Starter Set: Excerpt 7 - Monsters [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

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DeltaEmil

2014-06-26, 03:04 AM

Here's the nothic, the ochre jelly, and the ogre. (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ex/20140626)

Kurald Galain

2014-06-26, 03:21 AM

Well, it's good to see they're allowing non-combat abilities on monsters again. That said, as demonstrations go, these three are fairly unimpressive.

rlc

2014-06-26, 06:46 AM

So yeah, monsters can do things other than swing clubs. Not sure why there was a huge argument about this yesterday, but there you go.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-06-26, 07:29 AM

So yeah, monsters can do things other than swing clubs. Not sure why there was a huge argument about this yesterday, but there you go.

Because ...

THIS IS SPARTA THE INTERNET

Also other reasons...

Edit:

Nothic: Cool base fluff. Their multi attack only works on one target, not sure if I like that. I think I like how the 4e fighter had to target two different creatures when dual attacking. Weird insight is fun.

Ochre Jelly: Hey! Unaligned!

Ogre: I'm already making an Ogre Nothic hybrid monster

DeltaEmil

2014-06-26, 08:15 AM

So yeah, monsters can do things other than swing clubs. Not sure why there was a huge argument about this yesterday, but there you go.The argument was about ogres, who don't do much but swing clubs and throw the occasional javelin in a non-special way.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-06-26, 09:24 AM

The argument was about ogres, who don't do much but swing clubs and throw the occasional javelin in a non-special way.

I like to think that the argument from yesterday forced them to show more monsters...

:smallamused:

RedWarlock

2014-06-26, 10:00 AM

The argument was about ogres, who don't do much but swing clubs and throw the occasional javelin in a non-special way.
Do we have the full ogre statblock from elsewhere? There might be more abilities on the next page. We don't have the Ogre's flavor/background text, either.

da_chicken

2014-06-26, 11:16 AM

Nothic: Cool base fluff. Their multi attack only works on one target, not sure if I like that.

What makes you say that? It just says for multiattack the creature makes two claw attacks. It doesn't mention a targeting restriction either way. Each claw attack only hits one target, but I don't see why the restriction of the component applies to the whole.

Lokiare

2014-06-26, 11:22 AM

All it takes is one or two flavorful traits/powers to make a monster fun. I just feel sorry for those early edition fans, they won't like most monsters with special powers and immunities etc...etc...

I'd say split monsters into 3 groups. In one group they are super simple things like kobolds and goblins that you fight in large groups, make those simple with no special attacks or traits. Then the second group is things that are encountered in small groups or solo. Give them 1-2 special traits/powers. The last group are your mini bosses and end of adventure bosses. Give them 2-3 powers/traits and 2-3 more optional traits/powers to choose from to customize them.

1337 b4k4

2014-06-26, 12:14 PM

Lokiare

2014-06-26, 12:16 PM

:smallconfused: Are you reading the same early edition monster lists that I am?

Oops, I forgot my sarcasm tags. People are complaining that monsters have too many interesting powers. In early editions most monsters had interesting traits/powers.

StabbityRabbit

2014-06-26, 01:20 PM

Looks like unaligned is confirmed. So that's at least one good thing they took from 4e.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-06-26, 01:25 PM

Looks like unaligned is confirmed. So that's at least one good thing they took from 4e.

I'll make sure to write it on my character sheet as "Meh" :smallbiggrin:

Nah I do like it though, better than True Neutral.

Also, I can't help but feel that your profile pic and your name doesn't go that well together... I can't put my finger on it though...:smalltongue:

StabbityRabbit

2014-06-26, 01:36 PM

I'll make sure to write it on my character sheet as "Meh" :smallbiggrin:

Nah I do like it though, better than True Neutral.

Also, I can't help but feel that your profile pic and your name doesn't go that well together... I can't put my finger on it though...:smalltongue:

Yeah it was odd building my soulknife mercenary for Pathfinder, and being forced in to the "balance" alignment.

(Don't tell anyone, but it's actually a bunny.):smallwink:

Psyren

2014-06-26, 05:35 PM

captpike

2014-06-26, 06:35 PM

1) Why doesn't the Large Ogre have reach?

T-Rex arms

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-06-26, 07:00 PM

CyberThread

2014-06-26, 10:47 PM

I don't like how the monster fluff is so ...small, and at the very end of all the stats and everything. I want it next to the stat block.

StabbityRabbit

2014-06-26, 11:30 PM

1) Why doesn't the Large Ogre have reach?
2) Giant type is still here (unlike PF.) I don't think it'll matter as much unless the "X Person" spells are still strict.
3) Why does the ooze have an Intelligence score (albeit a low one)?
4) Why are the split oozes smaller? Now chopping the ooze in two is actually a good strategy. It also means we'll need a large ochre jelly mini and a medium one.
5) They could have dumped the whole "multiattack" line from the Nothic and simply showed the two attacks in the "Claws" line.
6) What is the point of Weird Insight?
7) How does the Challenge system work in 5e?

1) WotC could've realized that handing reach out to large creatures was a little odd once you thought about. Large creatures are on average about 9-10 ft. tall (math might be off) but they're able to hit creatures 10 ft. away? Does that mean every large creature is a knuckle-dragger? They'd have to be since their arms are apparently as long as they are.

3) It could be to show that they're now capable of animalistic "thought"

4) Something you see in videogames a lot is that slimes split once you kill/hurt them. WotC could have added it in since new players might think that's what they'd do anyway. The real reason is probably that they simply wanted to sell as many minis as possible.

5) The starter set is aimed at new players so the stat blocks were probably set up to make sure newbies know exactly what monster does rather than efficiency.

6) To be weird.:smallbiggrin:

7) We'll have to find out when 5e comes.

Also I agree with who said that the flavor text was looking sparse.

surfarcher

2014-06-26, 11:36 PM

Why do I feel compelled to give the Ogre levels in Fighter???

Envyus

2014-06-27, 12:02 AM

Why do I feel compelled to give the Ogre levels in Fighter???

They said to do that if you want it to be harder or more complicated.

surfarcher

2014-06-27, 12:11 AM

They said to do that if you want it to be harder or more complicated.

Really? Oh. Doesn't explain the instictive compulsion to do so, tho... lol!

pwykersotz

2014-06-27, 12:17 AM

I'm liking the streamlined statblocks. I finished running the 3.0 City of the Spider Queen module a year or so ago, and it made me want to never look at another stat block again. These are much better.

I hope that the Monster Manual itself has pictures for every creature. I don't expect it from the starter set, but my players have a much easier time imagining what they are fighting if I can show them what a creature looks like instead of taking a thousand words to do it.

Psyren

2014-06-27, 12:38 AM

1) WotC could've realized that handing reach out to large creatures was a little odd once you thought about. Large creatures are on average about 9-10 ft. tall (math might be off) but they're able to hit creatures 10 ft. away? Does that mean every large creature is a knuckle-dragger? They'd have to be since their arms are apparently as long as they are.

But he's holding a (presumably large-sized) greatclub and javelin. Are they the size of toothpicks to him?
In fact, the artwork shows that his arm + club actually is equal to his height.

(Also, I have a problem with your logic. We are 5-6ft. tall, and we have 5ft. reach. Are our arms 5ft. long?)

3) It could be to show that they're now capable of animalistic "thought"

Does this mean they can be dazed/stunned? Confused? Dominated? Maybe those aren't things anymore, or maybe they are, but either way they're not on the immunity list.

4) Something you see in videogames a lot is that slimes split once you kill/hurt them. WotC could have added it in since new players might think that's what they'd do anyway. The real reason is probably that they simply wanted to sell as many minis as possible.

You misunderstand me - I'm fine with them splitting as that is what they did in 3.5/PF and earlier editions. What I don't like is the size change that goes with it.

And yeah, the fluff is total weaksauce. Even 4e had more than this, and managed to combine fluff and crunch nicely with the "Tactics" sub-entry.

Envyus

2014-06-27, 12:57 AM

DeltaEmil

2014-06-27, 03:32 AM

The reason for the ochre jelly having an Intelligence score is simple. There are no non-ability scores in 5th edition like there was in 3.x.

Psyren

2014-06-27, 07:25 AM

The reason for the ochre jelly having an Intelligence score is simple. There are no non-ability scores in 5th edition like there was in 3.x.

So why 2 and not 0 then? I'm assuming there is no ability damage in 5e like there wasn't in 4th - of course, if there is, that is actually more reason for nonabilities to come back because then you can't simply drain a slime to 0, point and laugh. 2 implies that it's as intelligent as, say, a dog, which is not the case in any prior edition. Can I teach an Ochre Jelly tricks?

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-06-27, 07:30 AM

So why 2 and not 0 then? I'm assuming there is no ability damage in 5e like there wasn't in 4th - of course, if there is, that is actually more reason for nonabilities to come back because then you can't simply drain a slime to 0, point and laugh. 2 implies that it's as intelligent as, say, a dog, which is not the case in any prior edition. Can I teach an Ochre Jelly tricks?

Well it says that it stays away from large groups, dogs are smart enough to stay away from groups or other animals that may hurt them (ok, so not all dogs, some dogs get curious and want to play... And then get bit by a snake or whatever, my dog never learned though never died because of it...)

Perhaps you can raise a Jelly? That would be cool.

I know my ranger's skills and animal companion! Dungeoneering and Ochre Jelly! Totally get me a lance and ride it into battle!

Edit: They also stalk organic prey, they probably are as smart as any animal but probably without personality and such. Like a dog or cat will be aware of itself, maybe jellies are aware but have intelligence, does that make sense?

Psyren

2014-06-27, 07:52 AM

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-06-27, 07:59 AM

Oh, I see - they altered its behavior to fit the new Int score. Because I don't know of any oozes that would have cared about the size of a party before.

Though that wording is itself odd. Say there are 5 of these oozes and 5 of you. Will each one avoid the group of 5 individually, leading to none of them attacking you? Or do they now form "hunting packs?" Is there an alpha ooze that gets to eat first? (Just writing this stuff is making me shake my head.)

Will skeletons (and there will be skeletons) have rudimentary intelligence too? Zombies? Golems? Plants?

Obviously they will combine to make a super ooze! Then it will see the "large party" as a small party. :smalltongue:

I hope there are no mindless creatures, you can fluff anything to have some sort of basic programming or instinct. This way enchantment and illusions don't automatically get the f'you once you hit a certain level or certain type of monsters.

1337 b4k4

2014-06-27, 08:06 AM

1) Why doesn't the Large Ogre have reach?
2) Giant type is still here (unlike PF.) I don't think it'll matter as much unless the "X Person" spells are still strict.
3) Why does the ooze have an Intelligence score (albeit a low one)?
4) Why are the split oozes smaller? Now chopping the ooze in two is actually a good strategy. It also means we'll need a large ochre jelly mini and a medium one.
5) They could have dumped the whole "multiattack" line from the Nothic and simply showed the two attacks in the "Claws" line.
6) What is the point of Weird Insight?
7) How does the Challenge system work in 5e?

1) No idea, it was the same in the playtest packet, although I do note that early D&D (specifically the Rules Cyclopedia) make no mention of extended reach for ogres.

3) Because as the stat block notes, it has basic intelligence. Enough to avoid large groups and to stalk prey.

4) Because that's what oozes do. Also, it sort of makes sense, if this thing is going to be split, that the split versions will be smaller.

5) I think they're trying to be explicit.

6) Not every creature's abilities need to be solely combat abilities. In this case, imagine a Nothic that has manipulated its way to power by reading secrets from local authority figures and blackmailing them.

7) No real information on this yet. The last article suggested that XP values were how you would build encounters and the challenge value is a relative measure of power between monsters. Not sure if this is still the case or even if that interpretation was correct. The article was classic confusing Mearls.

Psyren

2014-06-27, 08:08 AM

Actually illusions do great against mindless creatures. You throw up a silent image of a wall, or disguise yourself as a different type of creature (say, a drow necromancer instead of the elf illusionist you were) and the skeletons are screwed unless their orders specifically allow them to circumvent that stuff. Now I have to wonder if the skeleton will poke at it or sniff you or something.

As for enchantments, they're still immune to charm and fear so there's not much an enchanter can do to them here either.

Psyren

2014-06-27, 08:17 AM

3) Because as the stat block notes, it has basic intelligence. Enough to avoid large groups and to stalk prey.

As I'm noting above, this causes continuity issues if everything that was mindless before has animal intelligence now.

4) Because that's what oozes do. Also, it sort of makes sense, if this thing is going to be split, that the split versions will be smaller.

Again, not taking issue with the split itself, just the size change. Now you need a medium ochre jelly mini where such a thing didn't exist before.
It's also ambiguous. Does it stop at one size change, or does the "original" mean "the ooze that was hit and made to split" in which case it would keep getting smaller and smaller.

5) I think they're trying to be explicit.

Perhaps, but they're doing so at the cost of precious statblock real estate. Doing it this way costs them a whole other line break on top of the text itself. I assumed all this keyword silliness was to save space, but they're doing the opposite.

6) Not every creature's abilities need to be solely combat abilities. In this case, imagine a Nothic that has manipulated its way to power by reading secrets from local authority figures and blackmailing them.

I'm fine with non-combat abilities, but not ones this poorly defined. Does the target choose the secret, or does the DM? And if it's the DM, do they then say to the player "tell me something about yourself?" Can it reveal tactical information like spells known or are the facts/secrets all fluff? When does it get a fact and when does it get a secret? After all, "facts" can be really inane things like "using my dark powers, I have learned you are an elf!" If multiple Nothics target you, can they all learn the same information or do they end up picking your past dry? Etc,

CyberThread

2014-06-27, 10:05 AM

Also gotta remember, this is the starter set, 20$ buck edition. These is for noobs to learn the system,and have you upgrade to the actual monster manual later.

StabbityRabbit

2014-06-27, 10:07 AM

But he's holding a (presumably large-sized) greatclub and javelin. Are they the size of toothpicks to him?
In fact, the artwork shows that his arm + club actually is equal to his height.

(Also, I have a problem with your logic. We are 5-6ft. tall, and we have 5ft. reach. Are our arms 5ft. long?)

Does this mean they can be dazed/stunned? Confused? Dominated? Maybe those aren't things anymore, or maybe they are, but either way they're not on the immunity list.

You misunderstand me - I'm fine with them splitting as that is what they did in 3.5/PF and earlier editions. What I don't like is the size change that goes with it.

And yeah, the fluff is total weaksauce. Even 4e had more than this, and managed to combine fluff and crunch nicely with the "Tactics" sub-entry.

I totally forgot about the weapon sizes!:smallsigh: I guess that's what I get for posting instead of sleeping. Yeah, just ignore my previous statement. Now the only reason I can think of is that WotC wanted to cut down on fiddly rules.

If those are things in 5e (dominated and whatnot) then I imagine you could do that to slimes. Rather easily too, due to their abysmal mental scores. More importantly if they can think like animals, then does that mean they can be companions like animals?

Sorry about the misunderstanding. The size change is probably to sell minis since Hasbro is probably breathing down their neck.

I remember when 4e first came out, and I would read the flavor text in the monster manual because it was so amazing to me in my youngster days. Somehow with this sad amount of fluff I don't see any kid doing the same thing. I know this is just the starter set, but isn't that where you want to introduce newbies to good fluff? They're probably not going to have much clue about what any of these monsters are, except for those who've seen something similar or the same elsewhere. And to me that's very sad.

da_chicken

2014-06-27, 10:21 AM

As I'm noting above, this causes continuity issues if everything that was mindless before has animal intelligence now.

Seriously? We're concerned about continuity of Ooze lore now? Weis, Greenwood and Salvatore are going to be up in arms because their series now don't make sense because the Ooze pulled a Scarecrow and got a brain?

Again, not taking issue with the split itself, just the size change. Now you need a medium ochre jelly mini where such a thing didn't exist before.

You don't need minis for 5e. Furthermore, nobody ever has every mini for every monster. I mean, seriously? I can't decide if this complaint or the one above is more petty.

It's also ambiguous. Does it stop at one size change, or does the "original" mean "the ooze that was hit and made to split" in which case it would keep getting smaller and smaller.

It keeps splitting until it's Small. Only Medium and larger Jellies have the Split ability.

Perhaps, but they're doing so at the cost of precious statblock real estate. Doing it this way costs them a whole other line break on top of the text itself. I assumed all this keyword silliness was to save space, but they're doing the opposite.

It reminded me if 4e stat blocks. I assumed they found that easier to read or otherwise desirable.

I'm fine with non-combat abilities, but not ones this poorly defined. Does the target choose the secret, or does the DM? And if it's the DM, do they then say to the player "tell me something about yourself?" Can it reveal tactical information like spells known or are the facts/secrets all fluff? When does it get a fact and when does it get a secret? After all, "facts" can be really inane things like "using my dark powers, I have learned you are an elf!" If multiple Nothics target you, can they all learn the same information or do they end up picking your past dry? Etc,

I would say it learns whatever is most advantageous for it to know or whatever the plot calls for it to learn or whatever it would most desire to know. Yes, the DM determines that. In a generic meeting encounter combat, I would assume they would not use the ability to defend themselves. It really depends what the creature looks like, but I would assume it's a Superman ability. It does what it needs to do.

Stray

2014-06-27, 10:39 AM

You don't need minis for 5e. Furthermore, nobody ever has every mini for every monster. I mean, seriously? I can't decide if this complaint or the one above is more petty.

Also, it's an ooze. Just make a blob of hot glue or epoxy, paint it if you need to and you have your very own mini.

CyberThread

2014-06-27, 10:54 AM

http://i.imgur.com/B30Tax0.png

Yorrin

2014-06-27, 12:09 PM

http://i.imgur.com/B30Tax0.png

My thoughts exactly. Oozes with mental scores ftw.

Psyren

2014-06-27, 12:13 PM

Seriously? We're concerned about continuity of Ooze lore now?

Calm down. I'm talking about mechanical continuity, not lore continuity.

Things like "I put the ooze to sleep" or "I confuse the ooze (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SublimeRhyme)" would have gotten a kneejerk "no" from DMs before this edition. Now they need to think about it, and why? How does this version make more sense than the previous one? How does something with no brain or facsimile thereof have intelligence?
It just feels like changing things for the sake of changing them, Greedo Shot First-style.

Hell, as written the preview spell (Command (http://www.enworld.org/newsimages/command.jpg)) will work on oozes for the first time, because it doesn't say that it's a charm effect anywhere. (In fact, it has no descriptors at all.)

You don't need minis for 5e.

You don't need minis for any RPG. Do you honestly think people won't use them? Or worse, throw out/lock away all the minis they got for previous editions?

It keeps splitting until it's Small. Only Medium and larger Jellies have the Split ability.

That's the interpretation if we take "original" to mean "the jelly (or child-jelly) that I attacked. If we instead take it to mean "the the original, Large jelly" then you instead get repeating Mediums until it runs out of HP.

I would say it learns whatever is most advantageous for it to know or whatever the plot calls for it to learn or whatever it would most desire to know. Yes, the DM determines that. In a generic meeting encounter combat, I would assume they would not use the ability to defend themselves. It really depends what the creature looks like, but I would assume it's a Superman ability. It does what it needs to do.

The ability says nothing about it only learning something advantageous. This is a recipe for table arguments.

obryn

2014-06-27, 12:19 PM

3) Why does the ooze have an Intelligence score (albeit a low one)?
Because of the way saving throws work in 5e. Saves are just ability checks, sometimes with either Advantage or a proficiency bonus.

Given the paucity of Intelligence saves as of the last packet, it's probably not a big deal.

7) How does the Challenge system work in 5e?
CR = "You must be this tall to ride." So a CR2 Ogre is fine for a 2nd level or higher party.
Encounter/challenge building is based on an XP budget, which is kind of like 4e in this sense, only obfuscated like everything else derived from 4e.

So why 2 and not 0 then? I'm assuming there is no ability damage in 5e like there wasn't in 4th - of course, if there is, that is actually more reason for nonabilities to come back because then you can't simply drain a slime to 0, point and laugh. 2 implies that it's as intelligent as, say, a dog, which is not the case in any prior edition. Can I teach an Ochre Jelly tricks?
There is definitely no ability score damage in 5e, and seriously, good riddance.

I don't see much of a gap between N/A and 2 Intelligence in this case, but oozes being "mindless" frankly never made any sense to me.

Yorrin

2014-06-27, 12:24 PM

CR = "You must be this tall to ride." So a CR2 Ogre is fine for a 2nd level or higher party.
Encounter/challenge building is based on an XP budget

An excellent explanation! I'll probably steal that line to teach my players how monsters work now.

1337 b4k4

2014-06-27, 12:57 PM

Hell, as written the preview spell (Command (http://www.enworld.org/newsimages/command.jpg)) will work on oozes for the first time, because it doesn't say that it's a charm effect anywhere. (In fact, it has no descriptors at all.)

You need to read that again. Command requires the target to understand your language. The jelly doesn't know any languages, therefore command doesn't work.

That's the interpretation if we take "original" to mean "the jelly (or child-jelly) that I attacked. If we instead take it to mean "the the original, Large jelly" then you instead get repeating Mediums until it runs out of HP.

We should probably take "original" to mean "the jelly that I attacked" given the structure of the ability. Specifically the ability states that "it splits into two new jellies" and subsequently "Each new jelly ... the original jelly". Also, frankly, I don't think it makes that much of a difference because you either end up with 4 small or 4 medium jellies. Given that the jelly can move through spaces as small as an inch without squeezing, it's not like the jelly size once it's medium or smaller makes a difference unless your players are playing large or giant creatures.

The ability says nothing about it only learning something advantageous. This is a recipe for table arguments.

Given the ability is insight vs deception, it logically follows that the item learned is something the target doesn't wish others to know, hence the deception.

Psyren

2014-06-27, 01:59 PM

You need to read that again. Command requires the target to understand your language. The jelly doesn't know any languages, therefore command doesn't work.

