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

[PairO'Dice Lost]

There's some line saying that low-level characters are like normal people, levels 6-10 are above-average, level 11-15 are like big heroes, something like that. Anybody know what I'm thinking of?

The oft-quoted Calibrating Your Expectations (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2) essay at the Alexandrian came to roughly that conclusion, the general consensus here being that it's flawed but fairly accurate, and there are a bunch of posts people have made supporting that general scale (examinations of the CR of Hercules's and Perseus's foes, examples of what you can do with 9 ranks in a skill, etc.) which I can link later today when I get back to my laptop, if you're interested.

[TheOOB]

Speaking of skills: I don't like how in 3.X cross-class skills cost two skill points. Having a lower cap makes sense, because you spend less time studying it, but having it cost more skill points per rank makes it seem like you're spending more time studying it and getting less gain from it. Okay, so I'm a Chem student. I have less time to practice guitar this semester because I'm (supposed to be) studying more. So why should every ten hours practicing only give me the benefit of five hours' practice if I were majoring in music?

A deeper problem is with cross-class skills. Skills were meant to be a way to customize your character outside of their class. So why were they so intrinsically tied to your class which skills you can have. If I want to play a diplomatic fighter, or a stealthy wizard, why can't I?

[noparlpf]

A deeper problem is with cross-class skills. Skills were meant to be a way to customize your character outside of their class. So why were they so intrinsically tied to your class which skills you can have. If I want to play a diplomatic fighter, or a stealthy wizard, why can't I?

That's exactly my point. I understand that some skills are tied to classes (Disable Device and Rogues, Survival and Druids or Rangers), but can't that be expressed by a bonus instead of by making cross-class skills cost double?

[obryn]

Seeing as WotC is already cribbing Bloodlines and Channel Energy off Pathfinder to try and get their 3e players back, it makes sense to learn from some of that system's better decisions.
Eh? 4e's divine classes have channel divinity ... it was released before PF, so I'm not seeing how Channel Divinity is now cribbing from PF.

The bloodlines bit, Pathfinder cribbed from WotC off the "draconic lineage" flavor and classes like the Dragon Disciple. It's not like it was an invention cut from whole cloth. :smallsmile:

-O

[navar100]

Ehh, I kind of like the option to stay in the base class to get some higher abilities and capstones. Especially if they go the more fluff based reasoning behind prestige classes as they've indicated. For a few of the characters I've played, I don't want to be inducted into the Great Knights of Prestigious Way and then go through the rituals to join Epic Warriors of More Awesome Than You, I'd rather just be a normal mercenary who is just that good.

Like the Warblade, for example. Warblade 20 is a fine character that can stand up fine when compared to those who prestiged out of the class earlier. I'd rather have that model than otherwise.

Point.

Maybe it's just me, but I think aesthetics is another factor. It sounds cooler to say you are <insert prestige class> than <insert base class>. Cleric or Sacred Exorcist? Wizard or Loremaster? Warblade or Eternal Blade? Rogue or Arcane Trickster? Certainly the mechanics of a prestige class and base class matter, but how many threads have we seen where someone is playing a base class but asking about prestige classes as if it's an automatic development-but-of-course-everyone-goes-into-a-prestige-class?

[navar100]

Then why bother? Variation in abilities by individual is already accounted for by the dice.

Because otherwise non-humans get an unfair advantage in character creation. In point buy, an elf wizard with +2 Intelligence only needs to buy a 16 to get an 18. A human wizard must buy the more expensive 18 costing more than a -2 to another ability score in compensation to compare to an elf's -2 to Constitution. If rolling for stats, an elf player needs only roll a 16 to get an 18. If he rolls a natural 18 anyway, that can go into another stat and let something else get the +2 to Intelligence, a 16 if he's lucky or anything if not playing a wizard. The human player has to get a natural 18 no matter what.

[Flickerdart]

The problem with 3.5's prestige classes is the same problem as with 3.5's base classes. Half of them suck, and of the half that don't, half of those only have good features for the first few levels. Saying "I'm a Sacred Exorcist" might sound cool, but when you're also an Abjurant Champion and a Spellsword...

If 5e wants to use prestige classes as joining organizations or otherwise becoming special, then they need to distance that from a character's primary method of becoming more powerful, because offering the ability to join the guild of Harpers should be an actual reward, not a chore that the PCs try to get out of as much as possible because the Harpers suck.

[navar100]

That's exactly my point. I understand that some skills are tied to classes (Disable Device and Rogues, Survival and Druids or Rangers), but can't that be expressed by a bonus instead of by making cross-class skills cost double?

Welcome to Pathfinder! :smallbiggrin:

[Kurald Galain]

The oft-quoted Calibrating Your Expectations (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2) essay at the Alexandrian came to roughly that conclusion, the general consensus here being that it's flawed but fairly accurate

The last time we discussed it, the conclusion was that it's not "fairly accurate", but wildly flawed, inaccurate all over the place, and contradicted by WOTC employees.

[noparlpf]

The oft-quoted Calibrating Your Expectations (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2) essay at the Alexandrian came to roughly that conclusion, the general consensus here being that it's flawed but fairly accurate, and there are a bunch of posts people have made supporting that general scale (examinations of the CR of Hercules's and Perseus's foes, examples of what you can do with 9 ranks in a skill, etc.) which I can link later today when I get back to my laptop, if you're interested.

I'd like that, yes please.
Personally I consider the 3.X system pretty flawed. I'd have to sit down and go through it again to come up with my reasons why, and that would also probably involve going outside and trying things like jumping off the fire escape to see how high it has to be for me to get hurt despite Tumbling.


Because otherwise non-humans get an unfair advantage in character creation. In point buy, an elf wizard with +2 Intelligence only needs to buy a 16 to get an 18. A human wizard must buy the more expensive 18 costing more than a -2 to another ability score in compensation to compare to an elf's -2 to Constitution. If rolling for stats, an elf player needs only roll a 16 to get an 18. If he rolls a natural 18 anyway, that can go into another stat and let something else get the +2 to Intelligence, a 16 if he's lucky or anything if not playing a wizard. The human player has to get a natural 18 no matter what.

I thought Elves had a bonus to Dex. I can't check the playtest for the 5e elf right now because for some reason I moved it to a different hard drive.
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with that. Going with your example, that elf wizard would be subpar for his own race. If elves are naturally smarter than humans, then of course they'll be better wizards. And a Con penalty really hurts, especially for a d4 hit die wizard. It balances out.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The last time we discussed it, the conclusion was that it's not "fairly accurate", but wildly flawed, inaccurate all over the place, and contradicted by WOTC employees.

I might have missed the latest conversations about it, but as I recall the consensus was that the major flaws were that (A) trying to generalize things like door-breaking and Jump to all ability and skill checks was a terrible idea and (B) saying everyone in real life is 1st level and 5th level people are rare is bogus and the actual boundaries are more flexible than that, but that the general thrust (you can represent real-world people as low-level characters much more accurately than as high-level characters, and ability and skill checks at lower levels are more accurate to real-life benchmarks than a lot of people give them credit for) was sound.

If you have any links to more recent discussions about it, please post them, I should probably read up on that.

[TheOOB]

Eh? 4e's divine classes have channel divinity ... it was released before PF, so I'm not seeing how Channel Divinity is now cribbing from PF.

The bloodlines bit, Pathfinder cribbed from WotC off the "draconic lineage" flavor and classes like the Dragon Disciple. It's not like it was an invention cut from whole cloth. :smallsmile:

-O

Actually, in later supplements there were whole suites of bloodline feats for 3e, so WotC can claim credit for sorcerer bloodlines, and Turn Undead has a long standing tradition in 3e of being used for other purposes. Now WotC is just building these ideas into the classes instead of being poorly executed later additions.

[Anderlith]

Pathfinder built off of 3.5 & DDN is building off of that. It's a natural evolution that is working out well. The bloodlines have their root in 3.5 Heritage feats, Turn Undead from Turn Undead Feats, etc. Pathfinder did a lot to bring certain feat abilities into class abilities, D&D is just coming full circle.

[Camelot]

A flexible +2 ability score boost, like 4e's, bumps the racial average for each stat up by a third of a point (assuming it's spread evenly among the six ability scores). Changing the average from 10.5 to 10.8 is not really significant.

The non-human races of D&D each have certain traits that are hard-wired into modern fantasy. Dwarves have really high constitution, as they can usually drink anyone under the table. Elves have really high intelligence, as they are known as the best spell-casters. This is, of course, in comparison to humans. From this logic, the toughest dwarf should be tougher than the toughest human, and the smartest elf should be smarter than the smartest human.

However, when you make a character in D&D Next, the rules don't support those tropes. Since a human can gain a racial bonus of +2 to an ability score, while each other race can only get +1, then you will always be able to make a human who has a higher stat than any other race can achieve. The toughest dwarf can get a 20 in Constitution with the right class, but the toughest human can have 21.

This is something that I think they should change; it's a trope that I would try to reinforce. Humans are supposed to be able to succeed at whatever they set their minds to, not surpass every other race. It results in something like "Where should we go to find the wisest person in the world?" "Well, they'll certainly be a human, so let's go with that."

[Tyndmyr]

The oft-quoted Calibrating Your Expectations (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2) essay at the Alexandrian came to roughly that conclusion, the general consensus here being that it's flawed but fairly accurate, and there are a bunch of posts people have made supporting that general scale (examinations of the CR of Hercules's and Perseus's foes, examples of what you can do with 9 ranks in a skill, etc.) which I can link later today when I get back to my laptop, if you're interested.

A more reasonable interpretation is that it's just a pretty terrible system for simulating humans at all. Carrying capacity easily gets ludicrous. Speed...A human with the quick trait and the Run feat(ie, how else are you going to represent a runner?) is going to be able to run a mile in about two and a half minutes at level one. In the real world, the record is about 4 minutes.

It works pretty good from the standpoint of having a decently playable game, but for simulating reality? Not so much.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

A more reasonable interpretation is that it's just a pretty terrible system for simulating humans at all. Carrying capacity easily gets ludicrous. Speed...A human with the quick trait and the Run feat(ie, how else are you going to represent a runner?) is going to be able to run a mile in about two and a half minutes at level one. In the real world, the record is about 4 minutes.

It works pretty good from the standpoint of having a decently playable game, but for simulating reality? Not so much.

Well, granted, D&D doesn't do a good job of simulating people compared to other systems, or do a good job at all in general. Given that there are always going to be players who either want to try to recreate some famous real or fictional character in D&D or who try to argue about what is or is not realistic about certain characters at certain levels, however, trying to figure out the least bad approximation seems like a worthwhile effort.

[TheOOB]

I care very little for simulating reality in D&D. The second goblins and wizards show up, I've suspended my disbelief enough to allow for improbable jumps and fast movement speeds.

I'd agree that there should be no way a human, for example, can have a higher CON than a dwarf. I'd prefer to take away the stat boosts from the classes, and make the races +2.

[1337 b4k4]

However, when you make a character in D&D Next, the rules don't support those tropes. Since a human can gain a racial bonus of +2 to an ability score, while each other race can only get +1, then you will always be able to make a human who has a higher stat than any other race can achieve. The toughest dwarf can get a 20 in Constitution with the right class, but the toughest human can have 21.

This actually isn't true. According to the playtest rules, all player characters capped at 20 for all of their abilities regardless of racial or other modifiers.

[theNater]

The non-human races of D&D each have certain traits that are hard-wired into modern fantasy. Dwarves have really high constitution, as they can usually drink anyone under the table. Elves have really high intelligence, as they are known as the best spell-casters. This is, of course, in comparison to humans. From this logic, the toughest dwarf should be tougher than the toughest human, and the smartest elf should be smarter than the smartest human.

However, when you make a character in D&D Next, the rules don't support those tropes. Since a human can gain a racial bonus of +2 to an ability score, while each other race can only get +1, then you will always be able to make a human who has a higher stat than any other race can achieve. The toughest dwarf can get a 20 in Constitution with the right class, but the toughest human can have 21.

This is something that I think they should change; it's a trope that I would try to reinforce. Humans are supposed to be able to succeed at whatever they set their minds to, not surpass every other race. It results in something like "Where should we go to find the wisest person in the world?" "Well, they'll certainly be a human, so let's go with that."
I agree that letting humans be tougher than dwarves would be weird, but I'm okay with the toughest human being exactly as tough as the toughest dwarf, as long as average humans are less tough than average dwarves. How about giving humans a floating +1? It'll maintain the distinction for average members of the races, and while toughest humans will be as tough as toughest dwarves, they will (theoretically) be rarer.

[Zombimode]

The non-human races of D&D each have certain traits that are hard-wired into modern fantasy. Dwarves have really high constitution, as they can usually drink anyone under the table. Elves have really high intelligence, as they are known as the best spell-casters. This is, of course, in comparison to humans. From this logic, the toughest dwarf should be tougher than the toughest human, and the smartest elf should be smarter than the smartest human.

However, when you make a character in D&D Next, the rules don't support those tropes.

Correction: They support those tropes, but not in a way you (personally) expect or like.

(Hill) Dwarves in D&D Next are tougher then humans. It is represented by immunity to poison and +2 HP/level.

(High) Elves show their familiarity to magic by getting a minor spell, regardless of class.

(Wood) Elves show their grace by their movement speed and hiding abilities.

Likewise with Halflings. Typical Halfling and Hobbit tropes are very well represented by their traits (the mechanics could use some work, though).

Humans have a higher raw potential (= ability scores), which is pretty in line for the D&D human fluff.

I think most peoples criticism of the Humans in Next come more from the unorthodoxy then the mechanics themselves.

[navar100]

I'd like that, yes please.
Personally I consider the 3.X system pretty flawed. I'd have to sit down and go through it again to come up with my reasons why, and that would also probably involve going outside and trying things like jumping off the fire escape to see how high it has to be for me to get hurt despite Tumbling.



I thought Elves had a bonus to Dex. I can't check the playtest for the 5e elf right now because for some reason I moved it to a different hard drive.
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with that. Going with your example, that elf wizard would be subpar for his own race. If elves are naturally smarter than humans, then of course they'll be better wizards. And a Con penalty really hurts, especially for a d4 hit die wizard. It balances out.

You're right. Dex. Same point.

[Anderlith]

I'd like to see all races have +2 to one score, but humans get +1 to two different things, this will allow them to tip stats in there favor without people getting red in the face because a "mere human" is better than another race. I think it's kind of ridiculous that people have to imagine humans as the average but oh well.


Actually I want to see humans get a bonus to Int because face it, humans are always the ingenious race, we don't live long so we have to start out smarter to get by, elves are too busy weaving baskets to want to study they have really long lives so there isn't any pressing need to be educated & dwarves are to stubborn in their thinking to innovate.

[Camelot]

This actually isn't true. According to the playtest rules, all player characters capped at 20 for all of their abilities regardless of racial or other modifiers.


I agree that letting humans be tougher than dwarves would be weird, but I'm okay with the toughest human being exactly as tough as the toughest dwarf, as long as average humans are less tough than average dwarves. How about giving humans a floating +1? It'll maintain the distinction for average members of the races, and while toughest humans will be as tough as toughest dwarves, they will (theoretically) be rarer.

I didn't notice the 20 cap rule, but it humans are still better in general. All humans get a +1 bonus to each ability, at the very least.


Correction: They support those tropes, but not in a way you (personally) expect or like.

(Hill) Dwarves in D&D Next are tougher then humans. It is represented by immunity to poison and +2 HP/level.

(High) Elves show their familiarity to magic by getting a minor spell, regardless of class.

(Wood) Elves show their grace by their movement speed and hiding abilities.

Likewise with Halflings. Typical Halfling and Hobbit tropes are very well represented by their traits (the mechanics could use some work, though).

Humans have a higher raw potential (= ability scores), which is pretty in line for the D&D human fluff.

I think most peoples criticism of the Humans in Next come more from the unorthodoxy then the mechanics themselves.

That is one way to think about it, I suppose. Abilities/features create the stereotypes, but then humans are generally going to tie with a member of another race at a basic task (e.g., when casting a spell, regardless of the number of spells the characters have, an average human will be just as good as an average high elf).

[Camelot]

I'd like to see all races have +2 to one score, but humans get +1 to two different things, this will allow them to tip stats in there favor without people getting red in the face because a "mere human" is better than another race. I think it's kind of ridiculous that people have to imagine humans as the average but oh well.

This makes sense to me. Since we are all humans (don't say it...), whenever we create a fantasy universe, we're going to view our own kind as the default, unless we acknowledge that and purposefully make it different.


Actually I want to see humans get a bonus to Int because face it, humans are always the ingenious race, we don't live long so we have to start out smarter to get by, elves are too busy weaving baskets to want to study they have really long lives so there isn't any pressing need to be educated & dwarves are to stubborn in their thinking to innovate.

The fact is, though, that humans as we know ourselves are so varying that it wouldn't make sense unless D&D completely redefines the race. Other fantasy races are fewer in number, and each member is less likely to be vastly different from another.

[noparlpf]

I'd like to see all races have +2 to one score, but humans get +1 to two different things, this will allow them to tip stats in there favor without people getting red in the face because a "mere human" is better than another race. I think it's kind of ridiculous that people have to imagine humans as the average but oh well.


Actually I want to see humans get a bonus to Int because face it, humans are always the ingenious race, we don't live long so we have to start out smarter to get by, elves are too busy weaving baskets to want to study they have really long lives so there isn't any pressing need to be educated & dwarves are to stubborn in their thinking to innovate.

I don't see the issue with humans being the default and average ability scores before racial modifiers being based on humans. We're humans. The only real humanoid species we have to work from to build the game is humans.
And I see no reason humans should have an Int bonus. Have you met my generation? Again, the 10-11 average is based on human Int. Giving humans a bonus to any specific ability score just skews the entire system. You might as well then scale it back down to 10-11 and adjust everything else to fit that.

[Zombimode]

That is one way to think about it, I suppose. Abilities/features create the stereotypes, but then humans are generally going to tie with a member of another race at a basic task (e.g., when casting a spell, regardless of the number of spells the characters have, an average human will be just as good as an average high elf).

Well, there ARE things where non-humans are simply better at than humans in Next*.
Dwarves are always better at fighting with axes and hammers than humans.
(Mountain) Dwarves are always better at wearing medium and heavy armor than humans.
Elves are always better with the bow than humans.
Halflings are always better at stealth than humans.
And so on.

For your specific example regarding magic of high elves and humans, yes, a high elf wizard is not better than a human wizard. How does this contradict and racial preconceptions? Not D&D ones anyway. Elves (talking about PHB elves) in D&D were never seen as the best wizards, neither in mechanics nor in flavor (maybe with the possible exception of 4e's Eladrin, but I don't know that much about them). If anything, humans seem to be the masters of wizardry. Magic has a longer tradition in elven society, and the average elf is far more familiar with magic then the average human. In 3e this is represented by the favored class of elves. In Next it is represented by every elf being able to cast some small magics.


*In a direct and fair comparison, of course.


Regarding scores of 10-11 being the human average:
I don't see why it should be seen as such. In Next it obviously isn't. In Next score of 10 and 11 (+0) mark the middle ground between the two extremes of the possible range (-5 and +5) of the abilities of the player races. Notions of averageness do not enter the picture.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Warning! Crazy idea in this post! Get your pitchforks and torches ready now!

D&D Next should remove Race as having a mechanical impact on the character. If you want to be an Elf, just be an Elf. If you want to be a tiefling, just be a tiefling. Put race where it belongs as an RP element like what your favorite color is or what you plan to do after you retire.

[Yora]

I'd like to keep the effect of race limited.
+1 to one ability, -1 to another, low-light vision when it applies, and maybe one interesting resistance, like enchantment for elves and poison for dwarves. Humans get an extra free skill and everyone is golden.

[Zombimode]

Warning! Crazy idea in this post! Get your pitchforks and torches ready now!

D&D Next should remove Race as having a mechanical impact on the character. If you want to be an Elf, just be an Elf. If you want to be a tiefling, just be a tiefling. Put race where it belongs as an RP element like what your favorite color is or what you plan to do after you retire.

Since this is easy to implement as a house rule (in fact it is probably one of the easiest house rules ever), I don't see why the published rules should lack mechanical diversification of races.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Since this is easy to implement as a house rule (in fact it is probably one of the easiest house rules ever), I don't see why the published rules should lack mechanical diversification of races.

1. The mechanical "benefits" given to you by your race more often than not actually *restrict* your choices rather than open them up. Most races are mechanically designed to go with a handful of particular classes, and being a non-standard race/class combination will make you strictly worse than a standard combination.

2. This pattern means your choice of race is almost always determined by your choice of class. They are not, in practice, the orthogonal axis they are advertised to be. In 3.5 you only have at most about a dozen legitimate choices of race when you're playing, say, a Cleric, and everything else is a trap option. I know some of you disagree, but my philosophy is trap options are bad for everyone and should never exist.

4E lightened this problem to a degree by:

- Making races only give bonuses, never penalties (well, almost never).

- Making racial powers and passive abilities based on serving a particular role, rather than just one particular class.

- Providing multiple choices in what benefits your race provides.


Finally, I realize this is a personal reason but it's just too big to ignore: I hate stereotype enforcement, not only in race but also everywhere else. No, dwarves should not ALL be alcoholic scottish vikings who live in caves, and I should not be required to homebrew my own version of dwarf racial mechanics if I want to host my game in a setting that subverts or ignores this. Even if you did solve all of these problems I stated above, race still simply does not matter nearly as much as your other character choices and serves very little purpose aside from acting as stereotype enforcement.

[Water_Bear]

Warning! Crazy idea in this post! Get your pitchforks and torches ready now!

D&D Next should remove Race as having a mechanical impact on the character. If you want to be an Elf, just be an Elf. If you want to be a tiefling, just be a tiefling. Put race where it belongs as an RP element like what your favorite color is or what you plan to do after you retire.

This isn't a bad idea, but it is exactly counter to the central idea of 5e. Since the beginning the whole point of the edition change has been to win back old players who were disillusioned by 4e, even some old 1e/2e diehards if possible. So I don't see making such a drastic and unprecedented change as really fitting with the nostalgia-heavy design philosophy at work here.

I'm also not sure how it would play out in practice. Halflings and Gnomes are much much smaller than humans, while Dwarves and Elves are always portrayed as more hardy and dexterous than humans. Ignoring that in the mechanics seems like a mistake, albeit a very minor one.

[noparlpf]

This isn't a bad idea, but it is exactly counter to the central idea of 5e. Since the beginning the whole point of the edition change has been to win back old players who were disillusioned by 4e, even some old 1e/2e diehards if possible. So I don't see making such a drastic and unprecedented change as really fitting with the nostalgia-heavy design philosophy at work here.

I'm also not sure how it would play out in practice. Halflings and Gnomes are much much smaller than humans, while Dwarves and Elves are always portrayed as more hardy and dexterous than humans. Ignoring that in the mechanics seems like a mistake, albeit a very minor one.

My question would be, how do you roleplay "a dwarf" when there is no information given as to what constitutes "a dwarf", either fluff or mechanics?
Aside from that, I don't like the idea of moving away from races as a mechanical part of the game. Statting a human and an elf the same is like statting a human and a tiger the same.

[Craft (Cheese)]

This isn't a bad idea, but it is exactly counter to the central idea of 5e. Since the beginning the whole point of the edition change has been to win back old players who were disillusioned by 4e, even some old 1e/2e diehards if possible. So I don't see making such a drastic and unprecedented change as really fitting with the nostalgia-heavy design philosophy at work here.

Eh, I'm well aware of that. Still, one can hope.



My question would be, how do you roleplay "a dwarf" when there is no information given as to what constitutes "a dwarf", either fluff or mechanics?

This is exactly my problem with the whole stereotype enforcement thing. You roleplay characters, not races. If the question that pops in your mind when you roleplay a dwarf character is "What would a Dwarf do in this situation?" then you've fallen into the trap. It's as absurd as roleplaying a canadian character and asking yourself "What would a Canadian do?"


Aside from that, I don't like the idea of moving away from races as a mechanical part of the game. Statting a human and an elf the same is like statting a human and a tiger the same.


I'm also not sure how it would play out in practice. Halflings and Gnomes are much much smaller than humans, while Dwarves and Elves are always portrayed as more hardy and dexterous than humans. Ignoring that in the mechanics seems like a mistake, albeit a very minor one.

Two things.

1. This proposal assumes PC/NPC asymmetry and monsters follow completely different creation rules from those followed by characters. Some people won't like this, but I don't think it's that big of a loss.

2. You can still *have* the racial bonuses, they'd just have to be modeled differently (and optionally), like through feats or monster class levels or something.

[thugthrasher]

This is exactly my problem with the whole stereotype enforcement thing. You roleplay characters, not races. If the question that pops in your mind when you roleplay a dwarf character is "What would a Dwarf do in this situation?" then you've fallen into the trap. It's as absurd as roleplaying a canadian character and asking yourself "What would a Canadian do?"



But a Canadian is MORE likely to react to certain things in a certain way than, say, a South African. Who will be more likely to react to those things in a different way then, say, a Chinese person. These are useful things to know when creating a character.

And that's not even getting into the fact that there are, in fact, physical differences between an elf, a dwarf, a human, and a halfling that don't really exist between different nationalities of human.

[1337 b4k4]

It's as absurd as roleplaying a canadian character and asking yourself "What would a Canadian do?"

Why is that absurd? Your world view is shaped heavily by the culture you were raised in. You mean to tell me you cant think of any situation where an American and a Canadian on average will act differently? Or a Canadian and someone from Japan? Hell, I can think of scenarios where two individuals from the same US state would act differently.

