D&D 5th Edition: 8th Revision and Counting [Archive] - Page 6

navar100

2013-03-14, 10:26 PM

You're not missing anything. In 3e, it's possible to reach a point where Joe has, say, a skill bonus of +22 at level 10 (e.g. +13 ranks, +2 feat, +2 equipment, +5 stat) while Bob, also level 10, has only a +1 (e.g. no ranks, +1 stat). That means you can run into three problematic cases: if they're both attempting a task with a DC less than 22, Joe can't fail but Bob has to roll to try to succeed; if they're attempting a task with a DC of 23 or more, Joe has to roll but Bob can't possibly succeed; and if they're making opposed rolls then Joe always beats Bob because Joe's minimum result is higher than Bob's maximum result.

Now, the above phenomenon is a problem; it means that any challenge the DM tries to set involving Joe and Bob using that skill is either impossible to succeed or impossible to fail for one of them. However, bounded accuracy takes it further: it's not mandating that people are always within 20 points of each other at the same level (a good thing), it mandates that people are always within 20 points of each other, period. In 5e, the best Joe could do would be +7+1d12 at 20th level, while the worst Bob could do would be -5+1d4 at level 1. So it's entirely possible, given unlucky rolls, that the difference is only +8 to -1, or a spread of 9 points--meaning that the most pathetic amateur potentially has a 14% chance to beat the world champion in something.

I disagree it's a problem, at least partially. It doesn't bother me Joe is just that good. He spent skill points. He spent a feat. He's accepting a magic item as part of his wealth by level. He spent resources to be that good. Bob invested nothing in that skill. Joe deserves to beat Bob all the time every time.

The caveat: The skill is Pick Pocket vs. Spot. Joe is NPC bad guy. Bob is a PC. Joe can always pick Bob's pocket. Enter DM. For one particular adventure arc Bob's pocket is picked. He and the party deal with it as the adventure hook. Everything is ok. If this becomes a continuous series of Joes picking Bob's pocket, then we enter DM jerkitude territory which is a different topic. The one particular Joe picking Bob's pocket is still ok as a possibility.

The partial problem: This was mentioned earlier. The skill is Move Silently. Joe and Bob are PC party members. Because Bob almost always fails the opposed roll vs NPC Listen, Joe's earned expertise is almost always wasted. A mechanic is needed to allow for group/party use of a skill. Just taking the average modifier of both and use that for the roll is a simple solution but still might not be satisfying. Rather, Joe can make a special skill check. If he makes it, he's able to compensate Bob's lack of skill allowing for the group modifier to be average + X, value of X to be hypothetically determined that makes this idea satisfying. Possibly Bob has to also make a check of some sort to avoid his incompetence ruining everything, thus the group modifier rolled is average - X. If Joe succeeds and Bob fails, then it's just average or maybe Bob failing is average - Z so that the total modifier is average + X - Z. However, Bob doesn't have to roll unless his modifier is at least Y less than Joe's. I'd say Y = 10 is good.

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-03-14, 10:59 PM

I disagree it's a problem, at least partially. It doesn't bother me Joe is just that good. He spent skill points. He spent a feat. He's accepting a magic item as part of his wealth by level. He spent resources to be that good. Bob invested nothing in that skill. Joe deserves to beat Bob all the time every time.

I actually agree with this, and am a big proponent of exponential growth as you level so you quickly get to the point where you don't need to roll for a lot of mundane stuff in an area where you're trained. I was talking about it being a "problem" in the sense that it's the problem that bounded accuracy was attempting to "solve," but bounded accuracy overshot the mark and just made things worse.

Stubbazubba

2013-03-15, 03:16 AM

The caveat: The skill is Pick Pocket vs. Spot. Joe is NPC bad guy. Bob is a PC. Joe can always pick Bob's pocket. Enter DM. For one particular adventure arc Bob's pocket is picked. He and the party deal with it as the adventure hook. Everything is ok. If this becomes a continuous series of Joes picking Bob's pocket, then we enter DM jerkitude territory which is a different topic. The one particular Joe picking Bob's pocket is still ok as a possibility.

And there are ways to handle this that are equitable to the player, they're just well outside the d20 paradigm. In MHR, for example, if you want to overcome a PC's speed or senses for an ambush, you have to discard a die of the same size or larger from the Doom Pool, the GM's analog to Plot Points. I think it's legitimate to let the GM "buy" a successful action against a PC without a die roll in exchange for a Metagame Point, depending on implementation, but I imagine this would be a fairly "gamist" thrust for many 3.5 fans.

The partial problem: This was mentioned earlier. The skill is Move Silently. Joe and Bob are PC party members. Because Bob almost always fails the opposed roll vs NPC Listen, Joe's earned expertise is almost always wasted. A mechanic is needed to allow for group/party use of a skill. Just taking the average modifier of both and use that for the roll is a simple solution but still might not be satisfying. Rather, Joe can make a special skill check. If he makes it, he's able to compensate Bob's lack of skill allowing for the group modifier to be average + X, value of X to be hypothetically determined that makes this idea satisfying. Possibly Bob has to also make a check of some sort to avoid his incompetence ruining everything, thus the group modifier rolled is average - X. If Joe succeeds and Bob fails, then it's just average or maybe Bob failing is average - Z so that the total modifier is average + X - Z. However, Bob doesn't have to roll unless his modifier is at least Y less than Joe's. I'd say Y = 10 is good.

Indeed, D&D fails at group actions almost by default, but that seems a slightly roundabout way to circumvent the issue. First, I do think there is a need to keep a specialist and a non-specialist of the same level on the same RNG. A framework has to be established wherein success/failure are not binary based on each roll, but that each roll is interdependent. The easiest, clearest way to do this would be to set it up like a 4e Skill Challenge, where the party needs X stealth successes before Y failures, and let successes that surpass the DC by a lot count towards more successes. You still get the problem here, however, that Platemail McDwarf is almost always better off just not rolling, in that his roll is almost guaranteed to hurt the party more than help. Making that roll is not going to be fun.

This can be mitigated in at least 2 ways; 1) Always let party members succeed on a nat20 or some other auto-success rule (this has its pros and cons), so that the Dwarf has some chance no matter what, and 2) allow particularly high successes to boost other rolls in addition to/instead of counting for multiple successes themselves.

Another, more structural option is to make it so that failures don't count towards "losing" the scenario, at least not directly. You can say that an area just has a certain Stealth "Threshold" given the lighting/shadows available and the number/training of guards, and this threshold is in terms of # of Stealth successes, flat (i.e. 3 Stealth successes, or 4 or 5, but not DC 22). So in this way, if McClunk fails his stealth check, the party is not actively progressed towards defeat, even though its not closer to victory, either. This at least makes the worst outcome possible neutral, not negative, for the individual player. You could also allow several "rounds" of rolling, if appropriate.

My preferred solution would be to prepare a cocktail of these solutions; combined with a Skill Tiers approach, you say that Stealth is a Group Action, and you must together meet a minimum Stealth Threshold of, say, 4 or be caught. The guards' Notice reaction is Tier 2 (Average), their Wis is +4, so the DC is 14; if you have a higher Tier, you roll with Adv. Any leftover Advantages can be used to re-roll failures, if necessary. A level 4 party comprised of an Elven ranger (Above Average Stealth, +8 Dex), a Human barbarian (Average Stealth, +6 Dex), a Dwarven Cleric (Poor Stealth, +2 Dex with Dis from Heavy Armor), and a Halfling rogue (Above Average Stealth, +8 Dex).

The ranger and rogue each have a 94% chance of success and a 44% chance of generating an Advantage, the barbarian's odds are 75/25, the Cleric's are 20/0, but if we assume that at least one Advantage was generated, then the cleric could bump up his odds to 45/0, and if 2 Ads were generated, he'd be at 70.

If, alternatively, beating the DC by 10 counted for 2 successes, but did not provide Advantage to allies, then this party would almost definitely achieve victory before the dwarf even needed to roll. Both of those approaches have their benefits, and I'm frankly not sure which one I'd prefer to go with...

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-03-15, 04:28 AM

Indeed, D&D fails at group actions almost by default,

It may not have rules for collective checks, but that doesn't mean that it "fails" at doing party vs. NPC group checks; it's difficult, certainly, when you fail if the NPCs' best roll beats your party's worst roll, but mechanics like Aid Another can somewhat compensate for unskilled characters in the party.

Quite frankly, it makes sense to me that a party containing Dwarfy McClankerton is going to have a hard time stealthing past some guards, and I don't like the idea of collective rolls that let the party succeed because some members are very stealthy. It strikes me as being something like a badly-run skill challenge, where a party can get into the castle throne room because the fighter climbed the walls with Athletics, the rogue fast-talked his way in with Bluff, and the wizard snuck in invisibly with Stealth; the party managed to get in despite the fact that three PCs only got inside the castle walls and the cleric never got in at all because, hey, they got 3 successes, they won the challenge!

I'd much rather the party successfully sneak past because the stealthier party members aid Dwarfy's checks and Dwarfy takes off his clanky armor, not because the stealthier PCs succeed for him. Particularly if 5e is going to support 4e-style party cohesion and interdependence as opposed to 3e-style teams of individual badasses, it makes sense to emphasize that PCs are helping one another and everyone contributes, rather than allowing the party face to succeed for everyone in social scenarios, the party scout to succeed for them in mobility scenarios, etc.

Kurald Galain

2013-03-15, 05:17 AM

if they're both attempting a task with a DC less than 22, Joe can't fail but Bob has to roll to try to succeed; if they're attempting a task with a DC of 23 or more, Joe has to roll but Bob can't possibly succeed; and if they're making opposed rolls then Joe always beats Bob because Joe's minimum result is higher than Bob's maximum result.

Now, the above phenomenon is a problem;

I don't agree either that this is a problem. See, a medium-to-high-level party is not challenged by an object or by a single skill check. A party is challenged by a situation. For instance, suppose the situation is a castle that they have to enter. I am perfectly fine with positing that the rogue can sneak in because he's just that good, and the wizard has no chance of doing so but has to find another option.

I think 4E is the only RPG on the market that suggests that in every situation every character always has to be able to make an equally meaningful contribution. I disagree that this is necessary or even desirable.

Quite frankly, it makes sense to me that a party containing Dwarfy McClankerton is going to have a hard time stealthing past some guards, and I don't like the idea of collective rolls that let the party succeed because some members are very stealthy.
Also, this.

1337 b4k4

2013-03-15, 08:49 AM

I actually agree with this, and am a big proponent of exponential growth as you level so you quickly get to the point where you don't need to roll for a lot of mundane stuff in an area where you're trained. I was talking about it being a "problem" in the sense that it's the problem that bounded accuracy was attempting to "solve," but bounded accuracy overshot the mark and just made things worse.

So given this [you being a proponent of character skill growth to the point of not rolling at all], would you be more amiable to the current 5e system if they produced better guidelines and indicators of when you shouldn't roll at all? I mean, if ultimately you want to get to a point where skilled people don't roll at all for "mundane" tasks, is there a difference to you whether "mundane" is defined by mathematically exceeding a certain threshold or just exceeding some other threshold (e.g. level disparity)?

Quite frankly, it makes sense to me that a party containing Dwarfy McClankerton is going to have a hard time stealthing past some guards, and I don't like the idea of collective rolls that let the party succeed because some members are very stealthy.

Eh, I always looked at stuff like this as abstracting away assumed planning and preparation. The reason the whole party (including Clanky McMetalPants) can sneak by successfully is that the sneaking expertise brought by the more skilled party members reminds them to do better preparation for sneaking. That is, when Clanky is sneaking on his own, he forgets (or doesn't even think about) finding some way to silence the joints in his armor. When he's with Elfie von Twinkletoes, he's reminded (or shown) how to properly bind his armor (or remove and carry it) so that it makes much less noise.

As for a mechanic for resolving group checks (assuming a single roll/non skill challenge version), how does this sound (using 5e).

1) Find the median (not mean) skill score for the skill at hand in the party
2) Tally the number of party members with a score > or < the median score.
4) Whichever side (< or >) has more members, give disadvantage or advantage respectively to a skill roll using the median party skill. If there are equal members above and below, then no advantage or disadvantage is given.

Kornaki

2013-03-15, 09:10 AM

1) Find the median (not mean) skill score for the skill at hand in the party
2) Tally the number of party members with a score > or < the median score.
4) Whichever side (< or >) has more members, give disadvantage or advantage respectively to a skill roll using the median party skill. If there are equal members above and below, then no advantage or disadvantage is given.

By definition there are an equal number of people above and below the median score. It sounds like you really wanted to use the mean for the last part

obryn

2013-03-15, 09:56 AM

What does 'bounded accuracy' even mean, anyway? I've been staying away from these discussions because I've never been clear on that.
In combat terms, it means that the primary scaling is not along the accuracy axis, but along the damage axis.

So, at 10th level, you might only have an additional +3 to-hit, but you might be doing +20ish damage.

The benefit is that accuracy is a lot "touchier" than damage, since it's inherently constrained by a d20's randomness. Damage and hit points have no technical upper bounds.

-O

Morty

2013-03-15, 10:27 AM

In theory, "bounded accuracy" means that for any given skill check/attack roll/etc. the difference between the most powerful character in the system and the least powerful character in the system will not exceed 20, so you never have a case where character X cannot possibly fail at a task that character Y has a chance to fail or a case where X cannot possibly succeed at a task that Y has a chance to succeed.

In practice, it has turned out to mean "WotC still can't do math, because doing the above causes many more problems than it solves."

In combat terms, it means that the primary scaling is not along the accuracy axis, but along the damage axis.

So, at 10th level, you might only have an additional +3 to-hit, but you might be doing +20ish damage.

The benefit is that accuracy is a lot "touchier" than damage, since it's inherently constrained by a d20's randomness. Damage and hit points have no technical upper bounds.

-O

Thanks for clearing it up. I'm not sure what the purpose is here, because it's perfectly normal that there are things you simply can't do unless you're highly skilled, and it applies even more to a fantasy setting than to the real world.
I could see it having more sense in combat, though. But I'm not much of a number-cruncher so I can't be sure. Besides, I think that the way D&D tracks damage is pretty terrible.

obryn

2013-03-15, 10:57 AM

Thanks for clearing it up. I'm not sure what the purpose is here, because it's perfectly normal that there are things you simply can't do unless you're highly skilled, and it applies even more to a fantasy setting than to the real world.
I could see it having more sense in combat, though. But I'm not much of a number-cruncher so I can't be sure. Besides, I think that the way D&D tracks damage is pretty terrible.
Well, it's because when they devised this system, they really wanted it for combat purposes. Using it for skills is just to keep the system somewhat unified, near as I can tell. And honestly, I'm not a fan of skill systems in D&D whatsoever, so I don't much care about that side of things.

The purpose in combat is pretty easy to see, IMO - it means that, when you're 10th level, a bunch of orcs can theoretically still be a challenge. They can still hit - it's not a series of misses - but the damage they do is low compared to what you can take.

This is opposed to double-scaling, where both attack bonuses and damage change with level. The math should - in theory - be easier to nail down if accuracy is fairly bounded. It certainly worked well on that front for 4e, which essentially has a level-scaling bounded accuracy system built in.

It also theoretically speeds things up because there's less adding on the d20. (But there's also bigger numbers on the damage side, so I'm not positive it actually helps that much.)

-O

Sebastrd

2013-03-15, 11:13 AM

Bounded accuracy is a reaction to the ridiculous numbers that were achievable in 3E, and the problems they created.

No humanoid PC should be able to reach 50 in an attribute.
Attack bonuses and Spell DCs outpaced AC and saves to the point that, at level 20, miss chance was better than AC and a DC high enough to challenge one PC could be an auto-fail for others.
The skill system generated characters that were experts in a few things and incompetent at everything else. Playing a "jack-of-all-trades" was impossible.
Too many magic items provided stacking bonuses that widened the gap even further.

The bottom line is that in order for characters to remain proficient in their areas of expertise, they had to be terrible at everything else. They all became one-trick ponies trying to find a way to apply their one trick to every situation.

By capping attributes and attack bonuses, DDN aims to avoid those issues. It also creates an environment wherein monsters remain threatening over a broader range of levels.

Also, keep in mind that the system is still in testing. Almost nothing is finallized at this point. {scrubbed}

1337 b4k4

2013-03-15, 11:22 AM

By definition there are an equal number of people above and below the median score. It sounds like you really wanted to use the mean for the last part

Sort of but not quite, consider the example provided here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median#Medians_in_descriptive_statistics

{ 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 14 }

Median value is 2, but there is only one value below the median {1}, two values above {3, 14}, in this case, advantage would be given.

Obviously how well this works will be dependent on how often party members are likely to have the same score for a given skill. In fact, thinking about it now, this would really only work well for parties of 5+ people, otherwise you're pretty much always rolling the median score straight up. So never mind, this was a bad idea.

Well, it's because when they devised this system, they really wanted it for combat purposes. Using it for skills is just to keep the system somewhat unified, near as I can tell. And honestly, I'm not a fan of skill systems in D&D whatsoever, so I don't much care about that side of things.

This is pretty key. Despite my earlier defenses of the 5e skill system, I think WotC is very much hampering themselves with their insistence that skills and combat work the same way. I get the appeal of the "unified mechanic", but ultimately, the game would be better served if each "major" system of the game had its own mechanic which best modeled that particular system. The problem of Kobolds not being dangerous after a certain level is different from the problem of rusty locks not being a challenge after a certain amount of skill investure. No one would expect throwing 100 rusty locks at your Thief would make it more likely for him to fail at opening the door, just that it would take him longer. By comparison, throwing 100 kobolds at your Theif should (potentially) make him fail to survive.

I would rather see a different mechanic for skills that had diminishing returns to get the "bounded accuracy" effect. I really like how GURPS 4e does it: because skills are rolled on a bell curve distribution, roll under a target number, each + to the target number from improved skills gives less and less benefit for more and more resources. A 2 CP investure at low levels will move your probability of success from 50 to 65%, but an 8 CP investure at higher levels might only move your success from 87% to 90%. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how well you could strip it down for simple D&D so that you didn't wind up with a tome of skills like GURPS does. Let's face it, GURPS is not easy to pickup and go with, it requires a lot of up front reading and understanding to really get going and that's clearly one thing they want to avoid with Next.

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-03-15, 12:58 PM

I don't agree either that this is a problem. See, a medium-to-high-level party is not challenged by an object or by a single skill check. A party is challenged by a situation. For instance, suppose the situation is a castle that they have to enter. I am perfectly fine with positing that the rogue can sneak in because he's just that good, and the wizard has no chance of doing so but has to find another option.

See my response to navar--I meant "problem" in the sense that "this is what bounded accuracy is trying to address" as opposed to "this is objectively a problem," though I probably could have worded that better.

So given this [you being a proponent of character skill growth to the point of not rolling at all], would you be more amiable to the current 5e system if they produced better guidelines and indicators of when you shouldn't roll at all?

No. I'm not in favor of arbitrary cutoff points or ignoring rules. The only time someone shouldn't have to roll to succeed at a DC X check is if they're taking 10 and have a modifier of at least (X-9) or they're not taking 10 and have a modifier of at least (X-1). If the system says something is a DC 10 task and you have a +9 modifier, then whether that task is tying your shoes or walking on air the system is saying you're good enough to not fail at that task barring dangerous circumstances (circumstance penalties), you don't need any other metric to tell you you don't have to roll.

Eh, I always looked at stuff like this as abstracting away assumed planning and preparation. The reason the whole party (including Clanky McMetalPants) can sneak by successfully is that the sneaking expertise brought by the more skilled party members reminds them to do better preparation for sneaking. That is, when Clanky is sneaking on his own, he forgets (or doesn't even think about) finding some way to silence the joints in his armor. When he's with Elfie von Twinkletoes, he's reminded (or shown) how to properly bind his armor (or remove and carry it) so that it makes much less noise.

Why "assume" Dwarfy took off his armor when he could just, y'know, actually take it off? There are costs associated with removing armor (time, lack of protection in the interim, loss of any special properties) and just handwaving those isn't a good solution.

Bounded accuracy is a reaction to the ridiculous numbers that were achievable in 3E, and the problems they created.

No humanoid PC should be able to reach 50 in an attribute.

Why are high stats a problem? First of all, 36 is the usual maximum (20 starting, +5 levels, +5 wishes/tome, +6 item), not 50, and secondly if characters start being superhuman around level 5-7 or so, then it makes sense that ability scores can get to phenomenal heights around level 20.

The skill system generated characters that were experts in a few things and incompetent at everything else. Playing a "jack-of-all-trades" was impossible.

Not impossible, just fairly restricted (only bards and factotums could really pull it off), but that's just a nitpick.

The bottom line is that in order for characters to remain proficient in their areas of expertise, they had to be terrible at everything else. They all became one-trick ponies trying to find a way to apply their one trick to every situation.

Now this I disagree with. Those standards aren't for mere proficiency--charger builds are proficient, the Ubercharger is a one-trick pony. The characters who spend all their money on one skill or set of skills are those like Diplomancers and truenamers who are abusing a single mechanic as the focus of their character; a normal skill monkey can do just fine without hitting those extremes. Martial characters don't need a +Bazillion attack bonus to function well, a completely normal fighter can get to hit-on-a-5 territory with most CR-appropriate enemies by high levels without sacrificing all competence in other areas.

