and useless prereqs (sup whirlwind attack). If they have to do prereqs I'd personally follow the ToB route and make feats/spells into groups or styles and say you need X of these types of feat/spells to advance. For spells they can just use the schools they already have. For feats they'll have to invent groupings, maybe Power style for things like power attack, Defender style, Assassin style, and so forth but there needs to be enough feats per style to make it worthwhile.

[Lictor of Thrax]

Personally, I have nothing against the idea of prerequisites as long as their fair. But I have to say, I really wish they tone down some of the prereqs for feats from 3.5 (don't remember how it's handled in 4e). A lot of good feats are ruined by the unnecessary and useless prereqs (sup whirlwind attack). If they have to do prereqs I'd personally follow the ToB route and make feats/spells into groups or styles and say you need X of these types of feat/spells to advance. For spells they can just use the schools they already have. For feats they'll have to invent groupings, maybe Power style for things like power attack, Defender style, Assassin style, and so forth but there needs to be enough feats per style to make it worthwhile.

I don't even think they'd have to add anything, considering that specialties seem to do that already.

[noparlpf]

Personally, I have nothing against the idea of prerequisites as long as their fair. But I have to say, I really wish they tone down some of the prereqs for feats from 3.5 (don't remember how it's handled in 4e). A lot of good feats are ruined by the unnecessary and useless prereqs (sup whirlwind attack). If they have to do prereqs I'd personally follow the ToB route and make feats/spells into groups or styles and say you need X of these types of feat/spells to advance. For spells they can just use the schools they already have. For feats they'll have to invent groupings, maybe Power style for things like power attack, Defender style, Assassin style, and so forth but there needs to be enough feats per style to make it worthwhile.

For spells, I think the 3.X spell descriptors would be a better existing system to split things up with. Like, Fireball would require that you know at least one [Fire] spell each of second level and of first level. Maybe give different spells from same schools a "discount", like Lightning Bolt only requires one lower-level [Electricity] spell, of first or second level, if you know other Evocation spells of each second and first level, because you have some practice casting Evocations and some casting Electricity spells, so you combine your knowledge and "skip" some of the Electricity training.

[Ashdate]

But I have to say, I really wish they tone down some of the prereqs for feats from 3.5 (don't remember how it's handled in 4e).

Feats ended up sort of weird in 4e; they didn't end up with the "chain" of prereqs, but many are restricted to race, class, and occasionally ability scores. I think it added more bloat than anything to the system, but overall I'm fairly neutral about them. I think I would prefer there to be fewer feats with less restrictions for 5e tho.

[TheOOB]

I doubt that'll work out in practice. There are generally some good low-level tricks that remain relevant.

(note how the designers of 4E assumed that low-level powers and low-level items wouldn't be useful any more to a moderate-level character, and how they were dead wrong about that).

I'm not saying low levels spells won't be useful, but a higher level spell will always deal less damage, and really nasty lower levels save or lose spells(like hold person) won't work on higher level foes. A 3.x wizard's hold person was still insanely difficult to save agienst even for a high level foe if they had a bad will save.


Feats ended up sort of weird in 4e; they didn't end up with the "chain" of prereqs, but many are restricted to race, class, and occasionally ability scores. I think it added more bloat than anything to the system, but overall I'm fairly neutral about them. I think I would prefer there to be fewer feats with less restrictions for 5e tho.

The problem with 4e feats, is since most offered small numerical bonuses, it was usually pretty obvious what feats were better than others(it just took some math), and too many feats amounted to "if you qualify you must take it". Feats wear not really used to customize your character, but where more like a math test at level up.

[Dienekes]

I don't even think they'd have to add anything, considering that specialties seem to do that already.

You could base it off specialties, but the major difference between them is, specialties remove all choice from taking feats in the first place so there does not need to be prerequisites as it's all planned out for you. Now if they expanded it so that we get maybe 14 or more feats in a specialty so there is choice in what we pick in a specialty that'd be something.


For spells, I think the 3.X spell descriptors would be a better existing system to split things up with. Like, Fireball would require that you know at least one [Fire] spell each of second level and of first level. Maybe give different spells from same schools a "discount", like Lightning Bolt only requires one lower-level [Electricity] spell, of first or second level, if you know other Evocation spells of each second and first level, because you have some practice casting Evocations and some casting Electricity spells, so you combine your knowledge and "skip" some of the Electricity training.

Honestly, while I suppose if they made a wide, wide verity of spells all about fire, I think it would be easier to just make it based off the schools, maybe add one or two more. And honestly, it's also a way to force specialization of spells. So in any case, I like that.

[TheOOB]

For spells, I think the 3.X spell descriptors would be a better existing system to split things up with. Like, Fireball would require that you know at least one [Fire] spell each of second level and of first level. Maybe give different spells from same schools a "discount", like Lightning Bolt only requires one lower-level [Electricity] spell, of first or second level, if you know other Evocation spells of each second and first level, because you have some practice casting Evocations and some casting Electricity spells, so you combine your knowledge and "skip" some of the Electricity training.

I *really* don't like that. Part of the reason I like to play a wizard is that I like to play a toolbox, I like to have lots of different types of abilities I can use. I can accept that the price I pay for my versatility is less raw power, but forcing any specialization ruins the class entirely.

[Starbuck_II]

Oh I understand the balance of it. However, I personally would have preferred fewer scaling spells to a huge amount of non-scaling ones. I don't get excited picking up: Lesser Flame Strike, Flame Strike, Greater Flame Strike, Lesser Fireball, Fireball, and Greater Fireball when it's all really the same thing with bigger numbers. I'd rather pick up just Fireball.

Then don't take the lower level versions.
If we redoing 3.5.
Nah, I want a level 1 fireball (Least Fireball), 2nd level Fireball (Lesser Fireball), 3rd level Firebal (as is Fireball), etc.

1st level (Least) Fireball has short range (not long), 15 foot area burst (not 20), etc and deals 2d6 fire.

2nd level (lesser) Fireball Med range, 15 ft area (not 20) and deals 4d6.

3rd level Fireball: Long range, 20 ft area, and deals 6d6 fire.

Those who only want Fireball wait till 5th level.

Greater Fireball already exists in 3.5 (delayed Fireball)

But the idea from 5th to add casting stat to damage is a neat idea.

[Craft (Cheese)]

On prerequisites: I can say this, taking an option at level-up you aren't interested in just so you can qualify for something you want later isn't fun. It actually kinda sucks considering you basically walk out of that level with no new shiny toys, it's bad for the same reasons dead levels are bad.

[Lictor of Thrax]

You could base it off specialties, but the major difference between them is, specialties remove all choice from taking feats in the first place so there does not need to be prerequisites as it's all planned out for you. Now if they expanded it so that we get maybe 14 or more feats in a specialty so there is choice in what we pick in a specialty that'd be something.


True. My assumption after seeing what they had done so far, was that all feats would fall under a category of a specialty and each specialty would then have a bunch of feats to choose from at each level.

The reason I assume that there'll be more feats added to each specialty at each level is because the Lurker specialty forces Skulker on you at third level, which only benefits ranged attacks . . . which to me says that eventually they have to add more options there for those who don't want to focus on ranged combat.

Just thinking of how I would handle it, there'd be some general feats that anyone could take, some feats that fell under multiple specialty umbrellas and some feats that were only available through a certain specialty. Then incorporating the suggestion of more lax requirements would be quite easy. As mentioned, much like how ToB doesn't require that you know every precursor to a higher level manuever/stance but instead just requires that you know X amount from Y school.


Conceptually, I really like that idea.



On prerequisites: I can say this, taking an option at level-up you aren't interested in just so you can qualify for something you want later isn't fun. It actually kinda sucks considering you basically walk out of that level with no new shiny toys, it's bad for the same reasons dead levels are bad.