I think the big problem of reducing race to just another choice like hair color is that it leads to playing dwarves and elves as "humans in funny hats". Then again, I'm one of those crazy SOBs who kind of likes the idea of Race as Class for some mechanical race flavor.

[Yora]

Okay, here I have to come in with my academic background in cultural studies and intercultural interactions:
We don't usually think "what would a Canadian do?". But subconsciously that's what everyone is doing all the time in all parts of the world.
If I am a German and in Germany, and there is an older man in a restaurant who is talking very loudly, I don't stop and think "what would a German do?". I would lean over and say "excuse me, could you keep your voice down a bit?".
But assumed I sit in a restaurant in southern Italy or Turkey. Those places are not far away but still I, and I think quite a lot people, would wait a moment and think "what would a local do?". Does this person behave inappropriate in public and by the local customs it is appropriate to speak up when someone feels annoyed? Or supposed I'm in China. Am I as a 20-something allowed to say such a thing to an older man, or would I have to give one of the older people from my group a hint to speak up in my place?

Many people never do it, and they are the ones that in all places of the world are called "Those damn stupid tourists!" in the local language. :smallbiggrin:

[Craft (Cheese)]

But a Canadian is MORE likely to react to certain things in a certain way than, say, a South African. Who will be more likely to react to those things in a different way then, say, a Chinese person. These are useful things to know when creating a character.

And that's not even getting into the fact that there are, in fact, physical differences between an elf, a dwarf, a human, and a halfling that don't really exist between different nationalities of human.


Why is that absurd? Your world view is shaped heavily by the culture you were raised in. You mean to tell me you cant think of any situation where an American and a Canadian on average will act differently? Or a Canadian and someone from Japan? Hell, I can think of scenarios where two individuals from the same US state would act differently.

I think the big problem of reducing race to just another choice like hair color is that it leads to playing dwarves and elves as "humans in funny hats". Then again, I'm one of those crazy SOBs who kind of likes the idea of Race as Class for some mechanical race flavor.

They act differently because they're individuals, not because they're Canadian and Japanese. Your culture and upbringing color your ideas but it does not dictate them, and it certainly doesn't dictate your personality either.

[Seerow]

They act differently because they're individuals, not because they're Canadian and Japanese. Your culture and upbringing color your ideas but it does not dictate them, and it certainly doesn't dictate your personality either.

That may be what you feel as an American, but obviously if you were Canadian you would think differently.

[Craft (Cheese)]

That may be what you feel as an American, but obviously if you were Canadian you would think differently.

Quite right! If I were a Canadian I'd be busy thinking about maple syrup, hating the quebecois, and singing the praises of our glorious Queen. Because all Canadians are like that.

[noparlpf]

This is exactly my problem with the whole stereotype enforcement thing. You roleplay characters, not races. If the question that pops in your mind when you roleplay a dwarf character is "What would a Dwarf do in this situation?" then you've fallen into the trap. It's as absurd as roleplaying a canadian character and asking yourself "What would a Canadian do?"

If I were roleplaying a Canadian I would definitely think, "What would a Canadian do?" Their culture is different from mine, so there are a variety of things the average Canadian would do differently. Yeah, "average"--that means that there will be exceptions, but in general, more Canadians will be like that than, say, Australians.
Further, dwarves, elves, and humans are all physiologically and neurologically different. Dwarves may well have a neurological predisposition to gruffness, beards, and alcohol.


They act differently because they're individuals, not because they're Canadian and Japanese. Your culture and upbringing color your ideas but it does not dictate them, and it certainly doesn't dictate your personality either.

And individual characters can be very different from their racial norm. The racial fluff is about the average dwarf, elf, or whatever. You can ignore it completely if you want to, but it's there to help influence character creation by giving an idea of the general racial predispositions and cultural background your character probably came from in the default setting.

[Ashdate]

Listen to Craft here guys; being a Canadian (and I'd like to think I have some experience at playing one) is not about (aboot?) choosing to eat poutine over wings at a pub.

I would challenge anyone to describe the real differences between an individual Canadian and an individual American; I assure you that it would be a very small list!

And that's his point; a dwarf is stereotyped into being seen as a short humanoid that enjoy drinking and hating on giants, but that says little about any particular individual. It's no different than declaring Americans to be jingoistic, fat, bull-headed people who like steak and Coca-cola.

[lesser_minion]

D&D Next should remove Race as having a mechanical impact on the character. If you want to be an Elf, just be an Elf. If you want to be a tiefling, just be a tiefling. Put race where it belongs as an RP element like what your favorite color is or what you plan to do after you retire.

I agree with you that it's kind of ****ty that I can't take any elf or any dwarf and make it work with any given character archetype. Being an elf shouldn't make me worse as a fighter than a human or a dwarf, and being a dwarf shouldn't make me worse as a wizard than a human or an elf. Sure.

However, fantasy races are a completely different kettle of fish to real-world races. The game should make these beings out to be alien and exotic, and making character race have no effect is not the way to do that.

[Craft (Cheese)]

If I were roleplaying a Canadian I would definitely think, "What would a Canadian do?" Their culture is different from mine, so there are a variety of things the average Canadian would do differently. Yeah, "average"--that means that there will be exceptions, but in general, more Canadians will be like that than, say, Australians.

That's not how culture actually works. Allow me to illustrate.

"All dwarves are short and have long beards. They all live underground and are proud of their fine stonemasonry work. They drink large quantities of alcohol, are fiercely obsessed with clan honor, and will start a fistfight with anyone at the slightest provocation."

"All Frenchmen are smelly and don't shave their body hair, aside from that on their face which doesn't grow in anyway. They wear silly hats and are proud of their superior fashion sense. They live on fancy cheeses, are obsessed with preserving their language and heritage from pollution by dirty foreigners, and whenever threatened will surrender to their attacker instantly."


Why is one of these descriptions standard and accepted while the other one horribly offensive?


Further, dwarves, elves, and humans are all physiologically and neurologically different. Dwarves may well have a neurological predisposition to gruffness, beards, and alcohol.

Ah, the old "neurological differences" card. It's like magic fairy dust you can sprinkle on a setting to sweep these things under the rug, because then you don't have to do any actual work of designing a real people. It's lazy. Ehl. Eih. Zi. Wai. Funny how these "neurological differences" always mean the fantasy race brain is confined to being a subset of the variety you see in humans.

[Seerow]

I agree with you that it's kind of ****ty that I can't take any elf or any dwarf and make it work with any given character archetype. Being an elf shouldn't make me worse as a fighter than a human or a dwarf, and being a dwarf shouldn't make me worse as a wizard than a human or an elf. Sure.

However, fantasy races are a completely different kettle of fish to real-world races. The game should make these beings out to be alien and exotic, and making character race have no effect is not the way to do that.

Honestly it's been a long time since the traditional fantasy races had anything distinguishing about them that actually made them different to any noticeable degree. If you play a "dwarf" but instead of taking the dwarven features you take a bonus skill point and feat, chances are nobody else in the group would ever notice. The only real exception to this is sight modifiers (ie not having Darkvision when it comes up would be a red flag).

If the races actually were more different, I could see the desire for keeping them with separate mechanics. But as it is, the majority of racial benefits are things that could conceivably come from training or other individual differences already. If those differences aren't greatly increased (likely to the point that the races are unrecognizable), then you may as well just leave it as all races use the same mechanic, with a different coat of paint.

[Kurald Galain]

Personally I like having races mechanically different. I find that 4E does this better than 3E. In my experience, unless a player is being over-the-top stereotypical, it's easy to forget what race his character is; whereas most 4E races have an obvious special power that will be visible almost every encounter. Even the monster manual gives e.g. the halfling racial power to most halfling enemies.

I like racial feats for the same reason. If all elves are simply humans with +5% dexterity, then that's really not noticeable enough in play.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I would challenge anyone to describe the real differences between an individual Canadian and an individual American; I assure you that it would be a very small list!

Well, since I love to be contrarian, historical and geographical knowledge is probably the biggest one. I can name the 50 states off the top of my head, in alphabetical order (we practiced that in second grade for 3 friggin weeks) but the only canadian province I can name without looking them up is Saskatchewan, and I probably didn't spell that right either, see how clueless I am?

There's also current events and artistic knowledge: For example, there are probably plenty of great TV shows in Canada that've never seen the light of day elsewhere, but I've never heard of them.

Finally I'm sure there's also some differences in terms of rituals and tradition like national holidays and whether you drive on the right or the left side of the road. (Which one is it in Canada? Look at me, the uncultured dumbass!)

Noticeable differences in personality and disposition though? I'd bet anything that there are none.


And that's his point; a dwarf is stereotyped into being seen as a short humanoid that enjoy drinking and hating on giants, but that says little about any particular individual. It's no different than declaring Americans to be jingoistic, fat, bull-headed people who like steak and Coca-cola.

Wait wait wait, there are people who don't like steak and coca-cola!? What the hell is wrong with you people!?


EDIT: Crap, massively off-topic! Think of something, Craft! Uhh....

Is anyone else majorly disappointed that the Necromancer specialty is only available to spellcasters? It's the perfect example of how we can use specialties to blend archetypes together and they screwed it up! Aura of Souls could easily be applied to all attack rolls, not just necromancy spells. And who says we need spellcasting to get an undead minion?

[TheOOB]

Is anyone else majorly disappointed that the Necromancer specialty is only available to spellcasters? It's the perfect example of how we can use specialties to blend archetypes together and they screwed it up! Aura of Souls could easily be applied to all attack rolls, not just necromancy spells. And who says we need spellcasting to get an undead minion?

The way I see it, more blatantly magic feats require spellcasting ability, meaning it is easier for a spellcaster to gain an undead servant, which makes sense. Note that becoming a spellcaster is as easy as taking a feat to gain minor spells(which is worthwhile on it's merits alone), or being a high elf.

[lesser_minion]

Honestly it's been a long time since the traditional fantasy races had anything distinguishing about them that actually made them different to any noticeable degree. If you play a "dwarf" but instead of taking the dwarven features you take a bonus skill point and feat, chances are nobody else in the group would ever notice. The only real exception to this is sight modifiers (ie not having Darkvision when it comes up would be a red flag).

In D&D, that is true. My point is that I'd prefer to see the designers improve the situation, rather than embrace it.

The designers already did a little of this in 4e -- we had teleporting eladrin, for example.

[Craft (Cheese)]

The way I see it, more blatantly magic feats require spellcasting ability, meaning it is easier for a spellcaster to gain an undead servant, which makes sense. Note that becoming a spellcaster is as easy as taking a feat to gain minor spells(which is worthwhile on it's merits alone), or being a high elf.

I only half-read the aura of souls feat and at first I thought you could use it to make a "Death Knight" fighter who uses the souls of his enemies to fuel deadlier attacks. Then I read it again and there went *that* character idea. If I ever do play in a 5E playtest game with this packet I wanna run a fighter with a homebrewed version of this feat that lets him get back expertise dice when he slays an opponent.

[AgentPaper]

I only half-read the aura of souls feat and at first I thought you could use it to make a "Death Knight" fighter who uses the souls of his enemies to fuel deadlier attacks. Then I read it again and there went *that* character idea. If I ever do play in a 5E playtest game with this packet I wanna run a fighter with a homebrewed version of this feat that lets him get back expertise dice when he slays an opponent.

Well if you want to play a death knight in 5e... (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=254215)

[Nu]

In my experience, unless a player is being over-the-top stereotypical, it's easy to forget what race his character is; whereas most 4E races have an obvious special power that will be visible almost every encounter. Even the monster manual gives e.g. the halfling racial power to most halfling enemies.

I like racial feats for the same reason. If all elves are simply humans with +5% dexterity, then that's really not noticeable enough in play.

I agree. I like my races to be different, and to feel different in play. I hope they stay that way.

[Stubbazubba]

I'd support replacing races with a handful of features - if you wanted to play a Halfling or a Dwarf you can take "Short," getting feature X, Y, and Z, and if you want to be a beautiful anything (but a must for Elf-lovers) you can take "Fair," getting feature A, B, and C, etc., etc., and end up with a list of descriptive physical/personality features divorced from race. However, I'd also list default packages for each race, just so the world has some assumptions the players can rely on ("The villager said the thief was no larger than a child, so we can probably assume Halfling or Gnome" - even if that's an invalid assumption to make in that situation, it's still good to be able to do so), and so the GM can just plug-n-play a race.

That approach would, as has been pointed out, be too revolutionary for the nostalgia-drenched Next. Keeping with the racial ability modifiers idea, I would say instead of getting bonuses to specific abilities, let each race get a bonus to 1 out of 4 possible abilities by default, plus 1 more if they take a penalty to 1 out of 3-4 other possibilities. That opens up the class/race combinations significantly without rendering race completely meaningless in your class decision. Say, for instance, a Dwarf could take a +2 bonus to one of STR, CON, INT, or WIS, and one more in exchange for a penalty to one of STR, DEX, WIS, or CHA. Dwarves still wouldn't make good rogues or sorcerers, but they could be fighters, barbarians, wizards, clerics, etc., just as well as many other races. By broadening the possible options, it means the list of what you could do well as X race is longer than the list of what you can't. That's a step in the right direction.

[1337 b4k4]

They act differently because they're individuals, not because they're Canadian and Japanese. Your culture and upbringing color your ideas but it does not dictate them, and it certainly doesn't dictate your personality either.

Of course they don't dictate, but they do provide a heavy influence. Allow me to illustrate. I am from an Italian American family from New York City. Not every Italian American from New York City is a loud individual, and as proof, I offer myself a generally quiet and reserved person. However, as my wife constantly reminds me, sometimes, when a discussion gets spirited, my "Italian American from New York City" comes out, and I can get loud. I never notice, because to me, it's normal, it's the same as my family and their family and the people I grew up with. My wife was born and raised in the south, where if someone was getting loud like I or my parents do, then it meant someone was dying, not that we were having a spirited conversation. So even though I as an individual am not a loud person by default, my background and heritage gives me a predisposition to getting loud, and then reacting to that loudness differently than my wife.

Another example, the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". Talk to any person who grew up in a Greek (or for that matter Italian) family, and they will all tell you that the movie captured the event almost exactly. By comparison, ask some people of Irish or Chinese heritage, and while they might pick out some similarities, they will likely not find the portrayal familiar. Does this mean that every Greek or Italian family is exactly like the family portrayed in the movie? Of course not, we're all individuals, but we all share a common set of cultural markers that permeate through us and mark our heritage and upbringing.


And that's his point; a dwarf is stereotyped into being seen as a short humanoid that enjoy drinking and hating on giants, but that says little about any particular individual. It's no different than declaring Americans to be jingoistic, fat, bull-headed people who like steak and Coca-cola.

Stereotypes exist for a reason, and they are not in and of themselves bad things, they only become bad when you refuse to accept an individual for who they are rather than what you expect them to be from the stereotype. And if you took the average American and judged them by say British standards, you wouldn't go to far astray on betting that they hit at least one if not more of the jingoistic, fat, bull-headed, steak liking or coke liking traits.


Why is one of these descriptions standard and accepted while the other one horribly offensive?

Luckily, the fluff in D&D doesn't say that all dwarves are as described, just that many or most are. That players have taken that to mean that all are and play their characters that way is no more an indictment of D&D's fluff than the fact that players also always play their characters in general as bloodthirsty killers.


Noticeable differences in personality and disposition though? I'd bet anything that there are none.


Between an American and a Canadian, probably not a whole lot, but I would bet on average you could say Americans are more brash. On the other hand, put an American farmer and a Chinese farmer next to each other, and I'll but you there are a whole lot more.

[AgentPaper]

What about this:

Each race gets a +2 bonus to one of 2 different stats. Dwarves can choose strength or con, elves can choose int or dex, halflings get dex or con, etc.

Then, when you choose your class, you get a +2 bonus to the main stat of that class, for example wizards get int, rogues get dex, fighters get str, and so on.

However, the important bit here, is that these two bonuses would not stack. For example, if you were a dwarf fighter, you would get +2 to strength and +2 to constitution. You wouldn't be able to get a +4 bonus to strength.

This means that any race can be any class just as effectively, but you're still flavored by your race. A dwarven wizard and a elven wizard both get +2 int, but the wizard also gets +2 dex, while the dwarf can get +2 con. Bam, races are different, but also balanced.

Humans could either get a floating +2 bonus, or a +1 bonus to all stats. I like the latter a bit more, actually, since it would mean a human gets +1 to all stats and +2 to their class stat, making them great for being versatile, which seems to be what humans are supposed to be all about in DnD.

What do you guys think?

[Stubbazubba]

Yes, I also support this idea; classes should get ability bonuses much more than races should.

[noparlpf]

Listen to Craft here guys; being a Canadian (and I'd like to think I have some experience at playing one) is not about (aboot?) choosing to eat poutine over wings at a pub.

I would challenge anyone to describe the real differences between an individual Canadian and an individual American; I assure you that it would be a very small list!

And that's his point; a dwarf is stereotyped into being seen as a short humanoid that enjoy drinking and hating on giants, but that says little about any particular individual. It's no different than declaring Americans to be jingoistic, fat, bull-headed people who like steak and Coca-cola.

We're talking past each other. You and Craft see the racial fluff as applying to individuals. It's meant as a generalisation about the entire population.


That's not how culture actually works. Allow me to illustrate.

"All dwarves are short and have long beards. They all live underground and are proud of their fine stonemasonry work. They drink large quantities of alcohol, are fiercely obsessed with clan honor, and will start a fistfight with anyone at the slightest provocation."

"All Frenchmen are smelly and don't shave their body hair, aside from that on their face which doesn't grow in anyway. They wear silly hats and are proud of their superior fashion sense. They live on fancy cheeses, are obsessed with preserving their language and heritage from pollution by dirty foreigners, and whenever threatened will surrender to their attacker instantly."


Why is one of these descriptions standard and accepted while the other one horribly offensive?

They're both offensive.
You're reading the fluff as saying "ALL dwarves are short, have beards, drink, and work stone." What it means is "MANY or MOST dwarves are short, have beards, drink, and work stone."

[Craft (Cheese)]

They're both offensive.
You're reading the fluff as saying "ALL dwarves are short, have beards, drink, and work stone." What it means is "MANY or MOST dwarves are short, have beards, drink, and work stone."

"MANY or MOST frenchmen are smelly, wear silly clothes, eat fancy cheeses, and surrender at the first sign of danger."

...Yeah, I don't see how that's any less offensive.


What about this:

Each race gets a +2 bonus to one of 2 different stats. Dwarves can choose strength or con, elves can choose int or dex, halflings get dex or con, etc.

Then, when you choose your class, you get a +2 bonus to the main stat of that class, for example wizards get int, rogues get dex, fighters get str, and so on.

However, the important bit here, is that these two bonuses would not stack. For example, if you were a dwarf fighter, you would get +2 to strength and +2 to constitution. You wouldn't be able to get a +4 bonus to strength.

This means that any race can be any class just as effectively, but you're still flavored by your race. A dwarven wizard and a elven wizard both get +2 int, but the wizard also gets +2 dex, while the dwarf can get +2 con. Bam, races are different, but also balanced.

Humans could either get a floating +2 bonus, or a +1 bonus to all stats. I like the latter a bit more, actually, since it would mean a human gets +1 to all stats and +2 to their class stat, making them great for being versatile, which seems to be what humans are supposed to be all about in DnD.

What do you guys think?

While I still prefer my solution of getting rid of race entirely, I do think this is much better than how it's currently handled. I approve.

[Ashdate]

We're talking past each other. You and Craft see the racial fluff as applying to individuals. It's meant as a generalisation about the entire population.

The racial fluff is rarely presented as such. Consider this passage from the 3.5 PHB (spoilered for space):


"Dwarves are slow to laugh or jest and suspicious of strangers, but they are generous to those few who earn their trust. Dwarves value gold, gems, jewelry, and art objects made with these precious materials, and they have been known to succumb to greed. They fight neither recklessly nor timidly, but with a careful courage and tenacity. Their sense of justice is strong, but at its worst it can turn into a thirst for vengeance."

4e was no better:

"Dwarves believe in the importance of clan ties and ancestry. They deeply respect their elders, and they honor long-dead clan founders and ancestral heroes. They place great value on wisdom and the experience of years, and most are polite to elders of any race. More so than most other races, dwarves seek guidance and protection from the gods. They look to the divine for strength, hope, and inspiration, or they seek to propitiate cruel or destructive gods. Individual dwarves might be impious or openly heretical, but temples and shrines of some sort are found in almost every dwarven community.

. . .

Dwarves never forget their enemies, either individuals who have wronged them or entire races of monsters who have done ill to their kind. Dwarves harbor a fierce hatred for orcs, which often inhabit the same mountainous areas that dwarves favor and which wreak periodic devastation on dwarf communities. Dwarves also despise giants and titans, because the dwarf race once labored as the giants’ slaves. They feel a mixture of pity and disgust toward those corrupted dwarves who still have not freed themselves from the giants’ yoke—azers and galeb duhrs among them."

Those passages are not saying "this is a generalization about dwarves". These passages are saying, "this is how you pretend to be a dwarf."

Also, consider how "useful" such stereotypes are. Even if we say (for example) that Americans "are generally, fat", how much of the population does that actually describe? I'm not trying to downplay the fact that 1 in 4 Americans are considered to be "obese", but is that a large enough percentage of the population to justify stereotyping every American?

And to be clear, I'm not trying to downplay culture or geographic effects on a population; my heart swelled just as large as any Canadian when Sidney Crosby led Team Canada to Hockey Gold during the last Winter Olympics. And yes, living in Canada is going to have a particular effect on how we "do" things compared to say, people who live in Mexico (i.e. we need to worry about where to pile snow in the winter).

But (and this is important), while individuals are shaped by culture and geographic location, we're not defined by them.

I might be Canadian, but hell if I can skate (and I'm much better at soccer than I am at hockey). Some of my favorite bands might be more local, but as much as I would like to put bands like Sloan on a pedestal, they're music is not something uniquely Canadian (and their music is influenced primarily by American and British music). As much as I've grown up in winters where one could expect at least one snowstorm during the year, I neither enjoy snow, nor have built any muscle from shoveling it, and certainly do not enjoy some form of "cold resistance".

I'm sure there's some winter-loving hockey nut who enjoys playing on his Ugly Stick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_stick), but I would really prefer if he not be the "Canadian" I'm compared to.

[noparlpf]

"MANY or MOST frenchmen are smelly, wear silly clothes, eat fancy cheeses, and surrender at the first sign of danger."

...Yeah, I don't see how that's any less offensive.

It is because you're intentionally choosing negative stereotypes. I can't counter the example because I know nothing about France besides that I dislike the language. The stereotypes you listed for dwarves are not particularly insulting traits, whereas the ones you listed for Frenchmen are intentionally only the negative ones.

[Craft (Cheese)]

It is because you're intentionally choosing negative stereotypes. I can't counter the example because I know nothing about France besides that I dislike the language. The stereotypes you listed for dwarves are not particularly insulting traits, whereas the ones you listed for Frenchmen are intentionally only the negative ones.

The stereotypes you list for Dwarves are neutral at best. And, I know not everyone's going to agree with me on this one, but I think thinking of people and cultures in terms of stereotypes is harmful even if the stereotypes are positive, like "Asians are math geniuses" or "Dwarves are the greatest blacksmiths."

[noparlpf]

The stereotypes you list for Dwarves are neutral at best. And, I know not everyone's going to agree with me on this one, but I think thinking of people and cultures in terms of stereotypes is harmful even if the stereotypes are positive, like "Asians are math geniuses" or "Dwarves are the greatest blacksmiths."

I don't think many people mind stereotypes like "German engineering is good" or "Asians and Jews tend to have good study ethics". That does not mean that all or even half of said groups fit those descriptions. There are plenty of Asian students who slack off and get bad grades, and plenty of German engineers are terrible. Plenty of dwarves won't be any good at stoneworking, but in the stoneworking industry, the work of dwarven masters will tend to surpass the work of human masters.
I do think there ought to be a couple of variants of each race published in core, providing maybe three or four different groups or ethnicities of each race.
As for facial hair, there's no reason male dwarves can't tend to have excessive beard growth. Humans tend to have five fingers.

[navar100]

Warning! Crazy idea in this post! Get your pitchforks and torches ready now!

D&D Next should remove Race as having a mechanical impact on the character. If you want to be an Elf, just be an Elf. If you want to be a tiefling, just be a tiefling. Put race where it belongs as an RP element like what your favorite color is or what you plan to do after you retire.

Legacy. Players are going to want their dark vision, infravision/low light vision, and +1/+2 bonuses to things. I don't mind races having different inherent abilities, I just want humans to be comparable, which was a problem with all RPGs before 3E decided it was ok for humans not to suck.

[Nu]

Also, consider how "useful" such stereotypes are. Even if we say (for example) that Americans "are generally, fat", how much of the population does that actually describe? I'm not trying to downplay the fact that 1 in 4 Americans are considered to be "obese", but is that a large enough percentage of the population to justify stereotyping every American?

And to be clear, I'm not trying to downplay culture or geographic effects on a population; my heart swelled just as large as any Canadian when Sidney Crosby led Team Canada to Hockey Gold during the last Winter Olympics. And yes, living in Canada is going to have a particular effect on how we "do" things compared to say, people who live in Mexico (i.e. we need to worry about where to pile snow in the winter).

But (and this is important), while individuals are shaped by culture and geographic location, we're not defined by them.