And so forth: it's possible to get very high numbers in one area, but characters need to be more well-rounded to survive in actual games, and it was rarely the numbers that broke anything, it was spells and feats and such.

Also, keep in mind that the system is still in testing.
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

In order:

1) The fact that it isn't finalized doesn't mean we can't talk about what's there now. The 4e previews came out with some absolutely crappy mechanics, and people on the forums complained about them and suggested better solutions, and lo and behold those problems were fixed in the release version.

That's what you do in a playtest. Things that might be considered annoying or rules-lawyerly in an actual game (pushing the boundaries, finding the weak points, interpreting the rules in different ways) are what you should be doing, and things that might be considered more fun in an actual game (handwaving things, houseruling problems, avoiding some mechanics) are what you should not be doing, as otherwise the problems in the game won't be addressed (or perhaps even found).

2) It's not "ignorance" when we all have a copy of the mechanics in hand (or on computer screen), and it's not "unwarranted speculation" when we can do basic math.

3) Never been a reality simulator, huh? Interesting. I must have simply imagined the detailed disease rules, specific armor vs. specific weapon tables, and long monster ecology sections (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/gygaxian-naturalism.html) (among many other things) when I was playing 1e. Certainly, it wasn't completely accurate or realistic in plenty of areas, but it being a flawed simulation doesn't mean the parts of the rules dealing with in-game reality (as opposed to metagame things like levels and XP) weren't an attempt at a simulation.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Funny you say that, since it's all the previous editions that have functioning math and 5e that's trying to turn D&D into Scrabble. :smallamused:

1337 b4k4

2013-03-15, 01:20 PM

No. I'm not in favor of arbitrary cutoff points or ignoring rules. The only time someone shouldn't have to roll to succeed at a DC X check is if they're taking 10 and have a modifier of at least (X-9) or they're not taking 10 and have a modifier of at least (X-1).

I guess I don't understand what the practical difference in your view between an arbitrary cut off and optimizing "out of range" is. If the goal is to make it so that "mundane" tasks don't have to be rolled for, what does it matter whether "mundane" is defined as "can take 10 and your skill bonus is +9" or it's defined as "your skill level is X, and you're comparing against something that is Y or less?" I certainly understand if you're not happy with the range that the mechanic can resolve, and therefore are unhappy with where those arbitrary cut offs might be, but from a purely affect on play stand point, I don't get why it's better than I don't have to roll because I'm mathematically outside the resolution range and I don't have to roll because I'm just that awesome according to some cut off defined elsewhere.

Why "assume" Dwarfy took off his armor when he could just, y'know, actually take it off? There are costs associated with removing armor (time, lack of protection in the interim, loss of any special properties) and just handwaving those isn't a good solution.

It all depends on how detailed you want to be. I generally would require my players to specify they're removing armor, explicitly for the costs that you outline. On the other hand, look at how much wailing and gnashing of teeth there was over the paragraph in the playtest describing how a search should work and how if you simply say "I look around the room" you won't find the key hidden in the dresser unless you say "I search the dresser". To some people, it appears anything short of being able to declare a general activity and have all the details resolve in your favor is requiring pixel bitching and mother-may-I game play. Personally I'm of the opinion that if you want to auto find the key hidden in the desk by saying "I search the room", I'm perfectly OK with letting you do that, you'll just likely also trigger the trap that was under the bed.

As I've said before, it's easier to add complexity than remove it. A skill check that by default resolves a bunch of assumed actions in one swell foop can easily be expanded by either not assuming the actions and requiring a roll for each (eliminating a lot of the newbie v. master issue everyone has) or by applying applicable modifiers. On the other hand, it's a lot harder to pare down a skill check from something complicated to something simple.

3) Never been a reality simulator, huh? Interesting. I must have simply imagined the detailed disease rules, specific armor vs. specific weapon tables, and long monster ecology sections (among many other things) when I was playing 1e. Certainly, it wasn't completely accurate or realistic in plenty of areas, but it being a flawed simulation doesn't mean the parts of the rules dealing with in-game reality (as opposed to metagame things like levels and XP) weren't an attempt at a simulation.

There's a difference between supplying rules to resolve something and being (or desiring to be) a reality simulator. D&D with the possible exception of 3.x was never designed to be a reality simulator, and there are multiple passages in the very books themselves indicating this.

Frozen_Feet

2013-03-15, 01:29 PM

D&D never was a simulation. This pretty darn explicitly spelled out in 1st Ed DMG. It is a game.

However, to paraphrase the text, "this doesn't mean that where it enhances the game, maximum possible realism isn't intended".

Early D&D worked on the assumption that players would be using their own wits for puzzle solving, and to effectively do that, there had to be a consistent frame of reference. This was also why humans were the most advantageous race - it was to encourage people to play what they know, so they would not get stuck playing cartoony stereotypes of creatures they have nothing in common with.

This wisdom has somewhat gotten lost with time. But the point stands: D&D is not a simulation. It is a game. It is fun, distracting past time. The simulation bits are there to make the game better - to ensure you have a familiar-enough frame of reference to make informed decisions.

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-03-15, 01:57 PM

I guess I don't understand what the practical difference in your view between an arbitrary cut off and optimizing "out of range" is.

The difference is that the latter case is gradual/organic where the former is not. You're assuming that there's some hard line dividing mundane tasks from non-mundane tasks that the rules are trying to model, when in fact it's the reverse: something is mundane for you if and only if you're good enough to succeed without effort. The system should actually allow you to become skilled at something over time, not keep forcing you to have a 50/50 chance to miss a low-level kobold or fail to jump 5 feet when you've long since passed the superhuman mark.

Why introduce something like "your skill level is X, and you're comparing against something that is Y or less" when we already have the comparison between skill modifier and DCs? Every system I've seen that does the former has an abrupt jump, like WotC's proposal I mentioned earlier that suddenly goes from 100% success at something to a 66% chance of success when you pass the threshold. Any system where X vs. Y is close enough that you don't have that sudden jump is going to be close enough to modifier vs. DC that it just introduces unnecessary complication.

D&D with the possible exception of 3.x was never designed to be a reality simulator, and there are multiple passages in the very books themselves indicating this.

But the point stands: D&D is not a simulation. It is a game. It is fun, distracting past time. The simulation bits are there to make the game better - to ensure you have a familiar-enough frame of reference to make informed decisions.

The two are not mutually exclusive, you know. It may not be a simulation of our reality, but an internally-consistent rules framework that delivers predictable outputs for a given input is a simulation for all intents and purposes. Call it a "simulation of an alternate reality" if you want, the point is that AD&D went to great lengths to seem like a living breathing world and not just a handy system to use if you wanted to play Conan or Legolas and kill evil things.

D&D has always been a combination of a simulation of in-game reality (whose fidelity, accuracy, and level of detail have varied by edition, obviously) with metagame mechanics that exist solely for the game's benefit; you could say it balances Simulationism and Gamism with practically no Narrativism, if you subscribe to GNS theory (you poor soul :smallwink:). Likewise, there have always been players who greatly favored the simulation aspect of things and liked playing D&D as Fantasy Vietnam where keeping track of time, rations, weather, disease, etc. was very important, and players who greatly favored the metagame aspect of things and liked playing D&D as a hack-n-slash combat tactics game with attached roleplaying aspects, with most groups falling somewhere between those two extremes.

Simplification does not imply making things more game-y, and complexity does not imply making things more simulation-y. It's entirely possible to have a simple, streamlined system for 5e that satisfies the more metagame-minded D&D players while still satisfying the more simulation-minded D&D players with its internal consistency.

navar100

2013-03-15, 02:55 PM

Part of the point of Take 10 and Take 20 in 3E was exactly so to say "I search the room". It was annoying when I played 2E to have to say "I search the bed. I search under the bed, under the mattress, under the sheet, in the pillowcase, tear open the pillow, check the springs." (No springs, hee, hee, hee), for those who get the reference For a rogue to search for traps he had to say "I search the floor. I search the wall., I search the door. I check the floor right in front of the door. I check the floor right behind the door. I check the doorknob." Then the DM says "Ha, you didn't say you search the ceiling. Make a saving throw." It's gotcha DMing. If 5E is going to go back to those days to please the pre-3E fans that's more incentive not to play 5E and stay a fired customer with glee.

Clawhound

2013-03-15, 03:25 PM

How would I change the skill system based on commentary so far?

I would start with level adjusted die size. If the level 1 commoner gets a +1d4 for skills while the level 10 barbarian gets a +1d10, much of the swinginess problem goes away. The commoner maxes at +5 while the barbarian mins at a +5. Meanwhile, that dragon has a +d20, so the barbarian maxes at +14 and the dragons mins at +6, so the barbarian still has a chance.

I see something like:
Level 1-2 d4
Level 3-5 d6
Level 6-8 d8
Level 9-11 d10
Level 12+ d20

This way, the die contribute to the bounded accuracy rather than the math, and the smaller die makes skill points far more important. Meanwhile, the closeness of die size means that challenges near your level remain challenges.

Of course, that throws out all existing DCs, so this solution causes as many problems as it solves.

Ashdate

2013-03-15, 04:33 PM

As was suggested earlier, they could take a nod from early editions of the game where "checks" were made by simply trying to roll your relevant ability score or under. Training can add a bonus (increasing the range you'd have to roll under). This would even scale when leveling, as ability score increase.

Hence, Conan the 18 Str barbarian would have a 90% chance of succeeding, while Hob the 8 str commoner has only a 40% chance of succeeding. If both "succeed" (or both "fail"), they roll again until one of them succeeds while the other fails. You could set "DCs" by adding bonuses/penalties, such that a legendary feat of strength might give you a -15 to your relevant ability, while an easy check might give a +5.

They won't do it because they insist on rolling high on a d20 and adding numbers for simplicity, but it seems like it would be more elegant and fix a lot of problems (I personally would also like the tension that such a system would bring too in a contest, as opposed to "well he rolled slightly higher...").

Seerow

2013-03-15, 04:54 PM

Ashdate

2013-03-15, 04:58 PM

How is "roll under your stat" substantially different from "add your stat to your roll, base target number is 20" (or 21 if you want to get nitpicky I guess)?

There's not much difference mechanically, although it would require an extra step of math. I think "rolling under" would be cleaner.

Rhynn

2013-03-15, 05:00 PM

Hence, Conan the 18 Str barbarian would have a 90% chance of succeeding, while Hob the 8 str commoner has only a 40% chance of succeeding. If both "succeed" (or both "fail"), they roll again until one of them succeeds while the other fails.

Take a page from Mongoose's RQ: if both succeed, higher roll wins. Less rolling.

Ashdate

2013-03-15, 05:31 PM

Take a page from Mongoose's RQ: if both succeed, higher roll wins. Less rolling.

Wouldn't that just lead to the unpleasant scenario we have right in 5e now?

Draz74

2013-03-15, 06:40 PM

There's not much difference mechanically, although it would require an extra step of math. I think "rolling under" would be cleaner.

Only cleaner when there are no modifiers to the roll. As soon as modifiers are involved, then both ways involve the same amount of math -- but the addition method will go slightly faster than the subtraction (or "apply modifiers to the DC instead of the roll") method.

Craft (Cheese)

2013-03-15, 07:08 PM

Morty

2013-03-15, 07:38 PM

[...] a desire for D&D to be something that it's not.

Well, the intention is to make D&D Next into a good game, which is indeed someting it isn't. :smalltongue:

Ashdate

2013-03-15, 07:41 PM

Only cleaner when there are no modifiers to the roll. As soon as modifiers are involved, then both ways involve the same amount of math -- but the addition method will go slightly faster than the subtraction (or "apply modifiers to the DC instead of the roll") method.

I still think rolling under is more elegant (if only because it's easy to tell if you succeed at a glance), plus it has a "tie" to an older edition, but I'm not going to fight you on this. EITHER would be preferable to me than the current system.

For those interested in the math, this hypothetical Conan vs. Hob matchup has Conan winning ~93% of the time (27/29). On average, you'll need to make 1.72 checks before you get one that doesn't require a reroll.

I'm not sure if a 7% chance of failure is "good enough" for the "the commoner shouldn't beat the barbarian" crowd, but I was trying to go for relative simplicity. At the very least it can be a starting point.

Seerow

2013-03-15, 07:51 PM

Well, the intention is to make D&D Next into a good game, which is indeed someting it isn't. :smalltongue:

Don't say stuff like that when I'm drinking soda. You nearly ruined my laptop screen!

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-16, 01:26 AM

How about going the 2D10 route?

Its not AS simple as rolling a 1D20 but it solves many problems in the system.

Crits/ misses become a 1/100 thing which is much more believable.

Figgin of Chaos

2013-03-16, 02:33 AM

How about going the 2D10 route?

Its not AS simple as rolling a 1D20 but it solves many problems in the system.

Crits/ misses become a 1/100 thing which is much more believable.

Or 3d6, for that matter. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/bellCurveRolls.htm)

Craft (Cheese)

2013-03-16, 02:46 AM

Or 3d6, for that matter. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/bellCurveRolls.htm)

Or 1d6+2d8-2. That way, you get the bell curve while still having the 1-20 range.

Figgin of Chaos

2013-03-16, 03:17 AM

Or 1d6+2d8-2. That way, you get the bell curve while still having the 1-20 range.

Yeah, but with the top and bottom numbers so unlikely anyway, it's not worth having a mechanic that looks that weird and un-intuitive. Snake eyes (of a three-eyed snake) and Devil's Marks are just as unique and evocative as 1s and 20s.

Draz74

2013-03-16, 03:20 AM

Or 3d20 drop highest drop lowest ... that'll give you a curve with 10 or 11 as the most likely results, but it's a much gentler curve. Less likely to break stuff.

And in 5e terms, it's kinda like rolling with Advantage and Disadvantage.

Craft (Cheese)

2013-03-16, 04:43 AM

Yeah, but with the top and bottom numbers so unlikely anyway, it's not worth having a mechanic that looks that weird and un-intuitive. Snake eyes (of a three-eyed snake) and Devil's Marks are just as unique and evocative as 1s and 20s.

Oh, I know. It's just whenever dice probabilities come up I can't resist the opportunity to self-validate my long, long hours spent messing around with anydice (and my own custom calculation software)...

MukkTB

2013-03-16, 09:38 AM

It feels like this is being made too complicated. As a player I want my skill system to do a few things. First it should reflect native talent. Next it should model practice and experience with some degree of flexibility. A master blacksmith should be better at smithing than a generic blacksmith or a journeyman and all of them should be worlds ahead of someone who doesn't know anything about the craft. This degree of skill should be significant. Someone trained to a level of competence in a skill should autosucceed at simple tasks. Especially when there isn't significant pressure. Good training should have a significant impact on success. Third some allowance should be made for the situation.

The system as I understand it isn't quite that robust. Native skill is applied. Advantage and disadvantage do manage to cover situational modifiers, if just barely. However there isn't much room for varying levels of skills, and the skill modifiers are dwarfed by the size of the dice being rolled. Meh.

Silverbit

2013-03-16, 05:27 PM

Well, I don't know much about skill systems, but today I DM'd my first 5e game, and it went swimmingly. We also had an entirely new player, and he learned fast. The classes seemed balanced (ironically the wizard seemed underpowered), and everyone had fun. I consider the session a success. My one complaint is that fighters seem to be able to dish out a lot of damage compared to other classes, but frankly, if one class is going to be good it should be the fighter.

Seerow

2013-03-16, 05:42 PM

noparlpf

2013-03-16, 08:05 PM

king.com

2013-03-16, 09:03 PM

Whoa, imagine the dude whose job is dealing damage actually doing that. That is some crazy stuff, man.

Don't worry, they'll fix that problem in the next testing packet.

noparlpf

2013-03-16, 09:04 PM

Don't worry, they'll fix that problem in the next testing packet.

Whoa, whoa, don't be too optimistic.

Seerow

2013-03-16, 09:15 PM

I've heard rumors they're planning on overhauling MDD/MDB/Maneuvers for the next playtest packet, but the only thing I've seen is an article alluding to them changing up how spells work (making them more specific), and making it so you can choose to upgrade a maneuver instead of picking a new one (oh boy, because having 5 maneuvers was just too many options for the Fighter! Now we get to have the illusion of more options without having to actually come up with anything new for the Fighter to do!). Anyone know of anything besides the article I mentioned?

Silverbit

2013-03-17, 07:07 AM

Jacob.Tyr

2013-03-17, 10:00 AM

I was a little tired last night, so my meaning may have been a bit unclear: I approved of that fighter doing a lot of damage, that's what fighters are meant to do. Sorry if it seemed a lot like complaining.

Wizards have had their save vs suck spells reigned in sufficiently, but they are more capable of dealing damage than a fighter very easily. Just cast magic missile with every spell slot and they deal more damage and can't miss.

navar100

2013-03-17, 03:31 PM

obryn

2013-03-17, 03:58 PM

Don't worry, they'll fix that problem in the next testing packet.

Believe me, I'm on board with fighters not sacking.

But the whole "rocket tag" bit needs fixed. Badly.

-O

Seerow

2013-03-17, 07:02 PM

Your meaning is clear. Everyone else is joking but without the blue text.

I wasn't joking, and the meaning was clear. Read his post. It boils down effectively to "The Fighter is too strong because it deals a lot of damage. The Wizard feels weak because its damage isn't that great"

Now tell me honestly you can't imagine that exact same feedback message being posted in response to a 3.X playtest.

All of the problems of 3.X are still pretty much there in DDN. The Fighter now has a higher optimization floor, his damage goes up basically automatically rather than having to pick the correct feats to keep up in that regard. But he still fundamentally lacks out of combat capability, and his in combat options are ridiculously limited (the expertise dice system is a horrible way of covering up the fact that they cut the Fighter down from 11 bonus feats that could all be used at the same time down to 5 maneuvers which you need to choose between from round to round). The only thing he IS good at is raw damage. On the other extreme, Wizards managed to become even MORE versatile, being able to prepare a bunch of spells changing day to day and cast from those spontaneously. Spells may not be as powerful as in 3.5 yet, but all the signs are there of the same problems repeating themselves in terms of spell design. The Wizard may be weak at raw damage, but he's still the guy with all the utility options, and the new casting system makes him stronger than ever.

king.com

2013-03-17, 08:18 PM

All of the problems of 3.X are still pretty much there in DDN. The Fighter now has a higher optimization floor, his damage goes up basically automatically rather than having to pick the correct feats to keep up in that regard. But he still fundamentally lacks out of combat capability, and his in combat options are ridiculously limited (the expertise dice system is a horrible way of covering up the fact that they cut the Fighter down from 11 bonus feats that could all be used at the same time down to 5 maneuvers which you need to choose between from round to round). The only thing he IS good at is raw damage. On the other extreme, Wizards managed to become even MORE versatile, being able to prepare a bunch of spells changing day to day and cast from those spontaneously. Spells may not be as powerful as in 3.5 yet, but all the signs are there of the same problems repeating themselves in terms of spell design. The Wizard may be weak at raw damage, but he's still the guy with all the utility options, and the new casting system makes him stronger than ever.

The problem I see is that there doesn't seem to be away around making the same problems without going against some of their established fan base. Then again I believe the open testing is just going to cause more problems than solve them.

Anyway because the fight argument has been beaten to death, how about we switch topics to healing? The warlord got mentioned lately and I really like the idea of a healing class coming as a leadership based character. Thought the idea was definitely a good thing in 4th but it seems to be something thats talking down up in this class and edition? Thoughts?

Craft (Cheese)

2013-03-17, 08:41 PM

Anyway because the fight argument has been beaten to death, how about we switch topics to healing? The warlord got mentioned lately and I really like the idea of a healing class coming as a leadership based character. Thought the idea was definitely a good thing in 4th but it seems to be something thats talking down up in this class and edition? Thoughts?

I really liked the Warlord, but realistically I don't think he'll fit in with where they're going with 5E now. The Warlord class is basically the embodiment of everything certain folk hated about 4E martial characters, and WotC seems to be trying very hard with the Fighter/Monk/Barbarian to appease that crowd.

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-03-17, 08:49 PM

The problem I see is that there doesn't seem to be away around making the same problems without going against some of their established fan base.

Not necessarily. As has been mentioned many times before, things like LFQW, the fighter lacking all out-of-combat utility, casters being better fighters than the fighters are, and similar were either much less of a problem or nonexistent in AD&D. It's possible to make a game that feels and plays like D&D without having those problems, the issue is that the current crop of WotC devs can't figure out how to do that.

Anyway because the fight argument has been beaten to death, how about we switch topics to healing? The warlord got mentioned lately and I really like the idea of a healing class coming as a leadership based character. Thought the idea was definitely a good thing in 4th but it seems to be something thats talking down up in this class and edition? Thoughts?

I dislike warlord healing for two reasons. The first and most obvious is that nonmagical healing offends the sensibilities of those who play HP as consisting wholly or partly of physical damage, but that objection can be easily addressed by changing the healing to temporary HP and/or disallowing targeting unconscious characters, and in any case I don't particularly care to open that can of worms again.

The other reason, and the one that I feel is more important, is that giving the warlord the ability to heal makes it less interesting. In 3e, bards have offensive buffs and have good utility, clerics have defensive buffs and affliction removal, crusaders have action manipulation and their own combat skill, healers have nothing but healing, and so forth; all of them fill the "help the party do X better" role, and they all have some degree of healing, but they all do it differently and provide different play experiences both for the one playing the class and for the rest of the party.