Agreed. In one of my games I'm doing exactly that this upcoming level. Take a feat that won't do squat for me but is necessary for an ability that will be a primary aspect of my character . . . so my level up is basically that I add about 5 HP and 1 BAB. Woohoo!

However, I think that could be greatly minimized if not eliminated by making the requirement aspects much broader, as per Dieneke's idea.

[TheOOB]

But the idea from 5th to add casting stat to damage is a neat idea.

I'm not convinced that's the case. The rules seem to imply that, but the spell description and sample characters don't.


On prerequisites: I can say this, taking an option at level-up you aren't interested in just so you can qualify for something you want later isn't fun. It actually kinda sucks considering you basically walk out of that level with no new shiny toys, it's bad for the same reasons dead levels are bad.

I would agree whole completely. Balancing costs via prerequisites is a terrible idea(for an example, see Exalted). The only reason one feat should require another is if a)it's an improved version of the first one, or b)the ability doesn't make sense unless they have the other feat first. In 3.x, Cleave requiring power attack or mobility requiring dodge was silly, the abilities are unrelated, but Great Cleave requiring Cleave, or Spring Attack requiring Mobility made sense(don't get me started on Whirlwind Attack).

If a feat is too powerful to just offer outright, make a weaker version of it.

[Grundy]

What do people think about the idea of spell prerequisites?

I love this idea. Any fiction I can think of has this concept built into it. I'd like so see it combined with something like skill ranks, but in spells.
Start all spells weak, something that an irl human could do. One rank in Knock gives a +3 to disable device, for example. This applies at any caster level. As ranks are gained, knock will not only open doors, it'll open other stuff, morph into dispel magic and break enchantment.
So then produce flame morphs into fireball into meteor swarm. Entangle into web into evards tentacles, etc.
I could see a few basic spells for each of the schools. Higher level spells require these lower level spells, at a specific skill rank.
Then you can have a generalist wizard, balanced with a specialized one. Also it's logical how power within a school or even a spell grows.
Also you could have a 15th level wizard who's specialized in illusion, say, struggling to open a locked chest, even with magic. And that makes me smile, and it makes sense.

[TheOOB]

I love this idea. Any fiction I can think of has this concept built into it. I'd like so see it combined with something like skill ranks, but in spells.
Start all spells weak, something that an irl human could do. One rank in Knock gives a +3 to disable device, for example. This applies at any caster level. As ranks are gained, knock will not only open doors, it'll open other stuff, morph into dispel magic and break enchantment.
So then produce flame morphs into fireball into meteor swarm. Entangle into web into evards tentacles, etc.
I could see a few basic spells for each of the schools. Higher level spells require these lower level spells, at a specific skill rank.
Then you can have a generalist wizard, balanced with a specialized one. Also it's logical how power within a school or even a spell grows.
Also you could have a 15th level wizard who's specialized in illusion, say, struggling to open a locked chest, even with magic. And that makes me smile, and it makes sense.

But whats the point of the spell system then? Fighters and rogues already get abilities that naturally get better at a linear rate like that. Why make casters work the same way?

[Stubbazubba]

But whats the point of the spell system then? Fighters and rogues already get abilities that naturally get better at a linear rate like that. Why make casters work the same way?

What's the alternative? Something that gets better either way faster or slower? I don't understand what you're asking here.

I think splitting up points into different schools sounds awesome. I would split it on two axes, though; you would put points into a school, and also learn spells within that school. When you raised a school's skill rank, all the spells you know in that school would rise, too. So if your Transmutation rank was just 1, Knock would give you Advantage on Disable Device checks or other attempts to get through a door, while at Transmutation 2 it would open locked, stuck or barred doors, and at Transmutation 3 it could be used on held doors, and at Transmutation 4 it could be used on arcane locked doors. Transmutation 5 would open up a new tier of spells, probably including Fly and Polymorph. This way you could have a 1-20 progression for each school (of course the spells in each school would have to be re-tooled or shuffled around to be relatively balanced).

I suppose that would be equivalent to just having a different class for each school, and each level of each class simply giving you additional spell picks, with spell effects based on your level in that class, and tiers of spell lists to pick from.

[noparlpf]

But whats the point of the spell system then? Fighters and rogues already get abilities that naturally get better at a linear rate like that. Why make casters work the same way?

...for balance? I hate the linear vs. quadratic thing going on. Casters shouldn't go from suck to epic while mundanes go from alright to pretty good.

[HMS Invincible]

Sorry to interrupt, but does anyone know when the next update for the playtest is coming?

[Zombimode]

Sorry to interrupt, but does anyone know when the next update for the playtest is coming?

No, but considering the last update was just a week ago, it may take some time - weeks or months, even.

[Craft (Cheese)]

So I just happened to notice this (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120821) lovely piece of work.

...Hoo boy, the guys who complained about the retcons, hasty revisions, and other instances of just plain bending over backwards necessary to make Eladrin and Dragonborn work in 4E settings are going to have a field day with this new... conception of sorcerers. I'm surprised it didn't come up in the bloodline discussion.

[Grundy]

... So if your .... rank was just 1, Knock would give you Advantage on Disable Device checks or other attempts to get through a door, while at rank 2 it would open locked, stuck or barred doors, and at rank 3 it could be used on held doors, and at rank 4 it could be used on arcane locked doors...

Heavily edited quote;). This is how I'd do knock, or any number of spells. It eliminates jumps in powers, makes magic more linear. I don't want to make ranks in schools because it's another thing to track, and also it makes sense to me that a caster could be really good at knock, but not need to know much about bulls strength. Also then we don't have to balance the schools to perfection. Just every single spell, which should happen anyway.

Then I'd also like to see spells as prerequisites for other spells. Like jump to levitate to fly. Or abrupt jaunt to d door to teleport.
I'd like to see magic crawl before it walks before it runs, and each magic user (arcane or divine) do the same, with every power they get. Just like the martial classes do!

Of course, the alternative to all this rank malarkey is to rename the spells and make them all strict prerequisites.

Either way spell levels are unnecessary. If somebody wants to know a little about everything, they can. If they want to burn everything down to the ground from level 1 better than anybody else, they can do that too. But that's all they'll be able to do.

[Zeful]

So I just happened to notice this (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120821) lovely piece of work.

...Hoo boy, the guys who complained about the retcons, hasty revisions, and other instances of just plain bending over backwards necessary to make Eladrin and Dragonborn work in 4E settings are going to have a field day with this new... conception of sorcerers. I'm surprised it didn't come up in the bloodline discussion.

It did. It was dismissed as irrelevant using a variation of the Oberoni Fallacy.

[kyoryu]

Feats ended up sort of weird in 4e; they didn't end up with the "chain" of prereqs, but many are restricted to race, class, and occasionally ability scores. I think it added more bloat than anything to the system, but overall I'm fairly neutral about them. I think I would prefer there to be fewer feats with less restrictions for 5e tho.

Actually, I liked the idea of tying feats to race/class, as a way of providing for additional differentiation within the race/class without just giving tons of stuff away for free.


On prerequisites: I can say this, taking an option at level-up you aren't interested in just so you can qualify for something you want later isn't fun. It actually kinda sucks considering you basically walk out of that level with no new shiny toys, it's bad for the same reasons dead levels are bad.

Yeah, agreed. I think a lot of times it's to make powerful abilities cost more, without just saying "this costs two feats". Having a weaker version (cleave/great cleave) is fine, but may not be possible in all cases.

But even then, it still kinda sucks to have to buy a feat you don't want, so there's a presentation aspect to consider.