I might be Canadian, but hell if I can skate (and I'm much better at soccer than I am at hockey). Some of my favorite bands might be more local, but as much as I would like to put bands like Sloan on a pedestal, they're music is not something uniquely Canadian (and their music is influenced primarily by American and British music). As much as I've grown up in winters where one could expect at least one snowstorm during the year, I neither enjoy snow, nor have built any muscle from shoveling it, and certainly do not enjoy some form of "cold resistance".

This is a game, and I wish we could leave the analogues to real life outside. More importantly, this is a fantasy game. What in the world is the point of having fantastic creatures such as elves, dwarves, and dragons; if they don't feel different? If we focus purely on individual differences, then there is no need for racial distinction. But if we have racial distinction, then I ask that we make it mean something. I'm not trying to make a statement on how things are in real life, just how I want them in my fantasy game about elves and dwarves.

I also have to feel that most people also want their fantasy races to feel different and act different, and those who don't can ignore the racial mechanics and "fluff," and create their own world where everyone is defined purely by individual traits.

[Saph]

This is a game, and I wish we could leave the analogues to real life outside. More importantly, this is a fantasy game. What in the world is the point of having fantastic creatures such as elves, dwarves, and dragons; if they don't feel different?

This.

What on earth is the point of having a variety of different fantasy races if they're all exactly the same?

[obryn]

Those passages are not saying "this is a generalization about dwarves". These passages are saying, "this is how you pretend to be a dwarf."
Yep. I think that's the crucial difference being missed here. :)

-O

[Tyndmyr]

Also, consider how "useful" such stereotypes are. Even if we say (for example) that Americans "are generally, fat", how much of the population does that actually describe? I'm not trying to downplay the fact that 1 in 4 Americans are considered to be "obese", but is that a large enough percentage of the population to justify stereotyping every American?

About 66% overweight, and 36% obese. It's...pretty common. I'd say we've probably earned that stereotype, given that statistically, we're a lot fatter than any other country. So yeah, describing Americans at large as fat is reasonable.

Assuming that someone IS fat just because he's an American is rather less reasonable, and has a significant error chance. Much of the problem with stereotypes is in the use, not the mere existence. Extrapolating from the statistics to the individual, in addition to not being scientifically valid, is likely to cause offense. Merely observing that a population exhibits a certain tendency is usually a lot less personal, and a lot less insulting.

[Ashdate]

This is a game, and I wish we could leave the analogues to real life outside. More importantly, this is a fantasy game. What in the world is the point of having fantastic creatures such as elves, dwarves, and dragons; if they don't feel different?

I'm not arguing that you shouldn't have traits that are affected by their physical composition/culture/geography. If you want to say that the Dwarven race gets a +2 bonus to constitution because of their physiology, has darkvision because most of their race is born and/or lives underground, and they get a +2 bonus to history because Dwarven culture tends to pump that kind of stuff into them, fine.

Just don't make it the default assumption that I love my beard, alcohol, mining, religion, and fighting goblins.

[thugthrasher]

Also, as I mentioned, not all of the differences in race are cultural.

Dwarves - Constitution bonus? Could reflect that dwarves are NATURALLY hardier. Resistant to poison? Physical difference between dwarves and humans.

Elves- Keen senses? Could be natural (dogs have better sense of smell than humans, and it's not because they trained it). Intelligence bonus? Maybe elves are, on average, actually born more intelligent to humans. Maybe it's just a natural affinity for magic (maybe there is an inherent 'magicness' to elves and that could also explain the free cantrip). Could be entirely non-cultural.

I would go so far as saying that MOST of the racial bonuses could easily have an explanation based on the physical differences (not mental). Obvious exceptions include weapon/armor trainings and the 'cultural' guessing in stonecunning. Fearless, maybe. But really, what else couldn't be explained by actual differences between the races?

It's not like our world where we are all the same species. Elves and dwarves and halflings are DIFFERENT from humans. It's not just culture and minor differences like skin color and eye shape.

[noparlpf]

Here's the line of fluff from the 3.5 PHB that people read as "dwarves drink a lot":
"Dwarves are known for their skill in warfare, their ability to withstand physical and magical punishment, their knowledge of the earth’s secrets, their hard work, and their capacity for drinking ale."
Bolded bits have to do with their racial Con bonus. A human describing a dwarf might say the dwarf drinks ridiculous amounts, but a dwarf has to drink more than a human to reach the same level of intoxication.
"Hard work" is probably a combination of culture and Con bonus--to a human, a dwarf might seem able to work particularly long and hard without tiring. "Skill in warfare" and "knowledge of the earth's secrets" are cultural and could be allowed to vary regionally; or, the latter could be an intrinsic part of "dwarfness". Here's a description of dwarves from a Tolkien fan-site: "Dwarves are a race of people who play an important role in Tolkien's stories. They are typically shorter than humans with a stouter build. They are very strong and have a greater endurance than any other race. It is never definitely stated that all dwarves have long beards but it is implied in The Hobbit where Bilbo wears a dwarven cloak, but feels confident that no-one will mistake him for a dwarf since he has no beard.

Little is said of dwarven women except that they are few in number. According to Gimli, only about one third of all dwarves are female and not all of them marry, so the population of dwarves grows slowly. Dwarven women rarely go abroad and when they do, they dress and appear so similar to their men that other races often cannot tell them apart.

Since Dwarves were created by Aulë, who was renowned among the Valar for his crafts, the dwarves are likewise known for their skill in crafts. Especially in working metal and stone. They were strong and resistant to any form of domination, and it was extremely rare for any dwarf to fight on the side of evil. "
And remember, most of modern high fantasy is based on people wanting to play "The Lord of the Rings". Otherwise we wouldn't have elves and orcs and dwarves and halflings all in one game.

[Nu]

I'm not arguing that you shouldn't have traits that are affected by their physical composition/culture/geography... Just don't make it the default assumption that I love my beard, alcohol, mining, religion, and fighting goblins.

I believe nearly all of these distinctions are probably influenced by biology, geography, and culture. Alcohol goes hand in hand with a dwarves naturally high Constitution and hardiness, and especially resistance to poison. Mining, that's a geographical thing. If you live in a mountain, it's natural to at least respect the miners even if you don't mine yourself. Religion? Tied directly to culture. And so forth.

Most importantly, it strikes me as both flavorful and realistic for most people in such a setting to have and maintain these sorts of stereotypes. I don't want to go bringing in real world examples right after I said not to, so I'll just say history and human nature say that this is what people tend to do.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I think the simplest way to solve the racial stereotypes vs. inherent biology problem, and one I've used to good effect in 3e, would be to split up physical features of the race from the cultural stuff. Give every race 4 features, 2 physical and 2 cultural; dwarves get darkvision and save boosts on the physical side and axe training and stonecunning on the cultural side, and so forth. Then, since culture is split off from biology, if you want to make a nonstandard dwarf (e.g. a hill dwarf raised by gnomes, a culture of sea-dwelling Viking dwarves, etc.) you can swap out the cultural stuff easily. One of the modules they put out could be a list of cultural traits (Desert Dweller, Subterranean, Primitive, Mercantile, etc.) for DMs to use for inspiration when creating new "subraces."

Heck, you could turn cultural traits into backgrounds as well. Make a Dwarven Heritage background (and one for all the other races, of course) that comes with some stereotypical dwarf-y skills and lets you pick one of the two dwarf cultural traits (if you're not a dwarf) or gives you social perks with dwarves as a dwarven elder or the like (if you are a dwarf), so playing a "race X raised by dwarves" character or a "I'm the dwarfiest dwarf that ever did dwarf" character is nice and easy. You could also take this further to do things like arbitrary half-X races that take two biology trait groups instead of one biology and one culture, or tie certain ability bonuses to culture and certain to biology for more granular mixing, or similar, but those things are probably best left to modules.

[Frozen_Feet]

I echo that humanoid species should be different, way more different than they generally are in fantasy games. My opinion on the matter is that if you could use humans for something, you don't need elves and dwarves or the like; to justify using them, you must have differences that go way beyond culture and into basic physiology and psychology.

Both would realistically mean that non-humans would not have identical spectrum of emotions and thinking as humans. Yes, this makes them harder to roleplay, but some of us like the challenge. I'm sick and tired of hearing that any non-human should be able to support every human personality.

[Knaight]

I think the simplest way to solve the racial stereotypes vs. inherent biology problem, and one I've used to good effect in 3e, would be to split up physical features of the race from the cultural stuff.
There are also fundamental issues with how cultures are presented. Essentially every edition of D&D has presented racial monocultures defined by trends, which largely ignores the interaction with individuals. This is incorrect and unbelievable on a number of points - the idea of racial cultures that nonetheless produce racially diverse adventuring groups is inherently suspect, particularly when trade is explicitly noted as part of the culture; monocultures are essentially absurd, and the use of trends exclusively is shallow. A better approach would be to look at cultures in the sense of pressures, many of which are inherently contradictory, where cultures are not monocultures but instead have factions and subcultures within them which vary in pressures exerted on the members of those societies. Added to that, there is the matter of geographical and climatological effects regarding societies, social pressures, and social development. Take dwarven alcoholism - if you couch that in terms of social pressures regarding individual and clan honor, their conflict, the association between alcohol and stresses that come from this conflict, geographic encouragement for alcohol development, physiological responses to alcohol, cultural pressures that are largely homogenous regarding alcohol being a positive influence as a social lubricant, and the idea of alcohol as a symbolic ritual demonstrating toughness in the presence of cultural pressures encouraging it it becomes much less a stupid looking stereotype and much more a believable cultural element. If you then add in variety among clans, geographical regions, etc. then there is some depth, particularly if racially heterogenous areas are taken into account.

Care would need to be taken to prevent the emergence of a mandatory setting, but through the presentation of multiple possibilities for the various races, cultures, geographical regions, etc. that could be avoided. I'm not optimistic about this being the way things are done, but the team might move towards it.

[deuterio12]

I echo that humanoid species should be different, way more different than they generally are in fantasy games. My opinion on the matter is that if you could use humans for something, you don't need elves and dwarves or the like; to justify using them, you must have differences that go way beyond culture and into basic physiology and psychology.

Both would realistically mean that non-humans would not have identical spectrum of emotions and thinking as humans. Yes, this makes them harder to roleplay, but some of us like the challenge. I'm sick and tired of hearing that any non-human should be able to support every human personality.

+1 to that.

Dwarves for example. If they're extra-tough and highly resistant to poison, then it makes sense that they drink all the time like there's no tommorow. They can afford to do so. It may sound like a cultural diference, but it's actually based on a physical characteristic.

[Draz74]

What about this:

Each race gets a +2 bonus to one of 2 different stats. Dwarves can choose strength or con, elves can choose int or dex, halflings get dex or con, etc.

Then, when you choose your class, you get a +2 bonus to the main stat of that class, for example wizards get int, rogues get dex, fighters get str, and so on.

However, the important bit here, is that these two bonuses would not stack. For example, if you were a dwarf fighter, you would get +2 to strength and +2 to constitution. You wouldn't be able to get a +4 bonus to strength.

This means that any race can be any class just as effectively, but you're still flavored by your race. A dwarven wizard and a elven wizard both get +2 int, but the wizard also gets +2 dex, while the dwarf can get +2 con. Bam, races are different, but also balanced.

Humans could either get a floating +2 bonus, or a +1 bonus to all stats. I like the latter a bit more, actually, since it would mean a human gets +1 to all stats and +2 to their class stat, making them great for being versatile, which seems to be what humans are supposed to be all about in DnD.

What do you guys think?

I was thinking the same thing earlier today. Not all the same in the details, but the basic idea: that if race and class stat bonuses don't stack, it will reduce the effect of "pigeonholing" certain races into certain classes.

I approve.

[AgentPaper]

It may also be beneficial to allow a few classes to get bonuses to one of two abilities, for example a fighter should also be able to choose dexterity over strength if they're going for a archery or finesse weapons. I don't think every class needs this though, for example it's hard to imagine a wizard that doesn't want intelligence, or a cleric that doesn't want wisdom, or a rogue that doesn't want dexterity.

[Frozen_Feet]

+1 to that.

Dwarves for example. If they're extra-tough and highly resistant to poison, then it makes sense that they drink all the time like there's no tommorow. They can afford to do so. It may sound like a cultural diference, but it's actually based on a physical characteristic.

On a roughly similar note, I made goblins in one of my games capable of tolerating much higher proportions of carbondioxide in the air, so they could live in more cramped underground tunnels. This became a huge plotpoint, as it meant human characters could not go into all places where goblins could (humans would suffocate) - ignorant of this fact, they tried to use a captured goblin to tell when the air would get too poisonous, and almost walked into their own doom because of it!

This sparked an idea for my current setting-in-progress: each non-human race is able to survive in conditions that would be lethal or near-impossible for human to live in without benefits of near-modern equipment. For example, one race is uniquely suited to living in tundra and glaciers, one can naturally dive deep and even breathe water, in addition to the goblins who can breathe poisonous air.

[Draz74]

for example it's hard to imagine a wizard that doesn't want intelligence, or a cleric that doesn't want wisdom, or a rogue that doesn't want dexterity.

On the Wizard and Cleric I have to agree, as long as we're stuck with the classic D&D magic-fluff where those are their casting-stats.

But Rogues ... not. I can easily come up with Rogue character concepts who would prefer Strength, Intelligence, or Charisma over Dexterity.

[AgentPaper]

On the Wizard and Cleric I have to agree, as long as we're stuck with the classic D&D magic-fluff where those are their casting-stats.

But Rogues ... not. I can easily come up with Rogue character concepts who would prefer Strength, Intelligence, or Charisma over Dexterity.

I didn't mean to say that all rogues would want dexterity as their main stat, I meant that all rogues would benefit from a high dexterity. Unless there's a way to build the rogue that I haven't taken into account, this is different from a Fighter who wants to use a bow or a rapier, because such a fighter would get no benefit at all from strength, and in fact it is likely to be their dump stat.

If you want to be a rogue that focuses on Int, or Charisma, then you may want to choose a race that boosts that stat, so that you can get it higher than normal. It'd fine if halflings make better charming rogues, and dwarves make better tough rogues, and elves make better skilled rogues. That adds diversity to the game and make race more meaningful. The issue comes in when Halflings or elves or dwarves become the best race for ALL kinds of rogues, which ends up reducing diversity and making race choice less meaningful, since the race and class are tied so closely together.

[noparlpf]

On a roughly similar note, I made goblins in one of my games capable of tolerating much higher proportions of carbondioxide in the air, so they could live in more cramped underground tunnels. This became a huge plotpoint, as it meant human characters could not go into all places where goblins could (humans would suffocate) - ignorant of this fact, they tried to use a captured goblin to tell when the air would get too poisonous, and almost walked into their own doom because of it!

This sparked an idea for my current setting-in-progress: each non-human race is able to survive in conditions that would be lethal or near-impossible for human to live in without benefits of near-modern equipment. For example, one race is uniquely suited to living in tundra and glaciers, one can naturally dive deep and even breathe water, in addition to the goblins who can breathe poisonous air.

I really like this. Very nice.

[Draz74]

I didn't mean to say that all rogues would want dexterity as their main stat, I meant that all rogues would benefit from a high dexterity. Unless there's a way to build the rogue that I haven't taken into account, this is different from a Fighter who wants to use a bow or a rapier, because such a fighter would get no benefit at all from strength, and in fact it is likely to be their dump stat.

If you want to be a rogue that focuses on Int, or Charisma, then you may want to choose a race that boosts that stat, so that you can get it higher than normal. It'd fine if halflings make better charming rogues, and dwarves make better tough rogues, and elves make better skilled rogues. That adds diversity to the game and make race more meaningful. The issue comes in when Halflings or elves or dwarves become the best race for ALL kinds of rogues, which ends up reducing diversity and making race choice less meaningful, since the race and class are tied so closely together.

That's fair. I forget, can Sneak Attack only be used with Finessable weapons as-written? Because if not, I can definitely imagine brawny Rogues who don't particularly need Dexterity if they gain a different bonus Background rather than Thief or Thug. (And there certainly will be more options than just those two, eventually.) And they were recently discussing options that would be alternatives to Sneak Attack, too ...

[navar100]

It may also be beneficial to allow a few classes to get bonuses to one of two abilities, for example a fighter should also be able to choose dexterity over strength if they're going for a archery or finesse weapons. I don't think every class needs this though, for example it's hard to imagine a wizard that doesn't want intelligence, or a cleric that doesn't want wisdom, or a rogue that doesn't want dexterity.

Consider the character creation process. If dice rolling, a spellcaster player may have a natural 17 or 18 for his casting stat so will want to put the +2 into another score that's important to him. In Point Buy, a player may be willing to pay the cost for a high stat in his prime and will use the +2 in another stat to save some points. For example, if he's comfortable with a 14 he'll only pay for a 12 allowing another stat to be a 12 or have no 8 at least and put the +2 in his secondary stat to make it 14.

If they follow the 4E model of every class being Dual-ability score dependent, then a +2 to either score does well.

[invinible]

Since the Psionic is going to be 1 of the base classes in the next edition of Dungeons & Dragons, I hope that class works with abilities base off of this list: http://indigolifecenter.wordpress.com/2008/01/06/list-of-metaphysical-and-psionic-abilities/ to minimize headaches when using the class.

[AgentPaper]

Consider the character creation process. If dice rolling, a spellcaster player may have a natural 17 or 18 for his casting stat so will want to put the +2 into another score that's important to him. In Point Buy, a player may be willing to pay the cost for a high stat in his prime and will use the +2 in another stat to save some points. For example, if he's comfortable with a 14 he'll only pay for a 12 allowing another stat to be a 12 or have no 8 at least and put the +2 in his secondary stat to make it 14.

If they follow the 4E model of every class being Dual-ability score dependent, then a +2 to either score does well.

The point isn't to allow for tons of flexibility. The point is to allow each race to do well as many different classes, while still retaining their racial flavor. Of course you can help out the player by allowing them to allocate stats wherever they want, but the point of game design is to put obstacles in the players path, not take them away.

[Craft (Cheese)]

There are also fundamental issues with how cultures are presented. Essentially every edition of D&D has presented racial monocultures defined by trends, which largely ignores the interaction with individuals. This is incorrect and unbelievable on a number of points - the idea of racial cultures that nonetheless produce racially diverse adventuring groups is inherently suspect, particularly when trade is explicitly noted as part of the culture; monocultures are essentially absurd, and the use of trends exclusively is shallow. A better approach would be to look at cultures in the sense of pressures, many of which are inherently contradictory, where cultures are not monocultures but instead have factions and subcultures within them which vary in pressures exerted on the members of those societies. Added to that, there is the matter of geographical and climatological effects regarding societies, social pressures, and social development. Take dwarven alcoholism - if you couch that in terms of social pressures regarding individual and clan honor, their conflict, the association between alcohol and stresses that come from this conflict, geographic encouragement for alcohol development, physiological responses to alcohol, cultural pressures that are largely homogenous regarding alcohol being a positive influence as a social lubricant, and the idea of alcohol as a symbolic ritual demonstrating toughness in the presence of cultural pressures encouraging it it becomes much less a stupid looking stereotype and much more a believable cultural element. If you then add in variety among clans, geographical regions, etc. then there is some depth, particularly if racially heterogenous areas are taken into account.

This. This is how you really design a believable culture.

[Zombimode]

It may also be beneficial to allow a few classes to get bonuses to one of two abilities, for example a fighter should also be able to choose dexterity over strength if they're going for a archery or finesse weapons. I don't think every class needs this though, for example it's hard to imagine a wizard that doesn't want intelligence, or a cleric that doesn't want wisdom, or a rogue that doesn't want dexterity.

This is already the case in Next.
Every class gets a +1 bonus to one of two or three abilities. Fighters can choose between Strength, Dexterity and Constitution, for instance.

[TheOOB]

At least in theory, the basic racial traits of a race are supposed to represent the gross physical traits of the race(or at least cultural traits that are so essential to the race they are instinctual), and the sub race is supposed to represent more cultural or societal differences. So, for example, there may eventually be a Dwarf sub-race the represents a Dwarf raised among humans.

As written, the races only party meet those design goals(I can accept that stoncutting might be instinctual to dwarves, but axe and hammer training?). Though to be noted, races are not even close to being done. Apparently, the base Core System is mostly done(though it will likely continue to receive revision throughout the next 2 years), and right now they are working on the classes, specifically the four core classes(so far, the cleric is mostly done, the rogue fairly close, the fighter still under development, and the wizard not really started). The races, equiptment, spells, and monsters presented are all pretty much stubs just there so what they do have is playable until those areas of the game are tackled.

[Craft (Cheese)]

That's fair. I forget, can Sneak Attack only be used with Finessable weapons as-written? Because if not, I can definitely imagine brawny Rogues who don't particularly need Dexterity if they gain a different bonus Background rather than Thief or Thug. (And there certainly will be more options than just those two, eventually.) And they were recently discussing options that would be alternatives to Sneak Attack, too ...

It just says "Once per round, you can deal Sneak Attack damage to a creature you hit with an attack. To deal this extra damage, you must have advantage against this creature."

By RAW you could even do it with a spell.

[navar100]

The point isn't to allow for tons of flexibility. The point is to allow each race to do well as many different classes, while still retaining their racial flavor. Of course you can help out the player by allowing them to allocate stats wherever they want, but the point of game design is to put obstacles in the players path, not take them away.

I was commenting on your thought that a wizard wouldn't want to put a +2 in a score that's not intelligence. I was showing that's not necessarily true.

If I can't have flexibility then why play? Here's an obstacle: Player, you can't do anything. Have fun.

A game is a series of interesting decisions, not an obstacle course. (Granted a real-life obstacle course could be a fun race.)

[AgentPaper]

I was commenting on your thought that a wizard wouldn't want to put a +2 in a score that's not intelligence. I was showing that's not necessarily true.

If I can't have flexibility then why play? Here's an obstacle: Player, you can't do anything. Have fun.

A game is a series of interesting decisions, not an obstacle course. (Granted a real-life obstacle course could be a fun race.)

Yes, but you're supposed to be making that decision when you choose your race. If you give characters a ton of flexibility in where they put their stat from race/class, then you start to dilute the flavor of those bonuses. If any wizard can get a bonus to +con, then there's no difference between an elf wizard (+int +con) and a dwarf wizard (+int +con).

[Knaight]

If any wizard can get a bonus to +con, then there's no difference between an elf wizard (+int +con) and a dwarf wizard (+int +con).
Other than all of the drastically divergent racial features other than stats, sure.

[noparlpf]

Just in terms of flavour, ignoring race, why should a Wizard get a Con bonus? Wizards sit around studying.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Just in terms of flavour, ignoring race, why should a Wizard get a Con bonus? Wizards sit around studying.
Well, that does require a lot of concentration and Concentration (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/concentration.htm) uses your CON bonus... :smalltongue:

[noparlpf]

Well, that does require a lot of concentration and Concentration (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/concentration.htm) uses your CON bonus... :smalltongue:

I've never understood that. I figured they just wanted one skill based on Con. I'd probably write it as Wis.

[TheOOB]

Just in terms of flavour, ignoring race, why should a Wizard get a Con bonus? Wizards sit around studying.

Aside from the rogue, every class seems to be able to choose a Con bonus(and I would support a general rules that makes it so every class can), because con is useful to everyone.

As for concentration, I would prefer a casting ability check.

[noparlpf]

Aside from the rogue, every class seems to be able to choose a Con bonus(and I would support a general rules that makes it so every class can), because con is useful to everyone.

As for concentration, I would prefer a casting ability check.

Useful, sure, but I don't see the fluff supporting Con bonuses for Wizards or Rogues.

[TheOOB]

Useful, sure, but I don't see the fluff supporting Con bonuses for Wizards or Rogues.

Two things. First of all, not everything has to be about fluff. Game mechanics are king, and making working game mechanics ALWAYS takes priority over fluff in every case.

Second, why would anyone in an adventurer profession not try to train themselves to be tougher. Adventuring is the most dangerous and demanding profession out there. If it is possible to train ability scores, that is one someone would logical pick to train regardless of their class role.

[Anderlith]

Just in terms of flavour, ignoring race, why should a Wizard get a Con bonus? Wizards sit around studying.

Run up & down a tight spiral staircase with several thick textbooks. It builds endurance

[navar100]

Useful, sure, but I don't see the fluff supporting Con bonuses for Wizards or Rogues.

It takes stamina to play Quidditch well.

[ThiagoMartell]

Two things. First of all, not everything has to be about fluff. Game mechanics are king, and making working game mechanics ALWAYS takes priority over fluff in every case.

I disagree so strongly about this that I can't even put it into words.
That's clearly not how D&D Next is designed. That's the 4e mantra you're repeating there.

[Dublock]

I disagree so strongly about this that I can't even put it into words.
That's clearly not how D&D Next is designed. That's the 4e mantra you're repeating there.

I like fluff, I use fluff, and I don't want to put work into changing fluff when I DM.

But honestly I am seeing a lot more game mechanics then fluff in DDN so far, and the fluff I have seen, looks more like place holder...at least I hope thats not all.

[Flickerdart]

Backgrounds are almost entirely fluff, though. From the looks of it, 5e is going to try and tie fluff and mechanics together much more tightly than in 3.5 (where refluffing was if not encouraged then at least easy) or 4e (where the fluff was clearly an afterthought).

[TheOOB]

I disagree so strongly about this that I can't even put it into words.
That's clearly not how D&D Next is designed. That's the 4e mantra you're repeating there.