So use telepathy, which even made it to 4e so it will undoubtedly be here. Even that will work now because they aren't mindless anymore. Or Tongues if that makes it in. The mere fact that language-dependent is the only barrier remaining is bollocks.

We should probably take "original" to mean "the jelly that I attacked" given the structure of the ability. Specifically the ability states that "it splits into two new jellies" and subsequently "Each new jelly ... the original jelly". Also, frankly, I don't think it makes that much of a difference because you either end up with 4 small or 4 medium jellies. Given that the jelly can move through spaces as small as an inch without squeezing, it's not like the jelly size once it's medium or smaller makes a difference unless your players are playing large or giant creatures.

So there is no difference between Small and Medium in this edition? Why even have halflin - excuse me, kender - then?

Given the ability is insight vs deception, it logically follows that the item learned is something the target doesn't wish others to know, hence the deception.

I wouldn't want an enemy to know anything that I didn't tell it. But some bits of information are still more vital than others. As written, there is no rhyme or reason to what it gets.

1337 b4k4

2014-06-27, 02:43 PM

So use telepathy, which even made it to 4e so it will undoubtedly be here. Even that will work now because they aren't mindless anymore. Or Tongues if that makes it in. The mere fact that language-dependent is the only barrier remaining is bollocks.

Tounges isn't in the playtest, but looking at the 3e version, the problem with this is that Jellies don't have any language at all. There is no language in which you could command the Jelly to do anything. Similarly, telepathy still requires being able to communicate. Since Jellies have and understand no languages, telepathy wouldn't work here either.

So there is no difference between Small and Medium in this edition? Why even have halflin - excuse me, kender - then?

Per the playtest ... not really. They both occupy 5x5 space, both take 8 medium sized creatures to surround and both count for the purposes of surrounding as 1 medium sized creature. The only real distinction is that a small creature scan squeeze into a space that a medium cannot. As for "why kender" because not every thing has to have a strictly mechanical impact on your game.

I wouldn't want an enemy to know anything that I didn't tell it. But some bits of information are still more vital than others. As written, there is no rhyme or reason to what it gets.

As I said, it should be whatever makes sense in the DM's world. Are nothics creatures of directed evil or are they creatures of random malevolence. Heck, as written it doesn't even say whether it's direct knowledge ("You have a twin sister, Leia, who is the leader of the rebel alliance and on the moon below") vs a vague image ("Sister... so you have a twin sister"). Nothing wrong with leaving some of the specifics blank for the DM to fill in. When in doubt, ask your players how it should work (dungeon world principle), chances are they'll be eviler than you*. And maybe there is no rhyme or reason for what it gets, it is after all a weird insight.

*True Story: While running a DW session my players encountered a malevolent plant with 2 appendages. After defeating the plant, they did some investigating and as a result of a bad roll "reveal an unwelcome truth" was called for. Decided it should be something about the malevolent plant they just destroyed. Asked my players what the "horrible truth" about the plant was, and on their own they added 4 more dangerous appendages and intelligence to the plant and oh by the way, it's sneaking up on them right ... NOW! It would have been perfectly legal for them to go with something like "the plant releases a poisonous gas after it dies", but they chose to make things harder (and frankly more interesting). Let your players help you clarify where things aren't specified and not only will they feel it's more fair, but chances are they'll be more difficult on themselves than you were planning to be.

Lokiare

2014-06-27, 03:15 PM

Because of the way saving throws work in 5e. Saves are just ability checks, sometimes with either Advantage or a proficiency bonus.

Given the paucity of Intelligence saves as of the last packet, it's probably not a big deal.

CR = "You must be this tall to ride." So a CR2 Ogre is fine for a 2nd level or higher party.
Encounter/challenge building is based on an XP budget, which is kind of like 4e in this sense, only obfuscated like everything else derived from 4e.

There is definitely no ability score damage in 5e, and seriously, good riddance.

I don't see much of a gap between N/A and 2 Intelligence in this case, but oozes being "mindless" frankly never made any sense to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarian#Biochemical_memory_experiments

What we consider intelligence is not the width and breadth of the word.

Jacob.Tyr

2014-06-27, 03:37 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarian#Biochemical_memory_experiments

What we consider intelligence is not the width and breadth of the word.
Man, it's not like I don't agree with your statement, but why did you link to something that was never repeatable under further testing, suffered from serious observer bias, and had serious design flaws?

Fwiffo86

2014-06-27, 03:44 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarian#Biochemical_memory_experiments

What we consider intelligence is not the width and breadth of the word.

This was a neat read. "How to train your jelly in three easy swings." LOL

But this part unfortunately discredits his findings.....

"McConnell's results are now attributed to observer bias."

Rilling, M. (1996). "The mystery of the vanished citations: James McConnell's forgotten 1960s quest for planarian learning, a biochemical engram, and celebrity". American Psychologist 51 (6): 589–598. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.51.6.589.
For a general review, see also Georges Chapouthier, Behavioral studies of the molecular basis of memory, in: The Physiological Basis of Memory (J.A. Deutsch, ed.), 1973, Academic Press, New York and London, Chap. l, l–25

But I get your meaning that intelligence and reasoning are not necessarily tied together. I can definitely see that as an argument for Jellies have INT.

rlc

2014-06-27, 04:14 PM

All of this talk about minis reminds me that i haven't decided if I'm going to be buying them this edition, even though i never have before.

Lokiare

2014-06-27, 04:41 PM

Man, it's not like I don't agree with your statement, but why did you link to something that was never repeatable under further testing, suffered from serious observer bias, and had serious design flaws?

This was a neat read. "How to train your jelly in three easy swings." LOL

But this part unfortunately discredits his findings.....

But I get your meaning that intelligence and reasoning are not necessarily tied together. I can definitely see that as an argument for Jellies have INT.

Yes, I was referring to the part below the discredited findings. I linked to what I did because it was the closest heading with a link to that section: "In 2013, Tal Shomrat and Michael Levin have shown that planarians exhibit evidence of long-term memory retrieval after regenerating a new head."

This is also some evidence: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brainless-slime-molds/

Envyus

2014-06-27, 07:04 PM

New Monster http://community.wizards.com/sites/mtgcommunity/files/BrFYxZVCQAAM3xP.jpg

Jacob.Tyr

2014-06-27, 08:50 PM

New Monster http://community.wizards.com/sites/mtgcommunity/files/BrFYxZVCQAAM3xP.jpg
I like it. That ability makes them scary early on, and is very thematic in my opinion regarding goblinoids. It is also simple, but manages to add quite a bit of complexity to fighting hob goblins.

StabbityRabbit

2014-06-27, 10:21 PM

New Monster http://community.wizards.com/sites/mtgcommunity/files/BrFYxZVCQAAM3xP.jpg

Seems like hobgoblins will actually deserve some respect this edition (at least during lower levels).

I wonder if this means every goblin will get a similar gimmick, or if we'll get an ogre style goblinoid.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-06-28, 12:17 AM

Seems like hobgoblins will actually deserve some respect this edition (at least during lower levels).

I wonder if this means every goblin will get a similar gimmick, or if we'll get an ogre style goblinoid.

I can see multiple DMs across the world throwing 5 or so Hobgoblins at an adventuring group (level 1 or 2) and slaughtering them... High AC and an average damage (when in numbers) of 12.5? Damn...

I think the CR may be wrong.

Envyus

2014-06-28, 01:06 AM

I can see multiple DMs across the world throwing 5 or so Hobgoblins at an adventuring group (level 1 or 2) and slaughtering them... High AC and an average damage (when in numbers) of 12.5? Damn...

I think the CR may be wrong.

That's not how CR works in this edition. Four of them are considered to be in the same ballpark as the Ogre. Meaning a party of 4 level 2 characters should have moderate to dangerous time with them.

The best way to describe CR is that "Your Party must be this tall to fight this monster and stand a good chance at winning. "

pwykersotz

2014-06-28, 04:43 AM

That's not how CR works in this edition. Four of them are considered to be in the same ballpark as the Ogre. Meaning a party of 4 level 2 characters should have moderate to dangerous time with them.

The best way to describe CR is that "Your Party must be this tall to fight this monster and stand a good chance at winning. "

But even if it's additive, 4 of these hobgoblins scare me way more than 1 ogre. The ogre is easy to hit with 11 AC, has 59hp, and attacks at +6 for 13 damage a round to a single target.

A hobgoblin has 18 AC, 11hp, and attacks at +3 for an average of 12 damage if they're using their abilities. With 4 of them, have a LARGE advantage.

Maybe that's intended. Within a certain range of CR, multiple opponents are going to be more powerful than a single opponent...but this seems like a fairly vast power gap.

Envyus

2014-06-28, 05:10 AM

But even if it's additive, 4 of these hobgoblins scare me way more than 1 ogre. The ogre is easy to hit with 11 AC, has 59hp, and attacks at +6 for 13 damage a round to a single target.

A hobgoblin has 18 AC, 11hp, and attacks at +3 for an average of 12 damage if they're using their abilities. With 4 of them, have a LARGE advantage.

Maybe that's intended. Within a certain range of CR, multiple opponents are going to be more powerful than a single opponent...but this seems like a fairly vast power gap.

They did bring up a thing for a situation like this. I think the xp cost is higher or something I need more details though.

Anyway there are ways to counter the hobs power. (Fighting at a range, moving so they have difficulty staying next to you so their allies get the damage bonus for example.) If they are using bows their AC will be lowered by 2 as well as they can't use their shield in that case. Hobs are dangerous and they make a great early elite monster but if your smart they are less of a threat.

I can imagine a Hob serving as a boss monster for a level 1 party with him being supported by one or two Goblins.

Lokiare

2014-06-28, 08:57 AM

They did bring up a thing for a situation like this. I think the xp cost is higher or something I need more details though.

Anyway there are ways to counter the hobs power. (Fighting at a range, moving so they have difficulty staying next to you so their allies get the damage bonus for example.) If they are using bows their AC will be lowered by 2 as well as they can't use their shield in that case. Hobs are dangerous and they make a great early elite monster but if your smart they are less of a threat.

I can imagine a Hob serving as a boss monster for a level 1 party with him being supported by one or two Goblins.

I thought all monsters go on the same initiative? So all the hobs would move and attack so only the first one would not get the bonus right? They could also just ready their action for their allies to catch up.

This seems like more of the "death from a random monster" syndrome we've seen in the play test.

StabbityRabbit

2014-06-28, 10:19 AM

I can see multiple DMs across the world throwing 5 or so Hobgoblins at an adventuring group (level 1 or 2) and slaughtering them... High AC and an average damage (when in numbers) of 12.5? Damn...

I think the CR may be wrong.

2 hobgoblins are CR:1, so any DM should be able to figure out 2 hobgoblins are a challenge to level a 1 party. They should also be able to draw the conclusion that more than that will be very challenging, if not outright TPK territory.

Not only this, but as stated above there are several ways around this 12.5 damage. All in all I think hobgoblins will be alright as long as DMs don't throw entire platoons at the players.

DeltaEmil

2014-06-28, 11:22 AM

2 hobgoblins are CR:1, so any DM should be able to figure out 2 hobgoblins are a challenge to level a 1 party. They should also be able to draw the conclusion that more than that will be very challenging, if not outright TPK territory.

Not only this, but as stated above there are several ways around this 12.5 damage. All in all I think hobgoblins will be alright as long as DMs don't throw entire platoons at the players.The fluff of D&D hobgoblins is that they are a highly disciplined fighting force, so having them not be encountered in platoon size would be quite a deviation from normal expectations about these lawful-evil Medium-sized goblinoids.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-06-28, 11:41 AM

That's not how CR works in this edition. Four of them are considered to be in the same ballpark as the Ogre. Meaning a party of 4 level 2 characters should have moderate to dangerous time with them.

The best way to describe CR is that "Your Party must be this tall to fight this monster and stand a good chance at winning. "

I know how the CR system should work, I'm saying that they may be way low for their CR.

Partially because they have...

The fluff of D&D hobgoblins is that they are a highly disciplined fighting force, so having them not be encountered in platoon size would be quite a deviation from normal expectations about these lawful-evil Medium-sized goblinoids.

This, a DM who throws 1 or 2 out there is going against the fluff. Which is ok and I go against the fluff.

However I can see a lot of DMs wiping the floor with parties because they throw a bunch of low CR enemies thinoingbit is ok or it is like 3.5 where a group could take out a bunch of low CR creatures without the chance of being straight up murderered (without crits).

I love the Hobgoblin so far, but I think that new or moderately experienced DMs may destroy parties with stuff like this.

rlc

2014-06-28, 11:52 AM

Well, someone who's used to 3.5 needs too realize that they're not playing 3.5 anymore. As for somebody who's new, I'm sure the starter set will explain what cr is. If someone doesn't read the information presented to them, it's their fault and they'll have to learn through trial and error.
An understanding group will also have to say, "well, we know it's your first time, so we ain't even mad, but that was a little too hard."

Envyus

2014-06-28, 11:57 AM

I thought all monsters go on the same initiative? So all the hobs would move and attack so only the first one would not get the bonus right? They could also just ready their action for their allies to catch up.

This seems like more of the "death from a random monster" syndrome we've seen in the play test.

All Monsters don't go on the same initiative by default. You can say they do if you want. It depends on far away the hobs are. And I would say tactics wise that one of the hobs would want to take advantage of range while his ally gets close.

Psyren

2014-06-28, 11:58 AM

The fluff of D&D hobgoblins is that they are a highly disciplined fighting force, so having them not be encountered in platoon size would be quite a deviation from normal expectations about these lawful-evil Medium-sized goblinoids.

If you're attacking a hobgoblin encampment that might be the case. But they're just as often hired as mercenaries or enforcers so you could very feasibly run into them in smaller numbers. The local crime boss or evil merchant isn't going to retain an entire platoon of them after all.

That ability is going to suck against ranged hobgoblins. One gets in close to one of you, and his buddy then pincushions that target for 1d8 + 2d6 + 1 at level 1.

StabbityRabbit

2014-06-28, 12:19 PM

The fluff of D&D hobgoblins is that they are a highly disciplined fighting force, so having them not be encountered in platoon size would be quite a deviation from normal expectations about these lawful-evil Medium-sized goblinoids.

To me that just sounds like it adds a fun new layer to fighting hobgoblins.

So, say you're trying to take down a Hobgoblin encampment, but there are way too many hobgoblins to be taken down in the main camp. Now the party has to find ways to get 1 or 2 hobs away from the main group. They could watch the encampment to see if it sends out smaller scouting parties, and take those down. Alternatively they could have an illusionist to try and draw out a couple of hobs.

This, to me, makes it sound like the biggest problem parties will have with hobgoblins now is getting them to split up into a killable size groups.

pwykersotz

2014-06-28, 02:05 PM

The WotC forums has this (http://community.wizards.com/comment/50773871#comment-50773871) gem nested in them:

In the Q&A Rule of Three from April they said that CR was defined as: a moderate to challenging encounter for a party of four level (CR#) characters.

Assuming this is correct, it makes a lot more sense about the deadliness of the Hobs now. CR no longer measures what you should be able to steamroll, but what you are challenged by. I like it.

Envyus

2014-06-28, 05:22 PM

In other news someone actually tested the new Hobs.

I've had a look at the stat block and I think the Martial Advantage ability is reasonable. I tried a few combat simulations to test it out. The first thing I learned is that this statement isn't true at all.

It's damage is so high that it makes the Hobbie virtually equivalent to an Ogre. That's kinda nuts.

The sample first level fighter will make short work of a single hobgoblin, due to higher damage output and second wind. The same fighter was turned to paste after two rounds up against an ogre. Of course, because they were single foes, the Martial Advantage ability didn't come into play.

A standard party of 4 2nd level adventurers was able to handle 4 hobgoblins with ease. The hobs got the drop on the party and were able to put them at a disadvantage early by peppering the fighter with arrows (including a critical). The utility of second wind showed itself here again.

The hobs tried to send two of them into harry the group so that the remaining archers could use Martial Advantage. It didn't work so well for them. The party concentrated its attacks on one of the melee hobs and the wizard took out one of the hob archers with a sleep spell. After that, the other melee hob was dispatched and the party advanced on the remaining archer.

Only one attack hit with Martial Advantage and the fighter survived with help from the cleric. Most of the other hob attacks were done without Martial Advantage, as the melee hobs couldn't stay alive long enough to help out their archer allies.

The combat might have gone better if the hobs had concentrated on maintaining a tight melee formation instead of splitting up--but then that's supposed to be their preferred style. Maybe Martial Advantage actually does encourage phalanx fighting after all. ;-)

rlc

2014-06-28, 06:38 PM

Next, someone will complain that he only used 4 hobgoblins instead of 8, so the math is obviously wrong.

Envyus

2014-06-28, 07:22 PM

Next, someone will complain that he only used 4 hobgoblins instead of 8, so the math is obviously wrong.

4 Hobs is correct in what an encounter should be for a level 2 party of 4 just so you know.

rlc

2014-06-28, 07:45 PM

I know.:smalltongue:

da_chicken

2014-06-28, 10:33 PM

Nah, they'll just complain that perfect tactics were not used. Everyone knows 4e monsters were balanced to perfect tactics in best case scenarios.

Lokiare

2014-06-29, 03:33 PM

Or we could read the actual quote where they expressly say the hobgoblins didn't stay together and thus didn't get their increased damage. You know, the actual problem.

rlc

2014-06-29, 04:40 PM

Or we could read the actual quote where they expressly say the hobgoblins didn't stay together and thus didn't get their increased damage. You know, the actual problem.

I don't think we're reading the same thing. Or any of the same things. They get the increase if one of them attacks while another one of them is next to somebody they're attacking, not if they're next to each other (though it does mention that that might be better for them). One of them did get it, but the fighter lived through it. If they do stay together and fight in a phalanx, then the party stands a chance of failing, sure, but as somebody already said, that's what 50/50 means.

So, what this tells me is that, while they're definitely dangerous, they're about right for their CR.

Envyus

2014-06-29, 04:50 PM

I don't think we're reading the same thing. Or any of the same things. They get the increase if one of them attacks while another one of them is next to somebody they're attacking, not if they're next to each other (though it does mention that that might be better for them). One of them did get it, but the fighter lived through it. If they do stay together and fight in a phalanx, then the party stands a chance of failing, sure, but as somebody already said, that's what 50/50 means.

So, what this tells me is that, while they're definitely dangerous, they're about right for their CR.

Plus if they stay together in Phalanx then you can just keep out of range and focus on ranged attacks. They won't be able to get their bonus and if they want to reply with Ranged attacks themselves their ac will drop. (And they still won't get the bonus.)

There are quite a few ways to counter them. But they are deadly

Kurald Galain

2014-06-29, 06:15 PM

New Monster http://community.wizards.com/sites/mtgcommunity/files/BrFYxZVCQAAM3xP.jpg

I'm starting to dislike the fact that every attack seems to spell out redundant information, such as that a longsword is a melee weapon, and that the default of no reach is printed as "reach 5'". Aside from that, I note that a team of hobgobbo archers will be extremely deadly. Also, how on earth is a longbow a melee attack?

pwykersotz

2014-06-29, 06:19 PM

Also, how on earth is a longbow a melee attack?

Clearly it's a predecessor to the legendary Gunblade.

da_chicken

2014-06-29, 06:25 PM

Nah, they'll just complain that perfect tactics were not used. Everyone knows 4e monsters were balanced to perfect tactics in best case scenarios.

Or we could read the actual quote where they expressly say the hobgoblins didn't stay together and thus didn't get their increased damage. You know, the actual problem.

You know, I really shouldn't say it, but.... (http://youtu.be/CQ6kOvO1SUE)

Envyus

2014-06-29, 06:32 PM

I'm starting to dislike the fact that every attack seems to spell out redundant information, such as that a longsword is a melee weapon, and that the default of no reach is printed as "reach 5'". Aside from that, I note that a team of hobgobbo archers will be extremely deadly. Also, how on earth is a longbow a melee attack?

The Archers will only be deadly if they have melee support next to their targets.

1337 b4k4

2014-06-29, 07:35 PM

Also, how on earth is a longbow a melee attack?

The only things I can think of (other than editing error) are:
1) It's away of allowing a hobgoblin archer to fight in melee without incurring disadvantage when you make a ranged attack in melee. Very odd way of doing it however.

2) It actually means that they can pull a legolas and stab you in the eye with an arrow.

Envyus

2014-06-29, 07:52 PM

The only things I can think of (other than editing error) are:
1) It's away of allowing a hobgoblin archer to fight in melee without incurring disadvantage when you make a ranged attack in melee. Very odd way of doing it however.

2) It actually means that they can pull a legolas and stab you in the eye with an arrow.

I thought it was just them shooting their bow at point blank range. Still incurring disadvantage.

Lokiare

2014-06-29, 08:09 PM

You know, I really shouldn't say it, but.... (http://youtu.be/CQ6kOvO1SUE)

I think you've invented a new logical fallacy here. Calling out a legitimate complaint against an argument as incredulous. It probably falls undo 'appeal to incredulity' though. Its an interesting hybrid between straw man and appeal to incredulity. You hold up a legitimate complaint and ridicule it without answering or replying to it ahead of time so that your opponent will look foolish if they use that complaint to the unskilled eye. Unfortunately anyone that has relatively decent reading comprehension sees right through it and it colors you unreliable in their eyes.

Regardless. No one appears to have answered the critique. The author implies that the hobgoblins got separated and didn't get to apply their extra damage. Thus the test itself was flawed, or the trait itself is nearly worthless in cases where they can be kept from forming a group or in the hands of a DM that doesn't know how to play them. The real question is: does 5E explain that they fight in tight formations by standing next to each other in small groups or not? If it does, then in this case its the DMs fault. If it doesn't then its 5E's fault for not telling the DM the basic tactics of the monster.

rlc

2014-06-29, 08:27 PM

He mad.

lol.