[noparlpf]

I don't like the idea of tying more than a few feats to a race, which 3.X did. Why should a Dwarf be able to do something I can't? I'm a human, I'm adaptable, I'm stupid enough to try to immunise myself to poisons by eating snakes.
Class feats 3.X also had. Thing with prerequisites like "Divine casting" or "Nature Sense". Those make more sense because if I have no training with a sword why should I be able to take a sword feat?

[Kurald Galain]

So I just happened to notice this (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120821) lovely piece of work.

Looks to me like they've been reading Start of Darkness for the whole wizards vs. sorcerers shtick. Also, they're not anywhere near as good at writing fluff as The Giant is.

[Lictor of Thrax]

So I just happened to notice this (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120821) lovely piece of work.

...Hoo boy, the guys who complained about the retcons, hasty revisions, and other instances of just plain bending over backwards necessary to make Eladrin and Dragonborn work in 4E settings are going to have a field day with this new... conception of sorcerers. I'm surprised it didn't come up in the bloodline discussion.

I've already seen one guy railing against it . . . but I don't really understand what about it makes this any harder to fold into a fantasy setting than anything else.

Clerics - Force you to accept Gods.
Warlocks - Force you to accept pacts with powerful entities.
Wizards - Force you to accept blanket "it's magic".
Druids - Force you to accept some sort of Mother Earth/Natural Power
Monks - Force you to accept some sort of Chi/Qi power

I don't see what's so rough about forcing people to accept bloodlines.

Is that what you're talking about?

P.S. I really like what they appear to be doing with Sorcs, which seems to be making them a built in hybrid magic class of sorts. Fighter-mage? Dragon bloodline. Stealth-Mage? My guess will be fey bloodline.

Obviously, the above is just speculation based off of the dragon bloodline.

[noparlpf]

My only issue with it is that there's only one bloodline so far and it's a boring one that has very few real ties to the concept of the class. When they come out with more, hopefully it'll be better.

[Stray]

So I just happened to notice this (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120821) lovely piece of work.


I don't like this lore. If it were to find its way to a core book it would promote needless intra-party conflict between wizards and other arcane casters. I know I can rewrite fluff, but I would prefer rulebooks not to put ideas into players heads that would be destructive to good atmosphere at the table. I had enough of conflict between elves and dwarves turning into insult race between players. If I want this sort of themes in my campaign I will put them myself, thank you very much. What I'm saying is I want default lore to be neutral, with sorcerer witchhunts and mages guilds consisting of all arcane classes being equally possible.

Also it goes on about what wizards think of them, but it fails to show what they think of wizards and how they interact with each other. It should either describe all relations or none of them.

[Lictor of Thrax]

My only issue with it is that there's only one bloodline so far and it's a boring one that has very few real ties to the concept of the class. When they come out with more, hopefully it'll be better.

A lot of the speculation is that Sorcerers and Warlocks were sort of tossed out there as a real basic concept 1) To have something to show people for the new playtest and GenCon and 2) to start getting some input.

Right now the sorcerer doesn't even make sense great sense because they get shield proficiency but need a hand free to cast and even though they don't have heavy weapon proficiency, their suggested weapon is a two-handed sword.

[Zeful]

My only issue with it is that there's only one bloodline so far and it's a boring one that has very few real ties to the concept of the class. When they come out with more, hopefully it'll be better.

But they won't. They'll be lazy copies of the many other heritage sorcerers, and fail to do anything meaningful or interesting with concept.

[TheOOB]

But they won't. They'll be lazy copies of the many other heritage sorcerers, and fail to do anything meaningful or interesting with concept.

Dude, seriously, uncool. Complaining about whats there is fine, but complaining about what they're going to make is silly and juvenile. You don't know what they are going to make, there may be a sorcerer bloodline so cool you'll be wanted to roll your first official 5e character a sorc. You can't know that yet.


Sorry to interrupt, but does anyone know when the next update for the playtest is coming?

If they don't release something during PAX(This weekend), I wouldn't expect something for a few more weeks/a month.

[Excession]

So I just happened to notice this (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120821) lovely piece of work.

I like it, especially if it's just a first pass. A little too strong on it always being Wizards out to hunt down the evil other magic users is all.

[Knaight]

On prerequisites: I can say this, taking an option at level-up you aren't interested in just so you can qualify for something you want later isn't fun. It actually kinda sucks considering you basically walk out of that level with no new shiny toys, it's bad for the same reasons dead levels are bad.

I'd also note that it is unnecessary, as one could just have all spells have a scaling mechanic. I'm thinking of something like a per spell metamagic effect, where you have a spell, and you can increase its level to do specific things, which effectively has spells at a range of levels (to use the Fireball example being thrown around, you might have that end up being level 1-5 or so, with a level 1 base spell, up to 2 levels of increase in damage, and up to 2 levels of increase in spread).

On Sorcerers and Warlocks: I'm not liking the whole "class X hates class Y" nonsense this is setting up, and the fluff is a little overbearing, particularly as spontaneous mages are prevalent within fantasy and currently can't be represented well due to the way sorcerers and warlocks appear to be handled. However, both the sorcerer and warlock are close to workable. The core concept of the warlock as someone who has traded something for power is a usable one with precedent in the literature under various names, and if the inner power concept is broadened so that the trapped soul is just a subset of sorcerers, that should work as well.

[noparlpf]

But they won't. They'll be lazy copies of the many other heritage sorcerers, and fail to do anything meaningful or interesting with concept.

No point being pessimistic about it before it's even happened.


I'd also note that it is unnecessary, as one could just have all spells have a scaling mechanic. I'm thinking of something like a per spell metamagic effect, where you have a spell, and you can increase its level to do specific things, which effectively has spells at a range of levels (to use the Fireball example being thrown around, you might have that end up being level 1-5 or so, with a level 1 base spell, up to 2 levels of increase in damage, and up to 2 levels of increase in spread).

Even something like that might be nice.


On Sorcerers and Warlocks: I'm not liking the whole "class X hates class Y" nonsense this is setting up, and the fluff is a little overbearing, particularly as spontaneous mages are prevalent within fantasy and currently can't be represented well due to the way sorcerers and warlocks appear to be handled. However, both the sorcerer and warlock are close to workable. The core concept of the warlock as someone who has traded something for power is a usable one with precedent in the literature under various names, and if the inner power concept is broadened so that the trapped soul is just a subset of sorcerers, that should work as well.

I don't like the restrictive fluff most of these things are setting up. I do definitely like the idea of more kinds of magic. Vancian magic is named after a single author. Most authors write truename magic, or some form of spontaneous casting, or dealings with extraplanar beings (binding or these warlocks), or sympathetic magic, or any number of not-Vancian things.

[Flickerdart]

I don't have a problem with the Sorcerer and Warlock fluff...if it were for other classes. The core base classes are supposed to be "vanilla" and easy to integrate into almost any setting. Stuff like this should be relegated to various specialized supplements like the Tome of Magic was.

[navar100]

I don't like the idea of tying more than a few feats to a race, which 3.X did. Why should a Dwarf be able to do something I can't? I'm a human, I'm adaptable, I'm stupid enough to try to immunise myself to poisons by eating snakes.
Class feats 3.X also had. Thing with prerequisites like "Divine casting" or "Nature Sense". Those make more sense because if I have no training with a sword why should I be able to take a sword feat?

And no race-based prestige classes either if they do have prestige classes.

[Zeful]

Dude, seriously, uncool. Complaining about whats there is fine, but complaining about what they're going to make is silly and juvenile. You don't know what they are going to make, there may be a sorcerer bloodline so cool you'll be wanted to roll your first official 5e character a sorc. You can't know that yet.