Really, because the vast majority of what they have done is mechanics. Fluff and story is nice, it can be helpful in building a campaign, but it is also something that can be changed, altered, and ignored. If I don't like the idea that a warlock fae pact gives you a wart, and I can change it and the rest of the system, both mechanics and fluff, work fine.

A mechanic on the other hand is far more important. Changing a mechanic, even a minor one, can be very difficult as it will have far reaching implications as all the mechanics are co-dependant on eachother. If you make say, perception checks based on intelligence, you've made every character, every item that boosts int stronger, and made everything that boosts wis weaker, you've affected the balance of the game. If you do a more dramatic change, like changing a d20 to 3d6, you've completly changed the whole game, all the carefully crafted probabilities are now completely worthless, and you'll either break the game, or make so much work you might as well be making a new system.

Game mechanics are king. Ultimately, if you have to choose between fluff and mechanics, you should choose mechanics every time in game design. Bad or weak fluff can always be made up for by good players, but bad mechanics, things that actually make the game itself no fun to play, ruin the entire experience.

[Water_Bear]

Really, because the vast majority of what they have done is mechanics. Fluff and story is nice, it can be helpful in building a campaign, but it is also something that can be changed, altered, and ignored. If I don't like the idea that a warlock fae pact gives you a wart, and I can change it and the rest of the system, both mechanics and fluff, work fine.

A mechanic on the other hand is far more important. Changing a mechanic, even a minor one, can be very difficult as it will have far reaching implications as all the mechanics are co-dependant on eachother. If you make say, perception checks based on intelligence, you've made every character, every item that boosts int stronger, and made everything that boosts wis weaker, you've affected the balance of the game. If you do a more dramatic change, like changing a d20 to 3d6, you've completly changed the whole game, all the carefully crafted probabilities are now completely worthless, and you'll either break the game, or make so much work you might as well be making a new system.

Game mechanics are king. Ultimately, if you have to choose between fluff and mechanics, you should choose mechanics every time in game design. Bad or weak fluff can always be made up for by good players, but bad mechanics, things that actually make the game itself no fun to play, ruin the entire experience.

I agree on all the particulars but I can't disagree more about the conclusion. Bad Fluff has killed more game systems than any amount of poorly balanced mechanics, while games like D&D WoD and Traveler have become practically household names because of the way they inspired players with their settings and styles. Fluff and Crunch must be in balance for a game to be successful; you can't ignore either and expect to get a good result.

[AgentPaper]

I agree on all the particulars but I can't disagree more about the conclusion. Bad Fluff has killed more game systems than any amount of poorly balanced mechanics, while games like D&D WoD and Traveler have become practically household names because of the way they inspired players with their settings and styles. Fluff and Crunch must be in balance for a game to be successful; you can't ignore either and expect to get a good result.

He's not saying that you need to ignore Fluff, he's saying that if they're in conflict, mechanics usually wins simply because it's easier to mold fluff around a mechanic rather than molding mechanics around fluff.

That's not to say that you shouldn't look to mold mechanics to fit fluff when you can, of course. A good mechanic that's backed up with good fluff is far superior to a good mechanic backed up by bad fluff. It's only when you can't get the two to work well together, that you need to sacrifice one for the other. Having to do so essentially means you've failed as a designer, but it's still better to have good mechanics and bad fluff than it is to have bad mechanics and good fluff.

[Oracle_Hunter]

I agree on all the particulars but I can't disagree more about the conclusion. Bad Fluff has killed more game systems than any amount of poorly balanced mechanics, while games like D&D WoD and Traveler have become practically household names because of the way they inspired players with their settings and styles. Fluff and Crunch must be in balance for a game to be successful; you can't ignore either and expect to get a good result.
Wait, what system has been "killed" by bad fluff :smallconfused:

[Kurald Galain]

Fluff is easier to change than mechanics, yes. But if a system is saying that the fluff for any spell/maneuver/power can be changed to whatever you like at any time, then that is basically saying that fluff doesn't matter. For a roleplaying game, I don't think that's a constructive attitude.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Wait, what system has been "killed" by bad fluff :smallconfused:

Eh... I can sortof half-buy this argument, in theory anyway. What really sells me on whether I want to try a new system/subsystem/splatbook is the kind of stories that pop into my head when I read it, moreso even than everything else put together. Interesting and innovative ideas will intrigue me, but to actually get it into play at the table the stories have to be there. Otherwise I'll just cannibalize the interesting bits and sprinkle it into my homebrew but the unmolested system itself will forever go unplayed.

It's the reason why I've still yet to try Dungeon World, Old School Hack, or Warrior/Rogue/Mage, I read through them and just think "...What am I supposed to do with this that I can't already do with D&D?" I mean they streamline the process and get you to those delicious nuggets faster and maybe even better than D&D does, but they don't evoke new nuggets that I want to dig up and chow down.

Now, I only half-buy the argument because fluff isn't really necessary to do this, though it helps. Oftentimes I'll come up with a story when reading a book through mechanics, just by saying to myself "Hey, I just came up with a great situation that these mechanics right here are just perfect for modeling/arbitrating." or "Hey, this mechanic sounds like it could do a great job of avoiding narrative structure problem X." Heck, the mechanics alone are what got me into Wushu and Ars Magica. Love Magica's spellcasting mechanic even though I can't stand Mythic Europe as a setting.

[Camelot]

Wait, what system has been "killed" by bad fluff :smallconfused:

It depends entirely on the players, doesn't it? What one person thinks is a deep and compelling world, another might think is pretentious and uninteresting.

When I pick up a game, I do so entirely because of the flavor. Star Wars? Sci-fi with jedi is so cool! Dragon Age? That game had a great plot, I'd love to make up my own stories in that universe! D&D? I love magic and swords and dragons! Call of Cthulhu? Ooh, I want to scare the heck out of my friends and myself! Vampire: the Masquerade? Eh, I don't really like vampires all by themselves.

Then once I start playing a game, or maybe even just reading the rules, I make a decision of whether I want to continue based on the mechanics. I took one look at the Call of Cthulhu book and my brain started spinning around in confusion, so I've never actually been in a game.

So I don't think bad flavor (or fluff) kills a game, but it can stop it from ever being born. Since I've never been interested in the world that V:tM presents, I don't even know how the mechanics work. Bad mechanics are what can kill a game.

Your experiences may vary, but of course we're interested in hearing them!

[Kurald Galain]

So I don't think bad flavor (or fluff) kills a game, but it can stop it from ever being born.

Yes. Good fluff sells a game. D&D is probably the only RPG that can still sell if it doesn't have good fluff in its core books, but that doesn't mean people want it to.

[Saph]

Yes. Good fluff sells a game. D&D is probably the only RPG that can still sell if it doesn't have good fluff in its core books, but that doesn't mean people want it to.

Yeah, in my experience good fluff will save bad mechanics more often than the reverse. A game with good fluff will still attract players even if the mechanics are bad, because it just looks cool. See pretty much all of the old World of Darkness games. They've got some of the most vague and inconsistent rules I've ever seen, but they still draw loads of players because of the setting and atmosphere.

[TheOOB]

It's like the old Nietzsche quote, which is usually paraphrased "It's better to be feared than loved" When it more goes like this(quoted from Wikipedia)

“The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other; but because it is difficult to combine them, it is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.” As Machiavelli asserts, commitments made in peace are not always kept in adversity; however, commitments made in fear are kept out of fear. Yet, a prince must ensure that he is not feared to the point of hatred.

It's best to have strong mechanics and strong fluff, but when you can't have both, have strong mechanics, so long as you don't completely ruin the fluff.

Fluff is great for attracting players, but it doesn't make the game good. Take Exalted for example, Exalted has some amazing fluff, but the mechanics are complete and utter garbage, the game is nearly unplayable. Yeah you'll sell some books, but if you want the system to have real staying power, you need to focus on mechanics. Luckily, D&D has implied fluff that sells it automatically, so they need to look at the long haul, ie mechanics.

And let me let you in on a game design secret. Very often, good games mechanics are completely(or at least mostly) divorced from their fluff. This isn't exclusive to RPGs. Lets use board games as an example. Many great games(Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Power Grid, Puerto Rico, Agricola, Dominion, and 90% of of BBG's top 100) could be re skinned to completely different fluff with little no no changes to the rules at all(You could make a version of Agricola where instead of building a farm you are building a military, and the winning is the one who "wins" the war at the end, same mechanics). Many really bad games(such as Risk or Monopoly) are so tied up in trying to support their theme that their mechanics suck. Very few people enjoy the mechanics of Monopoly, they enjoy the thought of owning half of New York and making their friends bankrupt.

[Kurald Galain]

Fluff is great for attracting players, but it doesn't make the game good. Take Exalted for example, Exalted has some amazing fluff, but the mechanics are complete and utter garbage, the game is nearly unplayable. Yeah you'll sell some books, but if you want the system to have real staying power, you need to focus on mechanics.
Exalted still has a big fanbase eleven years after its release. How again is that not staying power?



Many great games(Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Power Grid, Puerto Rico, Agricola, Dominion, and 90% of of BBG's top 100) could be re skinned to completely different fluff with little no no changes to the rules at all

I don't think that's true at all. They are good games precisely because the mechanics enforce their fluff. For instance, Settlers needs to be about settling and trade; if you re-theme the game as "some guy is dead and you need to find the culprit" then it stops making sense. (I haven't played Agricola so I can't comment on that, but I seriously doubt you can make it into a successful army game).

This also goes for D&D: whenever the mechanics clash with the fluff, most people don't mind at all, but some people complain. Have too many of such clashes causes the game to lose audience. And the reality is that WOTC has lost a lot of audience over the past years.

Risk and Monopoly were made in a vastly different time period, when expectations for boardgames were different. That's not a good comparison. With their humongous sales figures, you really can't call them "really bad games", and the issues in their mechanics clearly don't come from trying to support their fluff (but rather, from their simplicity). Finally, the reason these games sell well is not because they compensate their rules with such great fluff (they really don't) but because of brand recognition.

[Oracle_Hunter]

I don't think that's true at all. They are good games precisely because the mechanics enforce their fluff. For instance, Settlers needs to be about settling and trade; if you re-theme the game as "some guy is dead and you need to find the culprit" then it stops making sense. (I haven't played Agricola so I can't comment on that, but I seriously doubt you can make it into a successful army game).
Yeah no.

You can strip all the "fluff" from Settlers and it's still a good game. Additionally, it is a bit of a stretch to say that Settlers has much to do with settling an island or dealing with bandits -- I mean, why can't you use other people's roads to establish settlements?

The argument is completely wrong in Dominion, of course.

But that is really neither here nor there. Board Games are not Roleplaying Games and, as a rule, board games with good fluff and bad mechanics are just not as fun as games with good mechanics and bad fluff. For example, Twilight Imperium has excellent fluff but the mechanics are so bad I would never play it again.

* * * *

The main reason I objected to the initial claim is that I can think of exactly zero games that had good mechanics but faded into obscurity because their fluff was no good. It doesn't take a lot of brainpower to write fluff that you enjoy and that is exactly what would happen in any game which was fun to play but for some reason had "bad" fluff.

No, what is hard is writing good mechanics and people are far too willing to put up with bad mechanics because they get caught up in the fluff they enjoy. As a result we have tons of games out there with awful mechanics and decent fluff that still sell books and encourage gaming companies to simply hire good writers and mediocre game designers. You don't have to look very hard to find proof of that proposition :smallamused:

[Clawhound]

I find that the best game mechanics are in harmony with the fluff.

A good example is Call of Cthulhu. The game has an insanity mechanic. That mechanic plays directly into the fluff of the game. It works this way: the single most useful skill slowly drives you character crazy.

In D&D you have hit points. You get more as you go up levels. That means that you grow less and less afraid of your enemies and are willing to go after other enemies. It's like courage. Even with no other bonuses to hit or damage, those hit points make your character more fearless. It's hit points that make D&D a heroic game. Even if everything else about your character stayed the same, you could still combat stronger and tougher foes.

[Menteith]

If anyone's interested, James Wyatt (Creative Manager of WotC AKA the dude in charge of story in the D&D universe, specifically Forgotten Realms) had an hour long panel at the Escapist Expo yesterday, specifically about how story and mechanics are going to interact in D&D Next. It also has a general Q&A for him based on questions people have sent in.

Linky (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escapist-expo/6317-Everything-You-Wanted-to-Know-About-D-D-Next)

I'll try and transcribe some of the points that come up here as I listen to it.

- Playtesting is estimated to take two years
- Splatbook emphasis on new settings and fluff rather than mechanics and crunch.
- Strong support for worldbuilding.
- Character optimization is going to be possible, but isn't a design objective.
- First level characters are meant to be weaker than they were in 4E and 3.5E.
- Enemies will be able to be created with player creation rules.
- There are some things that they haven't figured out with regard to lore - for example, Kobolds and their relations to Dragons is something they're working on. They want to be as inclusive as they can, leading options for the players instead of saying yes/no.
- There explicitly will be multiclassing in the game.
- They hope to support living campaigns, but admit that it might be tricky with how modular the system is.
- Wizards are going to have more options than other classes because "it's magic".

Talking about adding in splatbooks that are full of "powers, feats, and magic items", similar to what 3E and 4E did with splats.

"It is my earnest hope that that's a direction we don't go down again, that we want to give you stories, setting material....somehow we had (previously) convinced ourselves that setting material wasn't important or wasn't what we should put our focus on...rather than giving people more of what they were clearly excited about getting."

After a few people in the crowd say they like using their own settings, and state their issues with using published settings.

"What I hear from you folks, and from a lot of DMs, is we like making our own stuff up. We want to make sure we give you tools to help you do that, which might be very little, or it might be a lot. There have been some pretty cool products in the past like the Worldbuilder's Handbook for 2nd Edition that could give a lot of inspiration, and a lot of information that you might not have a mastery of, personally. Published Settings and adventures, even if you don't use them directly can be really good for looting, pulling material out of and adapting to whatever you're doing. But its also the case that we want to empower the DM who says I don't need you Wizards, I'm going to make up my own campaign, my own world, and don't need you to tell me how to do it."

On the subject of premade adventures

"To be complete honest, as the co-author as one of those adventures [from 4E], I think we did a really poor job in taking the awesome adventure building and campaign building advice that was in the 4E Dungeon Master's Guide and putting it into practice and modeling how we thought 4E should be played, and that was a terrible mistake. All of which is a longwinded way of saying our business plan for adventures wasn't good, and our design for adventures could have been better. And that steered us away from putting a lot of emphasis on adventures. But it's true, we sit around and talk about it at the office about the adventures that are classics, and there's good reasons why the first playtest packet for D&D Next had the Keep on the Borderlands in it."

"While trying to give everyone the game that they want, are you at all worried about the system being stretched too thin?"

"I don't think so. The ugly truth is that people don't need us to play D&D. D&D, at its heart, is a really simple thing. You sit around and pretend to be adventurers going into a dangerous environment and killing stuff and performing heroic quests and all this and people don't look back on the adventure they played three years ago and say "remember when I moved three squares that way and did a Tide of Iron and forced the guy four squares back into the fire?" They talk about "Remember when we went into that tomb and there was that monstrosity with six arms and three heads, and you cast that spell that made it blind?" You remember stuff in world terms, not in game terms. I think as long as we give you the tools you need to tell your stories in the world, there's not much else that we really need to give you. We can and we probably will, give you an option to sit down at the table and play a tactical miniatures boardgame or even play dungeon command right now which is a really fun game, and we can give you tools to help you with a really intense intrigue game if that's what you really want, and we don't think that's going to stretch the system."

Some players really enjoy kitting out their players, not for a good story, and not for the verisimilitude of the world, but because they want to be powerful. Will this be supported in D&D Next?

"3.5 in particular was really all about character optimization. We've launched a topic on our forums called the character optimization forums where people can talk about what kind of character would be the best character, even if they'll never play that character (someone yells out "Pun-Pun") - [laughs], really, why would you ever want to? That will always be possible within the framework of the game as long as we give you rules, and why would we want to make it impossible, that's part of our player base we'd be alienating or saying no this game is not for you. But it's definitely not a point of emphasis."

1st level character powers varies between editions. What does a first level character in D&D Next mean to you?

"In D&D Next, first level characters are certainly more fragile than they have been in the last two editions, slightly less fragile than in first or second edition because the rules for going below 0 hit points are much more forgiving ... in 4E we spelled out that the PCs were special, we really want to ...in 3.5 we gave tables for how many player character classes existed in each city, and we wanted to de-emphasize that in 4E, player characters were more special, they were the ones who had survived awhile. Even at first level, they were tough, could hold their own. I'm actually not sure about how we are philosophically in what is true about the rest of the world in D&D compared to first level characters. I expect it's going to be more common to see NPCs who are level four clerics rather than "Dark Acolytes", NPCs statted up as monsters...I'm babbling here, sorry [laughs]. Mike, our boss, has been steering us very clearly toward an experience that is more like the classic feel of "I'm fragile, I could go into this dungeon and be killed by a giant rat."

In 4E there were many race and class options. Are there going to be as many options, or will you have broader classes which can be used to create a wider range of characters? Additionally, is there anything from 4E character creation that's on the chopping block?

"The answer to your second question is no. We can't say one way or another for your first question....our plan is to get the core right and expand out from there. Right now we have the four core classes and the four core races, have to make sure we get those right. We're thinking of those as the races and classes that are by and large in every D&D setting. When we get beyond that circle and get to classes that...those four classes are really broad, people can make fighters with different abilities that are really different from each other. When we get to paladin or ranger those might be much narrow classes that don't offer as much breadth because they're much more specific. You can imagine a D&D world that doesn't have paladins at all. The farther out we get from core the more explicitly optional things are going to be. We have a very rough design document circulation around that has all of the races that have been in the 1st PHB from past editions...half-orc, half-elf, tiefling, dragonborn, gnomes, as these are the less common races. Your DM will have a say about what role these races play in the world. I don't want to tell anyone you were wrong about liking a race or class, and don't want to tell anyone no about what they can play. Even if we don't give it to you right upfront or put an emphasis on it.

In previous editions, there was a large disparity between what a Fighter could do and what a Wizard could do. How do you plan to deal with class imbalance?

"There are two things to deal with. The first is actual power imbalance, which has been true in past editions - a high level Fighter can take on all of a god's minions while the Wizard faces the God themself. I say that because that's happened in one of my games - I was a Ranger. In Forgotten Realms, virtually every high level character that's been statted up is a Wizard. So there is a power disparity, but there's also the disparity of options. We don't want the Fighter to have as many options as the Wizard because "it's magic". It's a world full of magic and magic is the stuff that can do all this stuff...over the life of the edition, maybe there will be as many Fighter maneuvers as there will be Wizard spells at launch.

I'm not in love with all of his answers, but I suppose it's good to know the design direction they're planning on it.

I feel like a lot of this information answers questions we've raised - does anyone else have an opinion on his responses?

[TheOOB]

Exalted still has a big fanbase eleven years after its release. How again is that not staying power?

Exalted has a fan base that are desperate to "fix" the rules of the game(see the massive amount of fan revisions, including the giant wiki), and WW has given up and is just letting freelancers write the next edition. The game has a dedicated fan base, but very few of those people are under any delusion that Exalted isn't a broken broken game.


I don't think that's true at all. They are good games precisely because the mechanics enforce their fluff. For instance, Settlers needs to be about settling and trade; if you re-theme the game as "some guy is dead and you need to find the culprit" then it stops making sense. (I haven't played Agricola so I can't comment on that, but I seriously doubt you can make it into a successful army game).

You are dead wrong. Many game companies, Mayfair games in particular, when translating a game to English for an American release have be known to change the game, or even pull out the theme entirely and put a new theme in. Good game mechanics are about math, and not about setting or fluff. I can make fluff to justify almost any mechanic, but I can't make a mechanic to justify any fluff.

Example, Ninja Versus Ninja is the same exact game as Foray! The only difference is they made all the pieces look like ninjas, and game some story about sneaking into an enemy ninja dojos base. The game sells based on it's ninja theme, but the mechanics are what makes the game good or not.


This also goes for D&D: whenever the mechanics clash with the fluff, most people don't mind at all, but some people complain. Have too many of such clashes causes the game to lose audience. And the reality is that WOTC has lost a lot of audience over the past years.

Really, I've never had anyone complain that a strictly non magical fighter can jump over 30 feet(mechanics not fitting the fluff), but I've had a ton of people complain that the turn undead rules are unintuitive and poorly executed(bad mechanics)


Risk and Monopoly were made in a vastly different time period, when expectations for boardgames were different. That's not a good comparison. With their humongous sales figures, you really can't call them "really bad games", and the issues in their mechanics clearly don't come from trying to support their fluff (but rather, from their simplicity). Finally, the reason these games sell well is not because they compensate their rules with such great fluff (they really don't) but because of brand recognition.

It is true, the art of game design has advanced a lot since those games where made, and we've learned that things like roll to move and player eliminate(both mechanics) are bad. Being old, however, doesn't stop a game from being bad. I also think Scooby Doo is a terrible TV show, but it is old and popular. Lets face it, McDonalds has great sales figure, but I doubt anyone would claim that their food is of high quality. Most people buy and play Monopoly and Risk because they are not aware of how many games are out there.

[Kurald Galain]

Exalted has a fan base that are desperate to "fix" the rules of the game
Sure. Nevertheless, you suggested earlier that a game with poor mechanics cannot have staying power. Exalted proves that yes, it can. There are numerous other examples; for example, the card game Munchkin has rather bad mechanics (which is quite possibly intentional), but it's just sheer fun and its sales figures are through the roof.


Many game companies, Mayfair games in particular, when translating a game to English for an American release have be known to change the game, or even pull out the theme entirely and put a new theme in.
I'm sure that there are some games where you can replace one fluff by another without affecting the game quality. But this clearly isn't what makes a game good, because there are many popular games (e.g. Settlers) where the fluff is not so easy to change. Settlers is also vastly more popular than Ninja vs Ninja. This underlines the claim that having fluff and crunch rely upon each other makes for a more popular game than having the fluff "tacked on" to some mathematical model.

The difference is that a game with intertwined fluff and crunch is immersive, whereas a game with tacked-on fluff is moving pieces of wood around a table. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with moving pieces of wood around a table (e.g. playing chess) but you'll cater to a bigger audience if you can do both. You don't choose between fluff and mechanics, the key is doing both.



Really, I've never had anyone complain that a strictly non magical fighter can jump over 30 feet(mechanics not fitting the fluff)
There is nothing clashing between the mechanics of jumping and the fluff of jumping. You are talking about things that aren't possible in real life, but that has nothing to do with fluff/crunch clashes. This debate has been done to death already so I'm not going to repeat it here; just look in the earlier 5 threads for examples if you want.


Being old, however, doesn't stop a game from being bad.
No, but being popular does stop a game from being bad - at least, from a marketing point of view. It's a philosophical debate whether quality is decided by popular demand, but from a sales point of view: yes it is. WOTC does not want a game that the critics love but the players won't buy.

[obryn]

To be complete honest, as the co-author as one of those adventures [from 4E], I think we did a really poor job in taking the awesome adventure building and campaign building advice that was in the 4E Dungeon Master's Guide and putting it into practice and modeling how we thought 4E should be played, and that was a terrible mistake. All of which is a longwinded way of saying our business plan for adventures wasn't good, and our design for adventures could have been better.
No joke.

It is hard for me to put into words how badly WotC's published adventures crippled 4e's chances right out of the gate.

-O

[Menteith]

Stuff I like

- The idea that they shouldn't restrict options. I'm reading this as no racial/alignment restrictions, and not tying mechanics to their own fluff. I might be wrong on that reading, but I believe this means they intend to have as many character/setting possibilities available as they can, which is a really good thing.

- Increased support/better writing for their own adventures and settings. I use a homebrew setting for my 3.5 games, but if they put more effort into realizing a setting and making it appealing to me, I'd love to be able to use their material to support my games, rather than just letting class/race fluff wither and be ignored. I'd like to see some good fluff written before I sign on board, but I'm glad it's a priority.

Stuff I don't like

- The idea that Fighters need to always be a simpler class, and have fewer options than magic users, purely because "it's magic". If they got this route, I'd really like to see them flat out state that certain classes are just fundamentally weaker in the D&D Next Player's Handbook, and make it clear that mundane classes are intended to be simpler and less powerful.

- Low design priority on the character optimization subgame. I don't think that this is a massive issue, as I believe 3.5's design was at least partially accidental, and expect there to be a good deal of interesting aspects of character building in D&D Next, but it's worth noting that they're putting a low priority on something that I care about.

[Zeful]

- Low design priority on the character optimization subgame. I don't think that this is a massive issue, as I believe 3.5's design was at least partially accidental, and expect there to be a good deal of interesting aspects of character building in D&D Next, but it's worth noting that they're putting a low priority on something that I care about.

Honestly, being relegated to being worthless because the designers decided it was "fun" to have do math and argue semantics for hours upon hours is one of the worst "features" to have ever been added to 3.5, and needs to be excised. It's not fun, it's not good design, and it doesn't make for good debate. I use optimization discussions as ban lists, because trying to DM under that situation either requires you to be the best optimizer in the game, or get someone else to do it for you, at which point YOU AREN'T DMING ANYMORE.

So screw that with an ice auger.

[Menteith]

Honestly, being relegated to being worthless because the designers decided it was "fun" to have do math and argue semantics for hours upon hours is one of the worst "features" to have ever been added to 3.5, and needs to be excised. It's not fun, it's not good design, and it doesn't make for good debate. I use optimization discussions as ban lists, because trying to DM under that situation either requires you to be the best optimizer in the game, or get someone else to do it for you, at which point YOU AREN'T DMING ANYMORE.