Arzanyos

2014-06-29, 08:33 PM

The hobgoblins had pretty good tactics. They started out with ranged attacks, but the party withstood them. Then, they sent in two hobgoblins for melee, so that the two remaining archers would get the bonus damage, but they were taken down by concentrated fire. Maybe they would have lasted longer if they had all transitioned to melee, but that would have given the party a whole turn where the hobgoblins didn't do anything besides switch weapons.

Envyus

2014-06-29, 09:57 PM

I think you've invented a new logical fallacy here. Calling out a legitimate complaint against an argument as incredulous. It probably falls undo 'appeal to incredulity' though. Its an interesting hybrid between straw man and appeal to incredulity. You hold up a legitimate complaint and ridicule it without answering or replying to it ahead of time so that your opponent will look foolish if they use that complaint to the unskilled eye. Unfortunately anyone that has relatively decent reading comprehension sees right through it and it colors you unreliable in their eyes.

Regardless. No one appears to have answered the critique. The author implies that the hobgoblins got separated and didn't get to apply their extra damage. Thus the test itself was flawed, or the trait itself is nearly worthless in cases where they can be kept from forming a group or in the hands of a DM that doesn't know how to play them. The real question is: does 5E explain that they fight in tight formations by standing next to each other in small groups or not? If it does, then in this case its the DMs fault. If it doesn't then its 5E's fault for not telling the DM the basic tactics of the monster.

I did answer the question. Both tactics were good. Sending in Melee to attack while the other fired at a range was a fine tactic however the melee did not last long enough for them to really use their power. If they go in Phalanx formation then people can just stay out of range of their movement and hit them with ranged attacks with the hobs unable to get their powers advantage.

The hobs did not get to apply their extra damage because they got separated. They did not get to apply it because the Melee could not last long enough. He said their power would probbaly work better if they are kept in Phalanx formation which is how they are supposed to be played.

rlc

2014-06-29, 10:16 PM

This "critique" is talking about stuff that didn't even happen. The power was used and showed that it didn't kill the fighter in one hit, but it was strong enough to require healing. If they had stayed in a phalanx, then the fighter would still fight and the wizard would still wiz.

Psyren

2014-06-29, 11:20 PM

Envyus

2014-06-29, 11:46 PM

rlc

2014-06-30, 05:49 AM

My worry is that if the hobs got the drop on the party, they could open with what they apparently did during the second round of the quote above - two move in to melee while the other two fire from range. It seems like a pretty organic setup, only that time three of the four would get the MA bonus and the fighter would be eating 3d8 + 6d6 + 3. Even with the average numbers the poor fighter would be looking at 36 damage at level 2, with his best hope being that they don't focus fire.

Careful you don't cut yourself on that wit now :smalltongue:Yeah, that's a lot of damage, but at the same time, it's supposed to be an even fight under normal circumstance and you're adding an ambush on top of it. Ambushes are supposed to be hard, but you also have the support of a wizard and a cleric, plus i think another fighter, if i remember correctly. If you're using another party besides the pre-rolled one, then you obviously have different stuff, but you should still stands a chance.

Psyren

2014-06-30, 08:30 AM

Remember that Fighters tend to have high AC and hobs only have +3 to hit.

During an ambush, they'd have advantage though, right? (Not sure how surprise works in 5e.)

Yeah, that's a lot of damage, but at the same time, it's supposed to be an even fight under normal circumstance and you're adding an ambush on top of it. Ambushes are supposed to be hard, but you also have the support of a wizard and a cleric, plus i think another fighter, if i remember correctly. If you're using another party besides the pre-rolled one, then you obviously have different stuff, but you should still stands a chance.

The issue I see is that this wouldn't actually be an even fight in 3.x. 4 hobgoblin fighters for a level 2 party should be, not necessarily a cakewalk, but definitely not this potentially lethal for one party member out of the gate just for the DM following standard tactics (2 melee run up to the big guy in front while 2 ranged hang back and fire - i.e. standard stuff.)

It certainly fits with their apparently intended shift of "equal CR = tough/challenging" - and I only hope DMs are aware of that shift before they inadvertently kill someone off at level 1 or 2.

rlc

2014-06-30, 09:24 AM

The short answer for that is this isn't 3.x and I'm sure that they'll explain that the CR system actually makes sense in this edition.
The long answer is that, if someone doesn't realize that, whether it's because of what they're used to or they didn't bother reading, then they'll have to learn through trial and error. It's the same as any other sequel/reboot type of game (can't think of any other type of game with "editions" per se, but reboots are close enough). Sure, the hobgoblins can be tough if they use the right strategies, but that's realistic.

Jacob.Tyr

2014-06-30, 09:38 AM

C'mon, it's not like an even level fight in 3.X isn't a game of rocket tag at level 2. Especially if you roll for health at first level (which you are supposed to in 3.5). Making any even fight at that level into an ambush is pretty much a dead PC the first round.

Lokiare

2014-06-30, 10:15 AM

He mad.

lol.

Hardly. Annoyed is more like it. I'm just tired of people using faulty logic and emotional arguments to defend their ideals. It doesn't lead to a fruitful discussion. I do like that several posts after yours actually try to answer the critique.

C'mon, it's not like an even level fight in 3.X isn't a game of rocket tag at level 2. Especially if you roll for health at first level (which you are supposed to in 3.5). Making any even fight at that level into an ambush is pretty much a dead PC the first round.

This is nearly the same in 5e. The extremely low starting HP makes it likely that character death will happen. This prevents certain play styles.

Fwiffo86

2014-06-30, 10:26 AM

This is nearly the same in 5e. The extremely low starting HP makes it likely that character death will happen. This prevents certain play styles.

Question. How is Maximum Hit Points (as per your Class hit die) + CON mod extremely low hit points? Especially when you consider that Monster Blocks indicate only average HP totals for them?

Are we going back to 1e Monks? Double base hit die at first level? (I always thought this was a silly mechanic myself and never used it, I just gave 1e monks a d6 instead of d4.

rlc

2014-06-30, 10:43 AM

Hardly. Annoyed is more like it. I'm just tired of people using faulty logic and emotional arguments to defend their ideals. It doesn't lead to a fruitful discussion. I do like that several posts after yours actually try to answer the critique.

This is nearly the same in 5e. The extremely low starting HP makes it likely that character death will happen. This prevents certain play styles.

...nobody's using faulty logic or emotional arguments (except for the guy who's referencing things that didn't happen, like powers not being used that obviously were, or using the argument that he's annoyed...which are both all you). Again, I don't think we're reading the same things.
And your critique has been answered multiple times, including by me, and you just don't like the answers. If you die in a fair fight, that doesn't make it any less fair. And using ambushes as an example of a fair fight is faulty logic because the whole point of an ambush is to not be a fair fight.

I'm going to start reading all of your posts on this website in Pee-wee Herman's voice from now on because that's how rediculous you sound in every single thread.

Kurald Galain

2014-06-30, 10:44 AM

Question. How is Maximum Hit Points (as per your Class hit die) + CON mod extremely low hit points? Especially when you consider that Monster Blocks indicate only average HP totals for them?

The math for 4E is that a PC's hit points (at any level) are four times the damage a monster does on a hit (at that level), with a bit of variation between roles. This is not the case in any other edition; indeed, it is one of the reasons why people feel that 4E is too "same-y". I suspect that WOTC consciously stepped away from this approach.

After all, one of the main aims for 5E is to avoid the mechanics that made 4E controversial. Of course, many 4E fans like those mechanics, but that just means they aren't the target audience of 5E. There's no point in arguing that strawberry ice cream doesn't taste like chocolate, after all.

da_chicken

2014-06-30, 12:11 PM

Question. How is Maximum Hit Points (as per your Class hit die) + CON mod extremely low hit points? Especially when you consider that Monster Blocks indicate only average HP totals for them?

Because 4e was huge flat amount + Con score. First level hit points were vastly inflated. The Fighter starts with 15 + Con score, so a 15 Con fighter starts with 30 hp. The same fighter has to be level 3 in 5e (or any other edition) to get that high. Wizard was 10 + Con score, meaning the weakest Wizard with 8 Con still starts with 18 hp. That's not even possible for any character at first level in 5e. A 5e Barbarian with 16 Con starts with 15 hp.

Are we going back to 1e Monks? Double base hit die at first level? (I always thought this was a silly mechanic myself and never used it, I just gave 1e monks a d6 instead of d4.

What did you do for 1e Rangers? They had 2d8 at first level. The more strict Ranger translation I did from 1e to 3e gave Toughness at 1st level because of that.

Kurald Galain

2014-06-30, 12:15 PM

Because 4e was huge flat amount + Con score.

Flat amount + your best ability score, actually. A level-1 wizard can be expected to have 30 hit points, whereas in other editions they'd be lucky to have 6.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-06-30, 12:22 PM

Flat amount + your best ability score, actually. A level-1 wizard can be expected to have 30 hit points, whereas in other editions they'd be lucky to have 6.

Oh yeah, backgrounds!

obryn

2014-06-30, 12:27 PM

Flat amount + your best ability score, actually. A level-1 wizard can be expected to have 30 hit points, whereas in other editions they'd be lucky to have 6.
Only with one specific campaign-specific background a lot of tables didn't allow.

A level 1 wizard could have 30 hp with that background, but a Fighter with the same background could have 35.

The main difference would, of course, be in their healing surges, where the Wizard would probably have 6 and the Fighter would have a minimum of 9, but realistically 11-12. 4e differentiates classes in their surges (their full-day reserves, in other words) more than it does their hit points.

An average monster at 1st level deals 9 damage.

Kurald Galain

2014-06-30, 12:37 PM

Only with one specific campaign-specific background a lot of tables didn't allow.

Forgotten Realms is the first published campaign world within 4E, by far the most popular, and the basis for both of 4E's organized play programs, and aside from that most groups I'm aware of run off the character builder rather than particular source books. So yes, I'd fully expect the majority of 4E characters to have auspicious birth (or one of several backgrounds that do exactly the same).

obryn

2014-06-30, 12:45 PM

Forgotten Realms is the first published campaign world within 4E, by far the most popular, and the basis for both of 4E's organized play programs, and aside from that most groups I'm aware of run off the character builder rather than particular source books. So yes, I'd fully expect the majority of 4E characters to have auspicious birth (or one of several backgrounds that do exactly the same).
Generally the first two things banned out the gate are FR (and Scales of War) backgrounds and Dragonmarks. :smallbiggrin:

At higher levels, the bonus becomes pretty negligible, but most FR and SoW backgrounds are clearly more potent than PHB2 and onwards backgrounds.

captpike

2014-06-30, 03:36 PM

Question. How is Maximum Hit Points (as per your Class hit die) + CON mod extremely low hit points? Especially when you consider that Monster Blocks indicate only average HP totals for them?

Are we going back to 1e Monks? Double base hit die at first level? (I always thought this was a silly mechanic myself and never used it, I just gave 1e monks a d6 instead of d4.

because once health gets below a certain number there is no such thing as a little damage. if you only have 4 hp then any damage is serious. this becomes worse if the spread is big. for example 4hp vs 12hp. any damage that the 12hp person would care about would be devastating for the 4hp person.

personal I would say 15ish would be the lowest I would want hp to be (as in the lowest hp class, who dumped con). much less then that and it gets hard to give the character any non-debilitating amount of damage.

if you want a creature to do more damage it can, but if your max hp is too low there is NO way to have a creature do low amounts of damage.

The math for 4E is that a PC's hit points (at any level) are four times the damage a monster does on a hit (at that level), with a bit of variation between roles. This is not the case in any other edition; indeed, it is one of the reasons why people feel that 4E is too "same-y". I suspect that WOTC consciously stepped away from this approach.

After all, one of the main aims for 5E is to avoid the mechanics that made 4E controversial. Of course, many 4E fans like those mechanics, but that just means they aren't the target audience of 5E. There's no point in arguing that strawberry ice cream doesn't taste like chocolate, after all.

except that the people making the strawberry are saying that it DOES taste like chocolate.

Kurald Galain

2014-06-30, 03:41 PM

Generally the first two things banned out the gate are

I'm sure that is true at your table, but if you're going to make such a statement for most or all tables worldwide, then I would appreciate seeing a source on that. It is absolutely not my experience that any of these things are generally banned.

captpike

2014-06-30, 03:45 PM

there is no disadvantage to having your starting help be high enough to allow some granularity. when you have 8 health its hard to have any amount of damage that is small. this is made worse if someone has much more help then you do, say 15.

if you want creatures to do more damage you can do that, but if everyone has 10 or less hp you can never have creatures just do a little damage

obryn

2014-06-30, 03:47 PM

I'm sure that is true at your table, but if you're going to make such a statement for most or all tables worldwide, then I would appreciate seeing a source on that. It is absolutely not my experience that any of these things are generally banned.
Largely on recruitment posts on another (heavily 4e) board, with other common major houserules of "free expertise feat" and frequently "free improved defenses feat." :smallsmile:

No worries, though, this argument's boring. I give up, you win.

Lokiare

2014-06-30, 03:49 PM

1337 b4k4

2014-06-30, 04:07 PM

The posts above explain exactly what I'm saying. Its fine to have low HP monsters and high HP monsters at a given level. Its not OK for the mythic play style to have HP so low that you die from a single random hit.

In this case WotC are trying to feed us strawberry ice cream and calling it chocolate. I'd be perfectly OK if they said it was strawberry ice cream. I can just go somewhere else and get the ice cream I want. Instead they keep telling me the pink is from a special kind of chocolate.

Would you feel better if they labeled level 3 as the start of the "Mythic" tier? I mean, even if we assume that WotC really means "everyone" when they say "everyone" then by definition and necessity there will be parts of the game that you simply wont use because it won't be applicable to your play style. In this case, that appears to be levels 1 and 2.

Alternatively:

Mythic Module*
Multiply starting player HP by 3
At every level where you do not normally gain an attribute or proficiency increase, choose one attribute to increase or gain proficiency in a save.

*Completely untested and off the cuff, management is not responsible for broken tables.

Psyren

2014-06-30, 04:14 PM

For the record, I don't think Martial Advantage is going to break the bank and cause returning players to shun 5e in droves. (I'm actually more annoyed by intelligent oozes and stubby-armed ogres, but hey.) Everything taken as a whole from the monster design perspective is not really making me salivate, but at the same time I'm not pointing to any one thing as the "ruined forever!" breaking point either./

I do like that they've gone back to a more 3e-focused terminology. I can easily lift elements from these monsters and port them back into 3.PF.

pwykersotz

2014-06-30, 04:16 PM

Lokiare

2014-06-30, 05:45 PM

Would you feel better if they labeled level 3 as the start of the "Mythic" tier? I mean, even if we assume that WotC really means "everyone" when they say "everyone" then by definition and necessity there will be parts of the game that you simply wont use because it won't be applicable to your play style. In this case, that appears to be levels 1 and 2.

Alternatively:

Mythic Module*
Multiply starting player HP by 3
At every level where you do not normally gain an attribute or proficiency increase, choose one attribute to increase or gain proficiency in a save.

*Completely untested and off the cuff, management is not responsible for broken tables.

I've already solved it one way by simply adding constitution score to hit points of everything at 1st level. Monsters are more resilient. Characters are more resilient. Tactics matter more since you can't just alpha strike everything and win. Unfortunately the problem comes in when I have to rewrite half the game to make it playable. At that point I'm just going to go play a different game.

Psyren

2014-06-30, 05:52 PM

Or vice-versa. :smallsmile:

If 5e has an OGL (unlikely) I might consider that - otherwise I'll use the system that's easier to share/discuss/publish 3PP for as the base.

Jacob.Tyr

2014-06-30, 05:54 PM

I've already solved it one way by simply adding constitution score to hit points of everything at 1st level. Monsters are more resilient. Characters are more resilient. Tactics matter more since you can't just alpha strike everything and win. Unfortunately the problem comes in when I have to rewrite half the game to make it playable. At that point I'm just going to go play a different game.

Sounds like you want a different system, anyway. You should look into 4E, it seems to answer a lot of the complaints you have about 5E.

Lokiare

2014-06-30, 06:01 PM

Sounds like you want a different system, anyway. You should look into 4E, it seems to answer a lot of the complaints you have about 5E.

I already play 4E, but WotC keeps telling me 5e is a "game for everyone" and "supports all play styles." I'm simply stating that it does not do either.

Jacob.Tyr

2014-06-30, 06:13 PM

I already play 4E, but WotC keeps telling me 5e is a "game for everyone" and "supports all play styles." I'm simply stating that it does not do either.

Hey man, that sucks! But, honestly, I don't think anyone could reasonably take that statement as true, ever. Like, are they somehow going to pull all the Exalted, M&M, FATE, and NWoD players over to 5e? That's ridiculous, because those systems work for something completely different than any edition of D&D ever has.

I'm going to hold out on 5e, myself, because it lacks anything like ToB. Now that DSP has redone ToB for Pathfinder, it has become my go to game for fantasy (their work in general is fantastic). I'm hoping that more dynamic and interesting options outside of spells and "trip/bullrush/grapple" come out in a module eventually, but until then I'm holding off. I'm still playing Iron Kingdoms, Numenera, and am starting a M&M 3e game though, because those systems are great for different feels and game styles. The idea that 5e would somehow be "all play styles" is ridiculous.

Lokiare

2014-06-30, 06:18 PM

Hey man, that sucks! But, honestly, I don't think anyone could reasonably take that statement as true, ever. Like, are they somehow going to pull all the Exalted, M&M, FATE, and NWoD players over to 5e? That's ridiculous, because those systems work for something completely different than any edition of D&D ever has.

I'm going to hold out on 5e, myself, because it lacks anything like ToB. Now that DSP has redone ToB for Pathfinder, it has become my go to game for fantasy (their work in general is fantastic). I'm hoping that more dynamic and interesting options outside of spells and "trip/bullrush/grapple" come out in a module eventually, but until then I'm holding off. I'm still playing Iron Kingdoms, Numenera, and am starting a M&M 3e game though, because those systems are great for different feels and game styles. The idea that 5e would somehow be "all play styles" is ridiculous.

I think they kept it within the bounds of anyone that's played an official version of D&D. Don't worry I'll stop posting when they admit that 5E is a warmed over 2e/3E retroclone.

Arzanyos

2014-06-30, 06:20 PM

Oh, I think 5E can support all playstyles. It just can't be all thinks to all people. So, you might have to change some things, because they are geared towards a different playstyle than yours.

obryn

2014-06-30, 06:27 PM

I already play 4E, but WotC keeps telling me 5e is a "game for everyone" and "supports all play styles." I'm simply stating that it does not do either.
Dude, I also play 4e, and I figured out a long time ago that 5e probably won't do a good enough job at the kind of play I want without basically being rebuilt from the ground up. I'll give it a fair shake at my table, but I don't expect to play it long-term. I could be wrong; my players get opinions, too, and I'm not the king.

And you know what? I'm okay with that. Because I have not one but several games that already fulfill the game styles I want. Apparently, so do you.

So ... what's the problem here? Why does Next need to fill a niche that's filled by games you already have? I seriously don't get it.

Envyus

2014-06-30, 06:30 PM

I already play 4E, but WotC keeps telling me 5e is a "game for everyone" and "supports all play styles." I'm simply stating that it does not do either.

They don't keep claiming this. Only you and Captpike keep saying this.

Jacob.Tyr

2014-06-30, 06:36 PM

I think they kept it within the bounds of anyone that's played an official version of D&D. Don't worry I'll stop posting when they admit that 5E is a warmed over 2e/3E retroclone.

Ouch! That sounds like product suicide, to me. I don't think they will or should do that! It definitely is more like 3 or 2e than 4e, but a warmed over retroclone?

Definitely seems like a much better redo of 3rd than PF, and I rather like bounded accuracy myself! They even took some inspiration from 4th, although not enough for my tastes. It's a better start than 4th, 3rd, or Pathfinder were right out the gate, though.

Envyus

2014-06-30, 07:11 PM

Mike just answered a question I had on there most recent stream. The Hobgoblin longbow saying that it is a melee attack as well as a ranged attack is a typo. It's ranged only.

Fwiffo86

2014-06-30, 07:29 PM

if you want a creature to do more damage it can, but if your max hp is too low there is NO way to have a creature do low amounts of damage.

How is having your monsters deal MORE damage any different than having lower hit points? If your dealing more damage because your characters have more hit points instead of just lowering hit points and keeping the same damage, you are just posing a different alternative to the same thing. Aren't you?

What happens when I take the spindly mage and shove 36 inches of steel through his stomach? Supposedly he dies. But your alternative has a smirking mage pull the sword out, and fireball you.

With large numbers of hit points I feel you lose the whole point of using a class that foreswears menial things such as exercise and martial prowess so they can bend the laws of the universe instead. Its one of the things that balances the cosmic powers mages wield... you usually can one or two shot them if you get through their defenses.

1337 b4k4

2014-06-30, 07:52 PM

I've already solved it one way by simply adding constitution score to hit points of everything at 1st level. Monsters are more resilient. Characters are more resilient. Tactics matter more since you can't just alpha strike everything and win. Unfortunately the problem comes in when I have to rewrite half the game to make it playable. At that point I'm just going to go play a different game.

Changing the default modifier for starting HP now counts as rewriting half the game?

Psyren

2014-06-30, 08:07 PM

Definitely seems like a much better redo of 3rd than PF.

Eh... as its own game it's all right so far, but it has yet to demonstrate the true tactical complexity that 3e/PF is capable of. I need to see special attacks, summoning/shapeshifting/mind control spells, 3-dimensional combat, terrain and weather effects, afflictions, consumables etc.

Jacob.Tyr

2014-06-30, 09:41 PM

Eh... as its own game it's all right so far, but it has yet to demonstrate the true tactical complexity that 3e/PF is capable of. I need to see special attacks, summoning/shapeshifting/mind control spells, 3-dimensional combat, terrain and weather effects, afflictions, consumables etc.