The 4e devs interpreted the Leader role as the healer and buffer role, which meant that all of the above classes had the level of healing they could put out (and the way they healed) normalized to be quite similar, which meant that encounter design assumed a fairly standard level of healing and having more or fewer leaders in the party could make things too easy or too hard.

We already have plenty of divine classes for healing, as well as plenty of solutions for out-of-combat healing. We don't need the warlord to turn into yet another healer when it would be more interesting to give it its own niche; I want a warlord like the warblade, not like the cleric or the crusader.

Seerow

2013-03-17, 09:39 PM

I really liked the Warlord, but realistically I don't think he'll fit in with where they're going with 5E now. The Warlord class is basically the embodiment of everything certain folk hated about 4E martial characters, and WotC seems to be trying very hard with the Fighter/Monk/Barbarian to appease that crowd.

Honestly there is nothing in the Warlord that does not fit with the rules of DDN except it didn't exist pre-4e. That's literally the only hang up.

I've heard complaints that it is too tactical/focused on the grid, but I've yet to see anything that backs that up. Yes, you need to know who is able to attack who, and occasionally how far away people are... but you need to know this stuff for basic combat to happen. If you can handle "The fighter is within one standard movement of that enemy" in theater of the mind, you can handle the same thing when the Warlord says "I let the Fighter move up to the enemy".

The only other sticking point is Martial Healing, and frankly there's no argument against that existing either. In the DDN playtest docs HP is explicitly defined as an abstraction, which is all you need for non-magical healing to work. People who want to pretend like that isn't the case and house rule all hp is real wounds are free to ban the Warlord from their games, there is no reason to deny it a place in the rulebooks.

Honestly, the Barbarian and Monk have less reason to exist than the Warlord does.

I dislike warlord healing for two reasons. The first and most obvious is that nonmagical healing offends the sensibilities of those who play HP as consisting wholly or partly of physical damage, but that objection can be easily addressed by changing the healing to temporary HP and/or disallowing targeting unconscious characters, and in any case I don't particularly care to open that can of worms again.

Yeah I don't think that crowd is worth appeasing. HP is and always has been an abstraction, throughout all what, 30, 40 years the game has been around? Just because some people interpreted it as something totally different is not justification to remove the healing.

Temporary HP and the like are straight up inferior to regular healing, and not a substitute for actual healing, unless they had some weird things like "During a short rest you can convert temporary hp to real HP capped at your maximum" at which point why not just make it regular healing in the first place?

The other reason, and the one that I feel is more important, is that giving the warlord the ability to heal makes it less interesting. In 3e, bards have offensive buffs and have good utility, clerics have defensive buffs and affliction removal, crusaders have action manipulation and their own combat skill, healers have nothing but healing, and so forth; all of them fill the "help the party do X better" role, and they all have some degree of healing, but they all do it differently and provide different play experiences both for the one playing the class and for the rest of the party.

The 4e devs interpreted the Leader role as the healer and buffer role, which meant that all of the above classes had the level of healing they could put out (and the way they healed) normalized to be quite similar, which meant that encounter design assumed a fairly standard level of healing and having more or fewer leaders in the party could make things too easy or too hard.

We already have plenty of divine classes for healing, as well as plenty of solutions for out-of-combat healing. We don't need the warlord to turn into yet another healer when it would be more interesting to give it its own niche; I want a warlord like the warblade, not like the cleric or the crusader.

Here I can see some of your points, but disagree with the conclusion. Different classes having different amounts of healing, or different methods, is fine. Saying "We already have divine classes for healing, we don't need any others" is a cop-out in my eyes, because not every group wants a holy man following them around. There should be a variety of options to fill the same role in the group. If you can't sub a Warlord or Druid or Bard in place of the Cleric and still be able to work as effectively, then there is something wrong.

You even make my point for me in the second quoted paragraph. The game assumes a certain level of healing that it is balanced around. You can make the argument "that was just 4e! It doesn't have to be that way!" but it really does. If you design the game assuming no healing, and someone rolls in a cleric, now the game is completely non-threatening to that party who has access to healing. If you design the game assuming a cleric in the party, a party with a Warlord that has no healing will be running into trouble a lot more frequently. If the game is designed such that HP damage matters and it's not just rocket tag, then healing in combat is going to be important, and how it is handled needs to be consistent. You want to get rid of Warlord healing? Then make Cleric Healing take a couple of minutes so it can't go off mid combat, and balance the game around the lack of healing. Otherwise, it's not going to work.

That said, I'm not opposed to niches, and I think that having each leader more differentiated would be a good thing. But healing is not one of those things you can say "Okay we're dropping that". To borrow a WoW analogy, you have Paladin healers who drop big single target heals, Holy Priests that drop solid AoE/raid heals, Disc Priests that focus primarily on shields, with lesser (but still adequate) amounts of 'real' healing, Druids that focus on healing via HoT effects... and honestly no idea what the Shaman/Monk niches are, but you get the idea. Each one heals, but in a different manner that makes them different.

With D&D there's more room to make classes different beyond just that since you don't focus all of your time just on healing, and you generally have other stuff you can and should be doing. There's a convenient thread on the WotC forums breaking down the Warlord powers into a few distinct categories to give a feel for what they should be doing (Here (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/29807857/An_Analysis_of_Warlord_Powers?pg=1)), Clerics have their typical spells, with a focus on defensive buffs and bashing other peoples faces in. Bards' buffs have a more offensive bent, and tend to work on large groups at once. A Paladin might heal similar to how Crusaders worked, where attacking in melee grants a minor heal automatically, in addition to whatever else he was doing.

Anyway, I'm rambling here, but the point is we don't need to scrap non-divine healing just to make classes different. Healers are going to be necessary unless they make all healing strictly out of combat. There are plenty of ways to diversify the different leader-type classes without trying to pretend the role doesn't exist.

king.com

2013-03-17, 09:41 PM

Not necessarily. As has been mentioned many times before, things like LFQW, the fighter lacking all out-of-combat utility, casters being better fighters than the fighters are, and similar were either much less of a problem or nonexistent in AD&D. It's possible to make a game that feels and plays like D&D without having those problems, the issue is that the current crop of WotC devs can't figure out how to do that.

There are people publicly voicing the opinion that fighters should have the ability to hit things and then do damage as the extent of their ability. I'm more referring to the idea that there are people out there believing that. Then again I'm still preferring that the developers just go off and make a game and we'll be better off from a quality standpoint.

I dislike warlord healing for two reasons. The first and most obvious is that nonmagical healing offends the sensibilities of those who play HP as consisting wholly or partly of physical damage, but that objection can be easily addressed by changing the healing to temporary HP and/or disallowing targeting unconscious characters, and in any case I don't particularly care to open that can of worms again.

I can only believe crazy people are worried about healing in a system where being stabbed in the face with a knife is a minor inconvenience.

The other reason, and the one that I feel is more important, is that giving the warlord the ability to heal makes it less interesting. In 3e, bards have offensive buffs and have good utility, clerics have defensive buffs and affliction removal, crusaders have action manipulation and their own combat skill, healers have nothing but healing, and so forth; all of them fill the "help the party do X better" role, and they all have some degree of healing, but they all do it differently and provide different play experiences both for the one playing the class and for the rest of the party.

The 4e devs interpreted the Leader role as the healer and buffer role, which meant that all of the above classes had the level of healing they could put out (and the way they healed) normalized to be quite similar, which meant that encounter design assumed a fairly standard level of healing and having more or fewer leaders in the party could make things too easy or too hard.

We already have plenty of divine classes for healing, as well as plenty of solutions for out-of-combat healing. We don't need the warlord to turn into yet another healer when it would be more interesting to give it its own niche; I want a warlord like the warblade, not like the cleric or the crusader.

So whats wrong with putting a class about giving out buffs and temporary hit points as their primary method of 'healing'? Seems like this would be an unused niche that can be filled. Think of it as using tactics to prevent people getting hurt in the first place. A leader doesn't need to be the healer and buffer but this is one class that is actually designed to do that (atleast looking at 'core' stuff)

My biggest problem I think here is that I understand what a warlord is but both crusader and warblade sound like purely offense characters. Not anything that would be a leader or defensive class.

Anyway, I'm rambling here

Dont ever stop, they are awesome reads.

Craft (Cheese)

2013-03-17, 10:06 PM

So whats wrong with putting a class about giving out buffs and temporary hit points as their primary method of 'healing'? Seems like this would be an unused niche that can be filled.

4E artificer. Just sayin.

Honestly there is nothing in the Warlord that does not fit with the rules of DDN except it didn't exist pre-4e. That's literally the only hang up.

I was referring to the people who can't stand so-called "dissociated mechanics" like Fighter's Mark. The Warlord's powers are pretty much entirely dissociated, and you can't really fix this without drastically changing either the fluff of how Warlord powers work (yelling at people that somehow makes them able to run twice as fast or attack multiple times in a turn) or the crunch of the Warlord's battlefield abilities (enabling extra attacks and quick tactical repositioning).

The New Bruceski

2013-03-17, 10:08 PM

I still think rolling under is more elegant (if only because it's easy to tell if you succeed at a glance), plus it has a "tie" to an older edition, but I'm not going to fight you on this. EITHER would be preferable to me than the current system.

First rule of elegant system design: consistency. One of the best changes from ADND was making it "high rolls/plus numbers are always good." I never want to see the phrase "+1 penalty" ever again.

huttj509

2013-03-17, 10:27 PM

First rule of elegant system design: consistency. One of the best changes from ADND was making it "high rolls/plus numbers are always good." I never want to see the phrase "+1 penalty" ever again.

It's odd that percentile dice seem to be an exception. "18% chance, roll your d10s" would feel odd if you were going for 83 or above (00 is 100), as opposed to 18 or below.

I think part of it is that pulling out the percentiles is an uncommon occurrence. When they come out, it's for something special, and if that something special has different rules, it's not an issue.

huttj509

2013-03-17, 10:33 PM

I was referring to the people who can't stand so-called "dissociated mechanics" like Fighter's Mark. The Warlord's powers are pretty much entirely dissociated, and you can't really fix this without drastically changing either the fluff of how Warlord powers work (yelling at people that somehow makes them able to run twice as fast or attack multiple times in a turn) or the crunch of the Warlord's battlefield abilities (enabling extra attacks and quick tactical repositioning).

Fast movement: Spotting openings and opportunities for repositioning that are generally lost in the muddle of combat.

Extra attacks: Depends on if you already consider the "one attack per round" an abstraction, where in the hurly burly of combat most blows would be a combination of parries, maneuvering, feints, etc, many times even within 6 seconds. If you take the one attack as an abstraction, the warlord spotting an opening and notifying the striker is no problem.

If you don't consider it an abstraction, do you think the PCs "actually" take turns and sit there doing nothing waiting for 6 seconds so they can swing their sword again?

Ashdate

2013-03-17, 10:38 PM

I think importantly, good game design is matching what the player THINKS they should be doing to the action. Percentile dice are fun because they say "there are many outcomes that could have been, but this one is yours". We like rolling d6s for short swords and d12s for Greataxes because they "feel" right.

I personally think that telling someone "roll a d20 under your ability score" has an elegance that "roll a d20, add your ability score, and tell me if it exceeds 21" just doesn't have. But again, at this point I'll go for a better, less elegant way of resolving skill checks if it means getting a better skill system.

king.com

2013-03-17, 10:38 PM

4E artificer. Just sayin.

I was referring to the people who can't stand so-called "dissociated mechanics" like Fighter's Mark. The Warlord's powers are pretty much entirely dissociated, and you can't really fix this without drastically changing either the fluff of how Warlord powers work (yelling at people that somehow makes them able to run twice as fast or attack multiple times in a turn) or the crunch of the Warlord's battlefield abilities (enabling extra attacks and quick tactical repositioning).

I've not really played much 4ed so I dont really know what your talking about with the 4E artificer. I get the annoyance with dissociated mechanics but more from a perspective of "how do I use this and have it make sense outside of combat?" which (from what I have heard) isn't something that is used too often anyway. I mean, I don't think its a huge leap to say that hes shouting orders into combat to let people make better decisions. Roy seems a good example of a warlord honestly.

I personally think that telling someone "roll a d20 under your ability score" has an elegance that "roll a d20, add your ability score, and tell me if it exceeds 21" just doesn't have. But again, at this point I'll go for a better, less elegant way of resolving skill checks if it means getting a better skill system.

God yes this. It is so much easier to explain how a system works when it all comes down to : "see number on your sheet? If you roll your dice and its lower its good, if its higher its bad. "

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-17, 11:04 PM

God yes this. It is so much easier to explain how a system works when it all comes down to : "see number on your sheet? If you roll your dice and its lower its good, if its higher its bad. "

Except sometimes you don't, and sometimes larger numbers are bad. And sometimes not, and sometimes + is good and other times - is good.

Nope. Definatly more confusing then "Just roll high"

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-03-17, 11:08 PM

Yeah I don't think that crowd is worth appeasing. HP is and always has been an abstraction, throughout all what, 30, 40 years the game has been around? Just because some people interpreted it as something totally different is not justification to remove the healing.

I can only believe crazy people are worried about healing in a system where being stabbed in the face with a knife is a minor inconvenience.

HP has been at least partially physical damage since 1e, and that's how my group has always played it. HP is an abstraction, yes, but the people who say HP has always been completely incoherent and divorced from physical damage are incorrect:

Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness).
[...]
Each hit scored upon the character does only of small amount of actual physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points.

So while it makes sense for a warlord to heal people while they're still up, once they go unconscious, they're unconscious--they've suffered enough physical trauma and fatigue that no amount of drill sergeant-style "I didn't give you permission to die, maggot!" pep talks will get them back up and running.

Temporary HP and the like are straight up inferior to regular healing, and not a substitute for actual healing, unless they had some weird things like "During a short rest you can convert temporary hp to real HP capped at your maximum" at which point why not just make it regular healing in the first place?

I wasn't suggesting making the warlord a healer who uses temporary hit points, I was suggesting that he be differentiated from healers by letting him grant temporary hit points, so his "healing" is proactive and tactical rather than merely reactive. A warlord's pep talks, in my mind, should be able to give soldiers some morale bonuses and a temp HP cushion before the battle and keep them going until they finally collapse in exhaustion; making him a healer who can't do anything before battle but can inspire people who can't hear him is getting it backwards.

Here I can see some of your points, but disagree with the conclusion. Different classes having different amounts of healing, or different methods, is fine. Saying "We already have divine classes for healing, we don't need any others" is a cop-out in my eyes, because not every group wants a holy man following them around. There should be a variety of options to fill the same role in the group. If you can't sub a Warlord or Druid or Bard in place of the Cleric and still be able to work as effectively, then there is something wrong.

Note that I was talking about a primary healer position like the one 4e intended for its leader classes; bards and crusaders are good enough secondary healers, but they can't sustain a party on their own during combat unless there are more than one of them. If you want a primary healer, you can use a divine class for that, but my point is that you shouldn't need a primary healer because, the role isn't "party healer"--it's "party support," which includes but is not limited to healing.

Part of the warlord's concept, and what makes it different from the marshal, bard, crusader, warblade, etc., is that it is a tactician type whose healing rivals the cleric's. Dropping that into 5e as-is actually reinforces the "someone has to play the healer" problem, it doesn't solve it; it just means that your choices are priest vs. drill sergeant if you're the guy who gets stuck playing a role you don't want.

You even make my point for me in the second quoted paragraph. The game assumes a certain level of healing that it is balanced around.
[...]
You want to get rid of Warlord healing? Then make Cleric Healing take a couple of minutes so it can't go off mid combat, and balance the game around the lack of healing. Otherwise, it's not going to work.

You may recall that that's basically how 3e works if you go beyond the blaster/healer/sneak/beatstick party: combat healing is inefficient, patching up after combat is the norm, and you don't need a primary healer in the party. You can have characters with differing healing capabilities in the party, and you'll survive just fine, because healing isn't the be-all and end-all: bardic music and White Raven maneuvers improve your offense so you can kill enemies before they kill you, defensive buffs mitigate damage so you don't ever take it, and so forth. The end result is that your party doesn't die to HP damage, but healing isn't the only way to do that.

That said, I'm not opposed to niches, and I think that having each leader more differentiated would be a good thing. But healing is not one of those things you can say "Okay we're dropping that".

I'd say it could be, for the warlord. Looking at your link, the warlord has 54(!) healing powers, with 17 temporary HP powers, 16 condition removal powers, and 2 damage mitigation powers. Why is that? Why does he have to have more healing powers than the rest of those combined, when he could instead have more of the other three?

Of the four power types listed, healing is the type that least fits into the warlord theme, and I would be perfectly happy removing healing from the warlord in favor of giving him lots of damage mitigation and condition removal--as I said above, "support class" doesn't mean "healer," and without the core 4e constraint that leaders need some amount of healing I don't see why it should be retained in 5e when the other power categories work so much better.

king.com

2013-03-17, 11:25 PM

Except sometimes you don't, and sometimes larger numbers are bad. And sometimes not, and sometimes + is good and other times - is good.

Nope. Definatly more confusing then "Just roll high"

I'm entirely sure what your saying here. I was saying its a good thing to have one consistent method of determine success or fail.

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-17, 11:30 PM

I'm entirely sure what your saying here. I was saying its a good thing to have one consistent method of determine success or fail.

I agreed. Im just saying that 2e D&D wasn't consistent.

king.com

2013-03-17, 11:32 PM

I agreed. Im just saying that 2e D&D wasn't consistent.

Oh ok, comprehension fail I guess. Additionally I want to do everything in my power to have D&D Next to use percentile so we can keep the Shift + Number key joke going.

TuggyNE

2013-03-18, 03:24 AM

Oh ok, comprehension fail I guess. Additionally I want to do everything in my power to have D&D Next to use percentile so we can keep the Shift + Number key joke going.

The what? :smallconfused:

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-03-18, 03:50 AM

The what? :smallconfused:

People mocked 4e for being a money-grab by calling it $e. If 5e uses percentiles instead of d20s, it can be mocked by calling it %e.

TuggyNE

2013-03-18, 03:58 AM

People mocked 4e for being a money-grab by calling it $e. If 5e uses percentiles instead of d20s, it can be mocked by calling it %e.

Ah, I thought it might be something like that (based on the old M$ stuff), but since #e/@e/!e all mean nothing to me, I got confused.

king.com

2013-03-18, 04:19 AM

The what? :smallconfused:

This must have been mentioned before.

Shift + number key is how dnd works.

1 ! = Holy hell! D&D exists!
2 @ = AD&D is where its AT
3 # = 3rd ed is all about the numbers
4 $ = its all about the money
5 % = percentile dice all day evey' day

Frozen_Feet

2013-03-18, 04:46 AM

Ironically, I think 1st Ed AD&D might have used percentiledice the most.

MukkTB

2013-03-18, 05:41 AM

Morty

2013-03-18, 05:58 AM

Rhynn

2013-03-18, 07:08 AM

With regards to Warlord healing, I feel that there's no reason to stick to the old model which assumes that the party members will get clobbered and will need one member of the group to patch them up afterwards. The hit point system is a big mess that needs a thorough reworking instead of being unthinkingly taken for granted. Of course, that's not going to happen.

Yeah, I'd much rather see the whole "combat encounter" thinking deconstructed and dispelled, and a return to the old-school "let's think of creative ways to short-circuit this fight or at least take the enemy down without being hurt ourselves" model. (The notion that a fight isn't challenging to the PCs if they have to come up with a clever way to totally wreck it is ridiculous to me... surely that was the challenge?)

And maybe even the "monsters aren't for fighting unless we have to, they're for fooling, tricking, avoiding, or making a deal with" paradigm.

Frozen_Feet

2013-03-18, 07:24 AM

I agree with you, Rhynn. The thought of using "characters have x% chance to survive" as a baseline to determine what is "challenging" is not very sensible. "This encounter will deplete Y resources" is only slightly better.

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-18, 07:26 AM

I do agree. A system without a healer is a good idea. Then if there IS a healer allow for higher challenge levels.

Also the "Creative ways of Victory" I think is a bit too rose tinted in the glasses department.

I do agree with the necessity of creativity in a battle, however, the "Creativity" that often comes out of movies or RP encounters is often just dumb luck.

I do agree that a creative fight with thought is better then just padding. However, many of the "Old" memories was just the party getting slaughtered because defeating the enemy simply required more power.

Its much more difficult to create encounters based on creativity that the players can realisticaly do.

Kurald Galain

2013-03-18, 07:40 AM

Hell you could call 5E 'MARKET SHARE E: The Quest to Recover Lost Players.'
That works. Clearly, %E is all about regaining lost marketshare.

And maybe even the "monsters aren't for fighting unless we have to, they're for fooling, tricking, avoiding, or making a deal with" paradigm.
It strikes me as self-contradictory for a system to support both the "exploration and creativity" paradigm as well as the "you will fight about four groups of about five level-appropriate monsters in sequence to level up" paradigm. Both paradigms have their supporters, but they don't mesh well together.

Frozen_Feet

2013-03-18, 07:47 AM

Saph

2013-03-18, 07:50 AM

He's got a point though. It's the "Combat as Sport" vs "Combat as War" (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?317715-Very-Long-Combat-as-Sport-vs-Combat-as-War-a-Key-Difference-in-D-amp-D-Play-Styles) idea. The two give you very different game styles.