So screw that with an ice auger.

As in our previous discussions, I don't feel the same way. I'm really sorry you've had such a negative experience with it. My group isn't actively malicious, nor am I when I take part in other games, and I take great pleasure in optimizing a character (hence why I enjoy the Iron Chef competition on these forums so much). Different experiences lead to different conclusions for us, and I really enjoy a game with a good deal of character building depth.

I also believe that the "broken" aspects of optimization are more likely to occur if CharOp isn't something being heavily considered in the design process. During a beta, you want people trying to min/max the crap out of the game so you can find the glaring problems and remove them. I believe that if the developers don't work on optimization significantly, it's more likely that the unfun, broken features are more likely to make it a final product (as they did in 3.5).

[Zeful]

As in our previous discussions, I'm really sorry you've had such a negative experience with it. My group isn't actively malicious, nor am I when I take part in other games, and I take great pleasure in optimizing a character (hence why I enjoy the Iron Chef competition on these forums so much). Different experiences /shrug.

I'm not attributing malice to optimizers, I'm just ****ing tired of either being worthless to play, or needing to ****ing handheld in order to do something. That kind of design is terrible design and is fully incapable of adding or contributing any kind of depth to the game.

[Menteith]

I'm not attributing malice to optimizers, I'm just ****ing tired of either being worthless to play, or needing to ****ing handheld in order to do something. That kind of design is terrible design and is fully incapable of adding or contributing any kind of depth to the game.

I edited my post just after you posted this, but I'll respond to you here too.

- I think it's bad when the game requires a significant amount of technical knowledge to play.

- I think it's bad to have a game which doesn't have compelling choices in CharGen or allow someone with a significant amount of technical knowledge to use that knowledge.

- I think that munchkinery is way more likely if the developers don't fully push the optimization limits of the system during beta to identify weird/nonfunctional rules interactions. With such an open and long beta, this is less of a concern (as there certainly will be players who'll push the bounds for them), but still worth noting.

I get what you're saying, and I think that it's really ****ty that's happened to you, but I don't fault the system for it because my groups have never pulled that on me, nor have I pulled that on them. I've never actually had different degrees of optimization cause a problem within any of my group, regardless of whether it was in a PbP or RL, with me as a DM or a player, with longtime friends or people who've never touched the game.

[Seerow]

I'm not attributing malice to optimizers, I'm just ****ing tired of either being worthless to play, or needing to ****ing handheld in order to do something. That kind of design is terrible design and is fully incapable of adding or contributing any kind of depth to the game.

That doesn't mean that optimization is bad. It means the optimization floor needs to be lower, so you can't build a totally worthless character by accident. A common example here would be Tome of Battle as the baseline, rather than the Fighter. While the Fighter can in theory be built to be good in a narrow field, it is infinitely easier to screw up and be useless. On the other hand, if you are playing a Tome of Battle character, whether you optimize or not you're going to be effective.





We don't want the Fighter to have as many options as the Wizard because "it's magic". It's a world full of magic and magic is the stuff that can do all this stuff...over the life of the edition, maybe there will be as many Fighter maneuvers as there will be Wizard spells at launch.

Hey look one more thing to add to my ever growing list of "Reasons why I have little interest in 5e"

[Menteith]

Hey look one more thing to add to my ever growing list of "Reasons why I have little interest in 5e"

With two more years on development time, I'll have hope they'll change their minds. All I can do is give feedback and hope that we see a more robust system module for people who want a more interesting mundane character. I'm guessing/hoping he was referring just to the core set of rules during the panel, rather than something they wanted across every game.

The biggest point he made during the hour long presentation is that they wanted to create a system that could appeal to every gamer. They think that they can do it, and I'll do my best to help them reach that goal with feedback.

[noparlpf]

I edited my post just after you posted this, but I'll respond to you here too.

- I think it's bad when the game requires a significant amount of technical knowledge to play.

- I think it's bad to have a game which doesn't have compelling choices in CharGen or allow someone with a significant amount of technical knowledge to use that knowledge.

- I think that munchkinery is way more likely if the developers don't fully push the optimization limits of the system during beta to identify weird/nonfunctional rules interactions. With such an open and long beta, this is less of a concern (as there certainly will be players who'll push the bounds for them), but still worth noting.

I get what you're saying, and I think that it's really ****ty that's happened to you, but I don't fault the system for it because my groups have never pulled that on me, nor have I pulled that on them. I've never actually had different degrees of optimization cause a problem within any of my group, regardless of whether it was in a PbP or RL, with me as a DM or a player, with longtime friends or people who've never touched the game.

I certainly hope the open playtesting aids in minimising munchkinery and ridiculous shenanigans. There should be some reward for system mastery, but not the difference between playing an unoptimised fighter vs. playing a cheesed-out wizard.

In the group that introduced me to D&D, one of the older players seemed to enjoy the sort of prestige of being the one at the table who would optimise more. (He did nothing like the shenanigans I've seen online, but still, with a group of newbies at the table...)

[Seerow]

With two more years on development time, I'll have hope they'll change their minds. All I can do is give feedback and hope that we see a more robust system module for people who want a more interesting mundane character. I'm guessing/hoping he was referring just to the core set of rules during the panel, rather than something they wanted across every game.

The biggest point he made during the hour long presentation is that they wanted to create a system that could appeal to every gamer. They think that they can do it, and I'll do my best to help them reach that goal with feedback.

Saying "We want to appeal to every gamer" and saying "We're designing this to make Fighters suck" (in slightly different words) is mutually exclusive. Yes we can hope they're going to change their minds on that, but I find it hard to have faith they will, given how hard they're clinging to this crappy bounded accuracy mess and the absolute lack of a skill system.

[Menteith]

Saying "We want to appeal to every gamer" and saying "We're designing this to make Fighters suck" (in slightly different words) is mutually exclusive. Yes we can hope they're going to change their minds on that, but I find it hard to have faith they will, given how hard they're clinging to this crappy bounded accuracy mess and the absolute lack of a skill system.

I'm holding out until we see how modules work. I fully expect to see them clone 3.5's (or Pathfinder's) skill system through a module if you want it, and it's entirely possible that they'll have a module that significantly improves Fighters/mundanes. I understand their desire to get a solid core together, especially this early in the development cycle, but I really, really want to see the major selling point of D&D Next in action.

[Beleriphon]

Saying "We want to appeal to every gamer" and saying "We're designing this to make Fighters suck" (in slightly different words) is mutually exclusive. Yes we can hope they're going to change their minds on that, but I find it hard to have faith they will, given how hard they're clinging to this crappy bounded accuracy mess and the absolute lack of a skill system.

I think the comment wasn't "Fighters suck", but more Wizards have more "magical" tools than the fighter. That said the strength of the tools both have is a separate issue than the number of tools.

The fighter is the plumbers bag, it performs a narrow set of tasks exceptionally well (ie. plumbing). The wizard is the home reno store multi-tool. It can do some stuff the plumbing bag can't, but at the same time it doesn't do as good a job at plumbing.

The fighters still fight, and do it well. Making sure the wizard can't horn in on that shtick goes a long way towards making fighters not suck.

[AgentPaper]

Fighters don't need 50 pages of Maneuvers to be complex, deep, and fun to play. Maneuvers aren't spells, and comparing the to spells isn't going to help anyone.

[Menteith]

Fighters don't need 50 pages of Maneuvers to be complex, deep, and fun to play. Maneuvers aren't spells, and comparing the to spells isn't going to help anyone.

I think the issue is that Wizards seem likely to have access to many of the effects which made them absurdly powerful out of the box in 3.5 (such as Flight, Teleport, Invisibility, Charm Person, Disguise Self) and the developers simply giving up on having the classes be similar in power is frustrating. It's worth noting that balanced classes can work on very different systems and still feel distinct from each other - a Warblade, Dread Necromancer, and Factotum represent "iconic" classes of D&D (Fighter, Mage, Rogue) very well and are still reasonably balanced, and to hear that the developers aren't striving for a balanced system is disheartening.

[AgentPaper]

I think the issue is that Wizards seem likely to have access to many of the effects which made them absurdly powerful out of the box in 3.5 (such as Flight, Teleport, Invisibility, Charm Person, Disguise Self) and the developers simply giving up on having the classes be similar in power is frustrating. It's worth noting that balanced classes can work on very different systems and still feel distinct from each other - a Warblade, Dread Necromancer, and Factotum represent "iconic" classes of D&D (Fighter, Mage, Rogue) very well and are still reasonably balanced, and to hear that the developers aren't striving for a balanced system is disheartening.

When did they say that? Everything I've heard is that they're explicitly trying to balance the classes to each other, just without homogenizing them as they did in 4E.

[Menteith]

When did they say that? Everything I've heard is that they're explicitly trying to balance the classes to each other, just without homogenizing them as they did in 4E.

The quote I provided from the most recent panel on D&D Next, yesterday at The Escapist Expo;


"In previous editions, there was a large disparity between what a Fighter could do and what a Wizard could do. How do you plan to deal with class imbalance?

"There are two things to deal with. The first is actual power imbalance, which has been true in past editions - a high level Fighter can take on all of a god's minions while the Wizard faces the God themself. I say that because that's happened in one of my games - I was a Ranger. In Forgotten Realms, virtually every high level character that's been statted up is a Wizard. So there is a power disparity, but there's also the disparity of options. We don't want the Fighter to have as many options as the Wizard because "it's magic". It's a world full of magic and magic is the stuff that can do all this stuff...over the life of the edition, maybe there will be as many Fighter maneuvers as there will be Wizard spells at launch.

The creative lead on the project, in his most recent discussion on the subject, has stated that they do not want the Fighter to have as many options as the Wizard (in the context of the question asked at him, "Fighter" stands for mundane, see his comment about being a Ranger earlier in the quote). Since 3.5 (arguably the pinnacle of unbalance) had well balanced "Fighters" and "Wizards" (Warblades/Crusaders out of the box, optimized Paladins/Rangers/Barbarians etc against Beguilers, Dread Necromancers, Warmages, Healers, Bardic Sages, etc), it's clearly possible to have a "Fighter" balanced against a "Wizard". But they're taking the lazy/easy way out by simply saying they're fine with the Fighter right now, even after recognizing there's an issue.

I believe that it's possible to create a less powerful, less versatile Wizard (as compared to 3.5) and still preserve the "Wizard" feel to the class. Many of these boards have suggested ways to keep them in check. I also believe that it's possible to create an interesting, versatile mundane class to appeal to people who don't want to accept Magic = Powerful and Mundane = Limited. Recognizing a problem (differences in versatility across classes) really early on in the development cycle, and refusing to fix the problem, bugs me. Especially in the core rules.

[Seerow]

Fighters don't need 50 pages of Maneuvers to be complex, deep, and fun to play. Maneuvers aren't spells, and comparing the to spells isn't going to help anyone.

They aren't spells, but they are the Fighter's answer to them. If a level 5 Wizard has 40 spells in his spell book while a level 5 Fighter has 5 Maneuvers, 3 of which he gets to choose himself, you have a very big problem.

[Anderlith]

Yay for fragile characters, players need to feel like they can & will die if they make stupid decisions (like fighting the town sheriff)

[Knaight]

Yay for fragile characters, players need to feel like they can & will die if they make stupid decisions (like fighting the town sheriff)
That really depends on the town. It's not as if fighting sheriffs of particular towns from, say, a nearby forest hideout is absent from the literature.

[Seerow]

That really depends on the town. It's not as if fighting sheriffs of particular towns from, say, a nearby forest hideout is absent from the literature.

Everyone knows Robin Hood was a level 20 Ranger, that's why he was able to take on the Sheriff. Even then, how often did he outright win?

[ghost_warlock]

On the other hand, getting killed by random rat #3384 isn't fun. God, I hate fragile characters - every combat is reduced to luck of the die. That may be a good game design for a board game or poker, but it's crap design for a RPG that's supposed to be telling a story. :smallsigh:

[Grundy]

So I'm late to the party, and undoubtedly this has been discussed upstream, and i understand that dnd doesn't simulate real world situations perfectly. But I just noticed the weight and carrying rules in the packet, and I have a huge problem with them.
There's the neat formula- simple, direct. Str x 10 = encumbered. Encumbered weight x5= Max lift. Well, the current deadlift record is 1015 lbs. That works out to a 20 Str. Cool.
So the average guy, by this formula, isn't encumbered until 150 lbs, and can deadlift 500. Hmmm... That's awfully high. I am a carpenter by trade, so I lift large heavy objects all day. 150 lbs is a lot to ask of a laborer- ie a strong person- just to lift. I'd say that a person of above average strength IRL gets encumbered at around 75 lbs. That's like a large bag of concrete.
I also lift weights, and I know that I can deadlift 300 lbs. Now, I'm not the strongest guy in town, but I am a big strong guy. In 5e terms, I have a Str of 6.
I don't expect perfect rules, but this is just stupid. It totally takes my head out of the game.

[Seerow]

So I'm late to the party, and undoubtedly this has been discussed upstream, and i understand that dnd doesn't simulate real world situations perfectly. But I just noticed the weight and carrying rules in the packet, and I have a huge problem with them.
There's the neat formula- simple, direct. Str x 10 = encumbered. Encumbered weight x5= Max lift. Well, the current deadlift record is 1015 lbs. That works out to a 20 Str. Cool.
So the average guy, by this formula, isn't encumbered until 150 lbs, and can deadlift 500. Hmmm... That's awfully high. I am a carpenter by trade, so I lift large heavy objects all day. 150 lbs is a lot to ask of a laborer- ie a strong person- just to lift. I'd say that a person of above average strength IRL gets encumbered at around 75 lbs. That's like a large bag of concrete.
I also lift weights, and I know that I can deadlift 300 lbs. Now, I'm not the strongest guy in town, but I am a big strong guy. In 5e terms, I have a Str of 6.
I don't expect perfect rules, but this is just stupid. It totally takes my head out of the game.

I agree its stupid. I really liked the progression in 3e. Attempting to make strength gains linear ends up with either really wimpy strongmen, or way too strong weak guys.

[AgentPaper]

@Mentieth

You're taking the quote out of context. Number of options != power of character. Extra options can affect the power of a character, but they are not the same. Everything you've said here is a stated goal of DnD 5e.

@Seerow

No, you don't. First off, a level 5 wizard has exactly 9 spells as per the most recent playtest. Second, a fighter's maneuvers are at-will, rather than daily. If a fighter had the same number of maneuvers as a wizard, that would be a problem, because it would mean that the fighter has the same number of options every single round that the wizard gets over the course of a day.

[Seerow]

@Seerow

No, you don't. First off, a level 5 wizard has exactly 9 spells as per the most recent playtest. Second, a fighter's maneuvers are at-will, rather than daily. If a fighter had the same number of maneuvers as a wizard, that would be a problem, because it would mean that the fighter has the same number of options every single round that the wizard gets over the course of a day.


Wrong. A Wizard has 9 spells per day, but he has 30 spells known, because he has no meaningful limits on how many spells he can have on his spellbook. And that's not counting cantrips which adds at minimum 2 more spells to that, potentially up to 5.

40 was an exaggeration, but not much of one. Trying to compare how many spells a Wizard has prepared at any given time against the sum of a Fighter's abilities is entirely missing the point of how potent a Wizard's flexibility is.


Edit: If on the other hand you are suggesting that the Fighter should get access to 40 maneuvers and pick 5 of them at the start of the day, then sure, I will be more open to that particular comparison.

edit2: Put my edit in the middle of the post instead of the end. woops.

[Anderlith]

On the other hand, getting killed by random rat #3384 isn't fun. God, I hate fragile characters - every combat is reduced to luck of the die. That may be a good game design for a board game or poker, but it's crap design for a RPG that's supposed to be telling a story. :smallsigh:

It all has to do with the over all lethality of the creature attacking you. Odds are that you will not get killed by a rat, but if a human comes at you with a weapon, no matter how powerful you are, I want you to feel like the person is a threat. Imagine if you will a lone man with a shotgun versus a gang of guys with tire irons & other clubs. Yes the advantage is clearly to the guy with the gun, but he could still screw up & get hit in the brainpan & die.

Shadowrun is one of the few systems I've seen where no matter how powerful you were. If you were were dumb & got caught in the open & surrounded you were pretty much hosed. I want to at least see a module to make my games more lethal, as well as curbing the games exponential increase of HP & damage overall in the core rules.

Level one character's aren't heroes. Not yet, they are professionals yes, competent & able to handle themselves, yes. Heroship comes after, no one should start a hero at level one.

[Seerow]

It all has to do with the over all lethality of the creature attacking you. Odds are that you will not get killed by a rat, but if a human comes at you with a weapon, no matter how powerful you are, I want you to feel like the person is a threat. Imagine if you will a lone man with a shotgun versus a gang of guys with tire irons & other clubs. Yes the advantage is clearly to the guy with the gun, but he could still screw up & get hit in the brainpan & die.

I presume that he was referring to the Q&A session from the previous page, where James Wyatt seriously said that being able to die to a rat attack was a feature, not a bug.

[Menteith]

@Mentieth

You're taking the quote out of context. Number of options != power of character. Extra options can affect the power of a character, but they are not the same. Everything you've said here is a stated goal of DnD 5e.

Number of options is absolutely indicative of power. The ability to deal with a wide range of situations effectively is the way power is most readily evaluated in 3.5, and with good reason - the ability to hit ridiculously hard (or another highly specialized talent) is pretty low power as such a character is ineffective in a wide range of situations. Outside of situations specifically tailored to prevent a Wizard's dominance (specifically disallowing magic via Dead Magic/Antimagic, using specific effects to nullify a Wizard's advantages such as Anticipate Teleport or Vecna Blooded, etc) a Wizard will be able to contribute to every encounter. As they've previously stated they do not have an effective fix for the 10 minute adventuring day (if I recall correctly, they're attempting to shift the burden of solving it onto the DM - if I'm mistaken on this, please correct me), I see little reason why Wizards in D&D Next, with access to "iconic" spells, will not be magnitudes more powerful than the Fighter in many situations, even if the Fighter is effective in a single situation.

Additionally, I really don't think I'm taking the quote out of context. I could type up a complete transcript rather than what I've done already, where the somewhat frustrated person asking the question continues to press him for more information, before they interrupt him and move on to a different question, but I'd rather not have to do it. In the context of the question, in the context of the panel, the creative lead on D&D Next states that the design of the game is that the Fighter will have less options than the Wizard purely "because its magic".

EDIT

My primary objection isn't that the Fighter is really low power. I mean, I'd love to see a mechanically sophisticated mundane character with a wide range of options, both on a tactical battlefield and out of combat, and I hope that they'll deliver on that still, but there's a bigger issue. I would have liked to have seen a serious decrease in the scope of a Wizard's powers as compared to 3.5. If they're ceding that Wizards inherently need to have way more options than other classes "because magic"....well, that's sort of horrible.

[AgentPaper]

Wrong. A Wizard has 9 spells per day, but he has 30 spells known, because he has no meaningful limits on how many spells he can have on his spellbook. And that's not counting cantrips which adds at minimum 2 more spells to that, potentially up to 5.

40 was an exaggeration, but not much of one. Trying to compare how many spells a Wizard has prepared at any given time against the sum of a Fighter's abilities is entirely missing the point of how potent a Wizard's flexibility is.


Edit: If on the other hand you are suggesting that the Fighter should get access to 40 maneuvers and pick 5 of them at the start of the day, then sure, I will be more open to that particular comparison.

edit2: Put my edit in the middle of the post instead of the end. woops.

No, I'm not suggesting that. That kind of homogenization is what 4E did, and while I love 4E, that's not what Next is going for. The fighter and the wizard are supposed to be different.

I'd also like to point out that the number of spells you could potentially cast is FAR less important than the number of spells you actually can cast at any given point in time. It is an advantage when the wizard can prepare in advance, but that doesn't happen all the time.

It's also an advantage that the wizard needs much more than the fighter. Spells are much more specific and situational, by and large, than maneuvers are.

The solution to fighter/wizard balance isn't to make everyone into wizards. It's to make the fighter and the wizard balanced.

[ghost_warlock]

It all has to do with the over all lethality of the creature attacking you. Odds are that you will not get killed by a rat, but if a human comes at you with a weapon, no matter how powerful you are, I want you to feel like the person is a threat. Imagine if you will a lone man with a shotgun versus a gang of guys with tire irons & other clubs. Yes the advantage is clearly to the guy with the gun, but he could still screw up & get hit in the brainpan & die.

Shadowrun is one of the few systems I've seen where no matter how powerful you were. If you were were dumb & got caught in the open & surrounded you were pretty much hosed. I want to at least see a module to make my games more lethal, as well as curbing the games exponential increase of HP & damage overall in the core rules.

Level one character's aren't heroes. Not yet, they are professionals yes, competent & able to handle themselves, yes. Heroship comes after, no one should start a hero at level one.

That's all fine and good, but not entirely relevant given that Wyatt has been quoted as saying 'Mike, our boss, has been steering us very clearly toward an experience that is more like the classic feel of "I'm fragile, I could go into this dungeon and be killed by a giant rat."'

The designers aren't trying to build a system reminiscent of the Shadowrun experience you describe but instead one where they're intentionally pitting low level characters against the odds of a dice roll instead of having good/bad decisions on the part of the player/character decide their fate. Unless you want to make the argument that adventuring itself is a bad decision, which may be valid, but essentially undermines the entire purpose of the game. :smalltongue:

I'm fine with low-level characters being significantly weaker than high level ones, but there's no need to intentionally make them more fragile when, typically, the inherent randomness of low modifiers on dice rolls makes them more vulnerable to begin with.

Exceptionally fragile low-level characters are no more fun for me than playing rocket tag with save-or-dies. Some people enjoy games where a single bad roll can end their character's career, but it shouldn't be the default for 5e. Especially when the majority of games take place at low level. I don't really want to return to the days where I had to bring 4-5 characters to a session simply to stay in the game after having characters die from essentially nothing more than bad luck.

[Seerow]

No, I'm not suggesting that. That kind of homogenization is what 4E did, and while I love 4E, that's not what Next is going for. The fighter and the wizard are supposed to be different.

You can have similar numbers of abilities available while having different resource/ability usage structures. Claiming it's all in on the 4e side or all in on the pre-4e side is a bad argument.


I'd also like to point out that the number of spells you could potentially cast is FAR less important than the number of spells you actually can cast at any given point in time. It is an advantage when the wizard can prepare in advance, but that doesn't happen all the time.

It happens often enough to make it a very notable advantage. Having complete access to a large spell list is FAR more valuable than you are giving it credit for.


It's also an advantage that the wizard needs much more than the fighter. Spells are much more specific and situational, by and large, than maneuvers are.

Some are, some aren't. There's a number of spells that are very generally useful. On the other hand, Fighters have no capability at all outside of combat, while Wizards have plenty of spells that contribute there.


The solution to fighter/wizard balance isn't to make everyone into wizards. It's to make the fighter and the wizard balanced.

Giving everyone similar numbers of options doesn't make everyone wizards. If you need magic to have more options to feel magical then that's a personal issue, not some universal truth.

[Ashdate]

The problem with 3.5 casters isn't technically the number of spells they can cast, or the variety of spells they can cast, but rather, the strength of the spells they cast. When the power of individual spells are so high, adding the ability to cast many of them, as well as giving access to a variety of them simply exacerbates the problem.

Consider that the 4e Wizard has more "options" than your average character (due to their spellbook giving them "twice" the number of abilities, even if they're limited to the same AEDU system), but that the "extra" spells aren't particularly useful compared to past editions.

This is because there isn't a huge advantage in 4e to picking between two different abilities, as powerful situational abilities (i.e. Dimensional Anchor, Ray of Stupidity) and powerful "save or lose" abilities (i.e. Dominate Person, Otto's Irresistible Dance) are absent from the system.

Furthermore, the overall power "disparity" of spells on a particular level isn't very high, and even when there are "clear" winners, the system rarely punishes a particular choice. Unless the character goes out of their way to focus too heavily on either a particular NAD attack (i.e. all of their abilities attack the Will defense) or unless they focus too heavily on a particular "type" of power (i.e. Fire keyworded spells), the chances that they will be punished for picking the "wrong" spells is low.

If 5e insists on giving Wizards the ability to cast a "lot" of spells, as well as allowing them pick and choose from a list in their spellbook when preparing, then what must be tackled is the overall "strength" of the spells they cast. I believe they've mentioned the desire to cut down on the strength of the "utility" spells (i.e. 3.5 Invisibility, Knock, Silent Image, etc.), but they also must cut down on the "save or lose" spells. This doesn't mean they can't have something similar to the old' 3.5 Dominate Monster or Disintegrate, but that they should probably follow 4e's lead in reducing the overall lethality (and duration) or spells that cause a player/monster to "lose".

[TheOOB]

Sure. Nevertheless, you suggested earlier that a game with poor mechanics cannot have staying power. Exalted proves that yes, it can. There are numerous other examples; for example, the card game Munchkin has rather bad mechanics (which is quite possibly intentional), but it's just sheer fun and its sales figures are through the roof.

To be fair, 2e Exalted has not been out long, it's already generated fan fixes and a massive errata document, and is already getting a third edition. This is bad even for WW.