Oh, yeah. I think the framework is solid, it is currently lacking in choices though. Personally I don't care for flight, I hope polymorph spells aren't awful, and really hope summoning is reined in a bit (although concentration mixed with a solid yet fixed list might be fantastic here). Right now it is a simple yet sturdy frame, but I won't shell out until they start hanging some nice stuff off of it, either.

captpike

2014-06-30, 10:15 PM

How is having your monsters deal MORE damage any different than having lower hit points? If your dealing more damage because your characters have more hit points instead of just lowering hit points and keeping the same damage, you are just posing a different alternative to the same thing. Aren't you?

What happens when I take the spindly mage and shove 36 inches of steel through his stomach? Supposedly he dies. But your alternative has a smirking mage pull the sword out, and fireball you.

With large numbers of hit points I feel you lose the whole point of using a class that foreswears menial things such as exercise and martial prowess so they can bend the laws of the universe instead. Its one of the things that balances the cosmic powers mages wield... you usually can one or two shot them if you get through their defenses.

that is not how balance works, you cant balance someone being awesome at category A (offense) by them being weak at category B(hp and AC)

if I have 4hp, and I take damage its huge, I lose at least a quarter of my hp. if its two I lose half.

if I have 20h then I can still lose a quarter of my hp to an attack, but I could also lose 1/10th.

I think 15 is about the smallest amount of hp you can have and not have this issue.

Knaight

2014-06-30, 10:40 PM

there is no disadvantage to having your starting help be high enough to allow some granularity. when you have 8 health its hard to have any amount of damage that is small. this is made worse if someone has much more help then you do, say 15.
When you have 8 HP you can take 4-8 1d2 hits, and 8 1 damage hits. That seems like a small amount of damage.

if you want creatures to do more damage you can do that, but if everyone has 10 or less hp you can never have creatures just do a little damage
Assuming that damage comes in integers, that leaves creatures who do 1 damage, which is pretty clearly a small amount. Advance Wars (a video game example) has 10 hp for everything, and 1 damage is pretty minor - though that is partially because it's a pretty lethal game where 8-10 damage shots aren't exactly uncommon, provided that your opponent left an opening somewhere.

that is not how balance works, you cant balance someone being awesome at category A (offense) by them being weak at category B(hp and AC)
It's funny how many strategy games seem to manage this balance just fine, including the ones with relatively few units.

captpike

2014-06-30, 10:45 PM

When you have 8 HP you can take 4-8 1d2 hits, and 8 1 damage hits. That seems like a small amount of damage.

Assuming that damage comes in integers, that leaves creatures who do 1 damage, which is pretty clearly a small amount. Advance Wars (a video game example) has 10 hp for everything, and 1 damage is pretty minor - though that is partially because it's a pretty lethal game where 8-10 damage shots aren't exactly uncommon, provided that your opponent left an opening somewhere.

It's funny how many strategy games seem to manage this balance just fine, including the ones with relatively few units.

does the game have alot of d2s for damage?

yes you can do that when you have mulitible units that is not how RPGs work when you have and only have one unit. it just means that in any given situation you will be too powerful or too weak

Knaight

2014-06-30, 10:51 PM

yes you can do that when you have mulitible units that is not how RPGs work when you have and only have one unit. it just means that in any given situation you will be too powerful or too weak

Even if we assume that there are no followers, summoned creatures, suborned enemies, or whatever else, the party as a whole has more than one unit. Specialization works fine, and squad based strategy balance works just fine. Heck, strategy style balance works just fine in general, provided that the role of massed disposable troop is absent.

As for having lots of d2s for damage, no, it doesn't. It's almost like they specifically chose to avoid the presence of mostly harmless hits. There are plenty of d6s from the looks of things though, and with 10 Hp up to 9 of those can be flat soaked. 3 probably will be, 4 and 5 both have a decent (but below 50%) chance of it. That doesn't mean the capacity isn't there, merely that it isn't commonly employed, because they decided to make low level combat dangerous again.

rlc

2014-06-30, 10:52 PM

A lot of rpgs have characters who start off with low hp.

Lokiare

2014-07-01, 01:48 AM

How is having your monsters deal MORE damage any different than having lower hit points? If your dealing more damage because your characters have more hit points instead of just lowering hit points and keeping the same damage, you are just posing a different alternative to the same thing. Aren't you?

What happens when I take the spindly mage and shove 36 inches of steel through his stomach? Supposedly he dies. But your alternative has a smirking mage pull the sword out, and fireball you.

With large numbers of hit points I feel you lose the whole point of using a class that foreswears menial things such as exercise and martial prowess so they can bend the laws of the universe instead. Its one of the things that balances the cosmic powers mages wield... you usually can one or two shot them if you get through their defenses.
First off my play style uses hit points as they are described in every edition. Not as meat but as a measure to turn deadly wounds into scratches. So when that sword gets near the mage he teleports a couple feet out of its reach using some of his emergency reserves, which when they run out he'll be unable to dodge the sword and then gets stabbed and dies. second, being able to take multiple hits allows the players decisions to matter more than roll of the dice. A lucky shot from an Archer is all it takes right now to take out a mage.

Changing the default modifier for starting HP now counts as rewriting half the game?

That and all the other things I'm going to have to do to make the game support my play style such as removing or adjusting spells. Adding more things for martial classes to do. Balancing the game. Balancing martials with casters.etc...etc...

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-01, 06:56 AM

Eh... as its own game it's all right so far, but it has yet to demonstrate the true tactical complexity that 3e/PF is capable of. I need to see special attacks, summoning/shapeshifting/mind control spells, 3-dimensional combat, terrain and weather effects, afflictions, consumables etc.

Hey, which is it? Is 3.P tactical or is 4e? All I keep hearing is how 4e is the tactical game whereas 3.P is not. :smalltongue:

Anyways, I remember when 4e first came out (that very month) and everyone was bashing it for not having the number of options that 3.5 had, I just stared at them and shook my head. Not that you are going that far, but that's what it reminds me of :p.

Fwiffo86

2014-07-01, 08:46 AM

First off my play style uses hit points as they are described in every edition. Not as meat but as a measure to turn deadly wounds into scratches. So when that sword gets near the mage he teleports a couple feet out of its reach using some of his emergency reserves, which when they run out he'll be unable to dodge the sword and then gets stabbed and dies. second, being able to take multiple hits allows the players decisions to matter more than roll of the dice. A lucky shot from an Archer is all it takes right now to take out a mage.

Ok, so lets say it isn't a character, but a villain. Does he get the same treatment? Or does he have a completely different set up, simply because he isn't an ally, but a villain?

Me personally, I like knowing that ALL mages can be skewered on the business end of a blade with minimal effort once you get past their defenses. This applies to player characters AND their enemies.

As far as lucky shot taking out your mage, and player decisions... this is a flawed belief. Every decision a player makes determines when the dice are rolled. Not the other way around. You don't roll the dice THEN make a decision.

example) Party meets band of bandits (bandits built like characters, not using some BS stat block). Party attempts social solution. Player of wizard decides he/she does NOT want to RP it out. (roll dice). Dice roll badly, combat starts. Player of wizard decides to use attack spell first. (hoping to remove one from combat)(roll dice).

This is an example of the decisions dictating when to roll dice. Yes, if the wizard is standing in open ground with no defenses, yes, a good shot can take him out. Who's fault is that? It certainly isn't the systems fault.

Since this issue seems to revolve around the player decision making process. The player should be aware of his character. If he is not, it is not the system's job to compensate for poor decision choices. It is the job of the system to provide you with options to choose from. I'm sure you will argue that he should be able to take a hit and given the opportunity to change his tactics.

Well I say here is your solution, you put in the Storm Trooper School of Marksmanship rule. Basically it says, if your players are unaware of an enemy, the enemies initial volley of long range attacks always miss, but land close enough to alert the players to the fact they are being attacked.

that is not how balance works, you cant balance someone being awesome at category A (offense) by them being weak at category B(hp and AC)

This is EXACTLY how you balance this character. They have nearly limitless options and spells to choose from. Defensive spells, spells of obliteration, and can take out specific enemies or groups of enemies nearly instantly. That has to be balanced somewhere. And D&D has chosen to give them craptastic HP and virtually no armor other than their spells.

IF your wizards are running around with comparable HP to the mid-rangers or the heavys, they become unbalanced, and extremely powerful. I believe NO wizard should be able to take 6 hits of anything. If they can, why bother playing anything else OTHER than for personal appeasement?

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-01, 09:06 AM

Well I say here is your solution, you put in the Storm Trooper School of Marksmanship rule. Basically it says, if your players are unaware of an enemy, the enemies initial volley of long range attacks always miss, but land close enough to alert the players to the fact they are being attacked.

This is EXACTLY how you balance this character. They have nearly limitless options and spells to choose from. Defensive spells, spells of obliteration, and can take out specific enemies or groups of enemies nearly instantly. That has to be balanced somewhere. And D&D has chosen to give them craptastic HP and virtually no armor other than their spells.

IF your wizards are running around with comparable HP to the mid-rangers or the heavys, they become unbalanced, and extremely powerful. I believe NO wizard should be able to take 6 hits of anything. If they can, why bother playing anything else OTHER than for personal appeasement?

Ha, storm troopers.

But the problem with HP is that it is usually trivial in most editions of D&D.

2e: 1 hit and you probably died. Why have HP?

3e: Mages were severly unoptimized if they targeted HP. They had so many ways to take you out that HP didn't matter. Mid to high levels, wizards didn't care what their HP total was because of all their defenses.

4e: HP actually mattered, probably to much. Everything attacked your HP.

I would like to see a balance between 3e and 4e. HP should matter but everything shouldn't hindge on it.

I agree with the idea of what you said though, but sadly in practice it doesn't matter if the wizard can take one or nine hits, it all depends on her class features. If the class features are balanced then giving the wizard less HP is ok but giving them a bit more is ok too.

So I'm hoping we get a mix of 3e and 4e out of HP, find a neutral ground for it.

Fwiffo86

2014-07-01, 09:19 AM

Ha, storm troopers.

But the problem with HP is that it is usually trivial in most editions of D&D.

2e: 1 hit and you probably died. Why have HP?

3e: Mages were severly unoptimized if they targeted HP. They had so many ways to take you out that HP didn't matter. Mid to high levels, wizards didn't care what their HP total was because of all their defenses.

4e: HP actually mattered, probably to much. Everything attacked your HP.

I would like to see a balance between 3e and 4e. HP should matter but everything shouldn't hindge on it.

I agree with the idea of what you said though, but sadly in practice it doesn't matter if the wizard can take one or nine hits, it all depends on her class features. If the class features are balanced then giving the wizard less HP is ok but giving them a bit more is ok too.

So I'm hoping we get a mix of 3e and 4e out of HP, find a neutral ground for it.

Valid points. And I agree with you. A mix would be nice. Still.... I like my lethality. Probably why I use wound modifiers.

5e version:
25% hp down: -1 to attack rolls/damage rolls
50% hp down: cannot gain advantage, -3 attack rolls/damage rolls
75% hp down: as above/cannot maintain concentration/no attribute modifiers added to damage

Psyren

2014-07-01, 09:36 AM

Hey, which is it? Is 3.P tactical or is 4e? All I keep hearing is how 4e is the tactical game whereas 3.P is not. :smalltongue:

The distinction I have seen is that 3.P is strategic while 4e is tactical. The difference supposedly being that 3.P has many more options before the fights actually start, outside of the 25 x 25 close-range grid, such as buffing in the morning, crafting, preparing the battlefield, researching the enemy with scouting or divinations etc.

Anyways, I remember when 4e first came out (that very month) and everyone was bashing it for not having the number of options that 3.5 had, I just stared at them and shook my head. Not that you are going that far, but that's what it reminds me of :p.

My problem with 4e was not lack of options on release - rather, they had changed up the system so much that it was difficult to convert all the existing material to fit in with it well. I could create various powers and monsters with the same names, but porting over their functionality would simply not fit with 4e's design without significant alteration. For instance, it wasn't until Arcane Power that we even got (very, very limited) rules for how summoning was supposed to work.

obryn

2014-07-01, 09:41 AM

Ha, storm troopers.

But the problem with HP is that it is usually trivial in most editions of D&D.
Okay, let me tell you a story about HP. I'm going to quote an outstanding forum post from RPG.net, which was in turn an outstanding forum post on SA. What follows is NOT MINE, but it's pretty well spot-on.

It's long, but you'll end up smarter for it!

-------------

There are several factors behind this that wound up turning 3e into an absolute caster's paradise. The simpler factor is the change to how saving throws worked.

In 2e and earlier, a saving throw was just a d20 roll to hit a target number or higher based on your class. There were five categories of saving throws:

Paralyzation/Poison/Death Magic: Saves against exactly what it sounds like
Rod/Staff/Wand: Saves against effects from magic wands and the like
Petrification/Polymorph: Saves against spells that changed your body
Breath Weapon: Saves against breath weapons and similar effects where agility can help you avoid it
Spell: Save vs magic that doesn't fit into the above categories.

The saves are listed in order of priority, so you just scroll down the list until you find the first thing that makes sense. So if someone cast a death magic spell from a wand, you'd roll a save vs paralyzation/poison/death magic, but if someone cast a polymorph spell from a wand, you'd roll a save vs rod/staff/wand.

Classes were divided into four categories and had saves that progressed based on them.
Priests: Clerics, Druids
Rogues: Bards, Rogues
Warriors: Fighters, Rangers, Paladins
Wizards: Mages, Specialists, Illusionists

P/P/D R/S/W P/P BW S
Priest Lvl 1: 10 14 13 16 15
Lvl 19+: 2 6 5 8 7
Rogue Lvl 1: 13 14 12 16 15
Lvl 21+: 8 4 7 11 5
Warrior Lvl 1: 14 16 15 17 17
Lvl 17+: 3 5 4 4 6
Wizard Lvl 1: 14 11 13 15 12
Lvl 21+: 8 3 5 7 4

Classes had their saving throws improved at different rates. Warriors boosted their saves every two levels, clerics every three, rogues every four and wizards every five. Note that warriors start with poor saves but eventually were in the running for some of the best in every category, with their worst saves still allowing them to save against a spell 75% of the time. Saves were boosted by ability scores, where having a high Constitution could give you a bonus to saves vs. poison (and having one of 20 or higher gave you regeneration), while Dexterity might be allowed to boost some breath saves, and Wisdom could boost your saves against spells that targeted your mind (and having 19 or higher rendered you flat-out immune to mental spells such as charm person). Saves could also be increased by magic items such as rings of protection (AC and save bonus) or various spells and effects such as protection from evil or bard song. So at high levels a warrior packing the right items and spell effects could save against anything an enemy dished out.

Monsters had their saving throws calculated based on HD, with their "class" defaulting to warrior unless the DM decided otherwise. Everyone saved vs P/P/D at a level equal to their HD, but non-intelligent monsters saved vs. everything else at a level equal to half their HD, so it was pretty easy to rock a bear with a charm spell, for instance. This was not a very DM-friendly system, but since monsters had their saves based on HD, it meant that at higher levels a monster might still save against a PC's spell 75% of the time or more. So at low levels everyone was failing saves left and right, while at higher levels everyone was succeeding on saves more often than not. There were spells and effects that could penalize enemy saves, but you couldn't always use them.

The other major difference was that of ability scores. If you play 3e and then look at 2e, you'll notice something strange- none of the monsters listed have ability scores. There might be a note saying a half-ogre has an intelligence of 3-14 and gains a +2 bonus to damage rolls with weapons due to size and strength, but you will not see anything like the numbers that appeared in later games. A Belt of Frost Giant Strength might grant a character a strength score of 21 and thus a +9 bonus to weapon damage, and a Frost Giant might make weapon attacks with 2d6+9 damage, but monsters were all designed just by sort of winging it and slapping down numbers according to whatever you felt like, with it only tangentially resembling the math on the PC side of the board.

For 3e, they decided to unify the various mechanics behind ability scores. All ability scores now provided an increasing bonus for every 2 points above 10, or an increasing penalty for every 2 points below 10. This bonus penalty would be applied to skills based on the ability or intrinsically applied to various aspects of the character based on the ability.

-Strength: Melee attacks and damage, thrown weapon damage
-Dexterity: AC (limited by armor), ranged attack rolls, Reflex saves
-Constitution: HP gained per hit die, Fortitude saves
-Intelligence: Skill points gained per level, languages
-Wisdom: Will saving throws
-Charisma: Ahaha

Most of these were things that had some roots in player character rules for 2e, where having a high strength gave you bonuses to hit and damage with melee weapons, or thrown weapon damage, having a high dexterity boosted your AC and ranged attacks, constitution boosted your HP, and wisdom boosted your saves vs mind-affecting magic. But 2e had a stat cap of 25 as the domain of the greatest and most amazing of demigods and heroes, races only provided a +1 or -1 penalty to stats, bonuses did not scale at the same rate based on stat, and most ability-boosting items just set your ability score to a particular level; no matter if your strength was 3 or 17 naturally, a girdle of hill giant strength would give you a strength score of 19 regardless.

Saving throws were collapsed down into three categories.
-Fortitude: Using the body's strength to resist things like poison, disease, petrification and death attacks.
-Reflex: Uses agility to dodge out of the way of things like fireballs and dragon breath
-Will: Uses mental strength to ward off attacks against the mind such as fear or charm.

Instead of being a generic d20 roll determined by class, all saves were against a target Difficulty class based on the strength of the effect, which usually was somewhere in the vicinity of 10 + 1/2 the originator's level/HD + the originator's ability score bonus used for the effect.

Character classes had Good saves, which scaled at a rate equal to 2 + half the character class's level, and Poor saves, which scaled at a rate equal to one third the character class's level.

Fort Ref Will
Cleric Lvl 1 +2 +0 +12
Lvl 20 +12 +6 +12
Fighter Lvl 1 +2 +0 +0
Lvl 20 +12 +6 +6
Rogue Lvl 1 +0 +2 +0
Lvl 20 +6 +12 +6
Wizard Lvl 1 +0 +0 +2
Lvl 20 +6 +6 +12

These base numbers would then be modified by the character's ability scores, with Constitution boosting the Fortitude save, Dexterity boosting the Reflex save and Wisdom boosting the Will save.

Monsters now had their own ability scores, which were used in part to determine the monster's attacks, damage, AC and saves using math that the DM or players could do to figure out. Monsters either had class levels or hit dice of creature types, which functioned like feature-less class levels (which is to say, mostly terrible) which determined their good and bad saving throws.

Characters could improve one ability score by one point every four levels, and could use spells and items to boost them further. Unlike 2e, in 3e ability score boosters provided a flat boost to ability scores, which meant that they fell into one of the big number traps of the game- things that make peasants into heroes make heroes into demigods. Since players cannot point-buy their way into a ton of high ability scores, and are very unlikely to roll them naturally, plus the fact that they can only boost one ability score every four levels and can't afford to fill up entirely on ability score boosting items, it means that a character is unlikely to have more than two good ability scores, with maybe a third that's merely decent. This is a problem.

To reiterate, saves scale up like this.
Good: 2 + 1/2 level + Ability Score + Bonuses
Poor: 0 + 1/3 level + Ability Score + Bonuses

You have three saves and a base gap of 2 points between your good and poor saves at level 1 before ability scores are added in. Owing to the problem of different rates of scale, at level 20 you have a base gap of 6 points before ability scores are added in. And as we've already discussed, you have three save categories and your ability scores for each of those scores are unlikely to be equal. This is especially problematic because depending on your character you're going to have different needs for ability scores. A fighter or barbarian is extremely likely to want a high Strength score for attacks and damage and a high Constitution score for HP and fortitude saves, and while the character can probably safely dump charisma (and sadly be called a munchkin power-gamer), having a shoddy Intelligence means the character gets a staggering one skill point per level to do something other than fight, having a poor Dexterity means that the character's defenses and Reflex are going to be lower, and having a poor Wisdom will stack with the character's already Poor Will save to ensure that the character is going to fail saves against fear, sleep and charm attacks all the time. Sure, the fighter could use Weapon Finesse and boost Dexterity to cover AC and Reflex, but the character's weapon damage is going to take a sharp drop.

This is what is known as Multiple Ability Dependency, or MAD, and depending on the class can be staggeringly painful. In 3.5e, the Paladin was the poster child for this problem, requiring Strength for melee abilities, a moderate amount of Dexterity for Reflex and AC, Constitution for HP and Fortitude, a non-negative Intelligence for skill points, Wisdom for spells and Charisma for special paladin abilities. At the very least you probably wanted to boost Strength and Charisma at every opportunity, and couldn't really afford to completely dump or neglect your other abilities. (Of course, in 3e even if you could only afford to keep one ability score in tip-top condition, that didn't mean you couldn't use that score for everything like a wizard could, it just took considerably more effort. You can provide justification for just about any stat applied to just about any aspect of your character, which kind of defeats throws the whole system into question, doesn't it?)
Monsters didn't really have to worry about things in quite the same way. Monsters got their ability scores based on whatever the designer felt like throwing down. As you can well imagine, assigning numerical values with mechanical weight to abstract attributes of completely fictitious creatures based solely on how it "feels" has unusual results. Page through a monster manual or five and pay close attention to the monster ability scores. Note just not how they stack up, but how high they stack and where the numbers tend to cluster. You'll notice something interesting.

You see, when it comes to monster design, there's basically a hierarchy when it comes to assigning ability scores. Strength is frequently a high number, if not the monster's highest ability score, with numbers in the high 20s, 30s, even 40s for some monsters. Charisma and Constitution can be high on monsters with numbers occurring up into the 20s and low 30s, with Dexterity polling a bit behind. At the back of the pack comes Intelligence and Wisdom- with 2700 or so monsters released by WotC for 3e, I believe fewer than 100 of them (or even fewer than 50) had Wisdom scores higher than 20, an accomplishment reserved primarily for outsiders, dragons, aberrations and casters. While it's easy enough to conceptualize a monster who's strong, fast, tough, or perhaps possessing an incredible force of personality/magnetism, it's not so ease to tell just how brilliant or wise a creature is, especially with one whose mind completely eclipses that of regular people. If D&D uses 3d6 as the range from the most inept to the most adept among human abilities, than a 20 is already at a level beyond genius, so what does a 30 look like and how does that creature act? It seems as though mental ability scores have something of a soft conceptual ceiling to them in monster design. Given the mental difficulties in assigning ability scores to monsters, it's no wonder that one of 3e's designers publicly apologized for putting them into the game. (And this isn't even getting into how weirdly things broke when you started crossing PC/Monster options. Monsters could have huge Charisma scores that were almost entirely vestigial unless they took levels in some variant of paladin and suddenly gained enormous saving throw bonuses.)