Yes I can. I've seen this pattern before, it's why I'm against bloodlines being implemented like this. All of them are random buffs to the wrong things for a class. If you're adding archetype changes to a class they should actually affect the things the class does. Bloodlines most notable do not do this. The change the what the character is, not the how the class does things; because of this, they'll have to be a shallow as every other bloodline attempt ever made, and thus fail to do anything interesting or meaningful.

[Dienekes]

Yes I can. I've seen this pattern before, it's why I'm against bloodlines being implemented like this. All of them are random buffs to the wrong things for a class. If you're adding archetype changes to a class they should actually affect the things the class does. Bloodlines most notable do not do this. The change the what the character is, not the how the class does things; because of this, they'll have to be a shallow as every other bloodline attempt ever made, and thus fail to do anything interesting or meaningful.

See I can understand your hatred of bloodlines. Ok, no that's a lie, but I can understand that you hate bloodlines. But I don't get the bloodline doesn't change the class, only the character from what we've seen.

It looks like bloodlines do a lot of stuff, admittedly it's harder to see exactly how far they go with it since we only have 1 to work on, but Draconic Heritage determines HP, armor and weapon proficiencies, and three abilities all focusing on getting relatively close combat, effectively turning the Sorcerer class into a gish. Or at least, to me that seems to be the intended goal.

If they keep up that sort of stuff I can't see how bloodlines would not greatly change the class. And honestly seems fairly comparable to what they're doing with a Cleric's Domains.

[Craft (Cheese)]

On Sorcerers and Warlocks: I'm not liking the whole "class X hates class Y" nonsense this is setting up, and the fluff is a little overbearing, particularly as spontaneous mages are prevalent within fantasy and currently can't be represented well due to the way sorcerers and warlocks appear to be handled. However, both the sorcerer and warlock are close to workable. The core concept of the warlock as someone who has traded something for power is a usable one with precedent in the literature under various names, and if the inner power concept is broadened so that the trapped soul is just a subset of sorcerers, that should work as well.

The bigger problem, I think, is how this fluff is basically casting Wizards as if they're the superior class when, in theory, wizards/warlocks/sorcerers are supposed to be balanced against each other. It makes me seriously worried if this favoritism is going to seep through into other parts of the design.

[Knaight]

The bigger problem, I think, is how this fluff is basically casting Wizards as if they're the superior class when, in theory, wizards/warlocks/sorcerers are supposed to be balanced against each other. It makes me seriously worried if this favoritism is going to seep through into other parts of the design.

That could be a problem. The upside is that the article was written by one person, so it is quite possible that that person is a big fan of the wizard, but it isn't a trait of the team as a whole. Plus, there is always the possibility that the wizard being a favorite doesn't translate into them actually being any better; I'm hoping WotC incompetence works for us for once. That said, I can't say I'm optimistic about it.

[Craft (Cheese)]

That could be a problem. The upside is that the article was written by one person, so it is quite possible that that person is a big fan of the wizard, but it isn't a trait of the team as a whole. Plus, there is always the possibility that the wizard being a favorite doesn't translate into them actually being any better; I'm hoping WotC incompetence works for us for once. That said, I can't say I'm optimistic about it.

I suffer from a strong case of wizard favoritism myself. I can say from experience that resisting the temptation to make them just a little bit more powerful (and then a bit more, and then a bit more, until eventually they're seriously overpowered) takes a strong sense of self-control (and sometimes I still give in to it, even subconsciously). Incompetence means that sense of control isn't there.

Plus, IIRC (cba to check the article again), this was written by Mearls himself. He's probably the most powerful individual on the team when it comes to determining what design direction 5e is going to take.

[The New Bruceski]

Paladins will get a class "feature" that prevents all their abilities from working within 50 feet of a rogue, to keep party dynamics interesting.

[Felhammer]

I don't like this lore. If it were to find its way to a core book it would promote needless intra-party conflict between wizards and other arcane casters. I know I can rewrite fluff, but I would prefer rulebooks not to put ideas into players heads that would be destructive to good atmosphere at the table. I had enough of conflict between elves and dwarves turning into insult race between players. If I want this sort of themes in my campaign I will put them myself, thank you very much. What I'm saying is I want default lore to be neutral, with sorcerer witchhunts and mages guilds consisting of all arcane classes being equally possible.

Also it goes on about what wizards think of them, but it fails to show what they think of wizards and how they interact with each other. It should either describe all relations or none of them.

Actually, 3.x was filled with this kind of fluff, especially Wizards being anti-Warlock. It's not new for Wizards (who represent organized magic) to rail against people who use magic naturally or, essentially, cheat to get the power.

I agree, Mearls should have written a "How do Sorcerers and Warlocks feel about Wizard" but, in all honesty, we can easily see how they feel about Wizards. Wizards are haughty, holier-than-thou people who obsess over book learning. They neglect, criticize and condemn all the other ways of using arcane magic.

[Friv]

The bigger problem, I think, is how this fluff is basically casting Wizards as if they're the superior class when, in theory, wizards/warlocks/sorcerers are supposed to be balanced against each other. It makes me seriously worried if this favoritism is going to seep through into other parts of the design.

I would argue that the fluff in question doesn't present wizards as individually stronger, just more organized. If a lone wizard was easily a match for a lone warlock, they wouldn't have any reason to fear them.

I mean, I still think it's not great fluff, since it locks down a class into an organization, and I'm not a fan of that, but I can certainly see it as a general trend. Warlocks practically exist as a pointed discussion on the dangers of reaching for power too quickly, and sorcerers have the ability to grasp what wizards do without the long training needed to properly control it. Both styles of magic are liable to be much more dangerous, just because their users are more likely to not have a thorough grounding in what the crap they're doing.

[Knaight]

I mean, I still think it's not great fluff, since it locks down a class into an organization, and I'm not a fan of that, but I can certainly see it as a general trend.

Worse than that, it hampers individual characters. There are a whole bunch of plausible reactions between members of the three classes regarding the others. A sorcerer could admire a wizard for achieving with hard work what the sorcerer can simply do, another could scorn them for having to struggle, yet another could have a fascination with wizard magic due to it seeming exotic, so on and so forth. In converse, a wizard could be envious of a sorcerer; another could pity them for having an easy route, considering them inferior as a result; yet another could have a love of sorcerers magic and generally be furious at sorcerers for taking it for granted. If you assume a character who is actually tied into magic in a big way, and is somewhat major, they would likely have a complex relationship with the types of magic, the various practitioners, individuals in each group, factions within the organizations that exist, and so much else. Instead, we get "Wizards hate these guys and hunt them down".

[Lictor of Thrax]

Worse than that, it hampers individual characters. There are a whole bunch of plausible reactions between members of the three classes regarding the others. A sorcerer could admire a wizard for achieving with hard work what the sorcerer can simply do, another could scorn them for having to struggle, yet another could have a fascination with wizard magic due to it seeming exotic, so on and so forth. In converse, a wizard could be envious of a sorcerer; another could pity them for having an easy route, considering them inferior as a result; yet another could have a love of sorcerers magic and generally be furious at sorcerers for taking it for granted. If you assume a character who is actually tied into magic in a big way, and is somewhat major, they would likely have a complex relationship with the types of magic, the various practitioners, individuals in each group, factions within the organizations that exist, and so much else. Instead, we get "Wizards hate these guys and hunt them down".

But these are generalized concepts. No where does it say that any of this is how every player has to view things, just that that is the generic atmosphere.

While I don't think it's awesome fluff or anything, it by no means forces individual characters into feeling one way . . . but hell, my elf may have no problem at all with Half-Orcs, though technically the general elven feeling towards them is distrust.

Hopefully when they actually write out the real history and fluff they are more creative and in depth . . . but I also don't think there's some huge sin going on here.

[TheOOB]

{{Scrubbed}}

[Zombimode]

All of them are random buffs to the wrong things for a class. If you're adding archetype changes to a class they should actually affect the things the class does.