I'm sure that there are some games where you can replace one fluff by another without affecting the game quality. But this clearly isn't what makes a game good, because there are many popular games (e.g. Settlers) where the fluff is not so easy to change. Settlers is also vastly more popular than Ninja vs Ninja. This underlines the claim that having fluff and crunch rely upon each other makes for a more popular game than having the fluff "tacked on" to some mathematical model.

You could change settlers of catans fluff to anything. Those resource cards could have anything on their picture. The settlements, cities, and roads could be changed to anything as well, so long as they somehow generate cards. Farming and territory aquisition happens to be popular in German games, so that's the direction they went.


The difference is that a game with intertwined fluff and crunch is immersive, whereas a game with tacked-on fluff is moving pieces of wood around a table. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with moving pieces of wood around a table (e.g. playing chess) but you'll cater to a bigger audience if you can do both. You don't choose between fluff and mechanics, the key is doing both.

For experienced players, weak fluff is little problem. Fluff is primarly a way to draw new players in, and rarely says much about the actual quality of a product.



There is nothing clashing between the mechanics of jumping and the fluff of jumping. You are talking about things that aren't possible in real life, but that has nothing to do with fluff/crunch clashes. This debate has been done to death already so I'm not going to repeat it here; just look in the earlier 5 threads for examples if you want.

Hey, I just brought up an example where the rules, fighters can perform supernatural feats, counter the fluff, fighters have no supernatural abilities.


No, but being popular does stop a game from being bad - at least, from a marketing point of view. It's a philosophical debate whether quality is decided by popular demand, but from a sales point of view: yes it is. WOTC does not want a game that the critics love but the players won't buy.

I don't care about marketing. Walmart has great marketing, but it's still bad store that sells sub-par products. People buy cigarettes constantly, but that doesn't mean that they are not a completely horrible product. Unfortunately, quality does not always mean profit(though it helps), and profit does not always mean quality.

[Zeful]

If 5e insists on giving Wizards the ability to cast a "lot" of spells, as well as allowing them pick and choose from a list in their spellbook when preparing, then what must be tackled is the overall "strength" of the spells they cast. I believe they've mentioned the desire to cut down on the strength of the "utility" spells (i.e. 3.5 Invisibility, Knock, Silent Image, etc.), but they also must cut down on the "save or lose" spells. This doesn't mean they can't have something similar to the old' 3.5 Dominate Monster or Disintegrate, but that they should probably follow 4e's lead in reducing the overall lethality (and duration) or spells that cause a player/monster to "lose".

It also means cutting down or removing absolutes and auto successes. Stuff like Mind Blank or Foresight lose the "X is no longer capable of succeeding" clauses. Gate would no longer compel called creatures to capitulate to the casters commands (if, by a stroke of luck it actually kept the calling function at all).

It's essentially reducing depth of power in exchange for width and breadth of power.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Regarding the maneuvers vs. spells thing, as far as the posted quote is concerned I don't really care about how many maneuvers fighters get, how many spells a wizard can scribe into his spellbook, whether and when you can swap things out, and so forth. I'm concerned that they're anticipating there being as many fighter maneuvers in all of 5e as there are wizard spells in the 5e PHB. That's pretty much the 3e situation, actually, if you look at the over 2000 arcane and divine spells throughout 3e vs. the almost 270 ToB maneuvers published. Look how many homebrew ToB disciplines have been (and are still being) made to increase options, add support for a particular theme, etc. while "there's a published spell for that" is long past being cliché.

Just as important as power of a particular character's build is the flexibility of a class in making different build. Your stock 3e wizard can be built as a summoner, a blaster, a crowd controller, a trickster, and many more roles, plus tighter themes like ice mage or holy wizard or the like, and pretty much all of them will be fun to play, effective, and valuable, even if they're not the absolute best option out there. Meanwhile, there are a handful of fighter builds that are effective (charger, dungeoncrasher, tripper, intimidator, AoO lockdown, and a few niche ones) and a handful of more "fun" builds (shield bashers, mounted warriors, etc.), and the two don't tend to overlap much and/or are outdone by other classes (rangers and archery, barbarians and PA).

If there aren't enough fighter maneuvers to pick from--particularly if they're as unimpressive as the ones in the playtest--then building a fighter will once again come down to either aiming for effectiveness and coming up with one of a handful of "good" builds, or aiming for uniqueness and fun and not being able to make something too unusual, or both. The wizard will get to keep its insane flexibility in build to let you build whatever sort of wizard you want to play. Even if individual fighter builds are "better" than individual wizard builds or they have more options than individual wizards do, if we start running out of interesting things to do with fighters because they have such meager material released for them they'll have a big problem.

Ideally, I'd like to see classes have the versatility in build of 3e casters and the versatility in play of 3e martial types: you have a few bazillion options to choose from in building your character, but once you pick what you want you get a more tightly-themed power set. When you finish building your wizard it looks like a beguiler or dread necro, when you finish building your fighter it looks like a knight or marshal, and in both cases there are plenty more characters to explore. The sorcerer and warlock are different enough from the wizard to make me optimistic that individual classes will have plenty of ways to differentiate themselves, but we'll have to see how the next set of martial classes to be released turn out.

[Kurald Galain]

I really don't mind if first-level characters are fragile. In any campaign where I don't want that, I can simply start at level 3 or 4 instead.



The solution to fighter/wizard balance isn't to make everyone into wizards. It's to make the fighter and the wizard balanced.
Also, this. While wizards have lots of effects that sound powerful, it's up to the rules to actually make them powerful. For example, they could rule that magical flight has an altitude limit of 5 feet; or that polymorphing an enemy into a frog only makes him unable to attack for one turn; or that invisible creatures can be automatically located unless they're good at stealth checks.
I'm not saying that's the right solution, but it's not all that hard to make spells less powerful than they were in 3E.

[noparlpf]

Fighters don't need 50 pages of Maneuvers to be complex, deep, and fun to play. Maneuvers aren't spells, and comparing the to spells isn't going to help anyone.

I really disliked Tome of Battle. Especially because it's explicitly called "Blade Magic", and yet people claim it's the fix for mundane classes.


They aren't spells, but they are the Fighter's answer to them. If a level 5 Wizard has 40 spells in his spell book while a level 5 Fighter has 5 Maneuvers, 3 of which he gets to choose himself, you have a very big problem.

In my opinion, the solution is to power down the Wizard. If Fighter's can't keep up while staying mundane, then slow down the Wizard's advancement. Make them a little stronger at low levels, when Fighters tend to win out, but slow down their advancement. Also, make fewer combat spells, so yes, they'll have more options, but most of those will be utility spells or support spells so they actually have to think and roleplay that Int score.


So I'm late to the party, and undoubtedly this has been discussed upstream, and i understand that dnd doesn't simulate real world situations perfectly. But I just noticed the weight and carrying rules in the packet, and I have a huge problem with them.
There's the neat formula- simple, direct. Str x 10 = encumbered. Encumbered weight x5= Max lift. Well, the current deadlift record is 1015 lbs. That works out to a 20 Str. Cool.
So the average guy, by this formula, isn't encumbered until 150 lbs, and can deadlift 500. Hmmm... That's awfully high. I am a carpenter by trade, so I lift large heavy objects all day. 150 lbs is a lot to ask of a laborer- ie a strong person- just to lift. I'd say that a person of above average strength IRL gets encumbered at around 75 lbs. That's like a large bag of concrete.
I also lift weights, and I know that I can deadlift 300 lbs. Now, I'm not the strongest guy in town, but I am a big strong guy. In 5e terms, I have a Str of 6.
I don't expect perfect rules, but this is just stupid. It totally takes my head out of the game.

Well, encumbrance depends vastly on how you're carrying the weight. I can carry a 100-lb girl on my back for a couple of miles, keeping up with everybody else and chatting, easily. Carrying her in my arms, I wouldn't be able to go even a quarter of a mile without dropping her.
Average Str is 10-11. So the average guy is encumbered between 100-110 lbs. I'm probably a little above average in terms of strength, and I was fine carrying a 100-lb girl on my back with my legs supporting most of the weight, but I couldn't run more than 100m like that, at about half speed (based on experience). So you're probably right that the average guy would be encumbered at around 75-80 pounds of well-distributed mass.
I don't know what I can deadlift (the time I would have tried, I had a badly injured right hand and it couldn't take more than five pounds), but I can squat nearly my body weight (I weigh 180 lbs) when I'm out of shape.

[Stubbazubba]

I really disliked Tome of Battle. Especially because it's explicitly called "Blade Magic", and yet people claim it's the fix for mundane classes.

Yes, I think you've got it now!


In my opinion, the solution is to power down the Wizard. If Fighter's can't keep up while staying mundane, then slow down the Wizard's advancement. Make them a little stronger at low levels, when Fighters tend to win out, but slow down their advancement.

All this can possibly do is make high levels play exactly like low levels but with bigger numbers being traded back and forth. The Fighter 20 is still only adept at melee-ing big, fleshy monsters, that's literally all he can do. That's exactly what he was doing at level 1.

The Wizard is flying, traveling between dimensions, going invisible, transforming, creating walls of stone or steel, summoning other beings, communing with deities, seeing the future and re-writing matter, let alone what he can do in combat. The Wizard's game expands into a whole different beast by mid levels, and then again at high levels. And if you're going to have 20 levels, that's honestly as it should be.

If the answer is to reign in the Wizard to the Fighter's pace, then the game needs to stop at level 6, tops, because any advancement at the Fighter's pace is largely meaningless numeric bonuses which are just off-set by the new CR's AC and saves, anyway.

Advancement that doesn't bring new options is not advancement.

[Nu]

You sit around and pretend to be adventurers going into a dangerous environment and killing stuff and performing heroic quests and all this and people don't look back on the adventure they played three years ago and say "remember when I moved three squares that way and did a Tide of Iron and forced the guy four squares back into the fire?" They talk about "Remember when we went into that tomb and there was that monstrosity with six arms and three heads, and you cast that spell that made it blind?"

I know I shouldn't, but I read into this as "no one remembers when the fighter did a cool thing, they only remember it when you cast cool spells!"

In regards to the current discussion, I think maneuvers for the fighter are great. They work well with their current expertise dice mechanic, and I'm fine with having a lot to choose from. As long as they don't feel too "magical" I don't see why anyone should complain about them, but perhaps there should be some semi-magical ones for people who want to play that way.

So far, the options for spellcasters in Next are very easily comparable to stuff that other classes can do. I kinda hope they stay that way. Which isn't to say I hope they all stay direct damage, because I love battlefield control. I'd just be irritated if ONLY spellcasters can do battlefield control. No, the fighter being able to push/prone creatures one size category larger doesn't count.

[lesser_minion]

You can have similar numbers of abilities available while having different resource/ability usage structures. Claiming it's all in on the 4e side or all in on the pre-4e side is a bad argument.

You're dealing in dodgy statistics.

Take a fighter with the manouevre "kill anything and everything you want dead within 10,000 feet. Things with fighter levels are immune, but no other recourse is permitted." That's one manouevre. Massively underpowered, right?

Take a wizard with the spells "summon fluffy bunnies", "feed hamster", "summon inflatable mallet", "summon discarded banana peel" and "wet tissue paper armour". That's five spells. Five times more spells than the fighter gets manoeuvres. That's ridiculously overpowered, right?

Now obviously, this is an extreme pair of examples, but you should be able to see the point: simply having 40 spells doesn't make you more powerful than a guy with five manoeuvres, or even necessarily more versatile. It depends on what the spells are and what the manoeuvres are.

[Seerow]

You're dealing in dodgy statistics.

Take a fighter with the manouevre "kill anything and everything you want dead within 10,000 feet. Things with fighter levels are immune, but no other recourse is permitted." That's one manouevre. Massively underpowered, right?

Take a wizard with the spells "summon fluffy bunnies", "feed hamster", "summon inflatable mallet", "summon discarded banana peel" and "wet tissue paper armour". That's five spells. Five times more spells than the fighter gets manoeuvres. That's ridiculously overpowered, right?

Now obviously, this is an extreme pair of examples, but you should be able to see the point: simply having 40 spells doesn't make you more powerful than a guy with five manoeuvres, or even necessarily more versatile. It depends on what the spells are and what the manoeuvres are.

Okay now think this through seriously and tell me you honestly believe that the Fighter's 5 maneuvers will be more varied in use and utility than even 5 of the Wizard's spells, much less 40 of them.

Yes, power level matters. But number of options does as well. Right now the current design is Wizards get more powerful spells, that are more versatile, and a greater number of them, because "magic". Even if you made sure all of the fighter maneuvers had the same diversity and power as spells, the Wizard still has a greater number, and is better (see: Wizard vs Sorcerer).

The only way for the argument to work out in your favor is if, as you posit, the spells are made MUCH weaker than the maneuvers, and have a very limited scope. You and I both know that isn't going to happen, so why do you even bother trying to put it forward as a possibility?

[Nu]

Now obviously, this is an extreme pair of examples, but you should be able to see the point: simply having 40 spells doesn't make you more powerful than a guy with five manoeuvres, or even necessarily more versatile. It depends on what the spells are and what the manoeuvres are.

Okay, then how about this: assuming a equal or near-equal range of power, more options is better than less. If maneuvers were more powerful than spells, but spells were more versatile, then there would be a balance. But I think there's a rather fat chance of that happening.

Of course, the common assumed balancing factor is how often you can use spells against how often you can use a maneuver. I honestly feel this is the trickiest way to balance, because I've seen a lot of GMs run adventures where you have maybe 1-2 combat encounters per day. Obviously daily powers are more useful and potent in such a setting.

Now, one thing scares me, and it's the reaction of certain players to "encounter" and "at-will" wizard spells, which are said to be an optional thing. In order to truly balance powers you can use on a regular basis, and powers that you need to take a long rest to get back, you have to make an assumption about the typical adventuring day. I do not feel that Next will ever make such an assumption. Therefore, the most logical way to maintain a balance is to give everyone something they can do on a regular basis, which can be optionally included to maintain balance in situations where only having daily options is too weak(ideally you'd also give everyone something they can do on a daily basis, but we all know how strong the opposition is to "fighter dailies"). Of course, that's operating under the assumption that spells stay as straight-forward as they are in the current iteration of Next, which isn't likely.

[Diamondeye]

So I'm late to the party, and undoubtedly this has been discussed upstream, and i understand that dnd doesn't simulate real world situations perfectly. But I just noticed the weight and carrying rules in the packet, and I have a huge problem with them.
There's the neat formula- simple, direct. Str x 10 = encumbered. Encumbered weight x5= Max lift. Well, the current deadlift record is 1015 lbs. That works out to a 20 Str. Cool.
So the average guy, by this formula, isn't encumbered until 150 lbs, and can deadlift 500. Hmmm... That's awfully high. I am a carpenter by trade, so I lift large heavy objects all day. 150 lbs is a lot to ask of a laborer- ie a strong person- just to lift. I'd say that a person of above average strength IRL gets encumbered at around 75 lbs. That's like a large bag of concrete.
I also lift weights, and I know that I can deadlift 300 lbs. Now, I'm not the strongest guy in town, but I am a big strong guy. In 5e terms, I have a Str of 6.
I don't expect perfect rules, but this is just stupid. It totally takes my head out of the game.

Well, the thing is that a carpenter doesn't carry heavy loads the way an adventurer does.

An adventurer is more like a soldier. They are used to carrying things over long distances inside containers like backpacks. The rules assume some of that load will be armor, worn on the body, and weapons strapped to the body in various manners.

A carpenter usually only carries a heavy load a short distance, not miles, or even hundreds of yards, at a time, so putting things in that kind of configuration would waste your time.

150 lbs is a considerable, but not unheard-of load for a paratrooper and while infantry soldiers are generally stronger than an average person, they usually aren't incredibly strong. Modern E-SAPI-plated body armor can easily weight well over 50 lbs all by itself. My body armor, all told, weighed in around 70 lbs. That's including ammunition and water for a day, but not the rifle itself, or things like the helmet, elbow pads, etc. I could still move around almost as well as I could with nothing on because it was well-distributed. My ability to run for long distances or at high speeds would ahve been more severely reduced, but not to walk, and you don't usually run long distances in combat; the "Mogadishu mile" was an abberition.

150 lbs encumbered is a little high for an average person, but not outlandish at all. Encumbered is the point at which a person's ability to move and fight would be significantly degraded, not just inconvenienced. A really realistic system would base it on load configuration not just weight, but that system would be an awful lot of bookkeeping.

[noparlpf]

Well, the thing is that a carpenter doesn't carry heavy loads the way an adventurer does.

An adventurer is more like a soldier. They are used to carrying things over long distances inside containers like backpacks. The rules assume some of that load will be armor, worn on the body, and weapons strapped to the body in various manners.

A carpenter usually only carries a heavy load a short distance, not miles, or even hundreds of yards, at a time, so putting things in that kind of configuration would waste your time.

150 lbs is a considerable, but not unheard-of load for a paratrooper and while infantry soldiers are generally stronger than an average person, they usually aren't incredibly strong. Modern E-SAPI-plated body armor can easily weight well over 50 lbs all by itself. My body armor, all told, weighed in around 70 lbs. That's including ammunition and water for a day, but not the rifle itself, or things like the helmet, elbow pads, etc. I could still move around almost as well as I could with nothing on because it was well-distributed. My ability to run for long distances or at high speeds would ahve been more severely reduced, but not to walk, and you don't usually run long distances in combat; the "Mogadishu mile" was an abberition.

150 lbs encumbered is a little high for an average person, but not outlandish at all. Encumbered is the point at which a person's ability to move and fight would be significantly degraded, not just inconvenienced. A really realistic system would base it on load configuration not just weight, but that system would be an awful lot of bookkeeping.

Which is the issue--the encumbrance rules might be more or less okay because of that assumption (bolded bit), but the rules for lifting and carrying things? A 500-lb dead lift is not average strength.

[AgentPaper]

Which is the issue--the encumbrance rules might be more or less okay because of that assumption (bolded bit), but the rules for lifting and carrying things? A 500-lb dead lift is not average strength.

Not average in today's world, but it makes much more sense in a medieval world where the average person has to work in the fields doing strenuous labor 12 hours a day.

[noparlpf]

Not average in today's world, but it makes much more sense in a medieval world where the average person has to work in the fields doing strenuous labor 12 hours a day.

So encumbrance should fit moderately active humans, but lifting should fit highly active humans? You can't have it both ways.
If the game assumes farm labourers as the "default" human, and the 10-11 average score is based on those humans, one, you're strictly restricting character background, and two, you're basing "average" on highly active people (a minority) as opposed to moderately active people (most people).
Besides, a couple of us just gave examples where we can carry about what the equation suggests for carrying capacity, but we can't dead-lift what the equation says we should.

[Dienekes]

Not average in today's world, but it makes much more sense in a medieval world where the average person has to work in the fields doing strenuous labor 12 hours a day.

Actually it doesn't. The sort of work the farmer was doing would be more akin to endurance training than strength training. Would (with todays current body structures and nutrition) a man who was a farmer be stronger than some slob who did nothing all day, sure, yes of course. But a 500 lb dead lift is quite a lot.

[Knaight]

Actually it doesn't. The sort of work the farmer was doing would be more akin to endurance training than strength training. Would (with todays current body structures and nutrition) a man who was a farmer be stronger than some slob who did nothing all day, sure, yes of course. But a 500 lb dead lift is quite a lot.

There's also the problem of malnutrition being a frequent problem that isn't exactly good for muscles, and a diet that generally pushed people towards the lower end of their genetic size range (height being the most easily measured segment of this).

[Dienekes]

There's also the problem of malnutrition being a frequent problem that isn't exactly good for muscles, and a diet that generally pushed people towards the lower end of their genetic size range (height being the most easily measured segment of this).

I did try to make note of this with the (with todays current body structure and nutrition) side but yeah, definitely agree. If anything people from the middle ages should look small and weak to us, peasants and farmers especially.

[Kurald Galain]

Stories about medieval farmers aside, what I don't like here is WOTC's approach to numbers. It would have taken them all of 15 minutes to google up something reasonable, but instead they went with "it doesn't matter so let's make up something arbitrary".

The same applies to weapon weight. No, it won't affect most campaigns at all whether a longsword weighs 3 or 30 pounds. On the other hand I see no reason (other than laziness) to go with a random number instead of a real one.

[Dr paradox]

hmm. reading over this discussion, and based on my own impressions of the playtest, I agree with the suggestion that either spells should be powered down, or maneuvers should be powered up.

Personally, I love the combat expertise mechanic. it's excellently varied from spellcasting and other mechanics, provides tactical choice from one moment to the next, and allows for an easily discernable edge for fighters.

I feel like higher level maneuvers CAN be adjusted to allow for the same advancement style as wizards. Abilities like spell disruption, keeping creatures out of an area, period, moving through swaths of enemies and knocking them all down, and delivering covering rains of arrows are all things that are within the bounds of reality, but allow for some more battlefield control and variety. perhaps these are some lackluster examples, but I feel like it's entirely possible to tone up the scope and ability of maneuvers to approach wizard level, especially if there was some additional cost placed onto spells like Gate or Disintigrate. perhaps casting some of the more broadly reaching ones decreases your general spellcasting effectiveness for the rest of the day, or they require some more specific circumstances, or take longer to cast.

the out of combat ability question is still a thorny problem. does anyone have any suggestions?

[noparlpf]

Stories about medieval farmers aside, what I don't like here is WOTC's approach to numbers. It would have taken them all of 15 minutes to google up something reasonable, but instead they went with "it doesn't matter so let's make up something arbitrary".

The same applies to weapon weight. No, it won't affect most campaigns at all whether a longsword weighs 3 or 30 pounds. On the other hand I see no reason (other than laziness) to go with a random number instead of a real one.

This is a good point. Here are the results of thirty seconds Googling: link (http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/DeadliftStandards.html), link (http://www.livestrong.com/article/554669-mens-pushup-pullup-squat-deadlift-bench-press-standards/).
I'll pop by the gym a bit later before I get dinner, and see what I can dead-lift. I'm pretty out of shape right now, and I've never trained dead-lifting, so I'll count myself as untrained. Will report back.
As for weapons, a longsword (arming-sword) ought to weigh about two to three pounds (source: about a minute Googling). A five-pound sword would be longer, and two-handed. Or excessively wide for some weird reason.

[obryn]

This is not a new problem.

I recently made a Powers & Perils character (yes, really!), and my dwarf could press like 490 lbs with a pretty decent strength and good stamina.

-O

[noparlpf]

This is not a new problem.

I recently made a Powers & Perils character (yes, really!), and my dwarf could press like 490 lbs with a pretty decent strength and good stamina.

-O

Just because it's not a new problem doesn't mean it should be ignored, especially when it's a simple problem to remedy.

[obryn]

Just because it's not a new problem doesn't mean it should be ignored, especially when it's a simple problem to remedy.
I dunno. Out of everything that bugs me in the Next playtest, this is one of the things that bugs me the least. Yes, it's wildly unrealistic, but it's super-easy. More accurate would probably require a 1e-style table or a more detailed formula.

Basically, I can't blame the designers for being lazy about it in a playtest, and given how minor an issue it is, I wouldn't be surprised if the final version looks similar. It's a game about guys hauling treasure out of dungeons, not power-lifting in gyms, and the rule is perfectly adequate for that purpose. :)

-O

[Dublock]

Basically, I can't blame the designers for being lazy about it in a playtest, and given how minor an issue it is, I wouldn't be surprised if the final version looks similar. It's a game about guys hauling treasure out of dungeons, not power-lifting in gyms, and the rule is perfectly adequate for that purpose. :)

I gotta agree with this point.

Yes it is an issue and yes I will provide more feedback about it, but I much rather them focusing on things like fighter's abilities, fluff, and such.

[Seerow]

I still don't see why they can't haul the chart straight out of 3.5:

At 10 str (average) a character carries 33lbs unencumbered, up to 100lbs encumbered. Can lift 200, push 500.

At 18 str (normal max) a character carries 100lbs unencumbered, up to 300 encumbered. Can lift 600, push 1500.


Seems much more reasonable to me.

[obryn]

I still don't see why they can't haul the chart straight out of 3.5:

At 10 str (average) a character carries 33lbs unencumbered, up to 100lbs encumbered. Can lift 200, push 500.

At 18 str (normal max) a character carries 100lbs unencumbered, up to 300 encumbered. Can lift 600, push 1500.

Seems much more reasonable to me.
Eh, it's not like I'd specifically object to such a thing, but IMO, No Chart > Chart.

If it's functional for the purposes of the game, that's enough for me. It's not like most groups are going to be doing much beyond eyeballing it, anyway.

-O

[noparlpf]

I still don't see why they can't haul the chart straight out of 3.5:

At 10 str (average) a character carries 33lbs unencumbered, up to 100lbs encumbered. Can lift 200, push 500.

At 18 str (normal max) a character carries 100lbs unencumbered, up to 300 encumbered. Can lift 600, push 1500.


Seems much more reasonable to me.

Agreed, the 3.5 table is fairly reasonable.
I just remembered, we used to have a riding-style lawn mower. Average mass of those is 400-600 lbs, and I could lift up one end of it and haul it around with one hand when the tires went flat and I had to move it to replace them, but I couldn't lift the thing off the ground entirely on my own. (Granted, they're not exactly shaped well for lifting, they're kind of bulky.)

[Kurald Galain]

True, an encumbrance table isn't that crucial - but then again, neither does it require a lot of work to make one. In terms of design, that makes it a "quick win"; good design does not generally consist of focusing only on the high priorities and neglecting the rest.

If WOTC truly wishes to appeal to a broad market, then they would invest the fifteen minutes it takes to get this right. It's the attitude that matters, not this particular detail.