Thus due to the way ability scores and saving throw bonuses worked, most characters and monsters had at least one Poor save and three or more low ability score. Often times one the low ability scores was the same one that powered the Poor save. A good ability score in a Poor save was about as middling as a low ability score in a Good save and a high ability score in a Good save was dynamite.
Then you consider it from the caster's side. A caster's spell DC is equal to 10 + spell level + Ability Score + Bonuses, and while a paladin may have several ability scores that need to be kept up and running, a caster like a wizard only needs one, and thus has no real reason not to pump an 18 preracial into the casting stat, boost it further with race, items and every point of every level. Not only does boosting your casting stat make your spells harder to resist, but it gives you more spells. A fighter boosts strength to make attacks harder to resist, but it certainly doesn't give the fighter more attacks per round. And due to the nature of spellcasting, anything you sacrificed to boost your casting stat could probably be regained through spells.

So when your caster throws down a spell in 3e, the target makes a saving throw. The save difficulty is determined by the caster's casting stat, the level of the spell, and any particular bonuses the caster might have from feats (such as Spell Focus) or items (such as the Veil of Allure).

DC= 10 + spell level + ability score + bonuses

Primary spellcasters gain spells at a rate of about one level of spells every two class levels, so for your strongest spell, the spell level is about equivalent to half your level.

DC~ 10 + 1/2 level (rounded up) + ability score + bonuses

Compare it to a target's Good save.

Save= 1d20+ 2 + 1/2 level (rounded down) + ability score + bonuses

So it looks like they're about equalish, depending on if the target has any feats that boost saves or the caster has things that boost spell DCs. All things being equal, the defender has a slight advantage thanks to the +2 bonus, right?

Except all things aren't really equal. Given how valuable your casting stat is, a caster has no real reason to not to pump it as high as possible. Starting with a natural 18 or even 20 after point buy and racial bonuses is not an unheard of thing (Gray Elf Wizards, represent, and that's not getting into the dragonwrought kobold), but how many characters start with 18s or 20s in their Constitution scores? How many start with 20s in their Wisdom score if they're not casters? And a primary caster will boost the casting stat at every opportunity, buying stat-boosting items and spending ability points to crank it higher, up through the 20s and into the 30s as they climb through the levels. Now, remember how many monsters have a wisdom score above 20? What do you think that does to their will saves? Anything with about as many hit dice as the caster has levels is going to find the gap slowly growing between their best saves and a devoted caster's save-or-lose DCs, especially in the Will department, since few of them possess the Wisdom to match a caster in a fair roll-off. Though there are monsters with piles of Constitution who can boost their Good Fortitude saves even higher, and monsters with high Dexterity who can boost their Good Reflex saves. But here's the thing- if you're a caster who can pick and choose your spells, why would you every go after a target's strongest save? If you know your monster types, it's fairly easy to figure out what to target- casters have terrible Fortitude saves, everything else has a terrible Will save (and even creatures with Good Will saves rarely have the Wisdom to back it up).

Again, look back at our caster DC.

DC~ 10 + 1/2 level (rounded up) + ability score + bonuses

Now consider a target's Poor save.

1d20 + 1/3 level (rounded down) + ability score + bonuses

At level 1, they may be close to parity, but the more you level and the more hit dice you give to both sides, the wider the gap between them goes. Assuming equal ability scores and bonuses, at level 1 there's a 50/50 shot of the target making it, rolling 11 or higher on a d20, but at level 6 the target has to roll a 12 or higher, and at level 18 the target has to roll a 13 or higher. And this is assuming that your ability and miscellaneous bonuses are the same (and when it comes to poor saves, they rarely are).

Part of the problem with designing monsters by how they feel is that you can wind up overcompensating to a dramatic degree. Consider the ogre. When you think of an ogre, you think of a big beefy brute, don't you? Tough, but not one for willpower or agility, no? It's a giant type, and giants have hit dice that provide a Good Fortitude save, and Poor Reflex and Will saves. Then you assign it ability scores; you give it a high Strength because it's strong, and a high Constitution because it's tough, but then you give it shoddy scores for Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma because it's an ogre, right? It's not like they're nimble, sagacious scholars known for their personal magnetism. They're big dumb monsters who smash things. Who ever heard of an ogre with Lightning Reflexes or Iron Will?

So you set down your monster ideas and you crank out some statistics for 3e. You smile, pleased with your work because you have embodied the ogre. Hell, you can even take it one step further and give it levels in barbarian to be the most ogre you can be. Truly, this system allows you to make the paragon of ogredom!

One little problem though- you've taken a type with a strong Fortitude and weak Will save and paired it with a good stat that governs your Fortitude and a weak stat that governs your Will because it's more "realistic" like that. Except you've created a monster with a five point gap between its Fortitude save and its Will save, meaning if it has a 50/50 shot of saving against a spell that targets its Fortitude, it will have only a 25% shot of saving against the same DC for a spell against its Will. Throwing levels of Barbarian on top of it just compounds the issue, and creates a situation where you have a 10 point gap between your worst and best saves, so against a spell DC you have a 50/50 shot of saving with Fortitude, you'll need a natural 20 to save with Will. When it comes to being a melee beatstick like an ogre is, there are a huge pile of save-or-lose spells that target Will, such as Charm Monster or Confusion.

Most monster types have this same problem at higher levels, where the combination of creature type and assignment of ability scores compounds their strengths and exaggerates their weaknesses. Even for monsters with Good Will saves, most don't have the Wisdom or additional bonuses to keep up the way other creatures can with Fortitude or maybe Reflex, and most of the monsters with Good Will saves have Poor Fortitude saves and not much in the way of Constitution, which means they're vulnerable to a simple Slay Living. Sure, there are creatures with immunities- plants have Poor Will saves and undead have Poor Fortitude saves, but undead are immune to death effects and both are immune to mind-affecting abilities, except this isn't really a problem. A plant monster's immunity to mind-affecting spells doesn't do jack against Slow or Glitterdust, and an undead monster's immunity to death effects won't protect against being disintegrated or turned into a rock. Undead in particular are vulnerable because they have no Constitution score whatsoever (because they're not alive, see?), and have a Poor Fortitude save, so your average lich wizard is pretty frail if you can find the right save-or-die that isn't a death effect.

What about damage? Well, here's the thing- a fight ends when you reduce an opponent to 0 HP or lower, but that's because it usually puts the "dying" or "dead" status condition on an opponent, which is a pretty good condition that prevents the opponent from being any meaningful threat to you. Damage can be useful, but an opponent at half HP usually functions just as well as an opponent at full HP; it's only that last hit point that actually matters. So if you're going to cast a spell and hope your opponent fails a saving throw, it might as well be failing a saving throw against a spell that removes the foe as a meaningful threat.

When you think of a wizard casting spells that do damage, you think of the classics, right? "I cast Magic Missile" or maybe a nice Fireball.

In 2e, Magic Missile fired one missile every two caster levels that did 1d4+1 points of damage, to a maximum of five missiles at caster level 9.
In 3e, Magic Missile fired one missile every two caster levels that did 1d4+1 points of damage, to a maximum of five missiles at caster level 9.
In 2e, Fireball launched an explosive blast of fire that did 1d6 points of damage per caster level, to a maximum of 10d6 at level 10, save for half.
In 3e, Fireball launched an explosive blast of fire that did 1d6 points of damage per caster level, to a maximum of 10d6 at level 10, save for half.

How about that? They directly translated the spell mechanics from 2e to 3e in an effort to keep them as close to Gary's vision as possible.

Pity they forgot to check the rest of the game's numbers.

As I mentioned before, monsters in 3e had something that never really existed with monsters in 2e- ability scores that gave them the same capabilities as PCs. Chief among them were their Constitution scores. In 2e, characters could gain extra HP based on their Constitution each time they rolled for HP when leveling. Characters with a Con of 15 or more gained 1 additional HP per level, and characters with scores of 16 or more gained 2 additional HP per level. And characters with scores of 17, 18, or 19 gained 3, 4, or 5 additional HP per level,but only if they were warriors. 3e lowered the bar, so it now applied per point of your Constitution bonus, so a score of 12 gave you 1 additional HP, 14 gave you 2, 16 gave you 3, etc. Anyone could benefit from having a high Constitution, and guess what? If you were a fighty-type monster, you probably had a high Constitution.

Back in 2e, all monsters had a collection of d8s for HD (presumably the DM was supposed to roll them to determine each individual monster's HP total, but that was a great deal of work). No real bonuses, except may a +1 or +4 to total HP to indicate that this monster was seriously tough. For example, our old friend the ogre had 4d8+1 HP in 2e, for an average of about 19 HP, but due to having access to feats and a Constitution of 15, 3e's version of the ogre has 4d8+11 HP, an average of 29. Kicking it up a notch you get the Frost Giant, who had 14d8+1d4 in 2e, an average of 65. The 3e Frost Giant also has 14d8 HD, but has a Constitution score of 21 to represent it being a tough monster, which gives it 5 additional hit points per HD, so 14d8+70 for an average of 133 HP. The Tarrasque of 2e was a legend, a beast with a whopping 300 HP (no listed HD, just assumed it was somewhere around 70), and the toughest creature in the Monstrous Manual. The Tarrasque of 3e had 48d10 hit dice, a Constitution score of 35 for a modifier of 12 hit points per die and a bunch of Toughness feats, for an average of 858 HP. Almost two-thirds of that total comes from its Constitution modifier. Its HP count basically tripled.

Your spells did the exact same damage, but the addition of Constitution scores to all monsters meant that HP totals shot up. While you might have been able to kill or severely injure a monster on a failed save with a fireball in 2e, you'd barely knock a third of a frost giant's health off in 3e, even with the creature's fire vulnerability. And if you were expecting the target to fail a save in 3e, why have it fail a save against a spell that does a non-lethal amount of damage, when you could have it fail the same save for the same spell slot, but with a power that took the target out of the fight?

The HP inflation from the new Constitution meant that if you were the character who makes your living doing damage to targets, your job just got much harder if you didn't know how to optimize for damage.

Taking a look at our CR 9 Frost Giant with 133 HP, let's throw a 9th level half-orc fighter at it, built the way the PHB thinks you'll build it. Greater Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization (Greataxe), a +2 weapon, and a +6 strength bonus (16 base +2 Half-orc + 2 lvl + 2 gauntlets of ogre power). So you're hitting for +19/+14, 1d12+13 points of damage, an average of about 20 points of damage per hit, maybe a little higher with Power Attack. Against the giant's AC of 21, that's an average of about 32 damage per round, maybe 38 with Improved Critical and critical hits. So it'll take your fighter maybe three or four rounds to solo one giant. Unfortunately, the fighter probably has an AC in a similar range while using a two-handed weapon without a shield (maybe +3 platemail 12 Dex and a ring of protection +1 for a toal of 23) and if we give the fighter a 16 Constitution, you're looking at 81 HP on the fighter. So the giant might be doing an average of 30 points of damage per round, and be able to drop the fighter in three rounds if the two just slug it out. Odds are not good for the fighter (and even worse for the poor fool of a fighter who just wanted to buckle some swashes with a rapier and Weapon Finesse. How's your 1d6+5 damage working out for you?). But hey, what are you expecting when you're fighting solo against a monster designed to challenge a party of four people of your level?

Except for the fact that a wizard can fly out of reach at this level with Overland Flight and then bean the giant with save-or-lose spells like Charm or Hold Monster or Confusion, succeeding maybe 80% to 95% of the time against the giant's +6 Will save (compared to maybe a 35% to 50% chance for a 2e wizard, since the 14 HD giant saves against all spells on an 8 or higher thanks to its use of the Warrior save table, though some spells like Hold Monster provide penalties to the save if you only tag one target). And if you were playing 2e, you could probably get a fighter with around 1d10+12 damage at that point (high strength, weapon mastery, magic weapon) and maybe chunk the 65 hp frost giant in two to three rounds with your two attacks per round at full attack bonus (or even a single round if you were a master of the most lethal 2e weapon- the dart). And hey, if you were a 3e optimizer who took your half-orc fighter, threw in levels of Lion Totem Barbarian, grabbed Leap Attack, Shock Trooper, and a +1 valorous falchion, you might be doing (2d4+49)x2 damage per hit twice per round on a charge, and probably one-round the thing, or maybe even one-shot the frost giant if you scored a critical hit in a perfect example of the power of stacking multipliers on large static bonuses. And against an undead who just had a pile of d12s and no Constitution modifier (because they're not living, you see?), you can tear through those guys like tissue paper (10d12= 65 average HP on your starting lich, assuming you can get through the magical defenses). But then they'd call you the power-gaming munchkin, because even though the wizard can also effortlessly lay waste to encounters, the wizard can only lay waste to ten encounters per day at that level (but at least the wizard won't be easily thwarted by someone who's flying. Or invisible. Or ethereal. Or who has concealment. Or...).

In conclusion, 3e's change to saves and ability scores meant that monster math completely forked and casters could land their spells with startling ease if they understood which saves to target, while warriors needed a bunch of optimization tricks in order to keep up with doubled HP totals. It's a trend people noticed for a while, but people didn't really notice why things worked that way until they started running the numbers towards the end of the game's life cycle. Rocket Tag battles where one failed dodge is an instant kill are just part of the system if you want to work the numbers enough to not be slumming it with healbot cleric, meatshield fighter, skill monkey rogue and blaster wizard.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-01, 09:42 AM

Valid points. And I agree with you. A mix would be nice. Still.... I like my lethality. Probably why I use wound modifiers.

5e version:
25% hp down: -1 to attack rolls/damage rolls
50% hp down: cannot gain advantage, -3 attack rolls/damage rolls
75% hp down: as above/cannot maintain concentration/no attribute modifiers added to damage

The problem with this is that it punished non-casters more so than casters, if spells are more like 3e.

Also with how the math seems to be laid out anyone at 50% health will be useless in a fight.

Lethality is nice but to tack it on a system that cant support it may be a bad idea. -4 to attack and damage seems like a crazy high number in this system. Unless you don't want anyone making it past level 1 or 2.

That means that you will just be attacking with d20 + proficiency bonus (for the most part). So at level 1 that can be like... 1d20 + 2 versus AC 18 (hobgoblin)... That isn't lethality that will be a slaughter. Even AC 12 would be a pain.

How about something other than attack and damage, we don't want battles lasting ungodly long... Or give the players no chance to win if a creature crits (5% chance). At that point I would just say my character kills himself since there is Jo way out and he doesn't want to be a hostage each and every time they hit 50% of their HP.

The idea isn't bad but don't make the punishment so severe.

Millennium

2014-07-01, 10:01 AM

Changing the default modifier for starting HP now counts as rewriting half the game?
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I seem to recall Lokiare saying once that using supported systems and mechanics is very important to him. It's one of the big reasons that he's so mad about all of this in the first place: he feels that he is being forced to move to 5e, because Wizards abandoning 4e means that it is no longer a viable option for him to play.

In that context, it makes sense for him to feel like revising HP numbers is tantamount to rewriting half the system. HP has repercussions in a lot of different areas, and so to move to an unsupported method for them means that he will likely need to make many other unsupported changes in the future, in order to account for situations he could not have foreseen when he made this one.

Do I have this right?

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-01, 10:03 AM

My problem with 4e was not lack of options on release - rather, they had changed up the system so much that it was difficult to convert all the existing material to fit in with it well. I could create various powers and monsters with the same names, but porting over their functionality would simply not fit with 4e's design without significant alteration. For instance, it wasn't until Arcane Power that we even got (very, very limited) rules for how summoning was supposed to work.

I was not meaning to put you in the group that did that, only stated that your comment reminded me of those arguments.

Obryn:

I think I remember that post, but its been a while. It is pretty much what I've been telling people for a while, mostly in real life, that 2e and 3e are the same game but parts of it when "turned around" didn't get looked at correctly and they screwed it up. I think 3e could be fixed to be balanced with the math without going the route of pathfinder (carbon copy) or legend (drastically different).

You could make a 2e/3e retroclone and perhaps that's what 5e will be.

I rather like the roll under mechanic, may use it in d&d next somehow.

Fwiffo86

2014-07-01, 10:38 AM

The problem with this is that it punished non-casters more so than casters, if spells are more like 3e.

Also with how the math seems to be laid out anyone at 50% health will be useless in a fight.

Lethality is nice but to tack it on a system that cant support it may be a bad idea. -4 to attack and damage seems like a crazy high number in this system. Unless you don't want anyone making it past level 1 or 2.

That means that you will just be attacking with d20 + proficiency bonus (for the most part). So at level 1 that can be like... 1d20 + 2 versus AC 18 (hobgoblin)... That isn't lethality that will be a slaughter. Even AC 12 would be a pain.

How about something other than attack and damage, we don't want battles lasting ungodly long... Or give the players no chance to win if a creature crits (5% chance). At that point I would just say my character kills himself since there is Jo way out and he doesn't want to be a hostage each and every time they hit 50% of their HP.

The idea isn't bad but don't make the punishment so severe.

Also fair. I was trying to remember what I wrote down from memory (at work). So the numbers may be wrong. I was using a similar method in 3e, and then redesigned it when I read the exhaustion rules in 5e. If you haven't read them, you should....

Players need to eat and drink. Even if you become exhausted at the 2nd level (didn't eat or drink), spell casters get really boned, cause they can't maintain concentration. (again pulling from memory, may be wrong exhaustion level). Basically, it finally gives a reason to be hauling food all over the place. LOL

Psyren

2014-07-01, 10:44 AM

Paralyzation/Poison/Death Magic: Saves against exactly what it sounds like
Rod/Staff/Wand: Saves against effects from magic wands and the like
Petrification/Polymorph: Saves against spells that changed your body
Breath Weapon: Saves against breath weapons and similar effects where agility can help you avoid it
Spell: Save vs magic that doesn't fit into the above categories.

The saves are listed in order of priority, so you just scroll down the list until you find the first thing that makes sense. So if someone cast a death magic spell from a wand, you'd roll a save vs paralyzation/poison/death magic, but if someone cast a polymorph spell from a wand, you'd roll a save vs rod/staff/wand.

Urgh, this is so bloody unintuitive it makes my eyes bleed. Why is casting polymorph from a wand so different than casting it normally? What about breath weapons that can't logically be dodged, like a cloud of poisonous gas or a sonic shout?

In 3.5e, the Paladin was the poster child for this problem, requiring Strength for melee abilities, a moderate amount of Dexterity for Reflex and AC, Constitution for HP and Fortitude, a non-negative Intelligence for skill points, Wisdom for spells and Charisma for special paladin abilities.

And this is outright false. 3.5 Paladins typically wear heavy armor, so having a Dex above 12 is a waste most of the time and doesn't help their AC at all, which is great against most things anyway thanks to said armor again. Thanks to Divine Grace they don't need stellar reflex either, and in fact your typical paladin had a reflex save not that far off from an agility-focused class even while they were cased in steel. Int is also not a high priority for them because they don't have many skills the rest of the party needs to cover - Ride and Diplomacy are really all you need, maybe Concentration, so 10-12 can cover you here too. I agree about Wis being a problem area but PF fixed that.

Honestly I feel this article is complaining about things that aren't actually problems. Yes, an Ogre is a big dumb brute that is very likely to fail a will save. The whole point of low level monsters is to have obvious weaknesses and strengths. Oozes and plants are slow, giants are dumb, zombies are slow and also easily wiped out by any competent cleric, fey are cunning but physically weak. As you get higher, you start fighting things that have less obvious chinks in their armor - dragons, fiends and elementals are both strong and smart for instance. This is part of the challenge of playing a spellcaster, needing the right tool for the job.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-01, 10:50 AM

Also fair. I was trying to remember what I wrote down from memory (at work). So the numbers may be wrong. I was using a similar method in 3e, and then redesigned it when I read the exhaustion rules in 5e. If you haven't read them, you should....

Players need to eat and drink. Even if you become exhausted at the 2nd level (didn't eat or drink), spell casters get really boned, cause they can't maintain concentration. (again pulling from memory, may be wrong exhaustion level). Basically, it finally gives a reason to be hauling food all over the place. LOL

No worries, I do the same thing while at work. I wasn't trying to be combatant, I was just a little surprised at the numbers. Numbers (+/-) seem like they will be a rare commodity in 5e.

I tend to assume that the characters are competent enough to feed themselves, get to big of a magnifying glass and you need an attack roll of Urine versus Tree. :smalltongue:

Jacob.Tyr

2014-07-01, 10:53 AM

My problem with 4e was not lack of options on release - rather, they had changed up the system so much that it was difficult to convert all the existing material to fit in with it well. I could create various powers and monsters with the same names, but porting over their functionality would simply not fit with 4e's design without significant alteration. For instance, it wasn't until Arcane Power that we even got (very, very limited) rules for how summoning was supposed to work.
If they come out with a 3.X/pf -> 5E conversion guide, which is way more plausible than doing the same for 4E, I actually might switch to 5e rather quickly. Just notes on how to look at existing 3.X classes and change numbers around to make them work with 5E would be fantastic, and allow accessing the plethora of great content already out there.

obryn

2014-07-01, 10:56 AM

Urgh, this is so bloody unintuitive it makes my eyes bleed. Why is casting polymorph from a wand so different than casting it normally? What about breath weapons that can't logically be dodged, like a cloud of poisonous gas or a sonic shout?
No, it's not really intuitive. But as was said, you go down in order. If there's a poison gas breath weapon, poison is higher in priority.