:smallconfused: But... the 5e Sorcerer Bloodlines do precisely this. They have a huge impact on the general direction of the class.

Edit: aaaaand ninja'd big time by TheOOB

[TheOOB]

:smallconfused: But... the 5e Sorcerer Bloodlines do precisely this. They have a huge impact on the general direction of the class.

Edit: aaaaand ninja'd big time by TheOOB

*With mouth moving much faster than appropriate for the words spoken*

The way on the ninja is shrouded in mystery and fast typing skills.

I would like to see a ninja class that doesn't suck some time, just an aside.

[Leeham]

I would like to see a ninja class that doesn't suck some time, just an aside.

I guarantee there will be a rogue scheme for that eventually.

But more seriously, I don't think it's fair to judge the sorcerer based on
A) What we've seen so far
B) The fluff from that Legends and Lore article.

We've only seen one facet of the class so far, so come on guys, have a little patience. Secondly, and this is the part that really annoys me, the article wasn't a rules article, nor was it some some canonical D&D "If you don't play the game like this you're wrong" type of thing. It was FLUFF. Written by a guy who thought that was a cool back story for these mechanics. The sorcerer can be REFLUFFED however you like. In fact, it would probably be easier to refluff a sorcerer than say, a fighter or wizard.

[noparlpf]

Paladins will get a class "feature" that prevents all their abilities from working within 50 feet of a rogue, to keep party dynamics interesting.

Where's your evidence for that? Rogues can be good-aligned, and "mistrustful" isn't something I'd call "interesting".


*With mouth moving much faster than appropriate for the words spoken*

The way on the ninja is shrouded in mystery and fast typing skills.

I would like to see a ninja class that doesn't suck some time, just an aside.

The Rokugan ninja in 3.X wasn't too bad. Compared to the other ninja.

[Yora]

What does a ninja do that is different from a rogue?

[noparlpf]

What does a ninja do that is different from a rogue?

Mechanically or thematically? A ninja is a spy and an assassin. It's a subset of Rogue. It doesn't necessarily have to be a separate class in 5e, maybe just a variant.

[Dienekes]

What does a ninja do that is different from a rogue?

It's about as different as an assassin is to a rogue. Meaning mostly, just one that decided to focus on some specific subset of the rogues abilities.

Honestly, I don't think either need to be separate classes, but it would help making a Rogue Scheme that is actually called: Assassin, Spy, Acrobat, and all that jazz so that folks who get caught up on names know what they're supposed to play. Now if they do that, which it looks like they will, my question would be what real difference would the ninja have to the assassin scheme to make it necessary?

[noparlpf]

It's about as different as an assassin is to a rogue. Meaning mostly, just one that decided to focus on some specific subset of the rogues abilities.

Honestly, I don't think either need to be separate classes, but it would help making a Rogue Scheme that is actually called: Assassin, Spy, Acrobat, and all that jazz so that folks who get caught up on names know what they're supposed to play. Now if they do that, which it looks like they will, my question would be what real difference would the ninja have to the assassin scheme to make it necessary?

More smoke and illusions?

[Dienekes]

More smoke and illusions?

Smoke pellets should be an item, and as for illusions, I did not think we were going with the magic ninja variant but a more realistic take on them. If we're adding that sort of stuff then yeah, I guess it would be it's own scheme.

[noparlpf]

Smoke pellets should be an item, and as for illusions, I did not think we were going with the magic ninja variant but a more realistic take on them. If we're adding that sort of stuff then yeah, I guess it would be it's own scheme.

Smoke pellets are an item.
I didn't mean magic illusions. But I guess a couple of magic ninjutsu are kind of the classic western view of the ninja. Not that that necessarily means the ninja should be Naruto or something ridiculous like that. I don't think I'd like a magic ninja.

[Zombimode]

It's about as different as an assassin is to a rogue. Meaning mostly, just one that decided to focus on some specific subset of the rogues abilities.

Honestly, I don't think either need to be separate classes, but it would help making a Rogue Scheme that is actually called: Assassin, Spy, Acrobat, and all that jazz so that folks who get caught up on names know what they're supposed to play. Now if they do that, which it looks like they will, my question would be what real difference would the ninja have to the assassin scheme to make it necessary?

Points to consider from tradition (D&D tradition):

Assassins have a "Death Attack" and dabble in magic. One could say, the archetype the D&D Assassin covers, is the stealthy killer that uses magic to boost its skills.

Ninjas have various Supernatural powers. One could say a Ninja is a stealthy guy that uses Ki to for superhuman feats.

Both opposed to the Rogue, who currently seems to be a shady McGuyver type.


Whether you think thats enough of a distinction to make an own class is your call.
Personally, I think the Mage/Thief killer type is distinct enough to warrant a class. Its narrow, but not narrower than the Druid or Paladin. I wouldn't mind if its included in D&D Next.

The Ninja on the other side is to specific for my tastes as a class. Some (line of) Feats would be better, like "Ki User: Acrobatic", "Ki User: Body" and "Ki User: Mind" or so.



Now if they do that, which it looks like they will, my question would be what real difference would the ninja have to the assassin scheme to make it necessary?

Sorry if I'm harping on semantics, but very few things are necessary for a fantasy PnP system. One could argue that something qualifies for the genre some kind of magic user has to be available, likewise some kind of warrior. The Wizard and Fighter classes would satisfy this.

What is represented by a class, or by a feat (or whatever) or at all, is largely contingent. The reasons for including one thing or the other can vary. For Next tradition likely plays a big role, as well as player expectations and considerings what makes for an interesting game.

[Kurald Galain]

What does a ninja do that is different from a rogue?

Flip out and kill people? That's what I call Real Ultimate Pwoer!

[Ashdate]

Flip out and kill people? That's what I call Real Ultimate Pwoer!

I'm glad they got rid of them for 4e; before the heavy nerfs in 3e Ninjas had it all: Ninja Swords, Hippo Mounts, Rock Music... they were Tier -1 easy.

[Seerow]

I'm glad they got rid of them for 4e; before the heavy nerfs in 3e Ninjas had it all: Ninja Swords, Hippo Mounts, Rock Music... they were Tier -1 easy.

Don't forget their OP no save just die frisbie ability.

[Starbuck_II]

What does a ninja do that is different from a rogue?

Something like the Pathfinder version, I perfer the Eastern anime/fantasy version. They can Shadowclone (mirror Image) using Ki, turn invisible, Use ki for extra attack, wall climb, etc.

Rogues don't have magic/Ki, rogues are better at disabling traps however.

Both can find them easily.

[Menteith]

I'd rather see both a Rogue scheme for a nonmagical Ninja and a Monk scheme for a mystical Ninja. There's no reason both ideas couldn't be expressed through different ways.

[Zeful]

I would argue that the fluff in question doesn't present wizards as individually stronger, just more organized. If a lone wizard was easily a match for a lone warlock, they wouldn't have any reason to fear them.

I mean, I still think it's not great fluff, since it locks down a class into an organization, and I'm not a fan of that, but I can certainly see it as a general trend. Warlocks practically exist as a pointed discussion on the dangers of reaching for power too quickly, and sorcerers have the ability to grasp what wizards do without the long training needed to properly control it. Both styles of magic are liable to be much more dangerous, just because their users are more likely to not have a thorough grounding in what the crap they're doing.