Kurald Galain

2013-03-18, 07:51 AM

They're hardly mutually exclusive. You can have both "defeat X monsters to level up" and "solve X puzzles" or "find X forgotten ruins" or "make X allies" etc.. It only takes broadening the view of what constitutes a "level appropriate encounter" or "defeating" an encounter.
The key difference is whether your game is all about combat, or not. A lot of game design decisions in (e.g.) 4E stem from the assumption that a typical adventurer will face three or four combats every day, and indeed that system has several issues if you don't. For instance, 4E's monster manuals embrace the view that monsters are only there to be fought, and that they will die within 3-4 rounds each; as a result, their statblocks tend not to mention much about ecosystem or out-of-combat abilities. Now compare with 2E's MM, which is basically the opposite.

Stray

2013-03-18, 09:46 AM

New Legend&Lore Article (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20130318)

Druid, Paladin, Ranger and more coming in next playtest packet this Wednesday.

So far this article makes me cautiously optimistic about new classes.

Morty

2013-03-18, 09:54 AM

The Ranger won't be shackled to the two weapon styles. Colour me surprised. Although it is amusing the way they talk about it as "a bit of a change" rather than something utterly obvious.

As for the HP issue... my point was less about encounter design - although it factors there as well - and more about the assumption inherent in D&D 3rd and 4th edition that the characters will lose a fair deal of hitpoints and will need the healer to expend resources in order to throw magic at them or give them a pep talk and give those points pack. To say nothing about the inconsistency as to just what those points are which causes arguments pretty regularily. I'd much rather see a system which focuses on avoiding damage - by soaking it up with your manly chest, blocking it with your armor, parrying, evading and so on - and healing magic being used to mitigate the results of failing to avoid damage. It's a little more exciting than a slog through poorly-defined hit points knowing that the healer will get them back after the fight anyway.

Oracle_Hunter

2013-03-18, 10:01 AM

I'm still waiting until they figure out what to do with the Fighter and Rogue.

Mearls, obviously, loves focusing on "magical" classes -- including making the Ranger "more magical." But the Fighter's been broken from Packet 1 and instead of doing anything with it (aside from reducing damage output) Mearls is just churning out new classes.

Will Fighter be a forgotten class again, like in 3.x? Better believe it!

Morty

2013-03-18, 10:11 AM

Oh, yeah. I wasn't particularily surprised to see that the Ranger will get more spellcasting. After all, if you don't know what to do (and WotC usually doesn't with D&DN) the obvious solution is to throw magic at the problem.

Seerow

2013-03-18, 10:15 AM

I'm really not happy with seeing the return of the swift action, but for casters only.

Stray

2013-03-18, 10:19 AM

I certainly hope that fighters get this new expertise dice as an addition to what they already had and not as a replacement of maneuvers. Ability to self buff, but having to sacrifice an action to change kind of buff could be an interesting tactical option combined with (more) maneuvers. Otherwise fighters get totally ripped off while monks are enjoying their former unique mechanic.

obryn

2013-03-18, 10:41 AM

5E might as well be $E:The Reboot. They're not making it because they have some brilliant new idea that needs implementing, or because the flawed and outdated old systems are beginning to fail to meet the needs of the customers. This is because 4E is not standing up well financially.
It's making $6m/year at a minimum right now with DDI, with pretty much no significant development costs, and its profits are bankrolling the D&D Next team.

the people who say HP has always been completely incoherent and divorced from physical damage are incorrect
I think there are arguments for and against every definition of HPs that you can come up with. The only one that's remotely consistent is, "Hit points are an abstract number that tells you how close you are to dying."

Re: Temp HPs... Temporary hit points are massively weaker than actual healing, in practice. In order for the Next Warlord to function as a "cleric replacement" they will either need actual healing, or else some crazy strong balancing mechanics. Temporary HPs (1) don't stack, (2) can easily be wasted if you give them to someone who doesn't need them - as opposed to healing, where it's obvious, (3) can't bring someone back from unconsciousness, (4) can't help between combats. DR is even worse than Temp HPs, in that it can easily be wasted on every attack, if the damage roll is lower than the resistance handed out.

(Also, Temp HPs are a really weird concept if you're sticking with "hit points are largely meat points." You don't avoid any of the verisimilitude issues, if that's important to you. I don't understand why temp HPs are okay for morale-based effects but actual HPs aren't.)

Oracle_Hunter

2013-03-18, 10:43 AM

It's making $6m/year at a minimum right now with DDI, with pretty much no significant development costs, and its profits are bankrolling the D&D Next team.
Link? :smallconfused:

Sebastrd

2013-03-18, 10:44 AM

Why are high stats a problem? First of all, 36 is the usual maximum (20 starting, +5 levels, +5 wishes/tome, +6 item), not 50, and secondly if characters start being superhuman around level 5-7 or so, then it makes sense that ability scores can get to phenomenal heights around level 20.

Why should characters be superhuman around level 5-7? Humanoid PCs should not be stronger than giants and titans. Such stats are only achievable in one version of D&D, and it happens to be the one that is broken mathematically.

In order:

1) The fact that it isn't finalized doesn't mean we can't talk about what's there now. The 4e previews came out with some absolutely crappy mechanics, and people on the forums complained about them and suggested better solutions, and lo and behold those problems were fixed in the release version.

That's what you do in a playtest. Things that might be considered annoying or rules-lawyerly in an actual game (pushing the boundaries, finding the weak points, interpreting the rules in different ways) are what you should be doing, and things that might be considered more fun in an actual game (handwaving things, houseruling problems, avoiding some mechanics) are what you should not be doing, as otherwise the problems in the game won't be addressed (or perhaps even found).

2) It's not "ignorance" when we all have a copy of the mechanics in hand (or on computer screen), and it's not "unwarranted speculation" when we can do basic math.

Poor choice of words then. Applying the rules inaccurately is disingenuous.

The Conan vs. commoner example is not playtesting, it's applying the rules inaccurately. The scenario would call for an opposed check, not a roll vs. a DC. And where exactly does it say that everyone must be within 20 points of each other regardless of level? If a rules packet does indeed state that, you have my apologies.

However, Mike Mearls did say that they purposely include mechanics they expect do be unpopular just to gauge the reaction.

3) Never been a reality simulator, huh? Interesting. I must have simply imagined the detailed disease rules, specific armor vs. specific weapon tables, and long monster ecology sections (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/gygaxian-naturalism.html) (among many other things) when I was playing 1e. Certainly, it wasn't completely accurate or realistic in plenty of areas, but it being a flawed simulation doesn't mean the parts of the rules dealing with in-game reality (as opposed to metagame things like levels and XP) weren't an attempt at a simulation.

No system that uses hit points can be referred to as a reality simulator.

Funny you say that, since it's all the previous editions that have functioning math and 5e that's trying to turn D&D into Scrabble. :smallamused:

I disagree. 3E did not have functional math, and it got worse with every level. Outside of the "sweet spot", it was completely broken.

obryn

2013-03-18, 10:45 AM

Will Fighter be a forgotten class again, like in 3.x? Better believe it!
It depends on how they handle it.

The concept of "expertise dice" as encounter-based mechanics is a fine one. They just have to be numerous and potent enough to matter. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the question is... Is the Next Fighter (1) the guy who spams sword attacks and breaks out an Expertise trick for a change, or (2) the guy who does awesome Expertise tricks regularly and only goes back to boring swording when he has to?

I'm hoping for #2, but frankly expecting to see #1.

-O

Zeful

2013-03-18, 10:45 AM

I'm really not happy with seeing the return of the swift action, but for casters only.

I... wat.

They managed to make an even worse implementation of the already terribly implemented Swift/Immediate action system? What is wrong with these people?

obryn

2013-03-18, 10:49 AM

Link? :smallconfused:
The DDI numbers were checked again over on ENWorld this past week, for like the dozenth time, because people who don't like 4e can't believe that people actually subscribe to it and that the subscription numbers are growing. Two former subscribers were checked; neither were in the registered DDI group anymore.

So with a minimum subscription cost of about $6/month for annual subscribers, and taking into account that only people with both DDI and forum accounts are counted in the numbers, 4e is making a minimum of around half a million dollars a month right now. And that's with the skeleton crew assigned to maintain the Dragon/Dungeon articles and update the DDI stuff.

-O

Seerow

2013-03-18, 10:51 AM

I... wat.

They managed to make an even worse implementation of the already terribly implemented Swift/Immediate action system? What is wrong with these people?

There's people out there defending this too, saying Fighters have their expertise dice which is the equivalent of a swift action for non-magical characters.

I really can't even follow their logic here. Especially if maneuvers don't get a MASSIVE overhaul in this next packet. The last several have had the Fighter with 4-5 maneuvers and the last two at least have had a grand total of 11 maneuvers to pick from. It's a disgrace.

Kurald Galain

2013-03-18, 11:48 AM

The DDI numbers were checked again over on ENWorld this past week,
So, yeah, link? :smallconfused:

obryn

2013-03-18, 11:51 AM

So, yeah, link? :smallconfused:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?p=5611853

(down thread somewhere around the 80+ area. Current sub numbers in post 73. 106 is where the test is proposed, and it follows from there. See 116 and 119. I'd post links if I weren't on a tablet.)

-O

Ashdate

2013-03-18, 11:59 AM

obryn

2013-03-18, 12:30 PM

DDI subscription always get overlooked, particularly when comparing Pathfinder "book" sales to 4e "book" sales. I was initially skeptical, but DDI is one of the things that makes DMing 4e a dream.

They'd be crazy not to create a 5e/DnDNext version.
Yep. I mean, all along, people have been wondering, "How can WotC afford to develop a game for two years without any major new releases other than reprints?" This is the answer - and it's not that 4e was a financial failure, so WotC's cutting their losses. It's that 4e is still bringing in boatloads of money that nobody really needs to work for. It's not the mythical $50m+ that Hasbro wants (really, you'd need a core book release for that; funny how that works), but any TTRPG publisher in the world would be besides themselves with glee over $6m+/year.

The reprints and PDF sales aren't being done as a stop-gap measure to keep the lights on, like some have suspected. In light of this data, it's clear what they are. They're an outreach project. Public relations. A way to remind lapsed players that WotC exists and that they're making this new D&D and to get them back into the habit of buying D&D stuff from them. And all of it has been fantastic press and elevated WotC in the eyes of the community. It was a great move, and dovetails well with WotC's own rather squishy design goals of reuniting the fan base.

So yes. They'd be foolish not to try and keep such a great revenue stream. They'll need it when they start planning for D&D Double-Next in 2017. :smallwink:

-O

Ashdate

2013-03-18, 12:39 PM

D&D Double-Next

We have a winner!

Kurald Galain

2013-03-18, 12:42 PM

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?p=5611853
Interesting.

Okay, so DDI has a revenue of $6M per year. Looking around for other figures, I note that Magic the Gathering is making $200M, and Hasbro as a whole is making $4300M (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/22100.html). I have been unable to find reliable figures for Paizo, but Steve Jackson games makes about $3M per year (based on 2007 figures). From Hasbro's perspective, then, that $6M strikes me as "nice but unimpressive".

More to the point, WOTC is clearly acting as if their D&D brand is in trouble, considering they've cancelled several books and product lines, and they clearly have lost marketshare to Paizo. It's good, then, that 4E is still producing revenue, because I seriously doubt Hasbro would be willing to invest in 5E otherwise.

Reverent-One

2013-03-18, 12:47 PM

So what you're saying is that D&D is a little fish in a big pond? Good to see you've at least made it to the year 2000 Kurald. :smalltongue:

obryn

2013-03-18, 12:54 PM

I have been unable to find reliable figures for Paizo
Probably comparable income-wise, but with higher production costs.

Steve Jackson games makes about $3M per year (based on 2007 figures). From Hasbro's perspective, then, that $6M strikes me as "nice but unimpressive".
That includes their board and card games, right? This is just DDI. If you include board games, minis games, licensing costs, book sales, (now) pdf sales, etc., WotC's is going to be substantially bigger.

More to the point, WOTC is clearly acting as if their D&D brand is in trouble, considering they've cancelled several books and product lines, and they clearly have lost marketshare to Paizo. It's good, then, that 4E is still producing revenue, because I seriously doubt Hasbro would be willing to invest in 5E otherwise.
I agree that Hasbro would not be willing to invest in a new game if 4e were not making money. It is making money, and therefore the edition treadmill is allowed to continue. If Next is successful - not if it fails, if it's successful - we'll see another edition in a few years, like clockwork, because that's the only time when serious revenue spikes will ever occur in the RPG business.

Edited to add: There is no way - no way whatsoever - that any edition five years old will ever make as much money as a new edition release. You can call that "trouble" or you can call that "the obvious way the edition treadmill works." 4e is in "trouble" now in exactly the way 3.5 was in "trouble" in 2007. The difference here is that they're not even bothering with new books, because they have a much smoother, less-expensive way to make money this time around.

-O

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-03-18, 12:58 PM

Spoilering the HP stuff since the topic has moved on:
I think there are arguments for and against every definition of HPs that you can come up with. The only one that's remotely consistent is, "Hit points are an abstract number that tells you how close you are to dying."

There may be different explanations that make more or less sense, but if the argument is over what HP are intended to be, it's been the case in every edition that HP are intended to be physical resilience plus the ability to reduce the deadliness of hits (whether that's luck, divine favor, reflexes, or something else for a given character is immaterial).

And that interpretation is fairly consistent. At low levels it's basically all meat and you die to one or two hits from a weapon, then you start picking up skill and are able to survive a few hits as you avoid the worst of them, then once you start becoming more superhuman you can reduce a bunch of incoming attacks to barely scratching you because you have skin like steel or Neo-like reflexes, and so forth. Cure light wounds heals about one wound on average, roughly half a level 1 commoner's hit points in 3e; cure moderate heals something that can bring them down to 1 HP, cure serious cures something that can take them down to the negatives and cure critical can bring them from near-dead to full health.

The partly-physical-wounds paradigm is only "an abstract number that tells you how close you are to dying" if you assume PCs are regular, normal humans all the way up to level 20, which hasn't been the case since at least BECMI and isn't really supported by the rest of the rules; if John McClane can survive a few dozen cuts and a few bullet grazes, it's not inconsistent (to me, at least) that a mid-level PC can do the same.

Re: Temp HPs... Temporary hit points are massively weaker than actual healing, in practice. In order for the Next Warlord to function as a "cleric replacement"

That's what I'm arguing--that it shouldn't be a cleric replacement, any more than a druid should be a cleric replacement. They're different classes that do different things, and 5e needs to get away from the idea that a primary healer is required in every party.

(Also, Temp HPs are a really weird concept if you're sticking with "hit points are largely meat points." You don't avoid any of the verisimilitude issues, if that's important to you. I don't understand why temp HPs are okay for morale-based effects but actual HPs aren't.)

It's the "adrenaline surge" aspect of it, where you can ignore the pain of some more wounds for a while. When temporary HP runs out, you're still left with a big gash that needs to be healed and you drop if you were almost unconscious before and took some more damage, whereas real healing via morale means you were unconscious and now you're fine and can keep going.

Why should characters be superhuman around level 5-7? Humanoid PCs should not be stronger than giants and titans. Such stats are only achievable in one version of D&D, and it happens to be the one that is broken mathematically.

It's not restricted to 3e. D&D characters start getting to be all-around superhuman by level 6ish in AD&D and 3e, in the former case explicitly because the benchmark for "average person" is 0th or 1st level and by low-mid level you can effortlessly defeat tons of those, in the latter case implicitly because HP, skills, and other stats let you do superhuman things by that level.

The Conan vs. commoner example is not playtesting, it's applying the rules inaccurately. The scenario would call for an opposed check, not a roll vs. a DC.

Which is why everyone has been talking about opposed checks this whole time.

And where exactly does it say that everyone must be within 20 points of each other regardless of level? If a rules packet does indeed state that, you have my apologies.

It's not in the rules packet because it's not a "rule" of the system--it's a design principle behind bounded accuracy, laid out in the dev description of what bounded accuracy is.

However, Mike Mearls did say that they purposely include mechanics they expect do be unpopular just to gauge the reaction.

I don't think they'd do that with mechanics like "the entire skill system." :smallamused:

No system that uses hit points can be referred to as a reality simulator.

That's why it's called a simulator. SimCity 2000 is designed to let you simulate a city, hence the name--but there are plenty of abstractions, random chances, fudge factors, etc. in the math when the real-life stuff they're simulating is too complex to be represented accurately. Further, in both games they continue the simulation into non-real-life territory (mid and high level for D&D, 50 years in the future for SimCity 2000) and plenty of things are no longer realistic...but they're still attempting to simulate another reality, even if it's not as close to our own as it was before.

I disagree. 3E did not have functional math, and it got worse with every level. Outside of the "sweet spot", it was completely broken.

"Completely broken" is overstating it by far. "Breakable," certainly, if PCs get access to things like +30 skill boosters or other powerful number-boosting magic items, but not broken: the math basically does what it's trying to do (makes everyone fragile and somewhat competent at low levels, makes everyone able to face armies without dying and be quite competent at mid-high levels), Now, there are some bad assumptions in system (e.g. not giving enough skill points to cover a lot of skills so the "0 ranks at 20th level" situation can happen, making the basic orc more lethal than normal at 1st level, etc.), but it's not the math that makes 3e break down at higher levels.

So, L&L. Reactions:

Regarding the druid, it's fairly common knowledge that the 3e caster + wild shape + companion setup makes the druid too versatile and powerful and that the class would need to be split up or at least make some of those things mutually exclusive. Let's see what they've done, shall we?

The druid in the packet gains wild shape at 1st level, along with the choice of a circle. The circle of the oak grants improved spellcasting, while the circle of the moon focuses on wild shape. The druid matches the cleric's healing in terms of spells, but also has more access to damaging spells.

Wild shape is a daily ability that allows a druid to turn into a specific, chosen form. For instance, a 1st-level druid can transform into a hound that has a high speed, low-light vision, and a superior ability to find hidden things. Its bite attack makes it a useful combatant.
Well, no animal companion, that's good, but wild shape being combat-viable from 1st level isn't going to help the "my class feature is better than your class" problem, considering what the fighter gets at 1st level (i.e. not much).

So, what's new with the paladin? Nothing. Smite, turn/rebuke undead, spells, mount, save bonus, detect alignment, no maneuvers or other fighter-y stuff. No surprise there, but it is somewhat surprising that they're going with Good paladins (not just LG) and adding a N paladin in core. Hopefully it'll turn out better than expected.

On to the ranger:

The ranger's favored enemy serves to give this class a set of special abilities that grant the class a set of static bonuses and advantages. This class feature illustrates the ranger's role as guardian of the wild.

The favored enemy bonuses are themed around specific opponents such as dragons or giants, but the mechanics are versatile enough that you can gain their benefits against a wide range of creatures. For instance, picking dragon as a favored enemy grants a ranger immunity to fear. This ability is useful against a dragon's fear aura, but is equally useful against undead, spellcasters, and so forth.
Excellent. WotC is taking the suggestion for favored enemy that people have been making for the past year or so. :smallamused: No fighting style restrictions, more magic...hopefully this ends up looking more like the AD&D ranger than the 3e Drizzt clone, but we'll see.

The fighter is getting expertise dice that are spent to gain a bonus to AC or attack rolls, along with other specific abilities. A die spent is gone until the fighter pauses for a moment to rest, with an action spent to rest allowing the fighter to regain a die.

:smallannoyed:

So we're going from X dice every round to X dice that can be refreshed one at a time with an action. Why am I not surprised that they're screwing the fighter over yet again?

Our default assumption is that if you fight with two weapons of the appropriate size and are proficient with both of them, you are on par with a two-handed weapon user or a sword and board character.

Well, that was their default assumption in 3e as well, and guess how that turned out? :smallwink:

The word of power mechanic has been renamed as the swift spell rule, allowing us to use it as necessary with other classes and clearing up confusion between the rule and spells such as power word stun.

What's this? Codifying keywords instead of using annoying circumlocutions? Gasp! Hopefully the martial classes will get swift action abilities as well, but I'm not holding my breath.

Overall? Not impressed. I'll have to see the packet to be sure, but it looks like they're taking even more steps backwards in this one.

Grod_The_Giant

2013-03-18, 01:13 PM

Regarding the druid, it's fairly common knowledge that the 3e caster + wild shape + companion setup makes the druid too versatile and powerful and that the class would need to be split up or at least make some of those things mutually exclusive. Let's see what they've done, shall we?

Well, no animal companion, that's good, but wild shape being combat-viable from 1st level isn't going to help the "my class feature is better than your class" problem, considering what the fighter gets at 1st level (i.e. not much).
I dunno, it sounded kind of like the Shapeshift variant from the PHB2, which was pretty solid.

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-03-18, 01:21 PM

I dunno, it sounded kind of like the Shapeshift variant from the PHB2, which was pretty solid.

I definitely liked shapeshift better than standard wild shape, but balance-wise the shapeshift variant was solid because it was weaker than the standard wild shape and wasn't more powerful than low-level martial characters. The druid they mentioned sounds like they have shapeshift plus a path that will improve it, and I have my doubts that the wild shape-focused druid will be at all balanced with a fighter.