I agree that F/R/W is more intuitive. The larger point is that you got better at saving against stuff as you got higher level, rather than worse. If 3.x had a similar system with its 3 saves but went in a similar constant-improvement progression, it wouldn't be as big a problem. The math goes haywire, though, for all the reasons spelled out above.

Honestly I feel this article is complaining about things that aren't actually problems. Yes, an Ogre is a big dumb brute that is very likely to fail a will save. The whole point of low level monsters is to have obvious weaknesses and strengths. Oozes and plants are slow, giants are dumb, zombies are slow and also easily wiped out by any competent cleric, fey are cunning but physically weak. As you get higher, you start fighting things that have less obvious chinks in their armor - dragons, fiends and elementals are both strong and smart for instance. This is part of the challenge of playing a spellcaster, needing the right tool for the job.
To each their own. I found it matched my experience perfectly, and spelled out the issues with 3.x caster superiority very clearly. Where you see the "challenge" of a spellcaster, I see the outright strength that they get to pick the best way to defeat their enemies rather than relying on AC and HP like non-casters must.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-01, 11:02 AM

Urgh, this is so bloody unintuitive it makes my eyes bleed. Why is casting polymorph from a wand so different than casting it normally? What about breath weapons that can't logically be dodged, like a cloud of poisonous gas or a sonic shout?

I got this one!

It is like when a pitcher throws a 2 seam or 4 seam fastball. Yes they are both fastballs but you have to approach the hit very differently. If you deal with them the same you will hit into a ground ball and get thrown out.

It isn't just the effect but how the effect gets "thrown at you" there can be different deception going on with the attack.

Better baseball analogy... YouTube this by the way...

Fastball: Wand
Knuckleball: Normal Casting

Hitting them (or dodging them) is quite different.

Psyren

2014-07-01, 11:12 AM

The math goes haywire, though, for all the reasons spelled out above.
...
To each their own. I found it matched my experience perfectly, and spelled out the issues with 3.x caster superiority very clearly. Where you see the "challenge" of a spellcaster, I see the outright strength that they get to pick the best way to defeat their enemies rather than relying on AC and HP like non-casters must.

It's not "haywire." It's working as intended - feature, not bug. The article completely ignores complicating factors like spell resistance, creature type, cover/concealment, enemy positioning, presence of enemy spellcasters or ranged attackers etc. that PC spellcasters must be mindful of. The existence of a weak save is not the be-all and end-all of an encounter. Take something as simple as undead - they have weak fort saves and no Con, so by the article's standards they'd be supremely screwed, but they're immune to most things that provoke one anyway. Similarly, vermin and oozes have weak will saves, but this rarely comes up for them either. It takes system mastery to know not just what to target, but what attack to use. That is the strategic depth 3.P provides that was downplayed in 4e.

5e looks to be bringing some of that back, which is good - but time will tell just how much.

Better baseball analogy... YouTube this by the way...

Fastball: Wand
Knuckleball: Normal Casting

Hitting them (or dodging them) is quite different.

But why is one a fastball and the other not? Was casting from a wand somehow faster in 1e/2e? Is dodging a cone of fire from a staff fundamentally different from dodging a similar-sized cone of fire from a dragon?

This also promotes metagaming - even if my character didn't notice that the enemy was using a wand to cast the spell, if I had to use my "wand save" I can deduce what the enemy was doing. In 3.5 and PF, there are numerous ways to "fake it" and hide the fact that you are casting from an item, which has both roleplay and mechanical considerations.

Jacob.Tyr

2014-07-01, 11:17 AM

No, it's not really intuitive. But as was said, you go down in order. If there's a poison gas breath weapon, poison is higher in priority.

I agree that F/R/W is more intuitive. The larger point is that you got better at saving against stuff as you got higher level, rather than worse. If 3.x had a similar system with its 3 saves but went in a similar constant-improvement progression, it wouldn't be as big a problem. The math goes haywire, though, for all the reasons spelled out above.

To each their own. I found it matched my experience perfectly, and spelled out the issues with 3.x caster superiority very clearly. Where you see the "challenge" of a spellcaster, I see the outright strength that they get to pick the best way to defeat their enemies rather than relying on AC and HP like non-casters must.
One thing that made me really love 4E was that non-casters could choose to target saves with their attacks, rather than always targeting AC. It was pretty easy to get a spread of attacks that allowed you versatility against a variety of enemy types. When mundane attacks are always set vs AC, though, you wind up with the "challenge" of a spellcaster, in that they're always better able to hit an enemy than their allies are, while also having more of an impact while doing so. Especially in the case of Will saves, as was pointed out in the above rant. Load up on SoS spells that target Will and 9 times out of 10 you're golden in 3.x.

I actually think Next did a great job of dealing with this, though. AC isn't a never ending treadmill like in 3E (everything was a treadmill on 4e), and correct me if I'm wrong but higher level SoS spells require some quantity of damage before they actually become encounter enders (I think this was how disintegrate worked in the last playtest packet I read). Other SoS spells are concentration, so you'll at most be able to lock down a single enemy. These are pretty solid changes that fix some of the issues with caster supremacy, and don't allow casters to completely neglect the HP track or scoff at their mundane counterparts.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-01, 11:22 AM

Merlin the Tuna

2014-07-01, 11:51 AM

It's not "haywire." It's working as intended - feature, not bug. The article completely ignores complicating factors like spell resistance, creature type, cover/concealment, enemy positioning, presence of enemy spellcasters or ranged attackers etc. that PC spellcasters must be mindful of.It actually does address a handful of those, but worth noting is that because of the way 3.P are structured, many -- SR, creature type, etc -- don't matter. Spells were one of the very few extensible parts of the game, which meant that each new book added a new variety to the arsenal of core casters, largely circumventing those same conditionals. And that ignores that many of those properties were poorly implemented in the first place. Example: 3E saves almost exclusively serve to represent a character's ability to resist magic. Why then, is Spell Resistance represented as an entirely new roll to be applied to an arbitrary subset of spells, rather than simply a bonus to saves against Spells & Spell-Like Abilities? Pointing out that there are other sloppy mechanics to layer on top of the sloppy mechanics behind saving throws is not, to my mind, a strong counterpoint.

That's drifting away from the greater point though. The issue is not that Fighters and Ogres are bad at Will saves. It's that they created two separate systems to represent this -- the poor saving throw progression and the poor base stat -- noted that each seems fine in isolation, then implemented both. The result is a redundancy that drives behavior way too far to the extremes. It's not an unusual problem in game design, but the best case scenario is that makes for extraneous bookkeeping and the worst case is that it totally breaks a core part of your game. 3.P tends closer to the latter than the former, and it's part of why I don't think the "Strategic Depth" of 3.P holds water; most of it boils down to a version of "Use ice magic on fire creatures to win instantly."

obryn

2014-07-01, 12:04 PM

It's not "haywire." It's working as intended - feature, not bug. The article completely ignores complicating factors like spell resistance, creature type, cover/concealment, enemy positioning, presence of enemy spellcasters or ranged attackers etc. that PC spellcasters must be mindful of. The existence of a weak save is not the be-all and end-all of an encounter. Take something as simple as undead - they have weak fort saves and no Con, so by the article's standards they'd be supremely screwed, but they're immune to most things that provoke one anyway. Similarly, vermin and oozes have weak will saves, but this rarely comes up for them either. It takes system mastery to know not just what to target, but what attack to use. That is the strategic depth 3.P provides that was downplayed in 4e.

5e looks to be bringing some of that back, which is good - but time will tell just how much.
First off, the article notes several of those, including undead resisting death spells, but there being other kinds of spells that require Fort saves.

And near as I can see you're talking about "strategic depth" when I'm seeing "strategic depth ... for a full caster ... who engages in rock-paper-scissors strategy while knowing what their opponent threw ahead of time." :smallsmile:

It also illustrated really handily, for me, how exactly the mighty Fireball was brought so low in 3e. In RC, 1e, and 2e, it's still a top choice (if not the top choice) for 3rd level spells. It's one of the utter game-changers. Why? Because it keeps pace fairly well with hit points, and unlike most Save-or-Lose/Die spells in 1e, it still does something on a saving throw failure.

In 3e (and, yes, 4e) Fireball is a sucker's choice. Unfortunately, it looks like it will be in 5e, too, since it has the same hit point inflation issues as 3e has.

(The same argument goes for magic missile, btw. Though Sleep is dramatically superior at low levels, magic missile remains useful well into the game in RC/1e/2e.)

Millennium

2014-07-01, 12:14 PM

See spells that only effect a certain type and there is no way to effect another type with a spell (and not a feat) makes my eyes bleed.

Why would there not be a spell that can emulate charm person on undead or mindless creatures by hyjacking their basic functions and making the creature view you as friendly?

If I had an undead or ooze problem and I was a mage I would certainly make a charm spell that made them think I was friendly.
Many people have drawn poetic parallels between living beings and fire, and it's not hard to see why. Fire moves about and consumes things, just like creatures do. It needs air and fuel to continue existing, and again, that's like creatures. We even speak of fighting fires, and it's an apt metaphor.

But if I am trapped in a burning building, how can I make the fire view me as friendly? I cannot. The concept doesn't even make sense, because fire doesn't have views of things. Friendship is an opinion, and fire doesn't have opinions. But I could try to fight the fire. Or I could try to guide it away from me by using strategically-placed fuel. If I know the ways that fire works, I could even try to avoid it as I escape the building, by knowing where it is and is not likely to be. But if I stand around trying to communicate a desire to be its friend, I'm going to die, because that's not what fire is. That's not how fire works.

Mindless creatures are not much different. You can't use a spell to influence a mindless creature's opinion of you, because it doesn't have opinions to influence. At best it has programming, whether coded by a creator or dominator, or evolved through nature. Where it's coded, spells sometimes exist to override the coding: for mindless undead, you'd use command undead as the spell. But you're still doing something that is fundamentally different from charm, because the very nature of charm presupposes some conditions that simply do not hold with creatures like these.

Jacob.Tyr

2014-07-01, 12:21 PM

Many people have drawn poetic parallels between living beings and fire, and it's not hard to see why. Fire moves about and consumes things, just like creatures do. It needs air and fuel to continue existing, and again, that's like creatures. We even speak of fighting fires, and it's an apt metaphor.

But if I am trapped in a burning building, how can I make the fire view me as friendly? I cannot. The concept doesn't even make sense, because fire doesn't have views of things. Friendship is an opinion, and fire doesn't have opinions. But I could try to fight the fire. Or I could try to guide it away from me by using strategically-placed fuel. If I know the ways that fire works, I could even try to avoid it as I escape the building, by knowing where it is and is not likely to be. But if I stand around trying to communicate a desire to be its friend, I'm going to die, because that's not what fire is. That's not how fire works.

Mindless creatures are not much different. You can't use a spell to influence a mindless creature's opinion of you, because it doesn't have opinions to influence. At best it has programming, whether coded by a creator or dominator, or evolved through nature. Where it's coded, spells sometimes exist to override the coding: for mindless undead, you'd use command undead as the spell. But you're still doing something that is fundamentally different from charm, because the very nature of charm presupposes some conditions that simply do not hold with creatures like these.
Not to be rude but what system do you use where no one has conceived of any spells that can control fire? Shaping, creating, redirecting fire seem like pretty straight forward applications of magic. And that's before we peak behind the planar curtain and find living/thinking sentient fire.

Magic: It does that, too.

Psyren

2014-07-01, 12:33 PM

See spells that only effect a certain type and there is no way to effect another type with a spell (and not a feat) makes my eyes bleed.

Thing is, unlike the "save tree" above, this is intuitive. It makes sense that controlling something with no brain would require different methods than controlling something that has one.

Why would there not be a spell that can emulate charm person on undead or mindless creatures by hyjacking their basic functions and making the creature view you as friendly?

We have that. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/commandUndead.htm)

It actually does address a handful of those, but worth noting is that because of the way 3.P are structured, many -- SR, creature type, etc -- don't matter. Spells were one of the very few extensible parts of the game, which meant that each new book added a new variety to the arsenal of core casters, largely circumventing those same conditionals. And that ignores that many of those properties were poorly implemented in the first place. Example: 3E saves almost exclusively serve to represent a character's ability to resist magic. Why then, is Spell Resistance represented as an entirely new roll to be applied to an arbitrary subset of spells, rather than simply a bonus to saves against Spells & Spell-Like Abilities? Pointing out that there are other sloppy mechanics to layer on top of the sloppy mechanics behind saving throws is not, to my mind, a strong counterpoint.

That's drifting away from the greater point though. The issue is not that Fighters and Ogres are bad at Will saves. It's that they created two separate systems to represent this -- the poor saving throw progression and the poor base stat -- noted that each seems fine in isolation, then implemented both. The result is a redundancy that drives behavior way too far to the extremes. It's not an unusual problem in game design, but the best case scenario is that makes for extraneous bookkeeping and the worst case is that it totally breaks a core part of your game. 3.P tends closer to the latter than the former, and it's part of why I don't think the "Strategic Depth" of 3.P holds water; most of it boils down to a version of "Use ice magic on fire creatures to win instantly."

I actually understand your point, I simply disagree. Implementing both save progression and save stats is not "driving behavior way too far to the extremes." The simple fact is that you need both levers if you want complex design, like multiclassing and racial hit dice/bonuses, to be properly calibrated. The fact that it does emphasize a weakness in certain areas for certain characters gives them an area to focus on.

As for why SR follows different mechanics than saving throws, the simple answer is that saving throws apply to far more than just spells. The reverse is true too - SR gives creatures a stat that the designer can pit against certain hazards that do not affect the target directly, such as being hedged out by a protection from evil ward.

And near as I can see you're talking about "strategic depth" when I'm seeing "strategic depth ... for a full caster ... who engages in rock-paper-scissors strategy while knowing what their opponent threw ahead of time." :smallsmile:

Do they? Will you know for sure, with 100% accuracy, that you're facing X ogres, Y vampires and Z gelatinous cubes today?

If you listen to CharOp, absolutely, but they are the fringe that the game is not chiefly designed for.

It also illustrated really handily, for me, how exactly the mighty Fireball was brought so low in 3e. In RC, 1e, and 2e, it's still a top choice (if not the top choice) for 3rd level spells. It's one of the utter game-changers. Why? Because it keeps pace fairly well with hit points, and unlike most Save-or-Lose/Die spells in 1e, it still does something on a saving throw failure.

In 3e (and, yes, 4e) Fireball is a sucker's choice. Unfortunately, it looks like it will be in 5e, too, since it has the same hit point inflation issues as 3e has.

(The same argument goes for magic missile, btw. Though Sleep is dramatically superior at low levels, magic missile remains useful well into the game in RC/1e/2e.)

This is overly simplified. There are plenty of situations where fireball is useful - perhaps you need to destroy an object, like scuppering an enemy sailboat as it escapes from the harbor. Perhaps you are faced with swarms who prove immune to many of your other spells. Perhaps you need to set a very large fire to warn reinforcements at a far-off outpost. Is fireball the best spell of its level around? Of course not, but that doesn't mean it's useless. And even used in less tailored encounters it's still an offensive spell with very long range that can assault enemies in an area.

obryn

2014-07-01, 12:38 PM

But you're still doing something that is fundamentally different from charm, because the very nature of charm presupposes some conditions that simply do not hold with creatures like these.
I'd go even further. It's partially about how magic tended to work in D&D (other than in 4e), and partially how magic tends to expand in D&D.

First off, D&D magic has often (again, apart from in 4e) been rather excruciatingly specific, while non-magical stuff tends to be rather excruciatingly generic. On the one hand, we have Withering, which renders a specific limb useless. On the other hand, we have sharp swords, which can never render a limb useless (...unless they're magic Swords of Sharpness). So if you have a Charm Person spell, well, undead aren't people, so of course it wouldn't work. In 1e, believe it or not, this was frequently done for balance reasons. It's why Hold/Charm Person is easier to cast than Hold/Charm Monster. And why Undead are immune to quite a lot of common tricks, so you can't just put them to Sleep like you would kobolds or goblins.

Second, D&D magic - and anyone who's played any edition knows this - expands. Quickly. Very frequently, new spells come out which bypass the problems of old spells (just sometimes at a higher level). So you get Charm and Control Undead, which are kind of like the mirror image of Charm and Dominate Person. You also get spells like Assay Spell Resistance to bypass that pesky Spell Resistance, and so on. So if you have a spell that can't work against undead, it's only logical that, before long, someone will come up with the same spell ... only now it works against undead.

In 4e, this kind of specificity disappeared and it was decided that, no, Dominating a skeleton is no more helpful than Dominating a bandit, so the spells collapsed back into a single spell based on the outcome rather than the process.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-01, 12:38 PM

In 3e (and, yes, 4e) Fireball is a sucker's choice. Unfortunately, it looks like it will be in 5e, too, since it has the same hit point inflation issues as 3e has.

I wonder why 3e design philosophy on spells tend to keep them away from SoD HP damage but SoD indirect HP damage is fine?

Like...

Fireball is not ok to be a SoD because it deals direct damage.

Sleep is ok to be a SoD because something else has to coup de grace the target.

Or could this have been an accident and they didn't understand damage to HP... Eh probably an accident.

obryn

2014-07-01, 12:41 PM

Do they? Will you know for sure, with 100% accuracy, that you're facing X ogres, Y vampires and Z gelatinous cubes today?

If you listen to CharOp, absolutely, but they are the fringe that the game is not chiefly designed for.
It's about having a good set of spells prepared. It's a lot easier to do at 15th level than 5th, certainly.

This is overly simplified. There are plenty of situations where fireball is useful - perhaps you need to destroy an object, like scuppering an enemy sailboat as it escapes from the harbor. Perhaps you are faced with swarms who prove immune to many of your other spells. Perhaps you need to set a very large fire to warn reinforcements at a far-off outpost. Is fireball the best spell of its level around? Of course not, but that doesn't mean it's useless. And even used in less tailored encounters it's still an offensive spell with very long range that can assault enemies in an area.
I don't think this invalidates the point? The combat effectiveness of fireball undeniably plummeted between 2e and 3e; that's mostly because (1) 3e's hit point expansion meant it was no longer a potential encounter-ender, and (2) because there's better ways to end a battle on a failed save.

(Fun fact: It also plummeted between 1e and 2e for casters of 11+ level, because there wasn't a 10-die cap in 1e. So in the gonzo 1e Let's-Kill-Orcus-in-His-Castle Throne of Bloodstone adventure, the 100th-level Wizard was throwing around 100d6 Fireballs. The more you know.)

(Second fun fact: Spell ...er, Magic... Resistance in 1e was a percentile based around a 10th-level caster baseline. A lower-level caster had a harder time overcoming spell resistance, and a higher-level caster had an easier time around it. This explains why some 1e monsters had Magic Resistance with an asterisk and some that were >100%. Spell saving throws were still easy enough that this mostly benefitted high-level casters casting spells against low-level monsters. This was removed in 2e, and magic resistance was always how it was listed on the monster.)

Millennium

2014-07-01, 12:47 PM

Not to be rude but what system do you use where no one has conceived of any spells that can control fire? Shaping, creating, redirecting fire seem like pretty straight forward applications of magic. And that's before we peak behind the planar curtain and find living/thinking sentient fire.

Magic: It does that, too.
You can assert complete control over fire through magic, yes, much like you can assert complete control over undead. But that's not what the post I responded to was asking for.

They wanted something with a lighter touch (some might say, a more subtle touch): the charm effect, rather than outright domination. In fact, the command undead spell appears to do something very like this, when used on non-mindless undead. I hadn't been aware of that at the time I first read the post: I came across it when I looked up the spell to better reply.

But again, that's not what the person I was responding to appeared to be asking for. They wanted a way to charm mindless creatures. I was trying to explain why mindless creatures can't be charmed.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-01, 12:59 PM

You can assert complete control over fire through magic, yes, much like you can assert complete control over undead. But that's not what the post I responded to was asking for.

They wanted something with a lighter touch (some might say, a more subtle touch): the charm effect, rather than outright domination. In fact, the command undead spell appears to do something very like this, when used on non-mindless undead. I hadn't been aware of that at the time I first read the post: I came across it when I looked up the spell to better reply.

But again, that's not what the person I was responding to appeared to be asking for. They wanted a way to charm mindless creatures. I was trying to explain why mindless creatures can't be charmed.

Mindless creatures should be able to be charmed, like oozes and stuff.

Or something similar without needing a different spell or at least being able to subtly change the spell you know to effect a different type.

Enchantment isn't about just the mind but manipulation of a creature. Enchantment is very similar to transmutation in this reguard. Transmutation changes the physical properties while enchantment changes the mental. Even oozes have a basic programming or instinct. A charm spell should be able to manipulate that instinct into doing something else.

A charm spell could hit an ooze and make the instincts be that of a dog or chicken or whatever.

There is absolutely no reason enchantment shouldn't be able to work on any type of creature. Even constructs have basic orders and such, charm could easily intercept those orders and change them for the spell's duration.

Kurald Galain

2014-07-01, 01:07 PM

Mindless creatures should be able to be charmed, like oozes and stuff.

And fire elementals should be killable with fire damage... :smallbiggrin:

Merlin the Tuna

2014-07-01, 01:08 PM

I actually understand your point, I simply disagree. Implementing both save progression and save stats is not "driving behavior way too far to the extremes." The simple fact is that you need both levers if you want complex design, like multiclassing and racial hit dice/bonuses, to be properly calibrated.I mean if you like 3.P.5E, more power to you. But I'm completely mystified how you can point at multiclassing and racial hit dice as a strength of the Saving Throws. If anything they're the most damning aspects of it. But I would heavily dispute the two levers giving us an interesting, complex design as a statement of fact. More levers can introduce interesting or complex design (not the same thing), but it hinges on the levers themselves being well-designed. And these ones clearly are not.