Worse than that, it hampers individual characters. There are a whole bunch of plausible reactions between members of the three classes regarding the others. A sorcerer could admire a wizard for achieving with hard work what the sorcerer can simply do, another could scorn them for having to struggle, yet another could have a fascination with wizard magic due to it seeming exotic, so on and so forth. In converse, a wizard could be envious of a sorcerer; another could pity them for having an easy route, considering them inferior as a result; yet another could have a love of sorcerers magic and generally be furious at sorcerers for taking it for granted. If you assume a character who is actually tied into magic in a big way, and is somewhat major, they would likely have a complex relationship with the types of magic, the various practitioners, individuals in each group, factions within the organizations that exist, and so much else. Instead, we get "Wizards hate these guys and hunt them down".

So, in regards to previous arguments in this thread:

How are either of these complaints actually valid, if my complaint on bloodlines being limited isn't?

[Dienekes]

I'd rather see both a Rogue scheme for a nonmagical Ninja and a Monk scheme for a mystical Ninja. There's no reason both ideas couldn't be expressed through different ways.

This is a good idea. But they'll probably rename them so there aren't two schemes floating around called ninja.


So, in regards to previous arguments in this thread:

How are either of these complaints actually valid, if my complaint on bloodlines being limited isn't?

Because they are entirely basing their argument on disliking the fluff. Fine, if you said you don't like the fluff of bloodlines there'd be no argument. IBut you try to tie your dislike of the fluff into an argument of the mechanics saying that bloodlines will have no changes in altering the class which is as yet unproven. That's what gets pointed out, repeatedly.

Now personally, after a quick read through the sorc/warlock thing without thinking of implications or whatnot, I thought the fluff was interesting. Not the best thing I've ever read, but interesting.

[noparlpf]

I'd rather see both a Rogue scheme for a nonmagical Ninja and a Monk scheme for a mystical Ninja. There's no reason both ideas couldn't be expressed through different ways.

I think I'd like to see that.

[Lictor of Thrax]

It's about as different as an assassin is to a rogue. Meaning mostly, just one that decided to focus on some specific subset of the rogues abilities.

Honestly, I don't think either need to be separate classes, but it would help making a Rogue Scheme that is actually called: Assassin, Spy, Acrobat, and all that jazz so that folks who get caught up on names know what they're supposed to play. Now if they do that, which it looks like they will, my question would be what real difference would the ninja have to the assassin scheme to make it necessary?

As mentioned, a ninja isn't just an assassin, he's also a spy, an infiltrator. Really, the real difference between a ninja and a samurai wasn't so much their fighting styles but how they applied themselves. Samurai were the honorable face of their lord, ninja were the guys that did their business on the sly.

I see them having all sorts of diversionary tactics/abilities. Maybe focused on more cinematic and acrobatic abilities. I see them more diverse and spread out.

Assassin's were killers, flat and simple. While there'd definitely be some cross-over in some areas, I see them as completely focused on something that ninja simply dabble in.

[noparlpf]

Ninja deserve Hide in Plain Sight, definitely. Maybe an ability to avoid an attack by leaving a dummy image behind, and moving to behind the enemy. Fast movement. Possibly illusionary doubles. Maybe the ninjutsu abilities could be based on some Ki points system similar to the Sorcerer's Willpower in 5e. Uhh...some water-walk and wall-walk abilities. And maybe a fire-based ability. That's what I think of for Ninja.

[Yora]

That's a spellcaster with the Stealth Skill.

I like my ninja as just some guys who are really got at sneaking and silent killing with knives and poison and some scouting ability.

[huttj509]

That's a spellcaster with the Stealth Skill.

I like my ninja as just some guys who are really got at sneaking and silent killing with knives and poison and some scouting ability.

Aaaaaaand there's the problem. You ask 5 people what's necessary to be a 'Ninja' and you get 6 contradictory answers.

And worse? All of them are right.

[Knaight]

Aaaaaaand there's the problem. You ask 5 people what's necessary to be a 'Ninja' and you get 6 contradictory answers.

And worse? All of them are right.

Fortunately, just about all of them could easily be represented, though it works best if there isn't an explicitly delineated Ninja class or theme or whatever. Yora's conception can be handled with a rogue with the right equipment and skills really easily, Lictor's is represented easily enough with skills in disguise and deceit, a high dexterity score, and the rogue class. Noparlpf's is the only listed conception which requires quite a bit of new stuff, and even then, I wouldn't be surprised if the Monk class ended up having quite a bit of it built in.

[Talakeal]

I think the new sorcerer is a really good idea. A "possessed" character isn't a well represented arch-type in D&D, and the idea of a caster who becomes more melee focused as he runs low on spell slots is a creative new dynamic that turns the concept of going nova and the 15 minute work day on its ear.

The problem is, that isn't what a sorcerer is in D&D. It's a great idea for a new class, but it is a drastic betrayal of an existing concept, and that is exactly the type of thing they should be shying away from if they are trying to win back fans of older additions and not alienate anyone.

[AgentPaper]

How is that not what the sorcerer has been about historically? In 3.5, the sorcerer was just a re-hash of the wizard with slightly different casting. It wasn't until 4E that the sorcerer got their own distinct identity, and that identity is basically exactly what the 5E sorcerer is doing, just taken a step further.

As for specifically becoming more of a melee character when the spells are out, that's what the dragonblooded sorcerer does, not all sorcerers. We don't know what the other types do yet.

[Leeham]

I think the new sorcerer is a really good idea. A "possessed" character isn't a well represented arch-type in D&D, and the idea of a caster who becomes more melee focused as he runs low on spell slots is a creative new dynamic that turns the concept of going nova and the 15 minute work day on its ear.

The problem is, that isn't what a sorcerer is in D&D. It's a great idea for a new class, but it is a drastic betrayal of an existing concept, and that is exactly the type of thing they should be shying away from if they are trying to win back fans of older additions and not alienate anyone.

Emphasis mine.

I don't think it is really. In 3e the idea of sorcerer as the mage who draws his power from his supernatural heritage was right there in his fluff if not in the mechanics, and in 4e it appeared again, with mechanical representation. Now this iteration of the sorcerer might seem a little extreme, but if you ask me it's the logical conclusion of this concept, mechanically supported so that now the class focuses on that concept to the point where the class is all about power from supernatural heritage, instead of that theme just being a minor feature of the class.

[mhensley]

fun with d&d character generation - I give you Belkar Bitterleaf

1st level Halfling Fighter CE

Str- 12
Dex- 17
Con- 14
Int- 10
Wis- 8
Cha- 13

AC- 15 (studded leather)
HP- 12
2 x dagger 1d6 (+6 to hit, +3 to damage)

Halfling-
Speed- 25 ft.
Lucky
Halfling Weapon Training
Halfling Nimbleness
Lightfoot- naturally stealthy

Thug-
intimidate- 4
stealth- 6
streetwise- 4

Duelist - tumbling
Dual Wielder- two weapon fighting

[noparlpf]

Aaaaaaand there's the problem. You ask 5 people what's necessary to be a 'Ninja' and you get 6 contradictory answers.

And worse? All of them are right.

Exactly. That's why making a game to appeal to everyone is so hard.


Fortunately, just about all of them could easily be represented, though it works best if there isn't an explicitly delineated Ninja class or theme or whatever. Yora's conception can be handled with a rogue with the right equipment and skills really easily, Lictor's is represented easily enough with skills in disguise and deceit, a high dexterity score, and the rogue class. Noparlpf's is the only listed conception which requires quite a bit of new stuff, and even then, I wouldn't be surprised if the Monk class ended up having quite a bit of it built in.

Admittedly, half the things I listed came from Kirby's Ninja form in one of the DS games.

[Zeful]

Emphasis mine.

I don't think it is really. In 3e the idea of sorcerer as the mage who draws his power from his supernatural heritage was right there in his fluff if not in the mechanics, and in 4e it appeared again, with mechanical representation. Now this iteration of the sorcerer might seem a little extreme, but if you ask me it's the logical conclusion of this concept, mechanically supported so that now the class focuses on that concept to the point where the class is all about power from supernatural heritage, instead of that theme just being a minor feature of the class.