[noparlpf]

True, an encumbrance table isn't that crucial - but then again, neither does it require a lot of work to make one. In terms of design, that makes it a "quick win"; good design does not generally consist of focusing only on the high priorities and neglecting the rest.

If WOTC truly wishes to appeal to a broad market, then they would invest the fifteen minutes it takes to get this right. It's the attitude that matters, not this particular detail.

That's my opinion on it too. It's not so much that encumbrance matters, but more that they're willing to invest time in the game, rather than just brushing things off as unimportant.

[obryn]

True, an encumbrance table isn't that crucial - but then again, neither does it require a lot of work to make one. In terms of design, that makes it a "quick win"; good design does not generally consist of focusing only on the high priorities and neglecting the rest.

If WOTC truly wishes to appeal to a broad market, then they would invest the fifteen minutes it takes to get this right. It's the attitude that matters, not this particular detail.
Good design also means simple & functional, and keeping the focus of the game in mind. Which this does perfectly well. :)

Like I said, it's not like I'll hate Next forever if it has an encumbrance table. But WotC also can't keep going down every single player's wishlists. It's already a frighteningly unfocused system, and adding in everything every player wants isn't a good idea. That's not bad design - it's trying to focus on the game's purpose.

-O

[Zeful]

I still don't see why they can't haul the chart straight out of 3.5:

At 10 str (average) a character carries 33lbs unencumbered, up to 100lbs encumbered. Can lift 200, push 500.

At 18 str (normal max) a character carries 100lbs unencumbered, up to 300 encumbered. Can lift 600, push 1500.


Seems much more reasonable to me.

Reasonable yes, but an amusing thing resulted from it. Carrying everything you'd need for adventuring took a lot of weight. The bare necessities are 66 pounds on their own, almost two thirds an 18 str character's maximum unencumbered load, without factoring in money or weapons and armor, which could easily eat up the remaining 34 pounds.

I think the inflated numbers are mostly so the party doesn't need a wagon to haul around their stuff/treasure everywhere. Yeah it's a little ridiculous, but the only other solution was to completely disregard the encumbrance rules in full.

[Felandria]

Have to ask, any word on whether this edition will settle debates Re: Enlarge Person?

Are they finally introducing an improved version at a higher level?

Are they tweaking the spell itself?

[Anderlith]

That's all fine and good, but not entirely relevant given that Wyatt has been quoted as saying 'Mike, our boss, has been steering us very clearly toward an experience that is more like the classic feel of "I'm fragile, I could go into this dungeon and be killed by a giant rat."'

The designers aren't trying to build a system reminiscent of the Shadowrun experience you describe but instead one where they're intentionally pitting low level characters against the odds of a dice roll instead of having good/bad decisions on the part of the player/character decide their fate. Unless you want to make the argument that adventuring itself is a bad decision, which may be valid, but essentially undermines the entire purpose of the game. :smalltongue:

I'm fine with low-level characters being significantly weaker than high level ones, but there's no need to intentionally make them more fragile when, typically, the inherent randomness of low modifiers on dice rolls makes them more vulnerable to begin with.

Exceptionally fragile low-level characters are no more fun for me than playing rocket tag with save-or-dies. Some people enjoy games where a single bad roll can end their character's career, but it shouldn't be the default for 5e. Especially when the majority of games take place at low level. I don't really want to return to the days where I had to bring 4-5 characters to a session simply to stay in the game after having characters die from essentially nothing more than bad luck.


I don't like this way of thinking, you are limiting my playstyle by making adventurers as exceptional people off the bat, instead of having them grow into their abilities. If you start out low the only way you can go is up. If you feel like your characters should be stronger/tougher etc, then maybe there will be a module to buff up their HP gains & such. It's harder to nerf than it is to buff.

[obryn]

I don't like this way of thinking, you are limiting my playstyle by making adventurers as exceptional people off the bat, instead of having them grow into their abilities. If you start out low the only way you can go is up. If you feel like your characters should be stronger/tougher etc, then maybe there will be a module to buff up their HP gains & such. It's harder to nerf than it is to buff.
What version of D&D provides non-exceptional PCs by default?

-O

[noparlpf]

What version of D&D provides non-exceptional PCs by default?

-O

Level 1?
Also, the assumed default is 25 point buy, or 3d6. That provides an average score of 10-11 for each ability. That applies to PCs.
Further, all the rules apply to NPCs too.

Edit: A couple of posts down I was reminded that I had that mixed it. It's 15pb for 3d6, and 25pb for 4d6b3.

[navar100]

Good design also means simple & functional, and keeping the focus of the game in mind. Which this does perfectly well. :)

Like I said, it's not like I'll hate Next forever if it has an encumbrance table. But WotC also can't keep going down every single player's wishlists. It's already a frighteningly unfocused system, and adding in everything every player wants isn't a good idea. That's not bad design - it's trying to focus on the game's purpose.

-O

True. They only need concern themselves about my wishlist instead of everyone's. :smallbiggrin:

[obryn]

Level 1?
Also, the assumed default is 25 point buy, or 3d6. That provides an average score of 10-11 for each ability. That applies to PCs.
Further, all the rules apply to NPCs too.
In 3.x, 25-point buy is akin to 4d6, pick 3, arrange to taste. It's the "elite array". Also, Elites (like the PCs) get max HPs at 1st level.

As opposed to the "standard array" which is used by your average goblin or orc. They also have to roll for their first HD. :)

-O

[Seerow]

Reasonable yes, but an amusing thing resulted from it. Carrying everything you'd need for adventuring took a lot of weight. The bare necessities are 66 pounds on their own, almost two thirds an 18 str character's maximum unencumbered load, without factoring in money or weapons and armor, which could easily eat up the remaining 34 pounds.

I think the inflated numbers are mostly so the party doesn't need a wagon to haul around their stuff/treasure everywhere. Yeah it's a little ridiculous, but the only other solution was to completely disregard the encumbrance rules in full.

66 lbs as a minimum? Maybe if you want to carry a tent and full kitchen set around on your back. Most adventurers tend to live a little less luxuriously than that. Some food, water, rope, and a sleeping bag is what most characters I've seen and played have at low levels. (later on with higher strength characters and extradimensional storage space, they tend to live it up a bit more even on the road)

[noparlpf]

In 3.x, 25-point buy is akin to 4d6, pick 3, arrange to taste. It's the "elite array". Also, Elites (like the PCs) get max HPs at 1st level.

As opposed to the "standard array" which is used by your average goblin or orc. They also have to roll for their first HD. :)

-O

Oh, wait, 15 point buy would get you the 3d6 averages. 25 point buy is roughly equivalent to 4d6b3. Right. Okay, so PCs get slightly above-average stats at the beginning because of the assumption that most of the people who go adventuring are the unusual ones. That accounts for all the real superiority PCs have to NPCs at level 1, besides a couple of small class abilities.

This doesn't argue my point that NPCs are held to the same rules as PCs. If a PC should be able to lift more, give them higher Str scores, don't change the rules that apply to normal people too.

[obryn]

Okay, so PCs get slightly above-average stats at the beginning because of the assumption that most of the people who go adventuring are the unusual ones. That accounts for all the real superiority PCs have to NPCs at level 1, besides a couple of small class abilities.
That was my main point, yes. :smallsmile:

I am not arguing that a strength score should mean something else - just that 3.x assumes by default that the PCs are special in the setting and better than normal people. It represents this with better scores, more HPs, and free access to PC classes.

-O

[Water_Bear]

Also, the assumed default is 25 point buy, or 3d6. That provides an average score of 10-11 for each ability. That applies to PCs.
Further, all the rules apply to NPCs too.

Uhhhh.... what?

A 15 Point buy will net you the Standard Array (11/11/11/10/10/10), which all "ordinary" NPCs use by default, and the Non-Elite Array (13/12/11/10/9/8) which the DMG suggests using to spice things up.

A 25 point buy will generate the Elite Array (15/14/13/12/10/8), which is recommended for "elite" NPCs who have PC levels and normal WBL.

Also, the default rolling method laid our in the SRD is 4d6b3 not 3d6. Just rolling 3d6 flat will come out much much lower than a 25pt buy, and leave you with very very weak characters. Although that might be what you're looking for.

[Zeful]

66 lbs as a minimum? Maybe if you want to carry a tent and full kitchen set around on your back. Most adventurers tend to live a little less luxuriously than that. Some food, water, rope, and a sleeping bag is what most characters I've seen and played have at low levels. (later on with higher strength characters and extradimensional storage space, they tend to live it up a bit more even on the road)

Bedroll, blanket, the backpack, a belt pouch (unless you'd rather spend time digging through your bag looking for money to pay), a mirror, crowbar, rope, grappling hook, lantern, waterskin, tent, and 10 days trail rations.

That's not really luxury, and is actually hilariously cut down from what a set of adventurer would really carry (where's he going to put any loot that can't be strapped to his belt? Spare clothes? Spare Oil for the lamp, the containers for that oil? What about kitchen ware for just boiling potable water? Firewood that won't be sending up a tower of smoke when you burn it? Spell component pouch, holy symbol, disguise and or lock picks?). The tent could be stricken for 20 pounds, but carrying your pack, your armor (which can range from 10 to 50 pounds depending) and your weapon (another 2-8 pounds), means most characters, even strength 18 characters are encumbered when carrying all their crap around, and would need to drop their packs when they start fighting, and make several trips out of a dungeon with any large amount of loot.

[ghost_warlock]

I don't like this way of thinking, you are limiting my playstyle by making adventurers as exceptional people off the bat, instead of having them grow into their abilities. If you start out low the only way you can go is up. If you feel like your characters should be stronger/tougher etc, then maybe there will be a module to buff up their HP gains & such. It's harder to nerf than it is to buff.

Characters in a D&D game of any edition are already exceptional people - spell-slinging magic users and trained warriors. If you're looking for unexceptional people, you won't find them in a fantasy game. Unless you're planning on a party of commoners? Again, maybe you find that fun, but a party of commoners should not be the default for a D&D game.

[Seerow]

Bedroll, blanket, the backpack, a belt pouch (unless you'd rather spend time digging through your bag looking for money to pay), a mirror, crowbar, rope, grappling hook, lantern, waterskin, tent, and 10 days trail rations.

That's not really luxury, and is actually hilariously cut down from what a set of adventurer would really carry (where's he going to put any loot that can't be strapped to his belt? Spare clothes? Spare Oil for the lamp, the containers for that oil? What about kitchen ware for just boiling potable water? Firewood that won't be sending up a tower of smoke when you burn it? Spell component pouch, holy symbol, disguise and or lock picks?). The tent could be stricken for 20 pounds, but carrying your pack, your armor (which can range from 10 to 50 pounds depending) and your armor (another 2-8 pounds), means most characters, even strength 18 characters are encumbered when carrying all their crap around, and would need to drop their packs when they start fighting, and make several trips out of a dungeon with any large amount of loot.

You have a strange idea of what "an adventurer would really carry" especially since you've already admitted that the 3.5 rules for capacity are pretty accurate and the rules in the playtest have characters capable of carrying way too much. An adventurer would "really" have to be conscious of what he's carrying and cut out things that aren't necessary. Carrying around firewood on your back when you're walking through areas that you can get wood is stupid. As is carrying around a week's worth of clothes, a full set of kitchen ware, mirrors, crowbars, etc. These are things adventurers would probably like to have, but generally don't want to lug around with them all the time. The fact that they can't is what makes extra-dimensional storage so nice.

And yes, you will probably need several trips, or a wagon or something, to clear out a large dungeon full of loot. Are you also going to say that "real" adventurers just load up an entire dungeon worth of stuff on their backs and walk out?

[obryn]

Characters in a D&D game of any edition are already exceptional people - spell-slinging magic users and trained warriors. If you're looking for unexceptional people, you won't find them in a fantasy game. Unless you're planning on a party of commoners? Again, maybe you find that fun, but a party of commoners should not be the default for a D&D game.
...unless you're playing WFRP 1e or 2e. :)

Which, btw, is my go-to game if "rags to riches" is a vital part of my campaign idea.

-O

[Anderlith]

Characters in a D&D game of any edition are already exceptional people - spell-slinging magic users and trained warriors. If you're looking for unexceptional people, you won't find them in a fantasy game. Unless you're planning on a party of commoners? Again, maybe you find that fun, but a party of commoners should not be the default for a D&D game.

Let me put this another way maybe? It's all about relative competence

Cop = NPC townguard
Average Soldier (after maybe one tour in war) or a well decorated cop = What I'd like to see as the basis for a level one character
Special Forces = 4e's level of competency of a level one character

I want my player's to feel mortal & like something mundane can kill them. It makes them act realistically to the world & to act a lot smarter about fighting foes.

[Zeful]

You have a strange idea of what "an adventurer would really carry" especially since you've already admitted that the 3.5 rules for capacity are pretty accurate and the rules in the playtest have characters capable of carrying way too much. An adventurer would "really" have to be conscious of what he's carrying and cut out things that aren't necessary. Carrying around firewood on your back when you're walking through areas that you can get wood is stupid. As is carrying around a week's worth of clothes, a full set of kitchen ware, mirrors, crowbars, etc. These are things adventurers would probably like to have, but generally don't want to lug around with them all the time. The fact that they can't is what makes extra-dimensional storage so nice.

And yes, you will probably need several trips, or a wagon or something, to clear out a large dungeon full of loot. Are you also going to say that "real" adventurers just load up an entire dungeon worth of stuff on their backs and walk out?

No, I'm not going to say "...real adventurers just load up an entire dungeon worth of stuff on their backs...", because my point was that the 3.5 weight allocations made trying to carry loot out of the dungeon hard, to the point that you'd need to bring a mule or a cart along for the ride just to store essential things so you weren't carrying a 40+ pound pack into battle, and had more than 2 or 3 pounds available to carry loot without it slowing you down. Which is why they went with the much higher and less realistic weight system this time around.

As for the rest of the post. That was gross exaggeration of my point. Yeah, adventurers need to be conscious of what their carrying, like real life backpackers would, but the logistics behind carrying armor, weapons, and then all the stuff you need (which for what are a group of grave robbers is pretty similar to what freebooters or mercenaries would have carried), gets heavy really quickly, such that going in without some way of not carrying the weight of your camping supplies into the dungeon, looting the thing is almost impossible.

[AgentPaper]

It is called dungeons and dragons, not logistics and chart management. If you find keeping track of weight, food, water, encumbrance, various lackeys and mules, and all that sort of stuff that realistic adventurers would have to worry about, then you can add a module on to handle all of that. (either one made by WotC or more likely a fan creation) For those of us who'd rather worry about, well, just about any other aspect of DnD, having simple rules that don't bog the game down is much more important than realistic bench pressing.

[Menteith]

It is called dungeons and dragons, not logistics and chart management. If you find keeping track of weight, food, water, encumbrance, various lackeys and mules, and all that sort of stuff that realistic adventurers would have to worry about, then you can add a module on to handle all of that. (either one made by WotC or more likely a fan creation) For those of us who'd rather worry about, well, just about any other aspect of DnD, having simple rules that don't bog the game down is much more important than realistic bench pressing.

Then why not just remove Encumbrance from the game?

Rather than have twist realism into a horrible knot to justify an unrealistic mechanic, just don't model it at all in the core rules. If they take the time to model how much a typical human can carry, it's sort of weird that they're use such arbitrary numbers (not just for carrying capacity, for weapon weight and other aspects as well). They could just say "what a character can carry should be kept reasonable, and the DM may rule that a heavily overburdened character has Disadvantage under certain physical checks". Giving out precise rules for it which are silly from a realism standpoint doesn't make sense to me, as it's grating to people who care about logistics in game (as the numbers are weird) and the exact same to people who don't care (as they'll do their own thing anyway).

[obryn]

Let me put this another way maybe? It's all about relative competence

Cop = NPC townguard
Average Soldier (after maybe one tour in war) or a well decorated cop = What I'd like to see as the basis for a level one character
Special Forces = 4e's level of competency of a level one character

I want my player's to feel mortal & like something mundane can kill them. It makes them act realistically to the world & to act a lot smarter about fighting foes.
I find low-level 4e to be pretty darn lethal. Sure, the PCs are more capable, but so are the enemies. (It was less lethal early in the edition, but with the MM3 fixes - mostly to brute accuracy and soldier damage, while you're at low levels - it's plenty lethal now. And at higher levels, lethality is cut way down.)

One-hit death is rare, but simple character death can happen even with an L+1 or L+2 encounter.

-O

[WitchSlayer]

Let me put this another way maybe? It's all about relative competence

Cop = NPC townguard
Average Soldier (after maybe one tour in war) or a well decorated cop = What I'd like to see as the basis for a level one character
Special Forces = 4e's level of competency of a level one character

I want my player's to feel mortal & like something mundane can kill them. It makes them act realistically to the world & to act a lot smarter about fighting foes.

Guards in 4e could probably beat an equal number of level 1-2 adventurers, assuming they don't burn up all their dailies.

[navar100]

Then why not just remove Encumbrance from the game?

Rather than have twist realism into a horrible knot to justify an unrealistic mechanic, just don't model it at all in the core rules. If they take the time to model how much a typical human can carry, it's sort of weird that they're use such arbitrary numbers (not just for carrying capacity, for weapon weight and other aspects as well). They could just say "what a character can carry should be kept reasonable, and the DM may rule that a heavily overburdened character has Disadvantage under certain physical checks". Giving out precise rules for it which are silly from a realism standpoint doesn't make sense to me, as it's grating to people who care about logistics in game (as the numbers are weird) and the exact same to people who don't care (as they'll do their own thing anyway).

Not wanting exacting detail of every pound carried is not the same thing as not concerned about it at all. The rules should be enough to explain that a character cannot carry 5 great axes, 4 great swords, 3 suits of platemail, 2 chests of goldpieces, and a partridge in a pear tree. It's not necessary to account for every pound, how it's carried, where it's carried, how easy or difficult it is to reach a specific item, etc. For those who want such exacting detail an optional rules supplement module is fine. We can both have our way.

[Grundy]

...valid point about this being a fantasy rpg...

How about this then for a simple formula. 10x Str to encumber. That number x Str bonus (min 2)= Max lift.
So at Str 10, encumbrance at 100 lbs, lift 200. At Str 3, encumbered at 30, Max 60. At Str 20, encumbered at 200, Max 1000.

I think this particular issue is important, especially because it is the only quantitative tie to ability scores.

I'd rather see the formula as Str x 5 for encumbered, and Str bonus x 2 (min 2).

That means encumbered characters all over the place, yes, but they should be. I can see a trained person moving pretty well with armor and gear, but the guy next to him in shorts and a t shirt is going to move better.

[Grundy]

I don't like this way of thinking, you are limiting my playstyle by making adventurers as exceptional people off the bat, instead of having them grow into their abilities. If you start out low the only way you can go is up. If you feel like your characters should be stronger/tougher etc, then maybe there will be a module to buff up their HP gains & such. It's harder to nerf than it is to buff.

This is my sentiment exactly. Don't like low level play? Play higher level. Just let us low level crew have a game, too.

[Zeful]

How about this then for a simple formula. 10x Str to encumber. That number x Str bonus (min 2)= Max lift.
So at Str 10, encumbrance at 100 lbs, lift 200. At Str 3, encumbered at 30, Max 60. At Str 20, encumbered at 200, Max 1000.

I think this particular issue is important, especially because it is the only quantitative tie to ability scores.

I'd rather see the formula as Str x 5 for encumbered, and Str bonus x 2 (min 2).

That means encumbered characters all over the place, yes, but they should be. I can see a trained person moving pretty well with armor and gear, but the guy next to him in shorts and a t shirt is going to move better.

I don't really mind either way, I'm just explaining my point of view as to why they're changing it.

Though in the future, when cutting down a post to note continuity of discussion, can you toss some kind of brackets around your summary so you identify it's not a direct quote? I actually had to link back to the post to realize you weren't directly quoting me, and was referring to the content of my post (<> and {} are unused grammatically, so those would be preferable to [] which is generally used to point out or correct errors in a text).

[Seerow]

How about this then for a simple formula. 10x Str to encumber. That number x Str bonus (min 2)= Max lift.
So at Str 10, encumbrance at 100 lbs, lift 200. At Str 3, encumbered at 30, Max 60. At Str 20, encumbered at 200, Max 1000.

I think this particular issue is important, especially because it is the only quantitative tie to ability scores.

I'd rather see the formula as Str x 5 for encumbered, and Str bonus x 2 (min 2).

That means encumbered characters all over the place, yes, but they should be. I can see a trained person moving pretty well with armor and gear, but the guy next to him in shorts and a t shirt is going to move better.

I like it. It's simple, it gets the same range across well, and if you let the attributes scale above 20 (another DDN design decision I am very opposed to) it lets strength scale very quickly. Maybe make it strx5 for max before encumbered, strx10 for max encumbered, and multiply by str bonus for max lift.


Let's see
Max Unencumbered/Encumbered/Lift
3e:
10-33/100/200
14-58/175/350
18-100/300/600
22-173/520/1040
26-306/920/1840
30-532/1600/3200

Your system:
10-50/100/200
14-70/140/280
18-90/180/720
22-110/220/1320
26-130/260/2080
30-150/300/3000

The numbers fit reasonably well for the 10-20 range within human capability. The encumbered numbers are reasonable enough; a little more lenient than 3e. The encumbrance values don't scale as quickly past that as it does in 3e, but by the time you get to those strength values it doesn't matter much anyway since you do have extra-dimensional space.

On the other hand, the max lift keeps up nicely, and something equally simple like a x3 multiplier can be added for max push/drag, which means high strength characters still have something to add to exploration, namely the ability to easily move around extremely large things.

[Grundy]

I don't really mind either way, I'm just explaining my point of view as to why they're changing it.

Though in the future, when cutting down a post to note continuity of discussion, can you toss some kind of brackets around your summary so you identify it's not a direct quote? I actually had to link back to the post to realize you weren't directly quoting me, and was referring to the content of my post (<> and {} are unused grammatically, so those would be preferable to [] which is generally used to point out or correct errors in a text).

Sure thing. No offense intended.

[Grundy]

I like it. It's simple, it gets the same range across well, and if you let the attributes scale above 20 (another DDN design decision I am very opposed to) it lets strength scale very quickly. Maybe make it strx5 for max before encumbered, strx10 for max encumbered, and multiply by str bonus for max lift.


Let's see
Max Unencumbered/Encumbered/Lift
3e:
10-33/100/200
14-58/175/350
18-100/300/600
22-173/520/1040
26-306/920/1840
30-532/1600/3200

Your system:
10-50/100/200
14-70/140/280
18-90/180/720
22-110/220/1320
26-130/260/2080
30-150/300/3000

The numbers fit reasonably well for the 10-20 range within human capability. The encumbered numbers are reasonable enough; a little more lenient than 3e. The encumbrance values don't scale as quickly past that as it does in 3e, but by the time you get to those strength values it doesn't matter much anyway since you do have extra-dimensional space.

On the other hand, the max lift keeps up nicely, and something equally simple like a x3 multiplier can be added for max push/drag, which means high strength characters still have something to add to exploration, namely the ability to easily move around extremely large things.

There you go. Lets shoot it over to wotc as a freebie;). I'll have to save this for home brew in case wizards doesn't fix it.

[ghost_warlock]

Let me put this another way maybe? It's all about relative competence

Cop = NPC townguard
Average Soldier (after maybe one tour in war) or a well decorated cop = What I'd like to see as the basis for a level one character
Special Forces = 4e's level of competency of a level one character

I want my player's to feel mortal & like something mundane can kill them. It makes them act realistically to the world & to act a lot smarter about fighting foes.

That sounds fine. My problem is with the idea that low level characters should be afraid of everything because they have so few hit points. Even a low-level character should not be seriously threatened by a giant rat...that's like your soldier coming back from a tour in war and getting killed by a corgi! I'm not a skilled combatant by any means but I'm fairly certain that it'd take a large number of corgis to seriously injure me unless there were some pretty extreme circumstances.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ld4sr31dzX1qa77fso1_500.jpg

The disease that rats may be carrying, however, is an entirely different matter. :smallwink:

[AgentPaper]

I like it. It's simple, it gets the same range across well, and if you let the attributes scale above 20 (another DDN design decision I am very opposed to) it lets strength scale very quickly. Maybe make it strx5 for max before encumbered, strx10 for max encumbered, and multiply by str bonus for max lift.


Let's see
Max Unencumbered/Encumbered/Lift
3e:
10-33/100/200
14-58/175/350
18-100/300/600
22-173/520/1040
26-306/920/1840
30-532/1600/3200

Your system:
10-50/100/200
14-70/140/280
18-90/180/720
22-110/220/1320
26-130/260/2080
30-150/300/3000

The numbers fit reasonably well for the 10-20 range within human capability. The encumbered numbers are reasonable enough; a little more lenient than 3e. The encumbrance values don't scale as quickly past that as it does in 3e, but by the time you get to those strength values it doesn't matter much anyway since you do have extra-dimensional space.

On the other hand, the max lift keeps up nicely, and something equally simple like a x3 multiplier can be added for max push/drag, which means high strength characters still have something to add to exploration, namely the ability to easily move around extremely large things.

But see, even that is more than most people are going to care about. A simple multiplication is easier to remember and apply in practice, and having the numbers be somewhat high means that they won't come up unless the player tries to do something absurd, which is also good.