The Rogue 5/Thief-Acrobat 5 I spent most of my time with in 3.5E had a Reflex of about +15 and a Fort/Will of about +5 and +3, respectively. This did not yield a complex design. Despite having no specific interest in maximizing my Reflex save, I was nearly invincible to them. I'm struggling to think of a single Fort or Will save I made. (Let's ignore the fact that I had Improved Evasion to make it even sillier.) Heavier multiclassing -- like the average Gish build that uses 4 or 5 warrior & mage classes -- tends to make this even sillier as the character picks up more and more 1-2 level dips, further pronouncing the difference in saves.

Conversely, I'm playing Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance right now, which uses the franchise's RPS system called the Weapon Triangle. Axes beat Lances, Lances beat Swords, Swords beat Axes. If you have advantage on someone, you get +1 damage and +15% accuracy. Disadvantage is -1 damage, -15% accuracy. Significant for sure, but because it's thoughtfully integrated into the rest of the game, there are plenty of cases where attacking with disadvantage is a good decision in the long run. If you go the 3E route and change the bonuses to +/- 5 damage and +50% accuracy, that nuance immediately disappears.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-01, 01:09 PM

And fire elementals should be killable with fire damage... :smallbiggrin:

Hey, that is technically possible in 3.5...

Edit:

Coughsearingspellcough* :smalltongue:

For those that didn't know...

captpike

2014-07-01, 02:30 PM

Even if we assume that there are no followers, summoned creatures, suborned enemies, or whatever else, the party as a whole has more than one unit. Specialization works fine, and squad based strategy balance works just fine. Heck, strategy style balance works just fine in general, provided that the role of massed disposable troop is absent.
in an RPG the goal should be for everyone to be doing something cool and having fun, not for only a majority to be having fun.

I rather not play a game where in any given situation 2/5 of my players are useless.

As for having lots of d2s for damage, no, it doesn't. It's almost like they specifically chose to avoid the presence of mostly harmless hits. There are plenty of d6s from the looks of things though, and with 10 Hp up to 9 of those can be flat soaked. 3 probably will be, 4 and 5 both have a decent (but below 50%) chance of it. That doesn't mean the capacity isn't there, merely that it isn't commonly employed, because they decided to make low level combat dangerous again.
so rather then leave that as the DM's choice, they are telling everyone "you MUST make low level combat dangerous, it does not mater what your story calls for, or what you want"

what would be wrong about having level 1-2 creatures able to do low amounts of damage and then telling DM's that if want more dangerous creatures they can either use more creatures or use higher level creatures? is that no what the level system is for?

This is EXACTLY how you balance this character. They have nearly limitless options and spells to choose from. Defensive spells, spells of obliteration, and can take out specific enemies or groups of enemies nearly instantly. That has to be balanced somewhere. And D&D has chosen to give them craptastic HP and virtually no armor other than their spells.

IF your wizards are running around with comparable HP to the mid-rangers or the heavys, they become unbalanced, and extremely powerful. I believe NO wizard should be able to take 6 hits of anything. If they can, why bother playing anything else OTHER than for personal appeasement?

or you give the "heavies" the same overall power and versitily of the casters. even if its in different areas

also it would mean you would have to never allow any defensive spells, no mage armor, mirror image ect because that would negate the biggest disadvantage of the class.

Psyren

2014-07-01, 02:56 PM

It's about having a good set of spells prepared. It's a lot easier to do at 15th level than 5th, certainly.

Precisely - doing that successfully takes skill / system mastery and thus adds depth.

I don't think this invalidates the point? The combat effectiveness of fireball undeniably plummeted between 2e and 3e; that's mostly because (1) 3e's hit point expansion meant it was no longer a potential encounter-ender, and (2) because there's better ways to end a battle on a failed save.

Sure, but being weaker and being useless are two different things. Besides, I thought having fewer spells that could end an encounter in one cast was a good thing :smalltongue:

PF weakened a lot of spells, not just fireball - polymorph, glitterdust, grease, SoD spells etc. were all knocked down a peg.

Interesting facts - thank you for sharing. I dislike older edition mechanics but they are still beneficial to read.

There is absolutely no reason enchantment shouldn't be able to work on any type of creature. Even constructs have basic orders and such, charm could easily intercept those orders and change them for the spell's duration.

But that's the point, it shouldn't be "easy" at all. There should be some monsters that even the most skilled enchanter would be at a severe disadvantage against. This gives the DM a substantial toolbox from which to draw challenges, and making them intuitive is a design affordance to make that depth approachable even to the inexperienced.

The Rogue 5/Thief-Acrobat 5 I spent most of my time with in 3.5E had a Reflex of about +15 and a Fort/Will of about +5 and +3, respectively. This did not yield a complex design. Despite having no specific interest in maximizing my Reflex save, I was nearly invincible to them. I'm struggling to think of a single Fort or Will save I made. (Let's ignore the fact that I had Improved Evasion to make it even sillier.)

Of course it was complex. Your strengths and weaknesses were intuitive, and you had to play around them in order to maximize your chances of success. If I looked at someone called a "thief-acrobat" I would expect his reflexes to be pretty fine-tuned; therefore, without even reading the class tables for either of your two classes I would expect reflex to be far and away your best save. Similarly, I would expect your fort to be weak, because you are not intended to be assaulting enemies head-on - as a combination of the Sneak and the Fragile Speedster, I would expect you to avoid notice (and therefore the direct confrontations where these saves most often come into play) as much as possible. And those are indeed the tactics that are best for such a character to adopt.

These weaknesses however play into your strengths. Most effects that trigger a fort or will save (including massive damage) are targeted, meaning the enemy has to know you're there. Attacking from the front therefore is likely to subject you to them. Instead, you're encouraged to be stealthy and strike from the flanks/rear, which your skills and agility enable you to do more effectively than other classes.

Heavier multiclassing -- like the average Gish build that uses 4 or 5 warrior & mage classes -- tends to make this even sillier as the character picks up more and more 1-2 level dips, further pronouncing the difference in saves.

For starters, I'm not talking about 1-2 level dips, which I happen to think the system should not be encouraging anyway. I wasn't even talking about "heavy" multiclassing, which you made the leap for reasons unknown. I was thinking more along the lines of the most basic gish like the Eldritch Knight - warrior class + caster class + PrC, which tends to have two good saves.

Conversely, I'm playing Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance right now, which uses the franchise's RPS system called the Weapon Triangle. Axes beat Lances, Lances beat Swords, Swords beat Axes. If you have advantage on someone, you get +1 damage and +15% accuracy. Disadvantage is -1 damage, -15% accuracy. Significant for sure, but because it's thoughtfully integrated into the rest of the game, there are plenty of cases where attacking with disadvantage is a good decision in the long run. If you go the 3E route and change the bonuses to +/- 5 damage and +50% accuracy, that nuance immediately disappears.

It's also completely arbitrary. Why does an axe beat a lance while a sword can't? It has no grounding in logic.

As I touched on above, there is an integral concept to game design called "affordances" - elements within the game are mapped to our understanding of the real world outside it, allowing us to intuit information naturally without having to read a manual. "spearmen beat horsemen, horsemen beat footmen and footmen beat spearmen" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCSXEKHL6fc#t=4m04s) is the more intuitive expression of a weapon triangle. It makes sense that spearmen beat horsemen because they can strike their mounts as they close. It makes sense that horsemen beat footmen because they have the advantage of mobility and elevation. It makes sense that footmen can beat spearmen because they have shields to get in past the effective range of a spear.

So it's not that I disagree with your point on the Weapon Triangle, but for it to be truly effective it needs affordances to be intuitive.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-01, 03:16 PM

Millennium

2014-07-01, 03:22 PM

in an RPG the goal should be for everyone to be doing something cool and having fun, not for only a majority to be having fun.
All the time? At every moment? There's only one way to do that: a thoroughly homogenized experience, where everyone is doing the very same things, and you restrict your scenarios to those where those same things are always useful. This can be fun for short periods of time, but it gets boring surprisingly fast.

If different people are truly good at different things, then different situations will call for different specialties, and some people will be in the spotlight in that situation and others will be in the background. And this is OK. It's what makes it possible for characters to become interesting, and really shine in their own moments.

I rather not play a game where in any given situation 2/5 of my players are useless.
Neither would I. Fortunately, it's not a simple binary either/or. Yes, sometimes players are going to have to think a bit outside the box, or use Aid Another rather than taking the spotlight. But frankly, not only are most players content to do this from time to time, they'd actually prefer to do it from time to time.

You wouldn't think that sitting at a table and rolling dice could be tiring, but role-playing can actually be a surprisingly intense experience, and intense experiences are draining. You shouldn't keep any one player in the background for too long, of course, but many (if not most) actually enjoy taking the occasional break: being in the background for a few minutes while other characters are in focus.

what would be wrong about having level 1-2 creatures able to do low amounts of damage and then telling DM's that if want more dangerous creatures they can either use more creatures or use higher level creatures?
Are you suggesting that combat between creatures of the same level should not be balanced?

Fortunately for you, every edition of D&D that has ever used anything like CR has also had a way to make low-level combat as easy as you want: creatures whose CR/level/whatever is less than 1. If you want low-level combat to be easy, you can use fewer creatures or use weaker ones. This allows the numbers to actually remain meaningful, but allow the DM to scale encounters to whatever degree is desired.

Jacob.Tyr

2014-07-01, 03:22 PM

Sure, but being weaker and being useless are two different things. Besides, I thought having fewer spells that could end an encounter in one cast was a good thing :smalltongue:
PF weakened a lot of spells, not just fireball - polymorph, glitterdust, grease, SoD spells etc. were all knocked down a peg.
Interesting facts - thank you for sharing. I dislike older edition mechanics but they are still beneficial to read.

But that's the point, it shouldn't be "easy" at all. There should be some monsters that even the most skilled enchanter would be at a severe disadvantage against. This gives the DM a substantial toolbox from which to draw challenges, and making them intuitive is a design affordance to make that depth approachable even to the inexperienced.

Sorry to disagree with you, but the existence of a class that requires DM's throwing immune creatures at them to keep all challenges from being trivialized is something I really can't view as a positive in a game. On one hand it seems great, you have this power that is really useful and you balance it by adding in situations where it isn't. But, really, when your enchanter turns any non-immune enemy into a non-problem it gets harder and harder to justify negating his abilities without eventually looking like a **** DM. Further, it makes encounter design in adventures much more variable. One adventure might completely screw this character concept, the next might just be a snooze-fest while he dominates everything.

Granted, this is again where I really like 5E's concentration mechanics for casters. They can turn an even fight into an easy route by taking out one big threat, while still moving/casting non-concentration abilities. You don't need immunities anymore, because mind-control enchanters can't suddenly turn every enemy in a fight into their puppets. They can have one, while someone else might be directing a flaming sphere, someone else is maintaining a buff, or maybe someone is holding up a wall of force to split the enemies up. If they stick to concentration for duration spells/buffs/debuffs, I don't really think this is going to be an issue in 5E.

Of course it was complex. Your strengths and weaknesses were intuitive, and you had to play around them in order to maximize your chances of success. If I looked at someone called a "thief-acrobat" I would expect his reflexes to be pretty fine-tuned; therefore, without even reading the class tables for either of your two classes I would expect reflex to be far and away your best save. Similarly, I would expect your fort to be weak, because you are not intended to be assaulting enemies head-on - as a combination of the Sneak and the Fragile Speedster, I would expect you to avoid notice (and therefore the direct confrontations where these saves most often come into play) as much as possible. And those are indeed the tactics that are best for such a character to adopt.

These weaknesses however play into your strengths. Most effects that trigger a fort or will save (including massive damage) are targeted, meaning the enemy has to know you're there. Attacking from the front therefore is likely to subject you to them. Instead, you're encouraged to be stealthy and strike from the flanks/rear, which your skills and agility enable you to do more effectively than other classes.

For starters, I'm not talking about 1-2 level dips, which I happen to think the system should not be encouraging anyway. I wasn't even talking about "heavy" multiclassing, which you made the leap for reasons unknown. I was thinking more along the lines of the most basic gish like the Eldritch Knight - warrior class + caster class + PrC, which tends to have two good saves.

Yeah, this is just an oddity of the system when multi-class exp penalties are ignored and people go grab-bag on their class list. It really is just another failing of the 3.x setup when you start tossing 15 classes into 20 levels, but the system wasn't really built for that and I don't know that I'd let anyone do it in a game I was running if they asked. Everything else here makes sense. The only real issue comes when your DM starts throwing SoS and SoD at your thief, knowing he's weak against them. That is, honestly, a terrible way to play the game in my opinion. But, again, I think 5E LOOKS like it is going about this in a way that makes more sense than previous editions.

Psyren

2014-07-01, 03:26 PM

There are better ways to make something difficult that arbitrarily saying that spell X can be made but never spell Y.

Immunities are nice and all but I find most of them to be flat out lazy.

Sure an ooze is immune to mind effecting due to not having a mind but they do have instincts or a base programming. Saying that you can't tap into that with enchantments like one would a human brain is down right backwards.

You would think that fooling/reprogramming/enhancing the instincts of a mindless creature would be easier than one of a creature with more "stuff" to deal with.

I'm not saying it should be impossible, just more difficult. Either it requires the enchanter wizard to dedicate some build resources to studying necromancy, or they have to internalize a whole new method of casting, which is represented e.g. by a feat like Threnodic Spell (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/threnodic-spell-metamagic) or Coaxing Spell. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/coaxing-spell-metamagic) (Or they can simply dedicate monetary resources to a rod of same.) Alternatively, they can accept their inability to manipulate such creatures and come up with other solutions - maybe they dominate a big troll and use that to smash up any skeletons they might come across, or they add a couple of lightning bolts to their arsenal, or they simply make sure to pal around with a fighter or paladin or other set of adventurers. There are lots and lots of options, and therefore more and more depth as a result.

By making it more complex than simply treating these creatures like any other animal or humanoid the player might encounter, you force them to think more about the game and take that deeper dive into the mechanics. And while they research the above options, they may learn something else that they didn't know, taking one more step along the road to system mastery.

Sorry to disagree with you, but the existence of a class that requires DM's throwing immune creatures at them to keep all challenges from being trivialized is something I really can't view as a positive in a game. But, really, when your enchanter turns any non-immune enemy into a non-problem it gets harder and harder to justify negating his abilities without eventually looking like a **** DM. Further, it makes encounter design in adventures much more variable. One adventure might completely screw this character concept, the next might just be a snooze-fest while he dominates everything.

You aren't "required" to throw immune creatures at them at all. Enchanters have a lot of counters besides mere immune creature types. For instance, the enemy might have an abjurer among them, who can liberate many of their thralls, and turn the tide of a battle against them quite rapidly. They might even have an enemy enchanter, who can either counter their spells directly or wrestle with them for control. An enemy bard can interfere with your ability to command your minions in a number of ways. He can also use enemies that are simply strong-willed without being outright immune for a less absolute level of difficulty.

By providing a variety of counters, you can appeal to a variety of DM styles. Relying on affordances (as illustrated in the video I linked) keeps that large number intuitive and thus manageable.

Further, it makes encounter design in adventures much more variable. One adventure might completely screw this character concept, the next might just be a snooze-fest while he dominates everything.

Can we have some middle ground, do you think? How about a mix of strong-willed/immune enemies and some that aren't? Where an enchanter can contribute (by controlling one or more of the susceptible enemies) while still being threatened by, and therefore needing protection from, the non-susceptible ones?

Granted, this is again where I really like 5E's concentration mechanics for casters. They can turn an even fight into an easy route by taking out one big threat, while still moving/casting non-concentration abilities. You don't need immunities anymore, because mind-control enchanters can't suddenly turn every enemy in a fight into their puppets. They can have one, while someone else might be directing a flaming sphere, someone else is maintaining a buff, or maybe someone is holding up a wall of force to split the enemies up. If they stick to concentration for duration spells/buffs/debuffs, I don't really think this is going to be an issue in 5E.

I simply find this boring. I don't mind individual spells that limit your control to one target or effect at a time, but having them all be like that across the board - and competing with one another besides - is just stifling. This is exactly the problem I had with 4e summoning - because the summon ended up needing your actions to do anything, there was no action economy to be gained by summoning anything. They even used up your healing surges when they got hurt. There was almost no point to summoning at all.

Yeah, this is just an oddity of the system when multi-class exp penalties are ignored and people go grab-bag on their class list. It really is just another failing of the 3.x setup when you start tossing 15 classes into 20 levels, but the system wasn't really built for that and I don't know that I'd let anyone do it in a game I was running if they asked. Everything else here makes sense. The only real issue comes when your DM starts throwing SoS and SoD at your thief, knowing he's weak against them. That is, honestly, a terrible way to play the game in my opinion. But, again, I think 5E LOOKS like it is going about this in a way that makes more sense than previous editions.

Your thief, again, has the tools to avoid the lion's share of SoS/SoD effects already. Most are targeted or require line of sight, both of which are things a skilled thief can control. Most are a standard action or longer to get off and therefore can be interrupted provided you can get in close unseen (which you can.) And so on.

Kurald Galain

2014-07-01, 03:41 PM

Jacob.Tyr

2014-07-01, 03:45 PM

I'm not saying it should be impossible, just more difficult. Either it requires the enchanter wizard to dedicate some build resources to studying necromancy, or they have to internalize a whole new method of casting, which is represented e.g. by a feat like Threnodic Spell (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/threnodic-spell-metamagic) or Coaxing Spell. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/coaxing-spell-metamagic) (Or they can simply dedicate monetary resources to a rod of same.) Alternatively, they can accept their inability to manipulate such creatures and come up with other solutions - maybe they dominate a big troll and use that to smash up any skeletons they might come across, or they add a couple of lightning bolts to their arsenal, or they simply make sure to pal around with a fighter or paladin or other set of adventurers. There are lots and lots of options, and therefore more and more depth as a result.

By making it more complex than simply treating these creatures like any other animal or humanoid the player might encounter, you force them to think more about the game and take that deeper dive into the mechanics. And while they research the above options, they may learn something else that they didn't know, taking one more step along the road to system mastery.

You aren't "required" to throw immune creatures at them at all. Enchanters have a lot of counters besides mere immune creature types. For instance, the enemy might have an abjurer among them, who can liberate many of their thralls, and turn the tide of a battle against them quite rapidly. They might even have an enemy enchanter, who can either counter their spells directly or wrestle with them for control. An enemy bard can interfere with your ability to command your minions in a number of ways. He can also use enemies that are simply strong-willed without being outright immune for a less absolute level of difficulty.

By providing a variety of counters, you can appeal to a variety of DM styles. Relying on affordances (as illustrated in the video I linked) keeps that large number intuitive and thus manageable.

Can we have some middle ground, do you think? How about a mix of strong-willed/immune enemies and some that aren't? Where an enchanter can contribute (by controlling one or more of the susceptible enemies) while still being threatened by, and therefore needing protection from, the non-susceptible ones?

I simply find this boring. I don't mind individual spells that limit your control to one target or effect at a time, but having them all be like that across the board - and competing with one another besides - is just stifling. This is exactly the problem I had with 4e summoning - because the summon ended up needing your actions to do anything, there was no action economy to be gained by summoning anything. They even used up your healing surges when they got hurt. There was almost no point to summoning at all.

It would be good to find a balance, definitely. Feats, impacts of casting spells from higher stats, specialized class setups. There are a lot of ways stuff like this could be introduced. Some sort of Enchanter package for wizards allowing them to maintain multiple enchantments at a time. Feats that allow you to expand your target options, casting at higher levels to catch more enemies with each spell maintained. For sure if you dump all of your character resources into one thing you should be really versatile and powerful when using that, especially at higher levels. If it becomes super important at higher levels I'd prefer some sort of template setup where you can toss immunity on a few enemies quickly by just adding something like an "Indomitable" tag. There is a lot WotC could explore, and I hope they look into it and do it well.

obryn

2014-07-01, 03:56 PM

Precisely - doing that successfully takes skill / system mastery and thus adds depth.
For full casters. Who get to play the rock-paper-scissors game. :smallsmile:

Sure, but being weaker and being useless are two different things. Besides, I thought having fewer spells that could end an encounter in one cast was a good thing :smalltongue:
It's great if you actually remove all the encounter-ending spells. This didn't happen, though. What happened was that doing damage with spells - where you're actually working off similar game resources as every other character - disappeared.

Psyren

2014-07-01, 04:04 PM

For full casters. Who get to play the rock-paper-scissors game. :smallsmile:

Well, yes. Having that level of depth for every class could easily be off-putting to less experienced players. There is a place at the table for the ones who just want to roll to hit/roll damage and not worry about saves, immunities, SR, creature type, line of effect, area of effect, friendly fire, and all the other fiddly mechanics casters have to worry about.

Even 5e appears set to do this. The fighter stuff is handy (a "healing surge" mechanic, and the extra action thing) but simple.

It's great if you actually remove all the encounter-ending spells. This didn't happen, though. What happened was that doing damage with spells - where you're actually working off similar game resources as every other character - disappeared.

If you can end an encounter with the likes of sleep or glitterdust - 10' radius effects - it honestly wasn't much of an encounter to begin with.

Envyus

2014-07-01, 04:42 PM

We have a list of Monsters from the starter set.

Bugbear CL 1
Commoner CL 0
Cultist CL 1/8
Doppelganger CL 3
Evil Mage CL 1
Flameskull CL 4
Ghoul CL 1
Giant Spider CL 1
Goblin CL 1/4
Grick CL 2
Hobgoblin CL 1/2
Nothic CL 2
Ochre Jelly CL 2
Ogre CL 2
Orc CR 1/2
Owlbear CL 3
Ruffian CL 1/2
Skeleton CL 1/4
Spectator CL 3
Stirge CL 1/8
Twig Blight CL 1/8
Wolf CL 1/4
Young Green Dragon CL 8
Wraith CL 3
Zombie CL 1/4

Left out NPC's and important characters, these are just the monsters.

rlc

2014-07-01, 05:38 PM

All the way down to 1/8. I'm guessing those are some of the first things we'll fight.

Envyus

2014-07-01, 05:42 PM

All the way down to 1/8. I'm guessing those are some of the first things we'll fight.