Kurald Galain

2013-03-18, 01:25 PM

Edited to add: There is no way - no way whatsoever - that any edition five years old will ever make as much money as a new edition release. You can call that "trouble" or you can call that "the obvious way the edition treadmill works."

However, 4E is not just cancelling books now. It was cancelling books years ago, starting with the PHB Races series and the Foo Power 2 series. For 3E, the "mid-way revision" (aka 3.5) was highly successful, and for 4E, it was clearly not.

Anyway, I like what I hear of the 5E druid so far. The 4E druid, in my view, is a mistake: it can shapeshift into anything you want, but which form you pick has zero game effect whatsoever. 5E takes the opposite approach: you can shapeshift only into limited forms, but they each give you a distinctive game effect.

On the other hand, I don't like swift actions. I don't think a multitude of action types is necessary to gameplay. The only reason power words needed to exist was to clerics could cast a healing spell and attack in the same round; there's more elegant fixes for that.

obryn

2013-03-18, 01:47 PM

However, 4E is not just cancelling books now. It was cancelling books years ago, starting with the PHB Races series and the Foo Power 2 series. For 3E, the "mid-way revision" (aka 3.5) was highly successful, and for 4E, it was clearly not.
"Clearly not" being $6m/year? Sure. :smallbiggrin: I have deep doubts that 3.5 was making anywhere near this much post-2005 or so.

If books aren't your real money-maker, why focus on them? They don't necessarily need book sales right now, clearly. I would be stunned if 4e now, including DDI, is less profitable (net, not necessarily gross) than 3.5 was circa 2006 or so.

Edition revisions don't happen because people don't like your game or because the game was bad. They happen because they make absurd amounts of money, in TTRPG terms.

-O

Kurald Galain

2013-03-18, 01:55 PM

"Clearly not" being $6m/year? Sure. :smallbiggrin: I have deep doubts that 3.5 was making anywhere near this much post-2005 or so.
Oh, DDI is still doing fine. It's just that it's the earlier parts that are doing fine, and that the most recent books that were intended as a substitude didn't catch on as such. Compare this with 3.5, which mostly replaced 3.0, spawned a new series of popular splatbooks, and managed to keep the edition going for another five years.

obryn

2013-03-18, 02:09 PM

Oh, DDI is still doing fine. It's just that it's the earlier parts that are doing fine, and that the most recent books that were intended as a substitude didn't catch on as such. Compare this with 3.5, which mostly replaced 3.0, spawned a new series of popular splatbooks, and managed to keep the edition going for another five years.
I don't know why you're bringing your idiosyncratic views on Essentials into this. DDI is all of 4e; it's not one or the other. If DDI is successful, the line is successful, regardless of what books were released. It's all available in the builders, compendium, etc.

-O

Dienekes

2013-03-18, 02:16 PM

So, L&L. Reactions:

Regarding the druid, it's fairly common knowledge that the 3e caster + wild shape + companion setup makes the druid too versatile and powerful and that the class would need to be split up or at least make some of those things mutually exclusive. Let's see what they've done, shall we?

Well, no animal companion, that's good, but wild shape being combat-viable from 1st level isn't going to help the "my class feature is better than your class" problem, considering what the fighter gets at 1st level (i.e. not much).

I can see the druid maybe working if a few things happen. 1) Natural Spell doesn't exist, or at least not for quite a few levels. 2) The Fighter/Rogue is mathematically better than the wildshapes that the druid can get into in and out of combat respectively.

I'm hoping that at level 1 a Fighter can take on a dog, and also that a Rogue can find hidden thing better than the dog. Hoping. We'll see.

Excellent. WotC is taking the suggestion for favored enemy that people have been making for the past year or so. :smallamused: No fighting style restrictions, more magic...hopefully this ends up looking more like the AD&D ranger than the 3e Drizzt clone, but we'll see.

I agree and like everything but the magic bit. I've just never seen why Rangers are magic in the first place honestly. But whatever, I like the favored enemy changes a lot.

So we're going from X dice every round to X dice that can be refreshed one at a time with an action. Why am I not surprised that they're screwing the fighter over yet again?

I agree, having a mechanic to refresh die is ok so the Fighter doesn't spam his nova attack repeatedly. Hell, Warblades have the same thing. The only difference is Warblade maneuvers were good, while this article says they're taking away the Fighter's best maneuver and instead giving him bonuses to his AC and attack. Woohoo. Oh and instead of refreshing everything instead he can only refresh one die at a time. Yay.

Well, that was their default assumption in 3e as well, and guess how that turned out? :smallwink:

Actually I don't think so. I think the implication he's going for is that every martial character starts with the two-weapon fighting feat for free, and it only improves from there.

Overall? Not impressed. I'll have to see the packet to be sure, but it looks like they're taking even more steps backwards in this one.

On some things. Fighter looks worse. Druid could be a nice fix from 3e if they go about it right, ranger doesn't look too bad, and the paladin... Well honestly there's a paragraph talking about the paladin's 8th level ability and essentially calling it useless, but the oath thing might give them some flexibility.

MukkTB

2013-03-18, 02:59 PM

After that is the fighter even able to fill his role?

Rhynn

2013-03-18, 04:23 PM

It strikes me as self-contradictory for a system to support both the "exploration and creativity" paradigm as well as the "you will fight about four groups of about five level-appropriate monsters in sequence to level up" paradigm. Both paradigms have their supporters, but they don't mesh well together.

Well, obviously the one that only suits videogames needs to go, and the one that only works in a tabletop needs to stay. Or go by seniority, same result. Or go by which is obviously more fun, same result...

I do agree with the necessity of creativity in a battle, however, the "Creativity" that often comes out of movies or RP encounters is often just dumb luck.

:smallconfused:

No, it's about tactics. Ambushes, traps, running away, fooling or bribing monsters into fighting each other, etc.

Or just bring back "XP from treasure".

Oh please yes please. The worst thing AD&D 2E did was change that into an optional rule offhandedly mentioned in one sentence (not even in tables), from where it died an undeserved death of anonymity.

The key difference is whether your game is all about combat, or not. A lot of game design decisions in (e.g.) 4E stem from the assumption that a typical adventurer will face three or four combats every day, and indeed that system has several issues if you don't. For instance, 4E's monster manuals embrace the view that monsters are only there to be fought, and that they will die within 3-4 rounds each; as a result, their statblocks tend not to mention much about ecosystem or out-of-combat abilities. Now compare with 2E's MM, which is basically the opposite.

Fortunately, D&D 5E looks to be about 75% frantic backpedaling from 4E.

Axinian

2013-03-18, 05:03 PM

navar100

2013-03-18, 05:14 PM

1337 b4k4

2013-03-18, 05:32 PM

What is it about the fighter specifically that keeps that keeps getting them shafted? WoTC doesn't like giving martial characters nice things, I know that, but they do give them iconic okay things sometimes, like Favored Enemy or Rage. WoTC doesn't understand that non-casters need better stuff to be good, but they seem to actively hate the fighter specifically. Does anyone even know?

For one, until we see the new playtest, nothing says yet the fighter is getting nerfed. The L&L article states that the fighter is "getting" expertise dice that refresh after a rest. IIRC, in the most recent playtest, the maneuvers dice which melee classes share were renamed "martial damage dice", which suggests to me this is a new thing being added on to the fighter, perhaps as more powerful versions of the existing maneuvers.

That said, as we've sort of discussed before, the fighter tends to suck in new D&D because all of the fighter's cool niches that he used to occupy have been split off into their own classes.

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-18, 05:32 PM

:smallconfused:

No, it's about tactics. Ambushes, traps, running away, fooling or bribing monsters into fighting each other, etc.

Well I do that anyway with my planned encounters. I thought people meant stuff like Tomb Of Horrors or stupid stuff like that.

Oracle_Hunter

2013-03-18, 06:24 PM

On yet another fighter nerf:

What is it about the fighter specifically that keeps that keeps getting them shafted? WoTC doesn't like giving martial characters nice things, I know that, but they do give them iconic okay things sometimes, like Favored Enemy or Rage. WoTC doesn't understand that non-casters need better stuff to be good, but they seem to actively hate the fighter specifically. Does anyone even know?
I think the main problem is that the "designers" are having a hard time thinking about what a Fighter means.
You've seen this from WotC since 3.x (their class feature was feats for goodness sake!) but even TSR had a hard time pinning down the Fighter. Of course, back in the day, you saw very few Rangers and Paladins because it was damn hard to roll stats that qualified for them so it's not like they had to fight to keep their positions.

Anyhoo, WotC keeps seeing nice stuff to give more "defined" classes like Paladins, Rangers and Barbarians and as a result they are accidentally carving away the Fighter's niche. WotC doesn't mean to keep nerfing Fighters, but they aren't exactly interested in devoting time to them.

Additionally, Mearls is obviously of the "Casters are Cool" bent so he likes spending more time working on their Special Snowflake Class Design instead of focusing on more boring stuff like combat rules or balancing party composition. This, IMHO, is why we'll be seeing more "magical mundanes" (expect Monks to get some sort of spell system!) and fewer mundane heroes.

Dienekes

2013-03-18, 07:13 PM

For one, until we see the new playtest, nothing says yet the fighter is getting nerfed. The L&L article states that the fighter is "getting" expertise dice that refresh after a rest. IIRC, in the most recent playtest, the maneuvers dice which melee classes share were renamed "martial damage dice", which suggests to me this is a new thing being added on to the fighter, perhaps as more powerful versions of the existing maneuvers.

That said, as we've sort of discussed before, the fighter tends to suck in new D&D because all of the fighter's cool niches that he used to occupy have been split off into their own classes.

Hmm, it says that martial damage bonus is gone in the math section. I haven't played Next in awhile so I'm not certain if this means that what I think it means, that martial damage dice are out and replaced by this take an action to regain 1 die mechanic, or if martial damage dice and martial damage bonus are two different things.

obryn

2013-03-18, 07:21 PM

For one, until we see the new playtest, nothing says yet the fighter is getting nerfed. The L&L article states that the fighter is "getting" expertise dice that refresh after a rest.
Yep. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt until I see it, but using an Encounter-based refresh for the Fighter is a worthwhile basic idea. (However, I think missing a round to get back one "die" sounds unnecessarily punitive and think the Warblade from Bo9S's refresh would be fine.)

The question comes down, like I said before, to which thing the Fighter is...

(1) The swordy guy who swords stuff and oh yeah sometimes he has this weak thing he can do, I guess
...or...
(2) The highly-skilled warrior using a limited (but potent) system of maneuvers for their fighting and who only needs to go back to basic swording in rare circumstances.

Fortunately, D&D 5E looks to be about 75% frantic backpedaling from 4E.
The problem being, of course, that WotC need to court us 4e fans like they're courting everyone else. And right now, they're not doing a good job of it.

From my perspective, if the game doesn't respect its entire heritage - including 4e - I'm a lot less interested. I thought 4e had (and has!) flaws, but overall found it to be a huge improvement over 3.x in all the ways I wanted it to be. I don't need (or even want) Next to be 4.5, but if WotC doesn't respect D&D's entire heritage, including 4e, they've failed to meet their own stated design goals. And failed to keep me as a customer.

-O

Seerow

2013-03-18, 07:23 PM

Hmm, it says that martial damage bonus is gone in the math section. I haven't played Next in awhile so I'm not certain if this means that what I think it means, that martial damage dice are out and replaced by this take an action to regain 1 die mechanic, or if martial damage dice and martial damage bonus are two different things.

Martial Damage Bonus and Martial Damage Dice are two different things. The dice are the Xd6 that gets traded out for other maneuvers. The Damage Bonus is just a big flat bonus to damage warrior types start getting at higher levels to bump up their DPR.

1337 b4k4

2013-03-18, 07:34 PM

Yep. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt until I see it, but using an Encounter-based refresh for the Fighter is a worthwhile basic idea. (However, I think missing a round to get back one "die" sounds unnecessarily punitive and think the Warblade from Bo9S's refresh would be fine.)

Obviously we'll find out in a few days, but as always it depends on how it's done. If the short rest based maneuvers are sufficiently powerful enough to take the place of "encounter" powers, then certainly the option of surrendering a turn to get one back in the middle of an extended battle could lead to some interesting choices. Even more so if the martial damage dice stick around and allow for some form of a minor action on the spent turn.

Seerow

2013-03-18, 07:38 PM

Obviously we'll find out in a few days, but as always it depends on how it's done. If the short rest based maneuvers are sufficiently powerful enough to take the place of "encounter" powers, then certainly the option of surrendering a turn to get one back in the middle of an extended battle could lead to some interesting choices. Even more so if the martial damage dice stick around and allow for some form of a minor action on the spent turn.

2 to 1 odds we get the exact same list of 11 maneuvers already in the packet, more or less unchanged. Just now with more limited use.

CowardlyPaladin

2013-03-18, 08:01 PM

So um, I'm new to the idea of 5th edition and I don't want to wade through the whole thread, would anybody mind summing up the changes we know about thus far? I know that WOTC has claimed they are going to rely upon fan support.

Also isn't this a little soon for 5th edition, or did 4th not sell well? From my personal experience it broke the base even more than 3rd did but was that a market thing?

Anderlith

2013-03-18, 08:41 PM

So we have a new Legends & Lore, anyone else think the Paladin class is sounding weak?

The Ranger on the other hand is sounding really cool so far.

Mixed feelings :/

obryn

2013-03-18, 09:16 PM

Also isn't this a little soon for 5th edition, or did 4th not sell well? From my personal experience it broke the base even more than 3rd did but was that a market thing?
It's about right on schedule, frankly.

Expect D&D Post-Next in ... 2018 or 2019? ... as long as it does at least as well as 4e.

-O

king.com

2013-03-18, 09:29 PM

2 to 1 odds we get the exact same list of 11 maneuvers already in the packet, more or less unchanged. Just now with more limited use.

What if the entire packet is released with blue font?

Seerow

2013-03-18, 10:11 PM

What if the entire packet is released with blue font?

Then I'll at least get a laugh while facepalming.

king.com

2013-03-18, 10:58 PM

Then I'll at least get a laugh while facepalming.

I love how easy it is to come up with new thread titles.

FatR

2013-03-19, 01:14 AM

I think there are arguments for and against every definition of HPs that you can come up with. The only one that's remotely consistent is, "Hit points are an abstract number that tells you how close you are to dying."
No. The only definition HP that works at all is "Hit points are your literal ability to absorb physical harm". Everything else disregards countless grab/constrict/swallow/injection/area/setting your innards on fire attacks, and therefore does not work. The only reason any alternate explanations still are endlessly mulled over, is bad GMs being unwilling to part with plots unfit for DnD, even though falling from a cliff or being faced with a couple dozens of crossbow mooks objectively should not be a threat for people who fight dragons for a living.

FatR

2013-03-19, 02:21 AM

On yet another fighter nerf:

What is it about the fighter specifically that keeps that keeps getting them shafted?
As I said before, the very concept of Fighter leaves only two options: (1)shaft Fighter, (2)shaft every other class. "Fighting" is simply a completely invalid class niche in a game where every class is supposed to contribute equally in combat.

Yora

2013-03-19, 05:13 AM

And there is the main problem: Why are wizards and thieves supposed to be as good in combat as fighters?

obryn

2013-03-19, 08:01 AM

No. The only definition HP that works at all is "Hit points are your literal ability to absorb physical harm". Everything else disregards countless grab/constrict/swallow/injection/area/setting your innards on fire attacks, and therefore does not work. The only reason any alternate explanations still are endlessly mulled over, is bad GMs being unwilling to part with plots unfit for DnD, even though falling from a cliff or being faced with a couple dozens of crossbow mooks objectively should not be a threat for people who fight dragons for a living.
...and that they've been described as "not just meat" since the dawn of the game...

The whole bits of falling from cliffs and whatnot are a result of the hit point mechanic, not the other way around.

And there is the main problem: Why are wizards and thieves supposed to be as good in combat as fighters?
Why aren't they?

-O

1337 b4k4

2013-03-19, 08:01 AM

Why are wizards and thieves supposed to be as good in combat as fighters?

They aren't. Or they weren't intended to be early on. Unfortunately, as the years have gone by, the game has slowly focused more and more on combat (even as they've expanded the number of non-combat rules), culminating in 4e, where one of the major units of measure and time is the combat "encounter".

There are a number of reasons why this might have happened, but I think there are two that stand out:

1) D&D is the first game many players pick up, and good old fashioned slaughter fests are the easiest things to run as a new DM and one of the easiest things to get into as a new player. Combine this with teenage predisposition to action / combat scenarios in general and you get a generally new audience that demands combat as a focus. Then as these players grow and mature, I would bet by the time they start wanting to branch into other ways of telling the story, they're also growing tired of D&D in general, and seek other games and rules, leading to a much smaller active player base that seeks alternative focus from D&D.

2) The pop culture has changed. The literature that inspired D&D was largely exploratory and adventure stories, stories where the journey itself was as much of a focus as the protagonists were. Modern pop fantasy is largely heroic fantasy of the "chosen one" variety. Which isn't to say that there wasn't plenty of older "chosen one" fantasy, but that over the years, the focus has shifted.

Kurald Galain

2013-03-19, 08:38 AM

No. The only definition HP that works at all is "Hit points are your literal ability to absorb physical harm". Everything else disregards countless grab/constrict/swallow/injection/area/setting your innards on fire attacks, and therefore does not work.
Quoted for truth.

It's funny. In every edition prior to 4E, every rule is consistent with and points towards the straightforward interpretation of "HP indicate health, loss of HP indicates scratches or wounds". There's only a single throwaway line in the respective DMGs that says "but they may also be something else!" and for some reason some people find that one line more important than all the rest of the rules. Things like character morale and ability to dodge are clearly covered by other rules (e.g. morale by bonuses/penalties to hit, dodging by armor class and ref save).

Saph

2013-03-19, 08:44 AM

It's funny. In every edition prior to 4E, every rule is consistent with and points towards the straightforward interpretation of "HP indicate health, loss of HP indicates scratches or wounds".

That's how I've always run it too. If you look at virtually every on-hit effect in D&D, it's blatantly obvious that they assume the target is getting hit. Higher-level D&D characters are just flat-out superhuman, and that's how the system works.

Grod_The_Giant

2013-03-19, 09:29 AM

And there is the main problem: Why are wizards and thieves supposed to be as good in combat as fighters?
Because a large portion of the game-- time wise, if nothing else-- involves combat, and making players sit that out because they're playing noncombatants isn't good game design? Neither, for that matter, is making one class vastly better in one area (say, combat) and compensating by making it inferior in every other one.

obryn

2013-03-19, 09:38 AM

That's how I've always run it too. If you look at virtually every on-hit effect in D&D, it's blatantly obvious that they assume the target is getting hit. Higher-level D&D characters are just flat-out superhuman, and that's how the system works.
Getting hit, yes, but hit points in part represent the ability to turn strong blows into glancing ones. This is why you get more of them as you level up. And also why you suffer no ill effects from any of it until you actually drop.

In some other games - say, Earthdawn - it's a different story. Likewise, Savage Worlds with its wound systems.

As I mentioned above, I think you're mistaking the side effects of the hit point mechanics for their actual intended purpose. They're an abstraction introduced for speed and ease of play, and not intended as any kind of strict model of the world.

-O

Saph

2013-03-19, 09:53 AM

As I mentioned above, I think you're mistaking the side effects of the hit point mechanics for their actual intended purpose. They're an abstraction introduced for speed and ease of play, and not intended as any kind of strict model of the world.

Of course they're an abstraction. But they're still the rules, which means that regardless of how you spin them, they're what determines what actually happens in play.

obryn

2013-03-19, 10:08 AM

Of course they're an abstraction. But they're still the rules, which means that regardless of how you spin them, they're what determines what actually happens in play.
Yep, the rules determine what actually happens in play. As a 4e player, I'm pretty well versed in that, with "tripping" oozes and such. You have the game rules, which are set, and then build the narrative on top of the mechanics.

I don't see what's inconsistent about "hit points in part represent the ability to turn strong blows into glancing ones" in play, is the thing. You fall 200' and don't die; it's not because you have adamantium bones, it's because you're experienced and awesome enough to turn that incredibly deadly fall into a collection of bruises.

-O

Kurald Galain

2013-03-19, 10:12 AM

I don't see what's inconsistent about "hit points in part represent the ability to turn strong blows into glancing ones" in play,
"The ability to turn strong blows into glancing ones" is basically the same as "your literal ability to absorb physical harm".

Both of these work fine. However, some people think hit points also represent morale, fatigue, dodging ability, raw luck, and other ways to turn hits into misses. That interpretation leads to numerous contradictions.

Saph

2013-03-19, 10:21 AM

You fall 200' and don't die; it's not because you have adamantium bones, it's because you're experienced and awesome enough to turn that incredibly deadly fall into a collection of bruises.

It is physically impossible to hit a flat surface made out of solid metal at terminal velocity and survive, no matter how "experienced and awesome" you are. Yet a sufficiently high-level D&D character can do that reliably. It's not even something they train for, it's just a side effect of levelling up enough.