If you make the fairly restrictive by default, then players might feel like they need to follow those rules even if they don't really want to. I had a similar experience with the 3.5 rules. Our group tried to follow them, which always involved looking up the rules every few minutes and lots of time wasted trying to figure out who could carry how much and how encumbered they were and so on and so forth. I'd far prefer a system that is very simple, easy to remember, and not too intrusive to playing the game.

[Kurald Galain]

Oh, but it can be much easier. For example, every item is either small or big; just mark the big ones with a * in the equipment list. You can carry an unlimited amount of small items (subject to DM veto if you try something really silly), and you can carry an amount of big items equal to your strength modifier. Done.

This means that not everybody is going to carry a tent, rope-and-grapple, and so forth, but that's not basic equipment anyway. I find the notion rather silly that every adventurer would always carry "a mirror, crowbar, rope, grappling hook, lantern, waterskin, tent".

Most people are going to ignore encumbrance rules anyway. That means that (if they still do the "module" thing that we've seen no sign of in playtest) encumbrance should be an optional module. However, for the sake of people that like encumbrance rules, this module should then make sense; otherwise there's no point in having it.

[Zombimode]

Most people are going to ignore encumbrance rules anyway. That means that (if they still do the "module" thing that we've seen no sign of in playtest) encumbrance should be an optional module. However, for the sake of people that like encumbrance rules, this module should then make sense; otherwise there's no point in having it.

In my experience, encumbrance is hand-waved most of the time, but invoked under special circumstances. Nobody's gona care about that Bobs character put three flasks of lamp oil in his backpack, but if he tries something like this "So, there are three suits of Fullplate in the Armory, you say? Great and stuff them into my backpack and..." the likely response of the DM is something along the lines of "Hold on a second. They don't fit into your backpack. Besides, what's your carrying capacity?"

So, uhm.. I agree that if there are rules for encumbrance at all, they should make at least a bit of sense.

[1337 b4k4]

Even a low-level character should not be seriously threatened by a giant rat...that's like your soldier coming back from a tour in war and getting killed by a corgi

Actually, according to the d20 srd, a dire rat grows to about 4 feet long and weighs over 50 pounds. And that's listed as a smal l creature. In the D&D Next packet, it's listed as a medium sized creature. So it's really more like you getting killed by an average sized pit bull (30-60 pounds). One thing that I think makes D&D's fragile characters so odd to so people is that we're generally very well protected against the dangers nature poses to us on a day to day basis. Nature is vicious and will kill you without remorse given the opportunity, and there are a number of small things, smaller than corgis, which will lay down even the strongest of men without modern medical attention.

[Knaight]

Actually, according to the d20 srd, a dire rat grows to about 4 feet long and weighs over 50 pounds. And that's listed as a smal l creature. In the D&D Next packet, it's listed as a medium sized creature. So it's really more like you getting killed by an average sized pit bull (30-60 pounds).
The thing about this is that it is more like getting killed by an average sized pit bull while armed and armored, except for instead of being a predatory pack hunter it is instead an over sized scavenger. A pit bull attack is a scary dangerous thing when you're wearing normal clothing and have a pocket knife at best. When you're carting a sword around and are armored from head to toe it's not nearly as much of a problem.


Nature is vicious and will kill you without remorse given the opportunity, and there are a number of small things, smaller than corgis, which will lay down even the strongest of men without modern medical attention.
These almost universally do this with either poison or disease. Given the extent to which D&D healing magic vastly exceeds modern medical attention in basically every respect, disease is generally not a concern, and neither are relatively slow acting poisons.

[noparlpf]

Actually, according to the d20 srd, a dire rat grows to about 4 feet long and weighs over 50 pounds. And that's listed as a smal l creature. In the D&D Next packet, it's listed as a medium sized creature. So it's really more like you getting killed by an average sized pit bull (30-60 pounds). One thing that I think makes D&D's fragile characters so odd to so people is that we're generally very well protected against the dangers nature poses to us on a day to day basis. Nature is vicious and will kill you without remorse given the opportunity, and there are a number of small things, smaller than corgis, which will lay down even the strongest of men without modern medical attention.

It is my belief that a particularly determined grey squirrel could take down the average American. (Specifically because I'm not familiar with other people, just my neighbours and classmates.)


The thing about this is that it is more like getting killed by an average sized pit bull while armed and armored, except for instead of being a predatory pack hunter it is instead an over sized scavenger. A pit bull attack is a scary dangerous thing when you're wearing normal clothing and have a pocket knife at best. When you're carting a sword around and are armored from head to toe it's not nearly as much of a problem.

Well, if you're armed and armoured and well-rested, sure, that dire rat isn't particularly threatening. If you're not well-trained with that weapon (low levels or nonproficient) or already exhausted (low hit points), then it's not that much of a stretch to have a dire rat or a large dog take down an armed man. And most characters don't wear full plate, so you can't assume most characters will be armoured "from head to toe".

[Knaight]

Well, if you're armed and armoured and well-rested, sure, that dire rat isn't particularly threatening. If you're not well-trained with that weapon (low levels or nonproficient) or already exhausted (low hit points), then it's not that much of a stretch to have a dire rat or a large dog take down an armed man. And most characters don't wear full plate, so you can't assume most characters will be armoured "from head to toe".

Full plate isn't necessary. If you look at the stuff dog trainers use to get attacked in, it's basically a heavy gambeson, heavy pants and a helmet. In short, it is the equivalent of padded armor to use D&D terms, which is about as light as it gets. As for weapon training, you're essentially guaranteed to have a major reach advantage regardless, while up against something used to fighting other quadrupeds with teeth and claws and not bipeds with legitimate weapons. An ROUS is probably not an issue.

That's not to say that animals shouldn't be dangerous, but that the wrong animals currently are. It's one thing to be seriously threatened by a bear, or by most decently sized water animals while in the water, or a pack of wolves, and another entirely to be threatened by a rat.

[ghost_warlock]

Full plate isn't necessary. If you look at the stuff dog trainers use to get attacked in, it's basically a heavy gambeson, heavy pants and a helmet. In short, it is the equivalent of padded armor to use D&D terms, which is about as light as it gets. As for weapon training, you're essentially guaranteed to have a major reach advantage regardless, while up against something used to fighting other quadrupeds with teeth and claws and not bipeds with legitimate weapons. An ROUS is probably not an issue.

Precisely.

And, again, even 1st-level adventurers are trained with a basic proficiency in whatever weapon they wield - sword or spell. They are not utter noobs, not commoners, and should not be threatened by vermin. The game is Dungeons & Dragons, not Cornfields and Cottontails.

[noparlpf]

Precisely.

And, again, even 1st-level adventurers are trained with a basic proficiency in whatever weapon they wield - sword or spell. They are not utter noobs, not commoners, and should not be threatened by vermin. The game is Dungeons & Dragons, not Cornfields and Cottontails.

So the point is mostly that dire rats (and other low-level critters) are undersized and underpowered for the level of scary they're described as being (by fluff and CR).
What if they were four feet at the shoulder?

[Kurald Galain]

I think the main question is not of how "weak" first-level characters should be, but rather whether players should have the expectation that every combat is a level-appropriate challenge that they can be expected to defeat with a certain resource expenditure.

[obryn]

I think the main question is not of how "weak" first-level characters should be, but rather whether players should have the expectation that every combat is a level-appropriate challenge that they can be expected to defeat with a certain resource expenditure.
You can't have it both ways, though. From the DM side of the screen, I can either (1) have a set of useful guidelines which will tell me what a good challenge for my party should be, or (2) not have one. Given a choice as a DM between having useful guidelines and not having them, I'd rather have them every time.

I agree the expectation should not be there on the player side, but rules-savvy players will know it's there.

From there, it's a matter of DM style; my players know that not every fight in my 4e game will be beatable, even though 4e has a very accurate system for setting "level-appropriate" challenges. The difference is that I know which are which.

-O

[Ashdate]

I think this is an important point that Obryn is making; my issues with 3.5's CR system was that it was often comparing apples to oranges in terms of difficulty. There's already a bunch of random chance in the game thanks to using a d20 to accomplish most any action; don't compound the problem by allowing that "luck" to determine whether a player lives or dies (thanks to, for example, a lucky critical hit by a level 1 orc for 2d4+4 x 2 damage).

[1337 b4k4]

When you're carting a sword around and are armored from head to toe it's not nearly as much of a problem

It's a good thing then, that a single dire rat isn't much of a problem for an adventurer either. With a mere 5hp and a 13 AC, it's likely to go down in one or two rounds at most. And with a mere +2 to attack, doesn't have a gat chance of getting through all but the weakest of armors with any frequency. Even the unarmored elf wizard has an even 50/50 chance of being hit.

Now a pack of dire rats, well that's another story. The again, a pack of pit bulls is too.


and another entirely to be threatened by a rat.

Again though, 4' 50lb rat, not your average US house pet.


They are not utter noobs, not commoners, and should not be threatened by vermin. The game is Dungeons & Dragons, not Cornfields and Cottontails.

A 50lb rat is not mere vermin though. If you walked into your house and saw a 4 foot long 50 pound rat, you'd run screaming for the hills.

I should also mention in general, something in regards to the dangers posed by a dire rats teeth. Rodent teeth in general, are very shap, more so than your dogs. A standard hamster can gnaw its way through metal if given time (I should know, mine did), now imagine that sort of shap teeth, made bigger, and given the strength of a 50 lb animal's jaw.

[noparlpf]

I think this is an important point that Obryn is making; my issues with 3.5's CR system was that it was often comparing apples to oranges in terms of difficulty. There's already a bunch of random chance in the game thanks to using a d20 to accomplish most any action; don't compound the problem by allowing that "luck" to determine whether a player lives or dies (thanks to, for example, a lucky critical hit by a level 1 orc for 2d4+4 x 2 damage).

As a DM I've had terrible luck with monsters pulled from WotC's Monster Manuals. They're either too weak for their CR and the party kills everything with hardly any damage taken at all, or they're way too strong for their CR and the party dies.
So now I don't use printed materials as much. (When I use a DM screen and they can't see my dice, I lie a little bit, but then I'm still not using the printed monsters, I'm making up fair numbers.)
I don't think that's what any business wants to have happen, because then I'm less likely to purchase the splatbooks or later editions' manuals.


Edit:

A 50lb rat is not mere vermin though. If you walked into your house and saw a 4 foot long 50 pound rat, you'd run screaming for the hills.

I should also mention in general, something in regards to the dangers posed by a dire rats teeth. Rodent teeth in general, are very shap, more so than your dogs. A standard hamster can gnaw its way through metal if given time (I should know, mine did), now imagine that sort of shap teeth, made bigger, and given the strength of a 50 lb animal's jaw.

Personally I'd grab the axe from the side of the door and charge, because [expletive], that's my house, get the [expletive] out, you [expletive] rat!
But then I doubt most people keep an axe by the door like I do.

[Dublock]

As a DM I've had terrible luck with monsters pulled from WotC's Monster Manuals. They're either too weak for their CR and the party kills everything with hardly any damage taken at all, or they're way too strong for their CR and the party dies.
So now I don't use printed materials as much. (When I use a DM screen and they can't see my dice, I lie a little bit, but then I'm still not using the printed monsters, I'm making up fair numbers.)
I don't think that's what any business wants to have happen, because then I'm less likely to purchase the splatbooks or later editions' manuals.

There are a few things I won't mind or want from 3.5E, building encounters is NOt one of them. They need to burn all that material and forget that it ever existed when compared to 4E. That is one of the best features of 4E over 3.5 in my personal opinion.

About the rat...

I know personally I will grab some form of a stick (broom, base ball bat, my walking cane, etc) and proceed to kill the thing.

If there were multiple rats, then I would be closing the door and seeking for help. One? I think I could take it.

[noparlpf]

There are a few things I won't mind or want from 3.5E, building encounters is NOt one of them. They need to burn all that material and forget that it ever existed when compared to 4E. That is one of the best features of 4E over 3.5 in my personal opinion.

The 3.X CR system was completely broken. Instead of ignoring it, they should learn from it as a bad example.


About the rat...

I know personally I will grab some form of a stick (broom, base ball bat, my walking cane, etc) and proceed to kill the thing.

If there were multiple rats, then I would be closing the door and seeking for help. One? I think I could take it.

Multiple rats wouldn't stop me from trying, it's my bloody house. They'd just end up killing me.

[Yora]

It's not that the CR system is broken. It's just that a huge number of creatures has completely wrong numbers assigned.

[noparlpf]

It's not that the CR system is broken. It's just that a huge number of creatures has completely wrong numbers assigned.

True, but even estimating CR by their guidelines give some weird results sometimes.

[TheOOB]

It's not that the CR system is broken. It's just that a huge number of creatures has completely wrong numbers assigned.

The CR system was broken, as the number CR didn't actually mean anything, it's just an arbitrary assignment of how tough monster feels. At the core of the d20 system is a lot of math, which the CR system ignores. There's no indication or rules for how much health, AC, or damage a creature should have at different levels, every monster is just placed where they feel right.

If CR meant something, we would have never seen the giant crabs at CR 3

[ghost_warlock]

50lb rat is not mere vermin though. If you walked into your house and saw a 4 foot long 50 pound rat, you'd run screaming for the hills.

I grew up in the rural midwest U.S. I've been clearing rats that size out of the corn crib since I was 12 years old. Obviously, a giant rat is an appropriate encounter for an adolescent commoner, not a 1st-level adventurer.

Seriously, though, a 50lb. rat is a capybara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capabara). NOT SCARY.

[obryn]

The CR system was broken, as the number CR didn't actually mean anything, it's just an arbitrary assignment of how tough monster feels. At the core of the d20 system is a lot of math, which the CR system ignores. There's no indication or rules for how much health, AC, or damage a creature should have at different levels, every monster is just placed where they feel right.

If CR meant something, we would have never seen the giant crabs at CR 3
That's largely because 3.x didn't have a robust mathematical "spine" like 4e did, instead relying on its class/level system to try and build monsters in PC-like fashions.

With 4e, I know (for example) that a monster should have (Level +5) attacks vs. AC and do an average of (Level + 8) damage. You can still break the system by doing stuff like giving at-will stuns or whatever, but the math is directly related to creature stats. On the other hand, I could throw a high Strength, Natural Armor, or Con at a 3e monster, have it mess up balance, and leave the CR unaffected.

-O

[Knaight]

Seriously, though, a 50lb. rat is a capybara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capabara). NOT SCARY.
50 pounds is really light for a Capybara. 100 pounds is more normal, which just makes these hypothetical rats even sadder. That said, rats are much more dangerous for their size than capybaras are.

[Kurald Galain]

Seriously, though, a 50lb. rat is a capybara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capabara). NOT SCARY.

And sheep can easily weigh 200 pounds, so your point is? :smalltongue:

[ghost_warlock]

And sheep can easily weigh 200 pounds, so your point is? :smalltongue:

That neither sheep nor oversized rodents are appropriate challenges for adventurers. :smalltongue:

Also, this:

http://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/2008/3/24/izzhatwutiti128508531380312500.jpg

[Frozen_Feet]

Just because it looks cute and harmless, doesn't mean it is. :smalltongue: Angered squirrel can bit a grown man's finger off through leather gloves. Not pretty. A giant rat with a beef with your face would be pretty scary.

On the other hand, most such creatures are wary of men. You see a rat, you find a mop and shoo it away.

[Zombimode]

I grew up in the rural midwest U.S. I've been clearing rats that size out of the corn crib since I was 12 years old. Obviously, a giant rat is an appropriate encounter for an adolescent commoner, not a 1st-level adventurer.

Seriously, though, a 50lb. rat is a capybara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capabara). NOT SCARY.

This is also not a Dire Rat in any shape or form.

First, we have to determine what a medium sized quadroped is.
I would go for this. (http://galacticwatercooler.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/bronx.jpg)
Then, we need the rat. I would go for this. (http://brennor.dyndns.org/~shurijo/pathfinder_society/bestiary/dire_rat.png)

Combine.

THATS a Dire Rat. Now tell me such a creature isn't worth the AC 13, 5 HP, attack +2 1d6+2 damage it gets in Next.
If anything, Dire Rats are underpowered in Next.

[Water_Bear]

If anything, Dire Rats are underpowered in Next.

I should know. I myself commissioned a genuine Rat in NYC for $50 (that's almost $50) and have been practicing with it for years now. I can even chew through slabs of solid steel with my Rat.

Filthy sewers spend years working on a single Rat and feed it up to a million times to produce the finest CR appropriate encounters known to mankind.

Rats are thrice as fierce as Kobolds and thrice as tough for that matter too. Anything a Kobold can dig through, a Rat can dig through better. I'm pretty sure a Rat could easily bisect a knight wearing full plate with a simple vertical slash. :smalltongue:

IDK, I don't have that many ranks in Knowledge (Nature) myself but a single rat seems like an inappropriate enemy. Rat Swarm? Yeah. Were-Rat? Silly, but okay. Dire Rat... nah, too stupid.

My personal meter-stick is "If it gets lucky and kills you, would it be awesome or embarrassing?" Getting killed by a Dragon, or a bunch of Goblin Raiders, or a Wolf, or an Ilithid? Awesome. Getting killed by a big rat or centipede or a Flumph? Sorry, I don't care how high it's stats are that's just pathetic.

[TuggyNE]

If anything, Dire Rats are underpowered in Next.

"Dire Rats deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that." (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20)? :smallbiggrin:

E: Doggone it, I got ninja'd.

[Frozen_Feet]

I have to say, though, Dire Rats are somewhat redundant because there are dozens of real carnivorous, roughly mansized critters you could use to fill their role. Like, say, wolves. Or dingoes. Or rabid dogs. Or wolverines. Or lynxes. Or giant otters. Or some of the smaller bears. Or honeybadgers. Or...

[Menteith]

I have no issue with the intended power at level one so long as it doesn't affect how powerful characters can become.. It broadens the scope of adventures that can occur (by allowing less powerful characters) without inherently removing what power level I enjoy playing at. Even in a system like 3.5, I rarely start at level one. There's nothing that I immediately object to with regard to that statement.

[navar100]

That sounds fine. My problem is with the idea that low level characters should be afraid of everything because they have so few hit points. Even a low-level character should not be seriously threatened by a giant rat...that's like your soldier coming back from a tour in war and getting killed by a corgi! I'm not a skilled combatant by any means but I'm fairly certain that it'd take a large number of corgis to seriously injure me unless there were some pretty extreme circumstances.


Some people just liked 2E killer house cats.

[noparlpf]

Some people just liked 2E killer house cats.

Which has never seemed unrealistic to me; most people I know could be taken down by a determined housecat.

[Kurald Galain]

Ooh, anyone remember the Bunnies & Burrows RPG? Now that has killer house cats!

[1337 b4k4]

I have to say, though, Dire Rats are somewhat redundant because there are dozens of real carnivorous, roughly mansized critters you could use to fill their role. Like, say, wolves. Or dingoes. Or rabid dogs. Or wolverines. Or lynxes. Or giant otters. Or some of the smaller bears.

Eh, they fill a niche that none of those other examples do... dark, dank, cave dwelling scavengers. Some of those animals might make their homes in a cave, but a few levels under the earth or beneath a ruined castle, and you wouldn't expect to find many wolves or rabid dogs. But rats? Yeah, you expect the rats among the filth.

[Loki_42]

People, we need Dire Rats because we need ROUS's. What kind of game is it if we can't reference Princess Bride?

[Anderlith]

Well here I was wondering how this discussion could go so long without mention of R.O.U.S's only to be ninja'd at the end :'(

So anyhow, I'd have to say that a Dire Rat is the size of a small dog, with teeth sharper than a dagger, scrabbling claws & they hunt in packs & swarms, sure a warrior with a sword could cut one to ribbons but two or three? He's going to start to hurt

[ghost_warlock]

I have to say, though, Dire Rats are somewhat redundant because there are dozens of real carnivorous, roughly mansized critters you could use to fill their role. Like, say, wolves. Or dingoes. Or rabid dogs. Or wolverines. Or lynxes. Or giant otters. Or some of the smaller bears. Or honeybadgers. Or...


Eh, they fill a niche that none of those other examples do... dark, dank, cave dwelling scavengers. Some of those animals might make their homes in a cave, but a few levels under the earth or beneath a ruined castle, and you wouldn't expect to find many wolves or rabid dogs. But rats? Yeah, you expect the rats among the filth.

Skip the giant rats - they were a bad joke encounter back when I was playing with Rules Cyclopedia characters and they'll still be a bad joke encounter in 5e.

If you want a subterranean muck-dwelling encounter use slimes. They're just as silly but at least their myriad immunities and stealthiness make them actually dangerous.


Well here I was wondering how this discussion could go so long without mention of R.O.U.S's only to be ninja'd at the end :'(

Actually, Knaight mentioned them a page ago:

Full plate isn't necessary. If you look at the stuff dog trainers use to get attacked in, it's basically a heavy gambeson, heavy pants and a helmet. In short, it is the equivalent of padded armor to use D&D terms, which is about as light as it gets. As for weapon training, you're essentially guaranteed to have a major reach advantage regardless, while up against something used to fighting other quadrupeds with teeth and claws and not bipeds with legitimate weapons. An ROUS is probably not an issue.

That's not to say that animals shouldn't be dangerous, but that the wrong animals currently are. It's one thing to be seriously threatened by a bear, or by most decently sized water animals while in the water, or a pack of wolves, and another entirely to be threatened by a rat.

[TheOOB]

The thing with small animals is the tend to attack with their mouth, which brings their necks into range where they can be snapped by an average adult human. Any sort of small animal should be a meaningless threat to a combat trained adventurer, most of the danger of domestic animals attacks comes from either surprise, or people freaking out too much to realize than humans are much better in a fight than an animal who weighs less than 100 pounds.

[Zombimode]

"Dire Rats deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that." (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20)? :smallbiggrin:

E: Doggone it, I got ninja'd.

Hm, gotcha :smallwink:
But I didn't mean it that way. I just wanted to point out, that Dire Rats in Next are not unreasonably strong like some people here seem to think.


Skip the giant rats - they were a bad joke encounter back when I was playing with Rules Cyclopedia characters and they'll still be a bad joke encounter in 5e.

The point is, so far you (or anybody else for the matter) have not provided a convincing account for why Dire/Giant Rats should not be an opponent in Next.

Many of the arguments raised here are missing the point, since they seem to refer to slightly larger Earth-Rats, and not the big furry scavenger/mob predators they are in Next.
Other then this, your argument boils down to "Well, for some unstated reason, I don't like Dire Rats as enemies."
This is of course fine, but expect then some people will go "Ok, but I do like Dire Rats so I would prefer for them to be included in the Monster Manual. You don't have to use them, there are lots of other options if you want."

[ghost_warlock]

Hm, gotcha :smallwink:
But I didn't mean it that way. I just wanted to point out, that Dire Rats in Next are not unreasonably strong like some people here seem to think.



The point is, so far you (or anybody else for the matter) have not provided a convincing account for why Dire/Giant Rats should not be an opponent in Next.

Many of the arguments raised here are missing the point, since they seem to refer to slightly larger Earth-Rats, and not the big furry scavenger/mob predators they are in Next.
Other then this, your argument boils down to "Well, for some unstated reason, I don't like Dire Rats as enemies."
This is of course fine, but expect then some people will go "Ok, but I do like Dire Rats so I would prefer for them to be included in the Monster Manual. You don't have to use them, there are lots of other options if you want."

It breaks down to this - it's unconvincing and shatters verisimilitude that parties of armed and trained adventurers, even 1st level ones, should be so fragile that they fear for their life when fighting rats (even 50 lb. rats).

As I've said earlier even first level adventurers are not completely green; they've been trained and have basic proficiency with their individual skill sets and weapons of choice. A group of giant rats are perhaps an appropriate encounter for a pitchfork-wielding commoner, but even then the commoner likely doesn't have to fear for his/her life except in extreme circumstances. If you want to play a game where you portray a commoner fighting vermin you're more than welcome to, but that's not the default expectation when someone sits down to play Dungeons & Dragons.

Also, if rats - even giant ones - are scavengers then they should not be attacking groups of torch-wielding humans. Behaviorally it just makes no sense. Now, I can come up with some scenarios* where the rats attacking adventurers might make sense, but none of them are typical scenarios since the kind of aggression on the part of rats needed to facilitate them attacking groups of much-larger creatures carrying fire is far outside the norm.

To sum up, giant rats have a place in the 5e Monster Manual, but the game should not be designed in such a way that adventurers of even 1st level should seriously feel threatened by them. That's really the primary issue.

*


Wererats have been specifically breeding them for aggression, size, and fighting ability.
Mind control - druids, wererats, the Rat King from Ninja Turtles, etc.
The adventurers are tearing apart the rats' nest and threatening their young.
The rats are fleeing something much more frightening than the adventurers and the PCs just happen to be in their escape path.

[Zombimode]

It breaks down to this - it's unconvincing and shatters verisimilitude that parties of armed and trained adventurers, even 1st level ones, should be so fragile that they fear for their life when fighting rats (even 50 lb. rats).

But the point is that Dire Rats in Next are NOT small 25 kg creatures. They are about the size of Mabari Dogs of Dragon Age.
If we would talk about rats how they are portrayed in many video games, like in Oblivion or Morrowind, I would totally agree.


On an unrelated note: Mike Mearls sums up the feedback from the latest playtest (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120924).

I can't say that I'm to happy about the peoples apparent reaction, though, especially concerning the Sorcerer, which was, so far, my favorite class design in Next (note that the Dragon Sorcerer in specific was to strong in comparison with the other classes, but thats a problem of the execution, not the idea).