How 'bout no. Yes, there was a line in reference to supernatural heritage, but unlike the rest of the body of that text, it was written as myth-making than a statement of fact (and yes, there is a difference). The sorcerer fluff in 3e did not officially support any specific factor for why he could cast, making it the player's job to come up with all that background, if he felt it necessary.

Or to put it in a way that people will understand, the fighter. What did his class' fluff endorse for archetype? Anything you wanted it to. What if all fighters were in 5e mechanically forced to be mercenaries? How do you think people would take it?

[AgentPaper]

Or to put it in a way that people will understand, the fighter. What did his class' fluff endorse for archetype? Anything you wanted it to. What if all fighters were in 5e mechanically forced to be mercenaries? How do you think people would take it?

How are those in any way comparable? The sorcerer's fluff dictates only that you were born with strange powers. It says nothing about what you did with those powers, or anything else about your life at all. You could be a farmer who didn't know about his power until very late in his life, or you could be a scion of a noble bloodline that has nurtured their sorcerous bloodline for generations, or you could be a mercenary that uses their bloodline powers for coin.

[Camelot]

I made a character concept that works with the sorcerer as is, but doesn't mention anything about draconic heritage, and is fit into a completely different campaign world than vanilla D&D:


In the distant future, the number of demons swells exponentially, and eventually demons burst out into the mortal world. They brought ruin and chaos to the world, but worse were the people who joined them. With the right magic, you could be protected from the demons by making them think that you were one of them. You received magical powers with no need to study, no need to make deals with intelligent beings. The demons didn't care, as long as they had more beings helping them to destroy things.

One of these sorcerers was Karonis. The demonic powers that he obtained caused his body to enter a constant state of fluctuation. He can normally control it, but using his magic requires him to divert his attention to the spells, so the more magic he uses, the more his body transforms. His skin turns hard and crusty, his muscles bulge and swell, and fire barely harms him. Protrusions grow from him, and when they appear on his arms, he can use them as weapons. Karonis is slowly learning how to control this fluctuation.

When they make other sorcerous origins, it will be just as easy to fit them to different campaigns and character concepts. Most of them will probably have some effect on the sorcerer when he is out of spells, a mechanic that shows how sorcerers' magic is different from wizards' magic; it is something within you that you were born with, not something you had to learn, thus it has an effect on your body. Whether this is a heritage, a curse, or just because is up to the player and the DM of each particular campaign.

[1337 b4k4]

The sorcerer's fluff dictates only that you were born with strange powers.

Actually, it doesn't even say that. I really have to wonder if I'm reading the same playtest documents that everyone else is, because the Sorcerer class explicitly in the second paragraph calls out that the origin of the Sorcerer's power is completely variable. The only key defining part of fluff is that it is something the sorcerer must struggle to keep in check, and as they lose that struggle, the magic makes itself known on the sorcerer all the more.

Now, yes, the Sorcerer with the Draconic Heritage Origin does indeed have his powers by blood and from birth, but clearly in just reading the opening paragraphs, you could have a sorcerer who was but a poor scribe for a great druid who happened to be in the way when his master tried to take on a god, and was somehow fused with a lightning elemental. His hair sticks out in all directions as if he were just recently zapped, and as his will wears down over the time, you might catch glimpses of electrical discharge as he walks past.

Too me, the sorcerer fluff makes them about as generic as they can be without being just "Wizard with Spell Points Instead".

[TheOOB]

What does a ninja do that is different from a rogue?

In real life, a ninja was just an assassin with an unusually powerful air of mystique around them.

In fantasy, ninja usually have supernatural powers, quick movement, teleportation, invisibility. I would like to see a magical rogue sometime(I loved the beguiler, but I would have like a version that still focused on weapon attacks as their primary version of killing people).


How 'bout no. Yes, there was a line in reference to supernatural heritage, but unlike the rest of the body of that text, it was written as myth-making than a statement of fact (and yes, there is a difference). The sorcerer fluff in 3e did not officially support any specific factor for why he could cast, making it the player's job to come up with all that background, if he felt it necessary.

Or to put it in a way that people will understand, the fighter. What did his class' fluff endorse for archetype? Anything you wanted it to. What if all fighters were in 5e mechanically forced to be mercenaries? How do you think people would take it?

Actually, a fighters fluff implies the character is well trained and very experienced with weapon combat. They are not a thug with a sword, or some random militia men, those are warriors, they are fighters, which is something more.

Well the fluff for sorcerers in 3.x was clear their magic was inborn, likely a result of a supernatural bloodline, but in effect all they were mechanically was slightly different(and significantly worse) wizards. When you played a sorcerer, all you ended up with was a bad wizard. That's it. A 5e sorc will give you options as to where your powers come from, and abilities that help flavor and flesh out your characters, abilities which a wizard cannot replicate. It'll make the character unique from the wizard both in flavor and mechanically. And I reiterate, if you can't make an interesting character with a particular set of mechanics, that's your problem, not the games.

[Anderlith]

How 'bout no. Yes, there was a line in reference to supernatural heritage, but unlike the rest of the body of that text, it was written as myth-making than a statement of fact (and yes, there is a difference). The sorcerer fluff in 3e did not officially support any specific factor for why he could cast, making it the player's job to come up with all that background, if he felt it necessary.

Or to put it in a way that people will understand, the fighter. What did his class' fluff endorse for archetype? Anything you wanted it to. What if all fighters were in 5e mechanically forced to be mercenaries? How do you think people would take it?

There is the wonderful thing about fluff. Fluff is a wonderful thing.

Because it doesn't make a difference

If all fighters were mercenaries then I can just say "Nah, they are just people that kill stuff"

Personally I love the new sorcerer, I'd love to see what's next for them, but if I guy comes up to me wanting to play a sorcerer that doesn't like the fluff about bloodlines I'll tell them to either play a wizard/warlock or maybe play a distinctive bloodline that doesn't change them so much.

The fluff & mechanics that people need to focus on about the sorcerer isn't that they become melee combatants, it's that casting their spells gives them new abilities. The more they use their power the more they change.

A sorcerer is going to play drastically different from a wizard because a wizard knows that every spell will leave them weaker power-wise. While a sorcerer doesn't really get weaker power-wise... they just lose themselves to the magic, & that may not be a good thing.

If you look at the sorcerer as only a spontaneous wizard then just wait a little bit for the rules for them come out because I can promise you that they will.

[1337 b4k4]

I would like to see a magical rogue sometime(I loved the beguiler, but I would have like a version that still focused on weapon attacks as their primary version of killing people).

Rogue with the Charlatan background and Magic User specialty, maybe take ghost sound and get your DM to agree to a minor prestidigitation spell as your second minor spell.

Should work for most things no?

[Zeful]

{{Scrubbed}}

[AgentPaper]

{{Scrubbed}}

The point of my contention are that they are not the same thing. The fluff of the sorcerer dictates the source of their power, not their background. You can say it's the same thing as much as you like, but unless you have arguments to back that assertion up, it doesn't change the facts.

{{Scrubbed}}

Don't act like I'm not listening to you. It is in fact possible for people to disagree with you even after reading your arguments. If all fighters were forced to be mercenaries, that would indeed be a bad thing, to put it lightly. However, this is irrelevant, because sorcerers are not being forced into anything other than where their powers originally came from. This is true of all classes, even the fighter, who's power source is their personal skill and training in combat.

[Anderlith]

Now, move the the next damn line in my post. What if all fighters were in 5e mechanically forced to be mercenaries? As in, the class abilities made being a mercenary the only possible option.
A variant of the Oberoni Fallacy.

Strawman. That's NOT what I said. Try again.