So yes, high-level D&D characters do have adamantine bones, or something equally tough. Because that's what most accurately models the crazy stuff they can survive.

obryn

2013-03-19, 10:24 AM

Both of these work fine. However, some people think hit points also represent morale, fatigue, dodging ability, raw luck, and other ways to turn hits into misses. That interpretation leads to numerous contradictions.
I think all of the above (morale, fatigue, etc.) are fine ways to minimize the effects of physical damage and modeled well by hit points, insofar as it can be said that hit points "model" anything at all. (Which I think is incredibly questionable.) None of them turn hits into actual misses, though, and it is not how it's generally narrated even in a game like I run where hit points are decidedly fluffy and vague.

("Benny, how did your Rogue take no damage from that fireball despite being in the center of the blast in an open room?" "Evasion." "But you're standing right in the middle of the blast, exactly where you were when it exploded." "Yeah, evasion. It missed me." :smallwink:)

Regardless, hit point debates are a very internet thing, as far as I'm concerned. I've never run into issues with any interpretation in actual play at the table.

It is physically impossible to hit a flat surface made out of solid metal at terminal velocity and survive, no matter how "experienced and awesome" you are. Yet a sufficiently high-level D&D character can do that reliably. It's not even something they train for, it's just a side effect of levelling up enough.

So yes, high-level D&D characters do have adamantine bones, or something equally tough. Because that's what most accurately models the crazy stuff they can survive.
So it's physically impossible to turn a deadly fall into no big deal through training and awesomeness. But it's not physically impossible to have adamantine bones.

Got it.

-O

Saph

2013-03-19, 10:31 AM

("Benny, how did your Rogue take no damage from that fireball despite being in the center of the blast in an open room?" "Evasion." "But you're standing right in the middle of the blast, exactly where you were when it exploded." "Yeah, evasion.")

It's called Roguespace. Didn't you know? :smalltongue:

Regardless, hit point debates are a very internet thing, as far as I'm concerned. I've never run into issues with any interpretation in actual play at the table.

I do think a lot of GMs have the problem of not understanding just how powerful D&D characters get after a certain level. This becomes an issue when they set very mundane challenges (climb a cliff, bypass a locked door) and are shocked when the party breezes past them. I've never had any issues with hit points, but I've seen several games run into problems for that reason.

Morty

2013-03-19, 10:42 AM

I do think a lot of GMs have the problem of not understanding just how powerful D&D characters get after a certain level. This becomes an issue when they set very mundane challenges (climb a cliff, bypass a locked door) and are shocked when the party breezes past them. I've never had any issues with hit points, but I've seen several games run into problems for that reason.

I don't think the game is adequately prepared for the PCs to get so powerful, to be honest. But it might just be my impression.
Personally, I think that the HP system as used by D&D is irredeemable, but since it's there to stay, I don't think there's much point discussing it.

obryn

2013-03-19, 10:50 AM

I do think a lot of GMs have the problem of not understanding just how powerful D&D characters get after a certain level. This becomes an issue when they set very mundane challenges (climb a cliff, bypass a locked door) and are shocked when the party breezes past them. I've never had any issues with hit points, but I've seen several games run into problems for that reason.
No, and I'm with you on that. If your DM doesn't respect how your characters have advanced and grown, it's a serious problem. I know in my own Dark Sun 4e game, I've been doing that a lot. There's few things more satisfying than facing the same monsters at 17th that you faced at 12th, and mowing them down.

My point is that this growth doesn't have to be modeled in one specific way - by stronger bones and thicker skin.

-O

Doug Lampert

2013-03-19, 11:32 AM

So it's physically impossible to turn a deadly fall into no big deal through training and awesomeness. But it's not physically impossible to have adamantine bones.

Got it.

-O
And of course, at least one person has experienced complete chute failure, landed on hard-packed earth, and lived (he did not walk away given the large number of broken bonues, by some odd "coincedence" the bones were shattered at all five of the contact points that a chutist is supposed to land on as he comes down for a safe impact).

And MULTIPLE people have walked away from falls out of airplanes with no chute at all when they landed on a tree. There's nothing that says he lands on hard metal except the GM's claim, there can be something there and he can get lucky enough to hit a random flumph or whatever.

And there's NOTHING that says a real person can't possibly survive impact on a hard surface at terminal velocity. On the contrary, there's evidence that while it's unlikely with sufficient skill at taking a fall it can be done.

Given the choice between "adamantine bones" and "my character is so amazingly bad-ass that he can actually survive things that ACTUAL REAL PEOPLE have survived" I'll take the second every day of the week. That's not even all that bad-ass, the fact that he can get up and keep fighting is mildly bad-ass, but still doesn't need adamantine bones, it needs a certain amount of that "luck, divine favor, and skill" that some people are senselessly trying to remove from HP.

Pre-4th edition healing is the ONLY spot in any of the rule sets that supported the "pure meat" interpretation in any significant way. Things like coup-de-grace rules are complete nonsense if HP are actually adamantine bones and steal cable muscles or something like that.

Jacob.Tyr

2013-03-19, 12:36 PM

So one of the things that bothered me about fighter is how damage dice work, you can either spend them or bank them and hope something happens where you can then use them defensively. Banking them doesn't really make sense when the alternative is using them to drop an enemy quicker, which is typically the better defensive strategy.

Proposed: MDD refresh at the end of your turn, not at the start. I feel like this makes the fighter actually closer to a "defender" in 4e terms, enemies will want to target him and distract him, forcing him to parry and defend so that he can't just blow a wad of damage during his next turn. The question then becomes "Do I defend myself and my allies, or hope we survive until the next turn so I can do some damage".

Friv

2013-03-19, 12:38 PM

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-03-19, 01:37 PM

I don't think the game is adequately prepared for the PCs to get so powerful, to be honest. But it might just be my impression.

The game is adequately prepared for the rise in PC power--counters to certain spells generally come at the same level as those spells, for instance--but often DMs are not. Experienced DMs like most on this forum generally know about exponential power growth, the superhumanity of PCs, etc., but it can take new DMs a while to reach that point and if they go into things expecting to be playing LotR at 20th level then as Saph said they can be surprised mid-game when things don't meet their expectations.

Pre-4th edition healing is the ONLY spot in any of the rule sets that supported the "pure meat" interpretation in any significant way. Things like coup-de-grace rules are complete nonsense if HP are actually adamantine bones and steal cable muscles or something like that.

The "pure meat" interpretation doesn't mean that high-level PCs are Wolverine, it just means that a hit is a hit and damage is damage, as opposed to Schrodinger's Wounds or "I'm explaining loss of HP by saying he missed me but somehow still damaged me--don't look too closely at that."

Take everyone's favorite standard example, John McClane. McClane was hit with bullets, walked on broken glass, dropped from heights, etc. and kept on going with just a few bandages. A normal (low level) person would get hit in the chest and die, or bleed out from all the glass wounds, or break quite a few bones when hanging from the fire hose. A mid-level D&D character might be "lucky" enough to avoid those shards of glass hitting major blood vessels, or might be able to ignore the "fatigue" of being yanked around, but that luck doesn't translate into those attacks missing and that fatigue doesn't mean he can take a breather and be healed of his wounds--he can cope with the aftereffects of the wounds, but he still takes them.

So when someone casts a cure X wounds spell on John McHighLevelPC, he might only have sustained bruises and scratches where a weaker character would have died, and he may not be taking penalties from his injuries (aside from maybe some circumstance penalties on Diplomacy for looking like a dragon's chew toy :smallwink:), but under the standard interpretation of HP that spell is actually curing his wounds rather than abstractly restoring morale or something.

RedWarlock

2013-03-19, 02:47 PM

I've said this before elsewhere:

My preferred interpretation of HP is of pain, and how you deal with it. There may be actual injuries causing it, or (in the 4e case) it might be psychic or emotional trauma, but it's all summed up as how you deal with the pain. Once you hit 0, it becomes too much and you collapse. (which was also where massive damage rules fit nicely, because a sudden shock of damage to you could well do you in)

Morty

2013-03-19, 02:48 PM

The game is adequately prepared for the rise in PC power--counters to certain spells generally come at the same level as those spells, for instance--but often DMs are not. Experienced DMs like most on this forum generally know about exponential power growth, the superhumanity of PCs, etc., but it can take new DMs a while to reach that point and if they go into things expecting to be playing LotR at 20th level then as Saph said they can be surprised mid-game when things don't meet their expectations.

Yes, because the instructions, guidelines and flavor in the game don't prepare them for this idea, which is what I meant.

With regards to HP, I think that the main problem is how horribly bloated they are in 3.x. It doesn't even take a high-level character to survive being shot at with twenty crossbows in the middle of an open field while standing still. And it gets worse. Superhuman is fine; hit points in 3rd edition D&D are just absurd. That's not the only problem with them, of course - but probably the biggest one.

Kurald Galain

2013-03-19, 03:10 PM

My preferred interpretation of HP is of pain, and how you deal with it. There may be actual injuries causing it, or (in the 4e case) it might be psychic or emotional trauma, but it's all summed up as how you deal with the pain.

Sure. Now please explain how emotional trauma can cause ongoing fire damage if you weren't actually hit by the attack :)

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-19, 03:44 PM

1337 b4k4

2013-03-19, 04:06 PM

With regards to HP, I think that the main problem is how horribly bloated they are in 3.x. It doesn't even take a high-level character to survive being shot at with twenty crossbows in the middle of an open field while standing still. And it gets worse. Superhuman is fine; hit points in 3rd edition D&D are just absurd.

Actually, it's not so much the increased HP, so much as (like most other problems with 3.x) it's the removal of all the previously existing checks on PC power.

Let's take a BECMI fighter (1d8 HP + CON bonus) as an example. Let's assume max HP and an 18 CON for max bonus, giving us 99HP at level 9 (8 HP + 3 CON/level). In general, a human body in free fall reaches 99% of terminal velocity in 15 seconds (per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity), which gives us a falling distance of ~3618ft (http://www.gravitycalc.com/). Damage for falling was originally a flat 1d6 per 10' of falling (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2011/11/articles-of-dragon-falling-damage.html). This means, even at a minimum falling damage of 1 / 10', your 9th level fighter isn't surviving a terminal velocity impact with the ground. It's worth noting even if we scale this down to a mere 50% of terminal velocity (3 seconds), it's still ~144 feet, or one dead fighter.

Now let's take a 3.5 fighter, 1d10 HD with +4 from an 18 CON. At max that's 126 HP at 9th level. Per the SRD, it's the same 1d6 / 10' falling. What makes it possible for the 3.5 fighter to survive is that they stupidly capped falling damage at 20d6, meaning at a minimum, he walks away with a mere 20 HP lost, and at most is nearly dead with 6 HP remaining. Without the ill advised damage cap, even a 50% terminal velocity free fall will kill your fighter D-E-D dead.

It's also worth noting that in older editions somewhere around 9th level characters stop gaining HD and simply get an additional +2 or 3 HP, where as in 3.x they continue to gain

Talakeal

2013-03-19, 04:06 PM

Somebody made a FANTASTIC HP metaphor once:

When you hear that somebody survived being shot 7 times you don't assume that he got shot in the head, nor do you assume that they missed 7 times.

You asume that some grazed the person, and one hit him in the leg or such.

Though it does begin to break apart at very basic things. Like being submerged in Lava. But eh. Deal with it.

I dislike HP bloat, but for other reasons.

Yeah, the submerged in lava thing is a stupid 3.5ism. In earlier editions it was called out as auto death, and in real life it is all but impossible due to the high viscosity and density of the lava preventing submersion.

I suppose you could burrow into it or have it dropped on you, but in either case the prolngued contact or weight would kill you long before submersion.

Waspinator

2013-03-19, 04:11 PM

Not all lava is the same. Density is going to depend on the type of rock. But yeah, it's going to probably be hard to sink in it.

Axinian

2013-03-19, 04:16 PM

Sure. Now please explain how emotional trauma can cause ongoing fire damage if you weren't actually hit by the attack :)

Residual heat? You don't need to actually be hit by the fire to get burned. Ever tried spinning glass? Doesn't actually have a significant impact on your health, but it hurts like the 9 Hells.

Kurald Galain

2013-03-19, 04:17 PM

Though it does begin to break apart at very basic things. Like being submerged in Lava. But eh. Deal with it.

In certain 4E modules, lava counts as difficult terrain that deals 15 ongoing fire damage if you step on it :smallcool:

navar100

2013-03-19, 05:15 PM

Morty

2013-03-19, 05:19 PM

People are upset someone can fall 100 ft and survive yet have no problem with someone bringing forth a ball of fire from bat poo. Certainly it could be the bat poo user who does the falling, but what makes falling a Must Use real world physics but bat poo can be made to combust Just Because?

For purposes of the game, if Fighter McFighty falls 100 ft and survives, I'm perfectly fine with that result. He's just that bad ass he can take it. It is entirely irrelevant to me how many people in the real world would die just from falling 30 ft. You need to be able to separate fantasy from reality, or are we going back to the 1950's and (apocryphal?) stories of children dieing jumping out of windows like George Reeves as Superman, who ironically and tragically was not bullet proof himself like Superman.

Not everything is about fighters vs. wizards. And believe it or not, there's a hell of a lot of middle ground between the HP bloat 3rd edition D&D has and strict realism. Maybe it would be useful if you looked at things from more than one perspective every once in a while.

Grod_The_Giant

2013-03-19, 05:56 PM

1337 b4k4

2013-03-19, 06:12 PM

People are upset someone can fall 100 ft and survive yet have no problem with someone bringing forth a ball of fire from bat poo. Certainly it could be the bat poo user who does the falling, but what makes falling a Must Use real world physics but bat poo can be made to combust Just Because?

Since Morty already covered your erroneous Fighter v Wizard angle, allow me to introduce you to something called "suspension of disbelief", and more specifically "cognitive estrangement": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief

In general the audience of any given work is much more able and willing to suspend disbelief for things of extreme fantasy and wonderment, especially those things with which we would have no direct experience. Falling is something many people have direct familiarity with, and is something that is relatively mundane. Combine this with the fact that a standard adventure trope is the inherent dange in slipping and falling to your death ("fly you fools"), and the fact that the system for modeling such adventures does not allow for (and indeed explicitly prevents) the execution of that trope and you have an audience which has an issue with the falling rules, but not an issue with igniting bat poop.

Additionally, as a sort of cultural meme, we understand the rules of how "magic" works, and the game sufficiently approximates those rules, at least to the satisfaction of the audience. We also know how falling works and the game fails to sufficiently model that to our expectations.

king.com

2013-03-19, 06:22 PM

Not everything is about fighters vs. wizards.

Thats another great title!

Anyway what are the actual benefits of HP bloat in a system that ultimately becomes so heavily invested in damage reduction and elemental immunity? Is there actually a solid and clear benefit for it rising so much in the first place?

1337 b4k4

2013-03-19, 07:08 PM

Anyway what are the actual benefits of HP bloat in a system that ultimately becomes so heavily invested in damage reduction and elemental immunity? Is there actually a solid and clear benefit for it rising so much in the first place?

Well the primary and initial benefit is better PC survivabilty, a goal which is pretty well accomplished. If you look at the relative survivabilty, you find that 1st level in 2e, 3e and 4e correspond roughly to 2nd, 4th and 6th levels in 0e. Unfortunately, usually HP inflation is coupled with stat, defense and damage inflation leading to mostly a bunch of bigger numbers, which at high levels either leads to a rocket tag situation (3e) or "super kobolds" that conveniently have not taken over all of kobold kind (4e, or more especially noticeable in old CRPGs where higher level enemies we the same thing with a number and pallet swap). In theory, some of these issues (namely super kobolds) a addressed by "bounded accuracy", while the general problem of increased survivabilty without number inflation has to be addressed with a reworking of the math. They basically need to do all the inflation they plan on doing and then scale it all back down to reasonable numbers.

MukkTB

2013-03-19, 07:11 PM

Draz74

2013-03-19, 08:02 PM

To be honest, if you wanted "realism" with the quoteys then I think you'd want damage and HP to remain relatively similar over levels, but have AC and Attack Bonus go up with level. That way you can feel that as people level they pick up skill. I don't think that would make for good gameplay though.

Call of Cthulhu is kinda like this. It ends up being quite swingy -- a PC who's been doing great otherwise can die very suddenly to a couple of lucky hits. Which, when you think about it, is kinda realistic.

Anderlith

2013-03-19, 08:06 PM

This is why we need Wounds & Vigor from Starwars Saga.
Allow VERY FEW abilities allow for damaging Wounds & let Vigor stand in for the rough & tumble glancing blows.

Things like falling, lava, bleed effects, coup de grace's & vorpal weapons damage Wounds, maybe a few spells (Power Word Kill & Disintegrate probably)

Nizaris

2013-03-19, 09:25 PM

I've always been a fan of Wounds & Vigor. It would even allow people to get their martial healing in a way that could potentially make everyone happy. Magical healing affects wounds and vigor while non-magical heals heal just vigor. Since most damage would be vigor anyways, a martial healer feels important while magical healers still have better healing capabilities.

Current is same as previous editions, Con mod + HD / level. Standard W&V rules is Con mod + HD / Level Vitality and Con score Wounds. It would effectively double (or triple) the HP of starting characters. Vitality could be replenished normally with hit dice during rests while Wounds heal 1 point per HD spent. It would add to the gritty realism some are wanting by slowing healing for long rests.

navar100

2013-03-19, 09:48 PM

Since Morty already covered your erroneous Fighter v Wizard angle, allow me to introduce you to something called "suspension of disbelief", and more specifically "cognitive estrangement": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief

In general the audience of any given work is much more able and willing to suspend disbelief for things of extreme fantasy and wonderment, especially those things with which we would have no direct experience. Falling is something many people have direct familiarity with, and is something that is relatively mundane. Combine this with the fact that a standard adventure trope is the inherent dange in slipping and falling to your death ("fly you fools"), and the fact that the system for modeling such adventures does not allow for (and indeed explicitly prevents) the execution of that trope and you have an audience which has an issue with the falling rules, but not an issue with igniting bat poop.

Additionally, as a sort of cultural meme, we understand the rules of how "magic" works, and the game sufficiently approximates those rules, at least to the satisfaction of the audience. We also know how falling works and the game fails to sufficiently model that to our expectations.

Yeah, I know, verisimilitude. Within the context of the game, someone falling 100 ft and not dieing still does not bother me. Just like I can accept the dead walking, a laser beam can blow up a planet, and the ability to scramble your atoms and reassemble them thousands of miles away. It's an awesome thing high level heroes get to do.

Frozen_Feet

2013-03-19, 10:28 PM

Oracle_Hunter

2013-03-19, 10:30 PM

Considering how viscous lava is, and the fact that it is "only" 700 to 1200 degrees Celsius hot, it should be possible to run over it wearing boots made of steel or other highly heat resistant material. I think I've even seen pictures of someone standing on lava.
You usually die of breathing the superheated air first though.

But y'know, Convection Schmonvection (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConvectionSchmonvection) :smallcool:

RedWarlock

2013-03-19, 10:36 PM

Sure. Now please explain how emotional trauma can cause ongoing fire damage if you weren't actually hit by the attack :)

..What? Are you serious? I'm trying to not go into a ban-inducing rant here, but please explain how you got from point A in my text, which you quoted, to that.

Let me try to explain, and please if you're just trying to be cute and draw a false parallel, please disregard. That #%& don't fly here, not after the kind of day I've been having. (Today, I had my last day of an awesome, amazing-pay job that basically had to cut me due to department budget cuts, AND my leg has been giving me trouble for the last few weeks, exacerbated by the fact that I just had a heavy-lifting leg day at the gym, which made it feel worse than usual. I was limping through the supermarket afterwards, leaning heavily into the cart.)

It's about tolerance to pain, as a whole, by the person. To use the emotional trauma angle, imagine someone who just watched their entire family, village, and their lover die before their eyes. (this is the 'emotional' or psychic damage) Now they're in a fight with a separate attacker, who is landing blows on them. Normally, these small strikes and scrapes are easily ignored, but they've just been dealt such a massive trauma, that their senses flare up that much easier. Every strike feels like it's piercing right to the heart, and they can't ignore the weight of the prior events. Eventually, the suffering is too great, and the body can't resist any more, because their emotional torment has weakened them so greatly, and they can't really go on with this any more. They collapse in pain, (dying at negative HP) and lose consciousness.

Now instead of this actual event of watching the loved ones die, this was all the residual effect of a magical or telepathic attack, something that creating this imagery in your head, purely to mess with you. Have you ever had a nightmare that rattled you to the core? Even though you know it's not real, it seems so realistic, so threatening, disconcerting even, that you feel vulnerable. And then, in going to get a glass of water, to calm your nerves, have you stubbed your toe? Normally, it'd be a minor annoyance, but because you're already in such a distressed emotional state, you react all the more severely to the pain.

That is what psychic damage is. That's why it detracts from the whole of your HP, because it puts you that much closer to the edge, where your mind and body can't deal with the pain and suffering, and you break down, emotionally or physically.

Stubbazubba

2013-03-19, 10:37 PM

I think Wounds & Vigor (was it Vitality before that?) would be great; it would both be more dramatic than HP and model what we think of as heroic resistance better.

Frozen_Feet

2013-03-19, 10:48 PM

Or noxious gases, yes, but it's not a sure thing. Air is a good insulator, you can have something extremely hot at your feet without your head feeling a thing. Combine with insulating clothing and armor, and I could see someone taking a short run across it.

And let's be fair to 3.x. rules here, low-level character do die off pretty fast. You're taking 1d6 from the air, 1d6 from your swag catching fire, and 2d6 per round if you touch the damn thing - 14 damage on average, within the first 6 seconds or so. In one minute, we're looking at potential 10d6 + 20d6, average 95 points of damage. Even a high-level character without some serious resistance to fire is not going to survive for long.

kieza

2013-03-20, 12:16 AM

With regards to HP, I think that the main problem is how horribly bloated they are in 3.x. It doesn't even take a high-level character to survive being shot at with twenty crossbows in the middle of an open field while standing still. And it gets worse. Superhuman is fine; hit points in 3rd edition D&D are just absurd. That's not the only problem with them, of course - but probably the biggest one.

This is one of the restons that I'm slowly coming to appreciate systems with non-numeric advancement. (i.e. as your character gains power, it doesn't come in the form of increasing bonuses.) I'd love to see an edition of D&D where hit points/attack bonuses/defenses/skills advance only slowly, if at all, and you instead gain power by learning new tricks and refining old ones.

Example: Instead of gaining higher attack and damage bonuses as he levels, a Fighter develops a progressively more specialized fighting style. He starts out at level one, having chosen Improved Bull Rush. Later, he takes a feat which knocks enemies off balance when he forces them to move: he now gains a bonus to attack rolls against targets that he Bull Rushes. Next, he takes a feat that allows him to knock targets prone if he forces them to move into a solid object...and so on and so forth. He retains the same base accuracy, damage, defenses, and HP, but he becomes more powerful by gaining conditional bonuses that key off of each other.

I personally think it's a far better design than bounded accuracy. Sadly, numeric advancement is one of the sacred cows of D&D, so I'll probably be forced to homebrew something like this.

obryn

2013-03-20, 08:31 AM

This is one of the restons that I'm slowly coming to appreciate systems with non-numeric advancement. (i.e. as your character gains power, it doesn't come in the form of increasing bonuses.) I'd love to see an edition of D&D where hit points/attack bonuses/defenses/skills advance only slowly, if at all, and you instead gain power by learning new tricks and refining old ones.
http://www.dungeon-world.com/ :smallbiggrin:

(Or here (http://book.dwgazetteer.com/) if you want to check out the rules, especially the ones for classes.)

-O

Morty

2013-03-20, 08:31 AM

3.5 compensates for HP bloat with damage bloat, though. Even at middle-high levels, in my experience, it's possible for primary melee types to go down after just a few good hits. I remember being much more annoyed by 4e health-to-damage ratios.

The sources of damage that don't manage to scale up get left behind as jokes, though.

Thats another great title!

Seriously. It seems that everything eventually comes down to fighters vs. wizards somehow.

This is one of the restons that I'm slowly coming to appreciate systems with non-numeric advancement. (i.e. as your character gains power, it doesn't come in the form of increasing bonuses.) I'd love to see an edition of D&D where hit points/attack bonuses/defenses/skills advance only slowly, if at all, and you instead gain power by learning new tricks and refining old ones.

Example: Instead of gaining higher attack and damage bonuses as he levels, a Fighter develops a progressively more specialized fighting style. He starts out at level one, having chosen Improved Bull Rush. Later, he takes a feat which knocks enemies off balance when he forces them to move: he now gains a bonus to attack rolls against targets that he Bull Rushes. Next, he takes a feat that allows him to knock targets prone if he forces them to move into a solid object...and so on and so forth. He retains the same base accuracy, damage, defenses, and HP, but he becomes more powerful by gaining conditional bonuses that key off of each other.

I personally think it's a far better design than bounded accuracy. Sadly, numeric advancement is one of the sacred cows of D&D, so I'll probably be forced to homebrew something like this.

I agree, and it would solve a lot of problems. But like you said, it's not going to happen in D&D Next.

Doug Lampert

2013-03-20, 11:12 AM

In certain 4E modules, lava counts as difficult terrain that deals 15 ongoing fire damage if you step on it :smallcool:

Way too deadly for lots of real lava. People can walk on lava without harm, it takes thick boots and you're fine.

I once looked on the web for falling into lava, found only one reference, and that was a site saying that two people had done so in Hawaii when walking across it and both lived with no significant harm.

The outer surface of most flowing lava isn't that hot because lava is slow flowing, viscus, and a lousy heat conductor. (Note: not that hot in this case is still hundreds of degrees, so if those people weren't wearing heavy clothes I'd have expected 3rd degree burns, but they appearently weren't hurt and I could find no cases of anyone who was.)

This is also why lava forms tubes, the outer surface cools while the inside stays hot because the lava isn't well mixed and is a good insulator.

Considering how viscous lava is, and the fact that it is "only" 700 to 1200 degrees Celsius hot, it should be possible to run over it wearing boots made of steel or other highly heat resistant material. I think I've even seen pictures of someone standing on lava.

You almost certainly have, TV documentaries on volcanoes or geology occassionally have this sort of thing, almost always filmed in Hawaii since that's where you can find lava flows without deadly ash falls or other nastyness that actually is deadly going on at the same time.

Edited: Steel outer surface might be good, but steel is a good heat conductor which is bad in this case, rubber and lead leather strike me as better, although they'd be damaged at the point of contact by the heat.

Edited again: I just looked at this 5 hours later and noticed that I'd somehow typoed leather (a good thermal insulator and normal shoe component) with lead, a good conductor of heat that melts at fairly low temperature and isn't used in shoes. And yes, a steel or iron outer surface over an insulator would probably be a good design, but I don't think anyone actually makes shoes specifically designed for walking on lava. :) Rather a niche market and heavy leather boots are already available.

noparlpf

2013-03-20, 11:31 AM

Why not steel on the outside and a good insulator inside?

Clawhound

2013-03-20, 03:28 PM

This is one of the restons that I'm slowly coming to appreciate systems with non-numeric advancement. (i.e. as your character gains power, it doesn't come in the form of increasing bonuses.) I'd love to see an edition of D&D where hit points/attack bonuses/defenses/skills advance only slowly, if at all, and you instead gain power by learning new tricks and refining old ones.

Others have already done this for D&D. See E6.

I rather agree that static level D&D is rather interesting. Pick your level and stay there. As fun as leveling can be, it can also take you away from the fun that you are already having.

JusticeZero

2013-03-20, 06:34 PM

I'd love to see an edition of D&D where hit points/attack bonuses/defenses/skills advance only slowly, if at all, and you instead gain power by learning new tricks and refining old ones.
In AD&D, you only got HP rolls for a few levels, iirc 10. After that you got a small fixed number that your con bonus did not apply to.
Make it like that, but a bit E6ey. Only give big HP awards for the first few levels, then slow it down in that manner. Don't scale spell damage by level. Suddenly you throw a 5d6 fireball and an archmagi tosses a 5d6 fireball, maybe with some boosters in it to nudge it up. They can cast Meteor swarm too... at a damage appropriate to a caster at the flattening point. Focus on giving a wider selection of tricks, and increasingly nifty tricks, instead of ramping up the power behind them.
Bang, done.

Morty

2013-03-20, 06:40 PM

I think it's less about stopping the increase of power at a certain point and more about having the increase in power revolve around gaining more diverse and useful abilities instead of inflating numbers.

If nothing else, such a setup might make for a good module... presuming we ever get to see them.

MukkTB

2013-03-20, 06:56 PM

E6 is a pretty fun way to play 3.X. We haven't had a thread on it recently. That might mean its fallen out of favor here. I'm tempted to go rattle it around.

Loki_42

2013-03-20, 07:00 PM

So, the new playtest is out.

I still can't see those exploration rules they were talking about.

1337 b4k4

2013-03-20, 07:17 PM

Sadly, Seerow's pessimism seems to be correct, MDD is out, and expertise dice are largely underwhelming. Given the frequency with which the fighters "cool things" require expertise dice, I would do one of the following:

Increase the frequency with which fighters get expertise dice (say every 2 or 3 levels)

Change the expertise refresh to occur on turns where no expertise dice a expended (or perhaps require that a reaction be used, rather than an action, or invent some fighter only action that is essentially a defensive stance, perhaps allowing no offensive attacks or movement, but providing 2 extra reactions)

While I get that WotC does not appear to anticipate that fights in Next will last as long as they do in 4e and thus may not see a need for the fighter to have 5 or 10 expertise dice, the fighter should still get to be the awesome fighter every round if their expertise dice are only going to buy them one round effects.

PairO'Dice Lost

2013-03-20, 07:33 PM

Thoughts on the new playtest material:

1) I'm actually impressed with the fighter. It's still underwhelming, but WotC has apparently listened to feedback and learned some things. They decoupled the extra damage option from expertise dice, gave the fighter a better selection of abilities (including several warlord-like abilities), made the "damage on a miss" maneuver make more sense (now you roll an expertise die on a miss and add it to your attack roll, and if this new result would hit they take half damage from your attack), improved the multiattack maneuvers, and just generally made it better.

If only expertise dice refreshed automatically, and the fighter ended up with more than 5d6 in both size and number of dice, I'd say it's as close to giving fighters Nice Things as it's been thus far (which, granted, still isn't that close).

2) They remembered to give the druid an aquatic form, so that's good. :smallwink: The base druid gets 5 shapes, and the Path of the Moon gives 5 more, two of which enhance other shapes (Shape of the Dire Beast boosts general combat ability, Enhanced Form gives more utility, and they can stack if you spend two uses. It's fairly similar to a 3e shapeshift druid overall. Not half bad.

3) It looks like they're making good on their promise that mortal creatures don't generally have alignment: instead of detect evil, the Paladin's divine sense lets them detect celestials, fiends, and undead and prevents them from hiding from you, as well as consecrated/desecrated places. The LG paladin is called the cavalier, and all three variants look basically like 3e aligned paladins (divine grace, LoH, special mount, turn/rebuke undead).

4) The ranger's favored enemy follows the common forum suggestion to give enemy-specific abilities instead of just numbers. You can choose from goblinoids, dragons, and giants as favored enemies, and they all look fairly even power-wise. Camouflage is Hide in Plain Sight with a 1-minute prep time, not so impressive. Both the paladin and ranger get up to 5th level spells now starting at 1st, so they're more caster-y but not too magic-heavy.

5) Maneuvers and some former class abilities are now feats, which come in the martial, expert, magic, and general categories. They look very 3e: magic from feats, metamagic, and familiars are nice perks for caster characters, while things like Shove Away and Track should really just be basic combat maneuvers or skill uses.

Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised by a bunch of little things, but they still have a long way to go with this.

1337 b4k4

2013-03-20, 07:41 PM

They decoupled the extra damage option from expertise dice

Where do you see this? It looks to me like all the fighters extra damage options are expertise dice based.

Seerow

2013-03-20, 07:49 PM

Where do you see this? It looks to me like all the fighters extra damage options are expertise dice based.

He's referring to the Deadly Strike that Fighter, Barbarian, and a few others are sharing. It gives you +1[w] damage every so many levels.

But yeah the first tier of Fighter abilities is still pretty disappointing, and there's a lot of other options I'm seeing scattered among other classes that are similarly lacking. It seems they're trying to scale way back on bonus damage effects, so you get +X damage at level 1, and doesn't ever scale (noticed this in the Paladin, Fighter, and Ranger so far. Barbarian is the only class I've read so far that had a scaling damage bonus).

We've officially got bounded accuracy and bounded damage.The difference in combat ability between a level 1 and 20 character is about +4 to hit and +20 damage. Roughly the same bonus you'd get in 5-6 levels in older systems.

Kurald Galain

2013-03-20, 07:53 PM

I still can't see those exploration rules they were talking about.
Yeah, that's one thing.

Let's see.

Fighters can no longer disarm people or push enemies! They need a feat now for what used to be a standard ability.
Skills are back to based on one particular ability score, instead of "whichever ability the DM has in mind now".
The skill list has been condensed to more-or-less the same as the 4E one, and every skill name is a verb now, which leads to some weird constructions. Hilariously, "break an object" is a skill now.
Ability scores now cap at 20, even considering levelups.
The skill die now caps at d12, ever. Yeah, the skill system gets even worse. You get four skills total over the life of your character, unless you forego "skill die increases" to pick an extra one. Rather than training, certain classes gain advantage on certain skill checks.
Fighters get less expertise dice! And they no longer replenish each round, you have to spend an action to recover one die! Yay? It's basically now "twice per combat, you can do 3.5 points more damage in some way".
The warlord is here! Well, at least, the fighter can use some of the warlord's abilities. If an ally attacks and you have a warlordish ability, you can use one of your (limited) reactions, spend a (limited) expertise die, and add 3.5 damage to your ally's attack! Isn't it amazing?
Martial damage bonus is gone. Instead, fighters roll double damage starting at level 5, triple at level 10. Lots of dice here. Fighters also get multiple attacks again.
The rulebook explicitly mentions Darksun, FR, and Greyhawk.

And the druid is here! Well, it's basically as advertised. You can turn into a dog at level 1, rat at 2, horse or fish at 4, bird at 6. Combat-wise, none of these are impressive, and no, you cannot cast spells in animal form. However, one druid "build" can do a bear at level 1, which will still do less damage than a normal melee PC.

And the paladin is here too! Of course he gets to cast spells from level 1 (rangers too, of course). They also get channel divinity, albeit from a different list than the cleric, and they must pick an oath which gives them extra spells. I see a pattern here: cleric deities, druid domains, and so forth each give you a set extra spell of each level. All spellcasters use the sorc/wiz hybrid method, where you prepare spells but can use them in any permutation as long as you have slots left. Incidentally there's only two wizard schools left, evocation and illusion.

Overall verdict: still meh. But hey, at least we're still in the brainstorm phase, right? :smallcool:

Draz74

2013-03-21, 12:06 AM

Concur: this latest packet is a definite improvement, but still meh overall.

Though I haven't had a chance to read through e.g. the Spells document yet, and see how broken or not-broken casters really are.

Skills are too limited, as Kurald said, but at least they dropped the horrid idea of ending up with different skill dice for different skills as you level up. (At that point, you should really just be bringing Skill Ranks back! It's just as much bookkeeping!) I'd actually be mostly ok with the current system if characters just got to start out with, like, 7 skills instead of 4. And maybe give skillful classes a free boost in their Skill Die size at some particular level (Level 11 for the Ranger and Monk, Levels 7 and 15 for the Rogue?).

Requiring feats for basic combat maneuvers like charge, disarm, and bull rush is highly disappointing. These should be available by default, but even if they're not, the more martial classes should get some of them for free. (Some of the martial classes do get Bonus Feats off the martial list, but ... ugh, I'm not going to choose the Disarm feat when I can choose something that actually should be a feat, like Cleave. They got this right with the Rogue: the Rogue gets Expert Feats that are necessary for his Roguishness right from Level 1; no "Bonus Expert Feats at each even level, choose between ones that you need to actually be effective or ones that are weak but required for what your character is supposed to be able to do." Why couldn't they see that warriors should have been the same way?)

I'm actually ok with the Fighter's Expertise Dice being basically on a per-encounter refresh, and with a maximum of 5 Expertise Dice. Although I suppose recovering one die as a Reaction would be nifty. Having the dice grow in size beyond a d6 would be nifty too. And having maneuvers that let them do something other than "add or subtract numbers to damage, AC, or attack rolls" would be good too.

The new Deadly Strike feature that replaces "martial damage dice" and "martial damage bonus" is definitely an improvement over those implementations. I even like it better than 3e's iterative attacks system. It's still a little swingy and progresses in sudden leaps and bounds, but otherwise it's a much quicker, intuitive way to make damage scale throughout the game.

Dead levels are everywhere. Especially at higher levels. I still can't figure out why they want Feat progression to end after L9. It's kind of like the opposite of E6: after Level 11 or so, you don't get any new special abilities (except for higher levels of spells for the casters, natch); you just get bigger numbers, mostly HP and damage. And a few extra daily uses of your daily abilities. As a fan of E6, I find this general trend ... unsatisfying.

MukkTB

2013-03-21, 12:31 AM

What I'm hearing sounds really bad.

obryn

2013-03-21, 12:52 AM

Color me surprised. Not great yet, but moving in a better direction with a few glimpses of innovation. Still not sure if I'd want to run or play it, but it's a lot closer to a game I would.

avr

2013-03-21, 01:42 AM

Any idea when this is supposed to come together as a finished product? In some ways I'd be inclined to give them more leeway if they're still early in development - but the 5e playtests do seem to have been going on for quite a while already.

Gwendol

2013-03-21, 04:54 AM

Seerow

2013-03-21, 06:12 AM

Color me surprised. Not great yet, but moving in a better direction with a few glimpses of innovation. Still not sure if I'd want to run or play it, but it's a lot closer to a game I would.

What innovation are you seeing?

Saph

2013-03-21, 06:36 AM

Okay, having skipped the last few packets, I've taken a brief glance through this one. Not sure how much of this stuff is new to this packet, and how much I'm just catching up on.

Druid looks fun. Not sure how useful the forms are, but at least they're interesting and they do make the class feel genuinely different.
Fighter seems somewhat meh. +1d6 to something just isn't that interesting, and it's too hard to get the expertise dice back.
Barbarian looks very powerful, at least in straight-up combat. I kind of like the 'must attack every turn' rage mechanic.
Spells look good. They're basically a cut-down version of older edition D&D spells, but I'm fine with that, and they do have interesting effects.
Skill system seems bad. Really, really bad. You only get four skills and Spot, Listen, and Search are all different skills (why?) meaning you have to use 75% of your skill slots just to get the equivalent of the Perception skill!
Likewise, I'm not a fan of the return to the Intelligence/Wisdom split for perception. It might make a certain amount of sense, but it's so much easier just to use one roll.
Rogue is . . . okay, I guess. The schemes aren't bad, but they're hampered by the rogue needing to use the awful skill system. Sneak Attack seems weird, more like a fighter's Power Attack than anything else.
Looking at it many versions on from the initial playtest my group did, my feelings are mixed. It's definitely an improvement from the first version, but I'm not sure if it's enough of an improvement.

Cavelcade

2013-03-21, 07:41 AM

Dead levels are everywhere. Especially at higher levels. I still can't figure out why they want Feat progression to end after L9. It's kind of like the opposite of E6: after Level 11 or so, you don't get any new special abilities (except for higher levels of spells for the casters, natch); you just get bigger numbers, mostly HP and damage. And a few extra daily uses of your daily abilities. As a fan of E6, I find this general trend ... unsatisfying.

I would find it incredibly frustrating if it stayed like this. The fighter is (slowly) getting closer to having nice things, I hope they get closer to giving them outright soon - and hopefully things other than d6es.

The changes in basic marshall activities to being feats is also annoying. If every marshall class had them automatically, and they were there for other classes - maybe? A charging bear-druid would be pretty cool, and I'd be okay with that requiring a feat.

I hope they change the paladin mount to not be stupid - like let them have something like the druid's wildshape at least, something for ground and water at level 5-6, and something for air at level 10/whatever level a wizard learns Fly. I am...cautiously optimistic.

obryn

2013-03-21, 07:59 AM

What innovation are you seeing?
The idea behind the exploration rules is sound. The implementation seems wonky, but the idea is good. I like the favored enemy stuff. I like the Paladin breakdown, but don't know about a lot of the mechanics. I think the Druid shapeshifting may actually work, for once.

So it's doing an okay job of establishing an identity for itself, IMO. It's still extremely iffy, but I see this packet as baby steps in the right direction.

It's definitely an improvement from the first version, but I'm not sure if it's enough of an improvement.
This is where I am, too.

On the "good" side, it's establishing enough of an identity for itself now, in my mind, that it's a game I wouldn't mind adding to my shelf. It's not making me want to convert my campaign over, but I may actually playtest the packet this time around.

-O

Morty

2013-03-21, 09:07 AM

I can't help but notice how boring the Barbarian is. Other classes gain some choice of abilities, such as it is, but the Barbarian... gets mad and hits things. That's it.

And there seems to be as little point in using crossbows as before. Can't say I'm surprised.

Clawhound

2013-03-21, 09:48 AM

I always want to see fighters get nice things. I am also disappointed that fighters don't get standard maneuvers off the bat. If any class should be able to do "standard stuff that you expect", it's the fighter.

As for nice stuff, a fighter should be able to use (or figure out) any weapon or armor. The game is bound to create exotic weapons again, and if any class should have a natural affinity for such weapons, it's the fighter.

Clericzilla

2013-03-21, 06:47 PM

I never thought I would see the day that Favored Enemy would become useful. Seriously I just never thought WoTC would do something good with it. Heck Paizo even made it suck, even if it was an improvement over 3.5.

The Favored Enemy abilities isn't just against that sort of enemy but skills they have learned while learning to fight their favored enemy.

Slayer of Colossus is just fantastic and Avoid Reach is just just... niiiice.

I actually may play a Ranger at some point.

Anderlith

2013-03-21, 08:04 PM

So I've been able to finally take a look at the playtest.

For once I want to play a ranger...

The paladin isn't what I want, but it's passable... I think. I'd have to play it first. My major complaint here is the lack of choice, mounts are only good when everyone else is mounted. Give us the ability to trade out Mount for something else. Even an Animal Companion would be a nice change

The druid is nice, though I think it's lacking something

The Fighter still needs more power & versatility, though I'm glad they got rid of Martial damage dice

Treblain

2013-03-21, 10:34 PM

Has there been any official explanation why you stop gaining feats? I would have figured it to be a temporary thing while they came up with high-level feats or a prestige class system, but I haven't seen anything indicating that.