Not subject to the Oberoni Fallacy. It is fluff not mechanics. You cannot "break" imagination or fiction.

Also not a strawman.

[Zeful]

{{Scrubbed}}

[Zeful]

Not subject to the Oberoni Fallacy. It is fluff not mechanics. You cannot "break" imagination or fiction.

Also not a strawman.

"Variant" look it up. Claiming that fluff doesn't matter because you can rewrite it is pretty much the same statement that mechanics don't matter because the DM can rewrite it. So if the latter is a fallacy, the former is as well.

And yes, because: "What if all fighters were in 5e mechanically forced to be mercenaries?" was the point, which you have failed to address. Still strawman.

[noparlpf]

Not subject to the Oberoni Fallacy. It is fluff not mechanics. You cannot "break" imagination or fiction.

Mechanics are supposed to work without you changing them. Fluff is a recommendation only. Thus the Oberoni Fallacy does not apply to fluff.


Also not a strawman.

It kind of was though. He said "if the mechanics said blah" and you said "then I could ignore the fluff".


There, now I've sided with both people in an argument. Word.

Edit:

I'm not acting like you're not listening. But conversly, expecting me to read your mind: pretty stupid.

Please don't let this devolve into flinging insults. We're all mature adults here.


And what am I supposed to do when people make arguments that barely address half my point? Just let them be?

Sometimes, yes. No point getting into a tizzy over something that you could just agree to disagree on.


And for a fighter: Where and when is just as important. So again: When was power source separate from background, like ever?

Examples of background:
1. Trained in the military
2. Trained with a master
3. Learned to fight by experience...
3.a. ...on the streets
3.b. ...in a war...
3.b.i. ...defending one's hometown
3.b.ii. ...after conscription
&c., I'm too lazy to come up with more than half a dozen examples
Examples of power source:
1. Strength and skill
2. Strength and skill

[AgentPaper]

And Power Source was not part of background... when exactly?

Part of background, sure. You can't make a fighter and then have their background be that they grew up secluded in an ancient monastery reading books all of his life. If you want to be a fighter, you need to have combat experience and/or combat training. This is part of your background. That doesn't mean it's your entire background.


Claiming that fluff doesn't matter because you can rewrite it is pretty much the same statement that mechanics don't matter because the DM can rewrite it. So if the latter is a fallacy, the former is as well.

It's similar, but not the same thing. Whether fluff is good or bad is 100% a matter of opinion. You can say you don't like the fluff, and that you'd rather see something else, but that doesn't make it wrong. It's valuable feedback, and if a large number of the audience also don't like the fluff, then WotC should probably change the fluff, but it's impossible to please everyone, and you have to accept that sometimes, you're not the one who's pleased.

Fortunately, fluff is very easy and painless to change to fit your whim, so even if you're in the minority who dislike something, you can modify it however you like.

The Oberoni Fallacy applies to the situation where someone says "It's bad, but it's not bad because you can fix it." For fluff, what we're saying is "We like it. You don't like it, but that's ok because you can change it." The first contradicts itself, the second does not. Thus, no fallacy.


And yes, because: "What if all fighters were in 5e mechanically forced to be mercenaries?" was the point, which you have failed to address. Still strawman.

I addressed that point, and also I don't think strawman means what you think it means. If I were treating you as a strawman, I would be arguing against some fictional person who hated 5E because it was new, rather than any stated reasons. You have stated reasons (even if I disagree with them), so you're not a strawman, and I haven't treated you as such.

[Zeful]

Part of background, sure. You can't make a fighter and then have their background be that they grew up secluded in an ancient monastery reading books all of his life. If you want to be a fighter, you need to have combat experience and/or combat training. This is part of your background. That doesn't mean it's your entire background.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I could. The "inappropriate talent for lifestyle, unlocked during adversity" isn't common, but it happens in fiction. It's still essentially the same power source though.

But my point (since I am apparently really bad at making these things as clear as they need to be) is that it is part of their background, and can be their entire background, and now it's being mechanically defined for... what reason exactly? 'Cause I can't think of a compelling reason that doesn't outright sit down and demand I play only one setting.

[Anderlith]

Zeful, I am sorry let me elaborate, you ask "What if fighters were mechanically enforced to be mercenaries?" Well think about it. Every adventurer is basically a mercenary. Some do good, some do bad, but in the end they adventure, & get loot.

Now I'm not saying that the adventurer has to keep the loot, just that they receive it.

That is why I would say "Nah they just kill stuff", because all adventurers are mercenaries whether they know it or not

[noparlpf]

Zeful, I am sorry let me elaborate, you ask "What if fighters were mechanically enforced to be mercenaries?" Well think about it. Every adventurer is basically a mercenary. Some do good, some do bad, but in the end they adventure, & get loot.

Now I'm not saying that the adventurer has to keep the loot, just that they receive it.

That is why I would say "Nah they just kill stuff", because all adventurers are mercenaries whether they know it or not

Ehh...but some adventurers adventure for the adventure of it, some adventure for various other reasons (my favourite character is a mage (specifically Sorcerer/Stormcaster for your meta-stuff) whose current main goal in life is to become powerful enough to bring his mother back to life because he blames himself for her death), and some adventure because a rich dude is paying them. Even if they're all meta-mercenaries, only the latter is an in-game mercenary.

[AgentPaper]

But my point (since I am apparently really bad at making these things as clear as they need to be) is that it is part of their background, and can be their entire background, and now it's being mechanically defined for... what reason exactly? 'Cause I can't think of a compelling reason that doesn't outright sit down and demand I play only one setting.

It's being defined because it allows the sorcerer to be distinct and interesting as a class, with actual class features.

And I still can't figure out what you're looking at that says the sorcerer has a defined background. They need to have had some event (either in their life or their parents) that granted them the powers that they have, just like a fighter needs to have had some event in their life that granted them their power.

What background can you imagine for a sorcerer, that doesn't work with the current version? And I don't mean "Can you imagine one", I mean, give me an actual example of a background you want to have, and why it doesn't work.

[navar100]

What does a ninja do that is different from a rogue?

Some players get a thrill saying "I'm playing a ninja!". The literal word "ninja" needs to be the name of the class to qualify as playing ninja.

[noparlpf]

What background can you imagine for a sorcerer, that doesn't work with the current version? And I don't mean "Can you imagine one", I mean, give me an actual example of a background you want to have, and why it doesn't work.

I wanna play a Sorcerer whose power comes from Fey ancestry. Obviously the one heritage they've outlined in the playtest is the only one they'll ever write.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Some players get a thrill saying "I'm playing a ninja!". The literal word "ninja" needs to be the name of the class to qualify as playing ninja.

You're being sarcastic, but this is a real thing. The thing about classes, especially in D&D, is they don't just define a character's abilities, but also carry all sorts of baggage that attaches itself to the character. They imply a lot about a character's background, motivation, and even mannerisms.

This is the fundamental reason behind the Rogue == Thief stereotype (and also the reason why WotC saw it fit to make Thieves Cant a class feature rather than a background trait).


Ehh...but some adventurers adventure for the adventure of it, some adventure for various other reasons (my favourite character is a mage (specifically Sorcerer/Stormcaster for your meta-stuff) whose current main goal in life is to become powerful enough to bring his mother back to life because he blames himself for her death), and some adventure because a rich dude is paying them. Even if they're all meta-mercenaries, only the latter is an in-game mercenary.

Wait, wait, who says all D&D characters have to be adventurers? Who says all D&D campaigns have to be about killing things and taking their stuff?

[noparlpf]

Wait, wait, who says all D&D characters have to be adventurers? Who says all D&D campaigns have to be about killing things and taking their stuff?

Yeah, exactly. I was just saying that even among adventurers there are all sorts.