Darth_Versity

2013-03-22, 05:02 AM

The rogue looks like it has improved, which is good since it was quite bad in the last playtest. The schemes looks better balanced. I will most likely still recommend all going rogue to also add wizard levels.

I'm sorry but, what improvement? Most of what I see is negative for the rogue. The loss of Martial damage die and some attack bonus makes sense, they should not be primary combatants.

But the loss of 2 skills, the roll twice and keep the best on skill dice, and the underwhelming sneak attack are all bad. The poor skill system now using feats to accomplish things is just making things even worse.

A rogue's place is as a skill monkey, with the current changes they can't fill that role much better than anyone else.

Yora

2013-03-22, 07:32 AM

The Fighter still needs more power & versatility, though I'm glad they got rid of Martial damage dice
And suddenly I am interested in the game again. Think I missed the last two or three playtest versions.

obryn

2013-03-22, 07:59 AM

I'm sorry but, what improvement? Most of what I see is negative for the rogue.
If you check the intro document, the designers know the Rogue is terrible right now and is "in transition."

-O

Gwendol

2013-03-22, 08:19 AM

Yup, that's what I was reading. Also, sneak attack is a basic ability, and not part of a scheme. The skills system is not ideal though.

Morty

2013-03-22, 01:28 PM

If I were to run this version of the playtest, I wouldn't have the Fighter choose the maneuvers. He would get all of them with every class feature that grants them.

And I love how only three of the Rogue Schemes allow you to use ranged weapons with their special abilities... what did ranged rogues do to WotC?

snoopy13a

2013-03-22, 02:06 PM

And there seems to be as little point in using crossbows as before. Can't say I'm surprised.

I was actually confused with the "loading" description for crossbows and a few niche ranged weapons.

It says,

Because of the time required to load this weapon, you can fire only one piece of ammunition from it when you use an action or reaction to fire it.

Rather unclear. My best guess is one can only fire a crossbow once per round. It does imply, however, that one may fire a crossbow every round. If my guess is correct, the only class this effects is the Fighter at level 5+ (wouldn't be able to use volley with a crossbow).

Further, a wizard may want to use a crossbow in lieu of a cantrip for basic attacks to hide the fact that he is a wizard.

JusticeZero

2013-03-22, 04:52 PM

I wish they would at least touch up the weapons a bit so that it doesn't make the recreationists cringe too horribly.
A Spear is a one-handed weapon intended for use with a shield by soldiers. Nobody uses one as a two-hander for combat, except for maybe commoners who are hunting animals and who do not have a shield to use. And hey, you can use a lot of one-handed weapons in two hands if you want.
Someone who knows how to use a Sling can fire it just as fast as an archer can shoot arrows, with quite a long range. (The penetration is "meh" though, so I have no complaints about the 1d4 damage.)
"Double weapons" are ridiculous. Just because there are more than one way to use a weapon doesn't mean you can magically use all those edges at the same time - or is a swiss army knife the ultimate DPS weapon? It has like eight blades, so you should be able to pump out a lot of attacks every round, right?? No.
What are the stats for an atlatl? It should at least add range to javelin/dart if nothing else.

Cavelcade

2013-03-22, 05:33 PM

There are records (or well, as far as sagas can be trusted, records) of spears being used two handed, and the recorded length would seem to support that, at least as an option. 6-8' in length would be awkward to use in one hand to full effect, two hands seems more appropriate, though one handed spears also existed.

Double weapons are a bit silly, but I can kind of see the logic in them, at least for some of them - you attack in a circular motion with them, and just keep going and hey, at the bottom end, where there'd normally be nothing, there's another bit of the weapon to attack with! Ah well, that element of D&D has always been one I just let slide, the combat is just generally...hm.

Morty

2013-03-22, 05:54 PM

Dienekes

2013-03-22, 06:31 PM

Cavelcade

2013-03-22, 06:38 PM

They can be used that way, but it always feels awkward as hell to me. Of course, it's a completely different ball game to an actual battle, but I always prefer the control and speed of two hands.

snoopy13a

2013-03-22, 08:14 PM

Realism or not making recreators cry is one thing. But the weapons in this playtest are just boring. They're as dull as they were in the previous editions, which is to say dull as heck. There's no difference whatsoever between a greatsword and a greataxe or a longsword and a battleaxe. Nor is there any reason not to use the biggest weapon with the biggest die that's available to you.

If there were differences, then everyone would use the more powerful weapons--like in 3.5 were everyone uses a greatsword. Equal stats allows players to pick the weapon that they believe fits their character without imposing mechanical penalties.

Kurald Galain

2013-03-22, 08:25 PM

If there were differences, then everyone would use the more powerful weapons--like in 3.5 were everyone uses a greatsword.

A game can have weapons that are better in different ways. For instance, one weapon with a higher to-hit bonus, one with higher damage, one with reach, one with a disarm/trip bonus, and so forth. Then, at least, people have a mechanical reason to use different kinds of weapon.

Seerow

2013-03-22, 08:44 PM

A game can have weapons that are better in different ways. For instance, one weapon with a higher to-hit bonus, one with higher damage, one with reach, one with a disarm/trip bonus, and so forth. Then, at least, people have a mechanical reason to use different kinds of weapon.

Before the last packet came out, I was thinking something like this would work:

Weapon Damage Die
Crit Damage Die
Maneuver Die

Different weapons would have these in different amounts. A greatsword might be something like d12 weapon, d6 crit, d6 maneuver. Greataxe would be d12/d8/d4. Rapier would be d8/d8/d8. Dagger would be d4/d12/d8. etc.

It's just a simple write up, it's possible you may want to make something like finesse weapons and/or one handed weapons having fewer total dice bumps to distribute, so two handed weapons don't end up gimped, but you get the general idea.

The weapon damage die is obvious what it is.

The crit damage die could work one of two ways. Default way is the way it works in the current pack, except instead of the 1[w] you roll in addition to max damage, you get the crit die added. So a greatsword with d6 crit gets 12+1d6 on a crit. The other way, if your crit die is higher than your weapon die, you can use the crit die as your weapon die on a crit (so the dagger that normally deals d4 damage deals 12+1d12 on a crit).

The maneuver die is the die size you roll when using maneuvers (Remember I came up with this during the last packet when several classes had maneuvers/expertise die in one way or another). So a weapon with a high maneuver die is particularly good for things like parrying, or using the maneuvers that require rolling (thinking stuff like opportunistic strike, glancing blow, etc)

With this you could also do something like make sneak attack use your crit damage dice, and now you have an actual reason for Rogues to use daggers.

Anyway, yeah. Not really balanced, as I haven't put too much thought into it, and between looking back at last packet's maneuvers and the changes in this packet, I don't think the maneuver die is a particularly good idea, but you do still need something else for an extra diversification category. Maybe keep it in place but rework the basic combat maneuvers to take it into account? Honestly not sure.

JusticeZero

2013-03-22, 09:59 PM

(Spears) can be used (one handed), but it always feels awkward as hell to me.
It's not too bad. Replica weapons tend to be heavier and worse made than the originals, for one, but the big thing is that stab&board technique involves much more active use of the shield than the passivity that a lot of people assume. Shield isn't just a wall, it's being used to make openings and knock opposing weapons out of line too.
That means that the stance tends to put the shield further forward, and makes the reach of the spear important. Spear is held along the forearm, and the motion to attack is similar to a boxing hook. The arm helps to stabilize the spear. Switch to overhand to throw if needed.

Which reminds me, it'd be nice to have some crunch to improve the buckler, since that was the most advanced and effective form of the shield that ended up in use. (Much more mobile and used to smack swords around to make openings.)

JusticeZero

2013-03-22, 10:26 PM

Yeah, even if all it was was that some weapons were more platykurtic or leptokurtic on their damage than others. Some characters would want spiky damage, some want old reliable. Which is going to make your character happiest, doing 14 points of damage on a special hit, or doing 1d6X4? They're both the same in the long run.

Weapons could be balanced better than they were in 3. That edition did a fair job, but there were too many anomalies. Greatclubs are statted appropriately for common weapons, for instance. For example, someone didn't quite realize that 2d6 and 1d12 are not equivalent damage levels. 1d12 vs 1d10+1, 1d8+2, 1d6+3, 1d4+4? Are. There were several "favorites" depending on build. Some people liked the super-spiky Scythe for instance.

Also, some GMs were canny enough to toss some situational effects at the choices given. I feel downright sorry for the last melee guy I saw trying to fight with a greatsword... in a cave. huuuuge penalties.

Janus

2013-03-23, 12:01 AM

I feel downright sorry for the last melee guy I saw trying to fight with a greatsword... in a cave. huuuuge penalties.
Bah, that's where half-swording techniques come in handy.

Craft (Cheese)

2013-03-23, 03:02 AM

Also, some GMs were canny enough to toss some situational effects at the choices given. I feel downright sorry for the last melee guy I saw trying to fight with a greatsword... in a cave. huuuuge penalties.

An interior space with reasonably realistic proportions? In MY D&D? Preposterous!

Anderlith

2013-03-23, 05:38 AM

A greatsword can still be just as effective as a spear. Why give them penalties?

Morty

2013-03-23, 06:44 AM

If there were differences, then everyone would use the more powerful weapons--like in 3.5 were everyone uses a greatsword. Equal stats allows players to pick the weapon that they believe fits their character without imposing mechanical penalties.

What Kurald said. WotC doesn't exactly have the best track record of making things different while making them balanced, but it is possible.

With this you could also do something like make sneak attack use your crit damage dice, and now you have an actual reason for Rogues to use daggers.

More importantly, such a system might give warriors a reason to use daggers or other small weapons.

Mind you, there's nothing wrong with a system in which weapon choice beyond broad categories is aesthetical. But it shouldn't pretend that it's something more. If a longsword, battleaxe and a warhammer are identical, they should just be listed as "One-handed Strength weapon". Greatswords, greataxes and mauls would be "Two-handed Strength weapons". The players would be free to describe their character's weapons however they want.

Clawhound

2013-03-23, 09:18 AM

Funny, I was just writing to a friend a very similar complaint about weapons.

A sword is an expensive, high-tech, marvel of metallurgy and skill. A club fell off a tree. The sword, on average, does +1 damage over the club, but otherwise there is no difference.

That makes no sense.

And I don't know what to design that isn't unworkable, clumsy, or irrelevant.

Clistenes

2013-03-23, 10:03 AM

1337 b4k4

2013-03-23, 11:14 AM

And I don't know what to design that isn't unworkable, clumsy, or irrelevant.

And that's basically the trick here. The more realistic you want your weapons to be, the more and more your game has to start becoming a physics and combat simulator. Despite trends to the contrary, D&D was never designed to be, nor does it make, a good combat simulator. The original version had all weapons doing the same damage (1d6) with cost being the only differentiator. Variable damage was added because players would simply choose an iron spike, which was the cheapest item that did damage and use that as their weapon. Of course, as we know, simple variable damage doesn't pass the realism test either, and so AD&D introduced weapon speed rules and "weapon vs AC" rules, which were pretty widely panned. The Rules Cyclopedia had (and IMHO, dark dungeons improved on) a form of weapons proficiencies which included various weapon based traits (tripping, stunning etc) but this again required massive charts and sections of rules that could be unwieldy in play. Eventually we got to 4e where e designer grouped the weapons into categories, and the damage within a given category was pretty consistent. But it still tended to ends with people using the biggest damage die per category.

I tend to like things like Seerow's idea, where weapons have a base damage and then crit damage or other attributes. I just dislike the fact that such systems tend to fall along the same lines as the p lain variable damage system because the attributes and crit dice don't come into play often.

One idea I've been tossing around at least for melee weapons, is dividing weapons broadly into 3 categories of light, medium and heavy weapons. Light weapons all do 1d4 damage, but add your DEX bonus to the to-hit roll. Medium weapons do 1d6 damage with no bonuses at all heavy weapons do 1d12+STR damage but at say -3 to hit (or maybe disadvantage in next). That's the base system. Then each individual weapon (dagger or rapier in light, short sword or club in medium etc) could be trained in for proficiencies up to 3 times. For light weapons, each training gives +1 to damage, for medium weapons, each training goes up one damage die size, for heavy weapons each training adds +1 to hit.

I think it's relatively simple, encourages players to pick and study with a weapon without punishing them too greatly if they change weapons and applies all the time (as opposed to say a crit die that only applies 1/20 times). Obviously this is untested and still doesn't address ranged weapons.

The weapons in the Exalted game system all have different bonuses to damage, accuracy (attack), rate, speed and defenses, and you pick a weapon with that in mind. You may want to make the most damage with every hit, or have the most chance to hit with every attack, or be the first to hit, or make more attacks per turn, but there is no weapon that is the best at everything.

I can't speak for exalted having never played it, but in my experience, systems like this tend to wind up fairly unwieldy in use. They're better optimized to computers rather than humans.

Clawhound

2013-03-23, 11:49 AM

Zeful

2013-03-23, 11:54 AM

Anyway, yeah. Not really balanced, as I haven't put too much thought into it, and between looking back at last packet's maneuvers and the changes in this packet, I don't think the maneuver die is a particularly good idea, but you do still need something else for an extra diversification category. Maybe keep it in place but rework the basic combat maneuvers to take it into account? Honestly not sure.

Actually I think it's brilliant. It makes the situational use of weapon far more important. A rogue isn't just going to carry a dagger around if he can't assure Sneak attacks. And if Maneuvers aren't something that happen every turn (which I don't think they should for variety reasons), a rogue also wants a weapon like the Rapier, just for normal combat or against special enemies. Toss in a keyword system like in 4e to differentiate their use against different types of enemies, and a party of adventurers could easily carry 2 or 3 weapon types per person.

JusticeZero

2013-03-23, 02:29 PM

A greatsword can still be just as effective as a spear. Why give them penalties?
Because it had previously been defined as an all slash sword most similar to a Dadao (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadao), not a european slash-and-poke sword. Also, if they were going to use a sword as a shortspear, i'd have had them use shortspear damage for it, much in the way that hitting something with the butt of a spear does d6, not d8. And that's still a substantial penalty.

Morty

2013-03-23, 02:33 PM

The problem with "fighting" is that fighting is quite weapon dependent. What you do and how you do it is entirely the game of fighting. Once abstracted, as in D&D, you lose that detail and martial expertise no longer gets you anything.

I see a natural tension there that won't go away.

The fighter needs the detail in the combat system. A rich combat system is to a martial character what a rich spell system is to a caster. That's what makes the game interesting and challenging. It's also what makes the game overwhelming and challenging.

Ultimately, I favor adding maneuvers onto weapons. An axe should naturally add sunder while a halberd should add tripping. Simple weapons should add nothing.

Exactly. Combat in D&D is not going to be realistic and shouldn't be. But it does have to be interesting.

And I agree that maneuvers are the best way to differentiate weapons. If you can do something with a flail that you can't with an axe, it really feels like you're using a different weapon. Unfortunately, the current version of the combat system and special combat abilities doesn't really allow for that.

Jacob.Tyr

2013-03-26, 12:36 PM

Ultimately, I favor adding maneuvers onto weapons. An axe should naturally add sunder while a halberd should add tripping. Simple weapons should add nothing.
I like this idea quite a lot, and think it could also be expanded into something like what the rangers favoured enemies became. Give weapons variable abilities, like sundering for axes and tripping for halberds, and give the option to pick weapon training in specific weapons. Say you grab axe training, you now have a bonus with using axes to damage and hit rolls, but you've also studied with axes sufficiently to know how to sunder with other weapons.

1337 b4k4

2013-03-26, 02:19 PM

^ You should download Dark Dungeons and read through the weapons / weapon proficiency sections.

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-26, 02:31 PM

^ You should download Dark Dungeons and read through the weapons / weapon proficiency sections.

"Ive brought Elfstar to become a priestess and a witch"

:smalltongue:

1337 b4k4

2013-03-26, 03:49 PM

"Ive brought Elfstar to become a priestess and a witch"

Yeah, I suppose I should specify I meant Dark Dungeons the RPG (http://www.gratisgames.webspace.virginmedia.com/darkdungeons.html), not the Chick Tract. Though if the tract had a weapons proficiency section, I've clearly only ever read the edited versions :smalltongue:

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-26, 04:07 PM

Yeah I read it. Has DEFIANTLY some good ideas, but the 1e base kills it for me.

If I had the money and time, I would create "SUPERGAME" a game made out of the best bits from all the other D&D versions and clones.

1337 b4k4

2013-03-26, 06:17 PM

It's actually RC / BECM(Wot)I based, not 1e. Have you looked at the same authors Darker Dungeons (and soon Darkest)? Each one down the chain is supposed to get further and further from a D&D clone and more to the authors own "super version"

Stubbazubba

2013-03-26, 09:31 PM

If I had the money and time, I would create "SUPERGAME" a game made out of the best bits from all the other D&D versions and clones.

:smallbiggrin:

The irony of this being an apparently sincere statement in a 5e thread.

king.com

2013-03-26, 11:05 PM

:smallbiggrin:

The irony of this being an apparently sincere statement in a 5e thread.

Hes posting that ironically isnt he?

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-27, 02:07 AM

Hes posting that ironically isnt he?

Well no. I would say that each clone and version gets another piece of interesting mechanics. Combined together, they would work really well.

tommhans

2013-03-27, 03:02 AM

Think we are changing to the newest update today on our session, but i have to change a good amount on my character sheet, i think im gonna miss maneuvers and martial dice :( but yeah as im a fighter i do get this expert dice which basically works the same way? anyways, i am intrigued by the idea that skills are not something you automatically get +5 or more on, makes things more challenging
:smallsmile:

i think the cleric and the wizard in the group will find this new update better than the previous we played(played january edition) as we all felt the wizard was not always doing so much good in combat :p

But yeah i like how the ac isnt that insane, so that we have nice and "fast" encounters, allthough all the encounters the DM expects are fast and easy usually ends up taking far longer than the boss battle ^^

Anyways, the idea with having maneuvers with the weapons sounds like a smart idea, and then i have a better way of choosing(right now a maul and whirwind maneuver does the job, at first i did dual wield long swords as i had that feat, but found out that meant smaller percentage to hit and i did less damage, but yeah i felt the maul and whirlwind was overpowered, did like a ****load of damage with it as i get strenght and other bonuses, but there should be some disadvantages of choosing a maul instead of a long sword and so on)

king.com

2013-03-27, 04:43 AM

Well no. I would say that each clone and version gets another piece of interesting mechanics. Combined together, they would work really well.

I hate to explain the joke but your comment is the stated goal of D&D: The Next Generation.

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-27, 04:57 AM

I hate to explain the joke but your comment is the stated goal of D&D: The Next Generation.

Well it WAS but now its "Flounder about with no direction"

At least I have an understanding of what generally to do:

PF base, Tracks from legend, Max level of spell 7 (Adjust damage dealing though and teleportation spells and such), Use Houserules handbook Spellpoints system as "core" and then release a classic spell slots version. Use elemental axis as new alignment system, have few monsters per book but with detailed level progression to allow for different leveled monsters or PCs as monsters. AC as DR, When using swords use a static Reflex save with a score of 10. Use Codex martialis martial dice and feats, and a more detailed acrobatics system with each move detailed to allow for mix and match acrobatic combat. Then combine GMS guide with the Players handbook, and just call it "Core Book" for easier accessibility. Design the game to favor the GMs word over even the books rules. Just altogether separate magic items from core progression and same thing with money. Fix the faulty math and your all set.

Morty

2013-03-27, 07:03 AM

The thing is that floundering with no direction is usually the result of "taking the best part from each edition". It sounds nice in theory, but when you actually try to do it, you end up with a hodge-podge like D&D Next. You need clear direction to make a good game, not cherry-picking from several other games, each of which had a different goal and theme.

Scowling Dragon

2013-03-27, 07:25 AM

I DO have a pretty clear idea of what I want:

I want a better version of 3e. All those parts improve 3e in some way that it was flawed before. I have a single direction. Im just not re-inventing the bicycle. Im using the great ideas of before to improve on the now.

Tracks are easier to balance then feats and can allow for some cool creative combos. Use them to replace feats which have wildly different results and are often unbalanced, and often just BORING.

By spreading out spells, we tone down insane end level play whilst still retaining epic feel.

Like for example: Touch of death is a cool epic spell. Its something that a master necromancer could do. And Wail of the banshee is more like something a god could do.

Thus EPIC level play is with 8th and 9th level spells eliminating the often boring epic spells that often feel like: Its like 9th level spell only bigger and with more damage.

Like Teleport is ALREADY epic. Your teleporting HUNDREDS of miles. Thats insane! And Interplanetary teleport is something GODLY.

Less monsters but more detailed monsters speaks for itself.

AC as DR is more of a design choice, but its too simplify the confusing "Flat footed or touch AC or parry" system.

Codex Martialis is to allow for more cool, realistic stuff for martial guys to do without going TOB. Its more flowy.

Core Book is explainable because its easier. When a guy says "I want to get into D&D what do I buy?" the result is "Just this book" not "2 books minimum".

The only thing holding me back is not enough time to calculate the everything and more people to handle everything.

The reason Next is floundering is because they have no idea what they are doing. I see barely any elements of ANY edition in it except for a tint of 3e.

They have NO interlining thing. Its different from taking a bunch of different ideas that combine to work great together, then to trying to do EVERY idea at the SAME time.