These are the starter set monsters. Which is only supposed to got to level 5. (And according to Mearls the Green Dragon is an optional encounter you don't have to fight it.)

rlc

2014-07-01, 05:46 PM

Right, I understood that. I'm saying that the CR 1/8 monsters will probably be very early in the adventure.

Kurald Galain

2014-07-01, 05:48 PM

The math shows that an infinite amount of commoners are a suitable encounter for a level-one party :smallbiggrin:

obryn

2014-07-01, 05:56 PM

Well, yes. Having that level of depth for every class could easily be off-putting to less experienced players. There is a place at the table for the ones who just want to roll to hit/roll damage and not worry about saves, immunities, SR, creature type, line of effect, area of effect, friendly fire, and all the other fiddly mechanics casters have to worry about.

Even 5e appears set to do this. The fighter stuff is handy (a "healing surge" mechanic, and the extra action thing) but simple.
The first paragraph is missing the point; there's ways of letting martial characters interact with the entire game without heavily layered complexity. You're more or less spelling out the Tier chart, here. It's a little condescending, frankly.

Being willing to deal with complexity shouldn't result in power disparity quite as vast as we see in 3.x. Witness RC D&D, for an example, where spellcasters were less powerful and weapon-users had access to the phenomenal Weapon Mastery subsystem.

Likewise, the existence of simple options is good, so long as they're still able to participate. This is where 3.x martial classes fall short; it's a spellcaster's game. That, combined with a favorable saving throw chart, kept better parity while still working with "classic" D&D spellcasting.

Now, back on topic, the 5e Fighter has a Simple and a Complex build. We've only seen the Simple one; the complex one (with maneuvers) remains to be seen. I am skeptical about its potency, but I guess we'll see.

captpike

2014-07-01, 06:01 PM

All the time? At every moment? There's only one way to do that: a thoroughly homogenized experience, where everyone is doing the very same things, and you restrict your scenarios to those where those same things are always useful. This can be fun for short periods of time, but it gets boring surprisingly fast.

If different people are truly good at different things, then different situations will call for different specialties, and some people will be in the spotlight in that situation and others will be in the background. And this is OK. It's what makes it possible for characters to become interesting, and really shine in their own moments.

You wouldn't think that sitting at a table and rolling dice could be tiring, but role-playing can actually be a surprisingly intense experience, and intense experiences are draining. You shouldn't keep any one player in the background for too long, of course, but many (if not most) actually enjoy taking the occasional break: being in the background for a few minutes while other characters are in focus.

it should be a goal of the system, will they reach it perfectly? no but that does not mean they should not try.

the best way I know to approach it is to have each player be good at one part of each pillar. so everyone is good at something within combat, social situations, and exportation. so in the least no one is useless (or can only aid another, the next best to useless) in a whole section of the game.

if someone WANTS to be useless in an area they can easily make themselves that way, but its much harder to make up an entire new sub-system so your fighter can be useful in social situations.

Neither would I. Fortunately, it's not a simple binary either/or. Yes, sometimes players are going to have to think a bit outside the box, or use Aid Another rather than taking the spotlight. But frankly, not only are most players content to do this from time to time, they'd actually prefer to do it from time to time.

Are you suggesting that combat between creatures of the same level should not be balanced?

Fortunately for you, every edition of D&D that has ever used anything like CR has also had a way to make low-level combat as easy as you want: creatures whose CR/level/whatever is less than 1. If you want low-level combat to be easy, you can use fewer creatures or use weaker ones. This allows the numbers to actually remain meaningful, but allow the DM to scale encounters to whatever degree is desired.

the problem with just paring down the number of creatures is that that one creature is not a threat to the party but could still kill someone because they do too much damage. there needs to be creatures that do no more then 1/4hp of the lowest hp possible for level 1.

Well, yes. Having that level of depth for every class could easily be off-putting to less experienced players. There is a place at the table for the ones who just want to roll to hit/roll damage and not worry about saves, immunities, SR, creature type, line of effect, area of effect, friendly fire, and all the other fiddly mechanics casters have to worry about.

Even 5e appears set to do this. The fighter stuff is handy (a "healing surge" mechanic, and the extra action thing) but simple.

If you can end an encounter with the likes of sleep or glitterdust - 10' radius effects - it honestly wasn't much of an encounter to begin with.

why is 5e doing this, yet again, with casters and non-casters. maybe I want a simple caster or a complex fighter? if the game is made to have simple and complex classes then they should allow for such things even if they rename them. so a simple wizard is a sorcerer and a complex fighter is a marshal.

Psyren

2014-07-01, 06:25 PM

The first paragraph is missing the point; there's ways of letting martial characters interact with the entire game without heavily layered complexity. You're more or less spelling out the Tier chart, here. It's a little condescending, frankly.

How is it condescending? Honest question :smallconfused:
There are plenty of folks who simply don't want to deal with the complexities of spellcasting, whether because they are new and still learning the ropes, or experienced and want to take a break from the level of planning it requires.There is nothing bad or shameful about that - it just is.

Being willing to deal with complexity shouldn't result in power disparity quite as vast as we see in 3.x. Witness RC D&D, for an example, where spellcasters were less powerful and weapon-users had access to the phenomenal Weapon Mastery subsystem.

Witness what now? What is that? Do you have a link?

Likewise, the existence of simple options is good, so long as they're still able to participate. This is where 3.x martial classes fall short; it's a spellcaster's game. That, combined with a favorable saving throw chart, kept better parity while still working with "classic" D&D spellcasting.

Simpler classes have no problem participating in my games. CharOp paints a very different picture than what goes on at actual tables.

Now, back on topic, the 5e Fighter has a Simple and a Complex build. We've only seen the Simple one; the complex one (with maneuvers) remains to be seen. I am skeptical about its potency, but I guess we'll see.

I'm fine with this - the problem though is that the wizard will never be Simple because it will always have maneuvers (i.e. spells.) To take those away is to not have a wizard anymore. So at a minimum it will be equal in complexity to the complex fighter,

rlc

2014-07-01, 06:26 PM

There is a complex fighter. And there are probably monsters that do the tiny amount of damage you're wanting, since a list of monsters in the starter set was posted in this thread and there are monsters with 1/8 CR and even one with a 0 CR.

Psyren

2014-07-01, 06:30 PM

why is 5e doing this, yet again, with casters and non-casters. maybe I want a simple caster or a complex fighter? if the game is made to have simple and complex classes then they should allow for such things even if they rename them. so a simple wizard is a sorcerer and a complex fighter is a marshal.

The ironic thing is that the "simplest" casters (sorcerers and warlocks, in 3e) actually end up being the most complex, because whatever you select is with you for the long haul. You have to have a very good understanding of which spells/invocations it makes sense to spam and which it does not.

The only real way to make a simple caster is to dictate what it gets at every level or to make all the choices functionally identical. This is very straightforward, but not very appealing. (4e did slightly better by having a mix of both, but evidently this wasn't good enough either.)

Lokiare

2014-07-01, 07:23 PM

Hey, that is technically possible in 3.5...

Edit:

Coughsearingspellcough* :smalltongue:

For those that didn't know...

There was a long drawn out thread about this somewhere. The conclusion came down to since people are physical and physical damage can hurt them, fire damage of the right type can hurt fire creatures. It even explained in detail how fire breaks fight fire and how starting more fires starves all the fires of oxygen and puts them out. Basically there is no good reason fire or heat of some kind couldn't hurt a fire creature. Especially if it burned at a higher temperature than the fire creature.

in an RPG the goal should be for everyone to be doing something cool and having fun, not for only a majority to be having fun.

I rather not play a game where in any given situation 2/5 of my players are useless.

so rather then leave that as the DM's choice, they are telling everyone "you MUST make low level combat dangerous, it does not mater what your story calls for, or what you want"

what would be wrong about having level 1-2 creatures able to do low amounts of damage and then telling DM's that if want more dangerous creatures they can either use more creatures or use higher level creatures? is that no what the level system is for?

or you give the "heavies" the same overall power and versitily of the casters. even if its in different areas

also it would mean you would have to never allow any defensive spells, no mage armor, mirror image ect because that would negate the biggest disadvantage of the class.

The main problem is players have too few hit points. Even a 1d4 damage creature can kill a wizard in 2-3 average hits (6 hp +0 con mod). If you want random variability you can't really go below 1d4 for damage unless you go with math problems like 1-2 = 1 and 3-4 = 2 or something which complicates the game.

My idea is just add constitution score to the hp of all creatures unless they are 'minions' and meant to be killed in a single swing. Solo monsters meant to be a fight unto themselves would have multiple hp totals that you either work through or target specific parts to disable attacks and spells. Like a beholder would have normal hp, but each eye stalk would have extra hp and the central eye would have some hp and you would have to remove all hp in order to kill the thing. You could either just pound away at it or make the fight easier by targeting eye stalks or the central eye.

An Ogre Warlord might have 5 hp totals, swapping traits and tactics as each total is removed, and when one total is removed extra damage is not applied to the next one. The first hp bar would be just the normal Ogre 'smash' thing. The next one might be a broad swing that hits many things around it. The third bar might be the broad swing, but anything hit goes flying back. The fourth bar might be the Ogre raging getting to roll damage twice and take the highest while granting advantage to melee attacks. The fifth bar might end with the Ogre charging around the the battlefield hitting anything in its path.

All the time? At every moment? There's only one way to do that: a thoroughly homogenized experience, where everyone is doing the very same things, and you restrict your scenarios to those where those same things are always useful. This can be fun for short periods of time, but it gets boring surprisingly fast.

Uh no. everyone participating is not defined by homogenization. For instance a room trapped with a stone door that slides down and slowly fills with water from holes near the ceiling could be tackled by the Fighter/Barbarian/Monk trying to keep the door from sliding down/lifting the closed door. The Wizard could be casting spells like levitate to help the Rogue reach the holes, or casting water breathing to give everyone a few extra rounds of life to try to escape. The Rogue can try to climb and disable the holes filling the room with water. The cleric can be casting the opposite of create water over and over to slow the rise of the water. In other words everyone can be involved and do cool things while doing things that are completely different. It just takes some effort by the design team.

If different people are truly good at different things, then different situations will call for different specialties, and some people will be in the spotlight in that situation and others will be in the background. And this is OK. It's what makes it possible for characters to become interesting, and really shine in their own moments.

Neither would I. Fortunately, it's not a simple binary either/or. Yes, sometimes players are going to have to think a bit outside the box, or use Aid Another rather than taking the spotlight. But frankly, not only are most players content to do this from time to time, they'd actually prefer to do it from time to time.

You wouldn't think that sitting at a table and rolling dice could be tiring, but role-playing can actually be a surprisingly intense experience, and intense experiences are draining. You shouldn't keep any one player in the background for too long, of course, but many (if not most) actually enjoy taking the occasional break: being in the background for a few minutes while other characters are in focus.

Are you suggesting that combat between creatures of the same level should not be balanced?

Fortunately for you, every edition of D&D that has ever used anything like CR has also had a way to make low-level combat as easy as you want: creatures whose CR/level/whatever is less than 1. If you want low-level combat to be easy, you can use fewer creatures or use weaker ones. This allows the numbers to actually remain meaningful, but allow the DM to scale encounters to whatever degree is desired.

This is one possibility but not all possibilities. You can also have games where everyone tries to do things.

I'm not saying it should be impossible, just more difficult. Either it requires the enchanter wizard to dedicate some build resources to studying necromancy, or they have to internalize a whole new method of casting, which is represented e.g. by a feat like Threnodic Spell (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/threnodic-spell-metamagic) or Coaxing Spell. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/coaxing-spell-metamagic) (Or they can simply dedicate monetary resources to a rod of same.) Alternatively, they can accept their inability to manipulate such creatures and come up with other solutions - maybe they dominate a big troll and use that to smash up any skeletons they might come across, or they add a couple of lightning bolts to their arsenal, or they simply make sure to pal around with a fighter or paladin or other set of adventurers. There are lots and lots of options, and therefore more and more depth as a result.

By making it more complex than simply treating these creatures like any other animal or humanoid the player might encounter, you force them to think more about the game and take that deeper dive into the mechanics. And while they research the above options, they may learn something else that they didn't know, taking one more step along the road to system mastery.

You aren't "required" to throw immune creatures at them at all. Enchanters have a lot of counters besides mere immune creature types. For instance, the enemy might have an abjurer among them, who can liberate many of their thralls, and turn the tide of a battle against them quite rapidly. They might even have an enemy enchanter, who can either counter their spells directly or wrestle with them for control. An enemy bard can interfere with your ability to command your minions in a number of ways. He can also use enemies that are simply strong-willed without being outright immune for a less absolute level of difficulty.

By providing a variety of counters, you can appeal to a variety of DM styles. Relying on affordances (as illustrated in the video I linked) keeps that large number intuitive and thus manageable.

Can we have some middle ground, do you think? How about a mix of strong-willed/immune enemies and some that aren't? Where an enchanter can contribute (by controlling one or more of the susceptible enemies) while still being threatened by, and therefore needing protection from, the non-susceptible ones?

I simply find this boring. I don't mind individual spells that limit your control to one target or effect at a time, but having them all be like that across the board - and competing with one another besides - is just stifling. This is exactly the problem I had with 4e summoning - because the summon ended up needing your actions to do anything, there was no action economy to be gained by summoning anything. They even used up your healing surges when they got hurt. There was almost no point to summoning at all.

Your thief, again, has the tools to avoid the lion's share of SoS/SoD effects already. Most are targeted or require line of sight, both of which are things a skilled thief can control. Most are a standard action or longer to get off and therefore can be interrupted provided you can get in close unseen (which you can.) And so on.

The idea behind 4E was that everything was balanced so that your choices were not based on what's more powerful but what is more flavorful to you. A summoner was just as powerful as an evoker which was just as powerful as a charmer. Some people say that these things were homogenous, but when pressed they usually come to admit that its just how the characters gain resources rather than how they play. For instance the summoner is nice because it creates persistent threats that move about the battlefield or block areas, the evoker deals damage over a large area, and the charmer causes enemies to hit each other with their basic attacks (which is interesting because lots of monsters had nice riders on their basic attacks and it was usually different from combat to combat). They all played completely differently.

How is it condescending? Honest question :smallconfused:
There are plenty of folks who simply don't want to deal with the complexities of spellcasting, whether because they are new and still learning the ropes, or experienced and want to take a break from the level of planning it requires.There is nothing bad or shameful about that - it just is.

Witness what now? What is that? Do you have a link?

Simpler classes have no problem participating in my games. CharOp paints a very different picture than what goes on at actual tables.

I'm fine with this - the problem though is that the wizard will never be Simple because it will always have maneuvers (i.e. spells.) To take those away is to not have a wizard anymore. So at a minimum it will be equal in complexity to the complex fighter,

I have no problem with someone that likes to play simple characters. I do have a problem when they want to play a specific type of character and the only option is a simple one that can't keep up with the other characters.

In 1E, 2E, 3E and 5E the martial characters fall to the wayside to the caster classes as levels progress, unless of course they did a complete redesign while we weren't looking.

For instance you can balance a simple fighter that just hits things by granting:

1. Add their level to the speed they move rounded down to the nearest 5'
2. Gain extra attacks every 3 levels to a max of 6.
3. Gain damage increases to each attack equal to their level.
4. Increase their crit range by 1/4 their level.

To match fireball which can be cast 2 times by a wizard in a day. Assuming the Wizard doesn't pull it out for anything less than 5 creatures and deals 6d6 damage to each creature. Using WotC metric of 4 average encounters per day you end up with 60d6 worth of damage per day. for a fighter to keep up with that at 5th level they need to make 30 attacks and deal 1d12 damage on each. If you count saving throws. its probably closer to 20 attacks. 20/4 = 5. So each combat they need to hit with 5 attacks. If they hit 70% of the time that means they have to make 7 attacks per combat just to keep up with 2 fireballs. Of course the wizard has 5-6 other daily spells and unlimited cantrips that the fighter needs to keep up with too. Someone else can run the math but we are talking 2-3 attacks per round by level 5 for a fighter to keep up with a great sword. if they have something lesser then they need even more attacks to keep up.

There is a complex fighter. And there are probably monsters that do the tiny amount of damage you're wanting, since a list of monsters in the starter set was posted in this thread and there are monsters with 1/8 CR and even one with a 0 CR.

Its unlikely that monsters do less than 1d4 damage without resorting to 'complex' mechanics like the divide and round down on d6 and d4 to produce d2 and d3 rolls. As I said above a wizard can die to 2-3 hits from a 1d4 damage monster (return of the house cat killer).

obryn

2014-07-01, 07:35 PM

How is it condescending? Honest question :smallconfused:
There are plenty of folks who simply don't want to deal with the complexities of spellcasting, whether because they are new and still learning the ropes, or experienced and want to take a break from the level of planning it requires.There is nothing bad or shameful about that - it just is.
It was the way it was phrased - more or less that playing a wizard is some kind of burden due to the complexity.

Witness what now? What is that? Do you have a link?
Sure; RC D&D is one of my two favorite D&Ds. It's largely forgotten nowadays, since 2e through 5e are a continuation of the AD&D line rather than the "simple" game. RC is short for Rules Cyclopedia, a 1989 hardcover that brought together the BECMI line. It's for sale on the D&D Classics website for a ten spot; hard copies in iffy condition regularly go for upwards of $50*. It's the only time you could buy an entire D&D game, including monsters and a DM toolkit, in a single book.

I took a new look at it a few years back. It's undeniably simple, more or less by design, with complexity that scales by level. Moreso than newer editions, it shifts focus several times throughout the levels, with realm management being a pretty big part of level 9+ play, culminating in a quest for immortality - and even play as immortals. The design is very tight and generally light, with a lot of great features like complexity that scales with level. It's not perfect - Thieves in particular are pretty bad without some help - but if I was stuck on a desert island with one D&D book, this'd be it.

There's several retro-clones of it, but my favorites are Dark Dungeons and Darker Dungeons (http://www.gratisgames.webspace.virginmedia.com/darkdungeons.html). The latter is cleaned up and modernized a bit more.

Weapon Mastery itself is a really neat subsystem. It's not technically class-restricted, but Fighters get the most out of it, by far, since they're the only ones with any access to the really good weapons. As you progress in your mastery of your weapons, you get scaling attack bonuses, AC bonuses, improved damage, and weapon-based special abilities. For example, mastery with a Spear might let you Stun your enemies, in addition to extended throwing ranges and setting vs. a charge. A sword, on the other hand, lets you Deflect a number of incoming attacks (basically opposed attack rolls) and disarm your opponents. A battle axe's impact might also Stun, but it's more likely to Delay your opponents, forcing them to lose initiative next round.

On top of that, though it's not as explicitly called out in Dark Dungeons except for a little blurb in the Morale section, there's the Despair effect, which forces Morale checks when...

The weapon user inflicts maximum possible damage with his weapon.
The weapon user avoids all damage in a round by deflecting the opponent's blows.
The weapon user disarms two or more opponents in the same round.

So a nice little Fear effect you get from being an awesome force of destruction.

What's more, it fits nicely in with the rest of the system.

* I got my hardcopy for $4, shipped with Amazon Prime, because the seller didn't do his research before putting it up for sale.

captpike

2014-07-01, 08:12 PM

The ironic thing is that the "simplest" casters (sorcerers and warlocks, in 3e) actually end up being the most complex, because whatever you select is with you for the long haul. You have to have a very good understanding of which spells/invocations it makes sense to spam and which it does not.

The only real way to make a simple caster is to dictate what it gets at every level or to make all the choices functionally identical. This is very straightforward, but not very appealing. (4e did slightly better by having a mix of both, but evidently this wasn't good enough either.)

this is only true if you buy into the 3e notion that every spell must be complex.

no more reason you can't have a simple caster then a simple fighter.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-02, 06:04 AM

There was a long drawn out thread about this somewhere. The conclusion came down to since people are physical and physical damage can hurt them, fire damage of the right type can hurt fire creatures. It even explained in detail how fire breaks fight fire and how starting more fires starves all the fires of oxygen and puts them out. Basically there is no good reason fire or heat of some kind couldn't hurt a fire creature. Especially if it burned at a higher temperature than the fire creature.

And all that doesn't matter. Fluff it however you want, the feat still mechanically gives you a way to ignore fire immunity and thus kill fire elementals with fire.

Which can makes sense but is still quite silly saying it out loud.

da_chicken

2014-07-02, 06:27 AM

I prefer the explanation "it's ****ing magic." In particular because it's ****ing magic. We don't need midi-chlorians, Mr. Lucas.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-02, 06:55 AM

I prefer the explanation "it's ****ing magic." In particular because it's ****ing magic. We don't need midi-chlorians, Mr. Lucas.

I agree, to a point.

If we have "because its magic" we better have "because he/she's that damn good".

Fighter can use adrenaline to heal HP? Because he is just that damn good.

Fighter can damage on a miss? Because she is just that damn good.

Rogue can sneak through a wall of force? Because he is just that good.

Rogue can steal the pants off a target? Because she is just that good.

These are minor examples of this concept but I guess we need baby steps to get people used to the idea that non-casters can be " just that damn good".

Jacob.Tyr

2014-07-02, 07:58 AM

I agree, to a point.

If we have "because its magic" we better have "because he/she's that damn good".

Fighter can use adrenaline to heal HP? Because he is just that damn good.

Fighter can damage on a miss? Because she is just that damn good.

Rogue can sneak through a wall of force? Because he is just that good.

Rogue can steal the pants off a target? Because she is just that good.

These are minor examples of this concept but I guess we need baby steps to get people used to the idea that non-casters can be " just that damn good".

Your first two don't even need that qualifier... people just need to remember what "HP" actually is in DnD. I can easily see a fighter being able to tire their opponent to some extent every time they do an attack routine against them, it is stranger that this doesn't happen. Getting a second wind as it were is really just getting a second wind. Second wind is a pairing of words in our language not because it is some mystical thing that only demi-gods are thought capable of, after all.

RC rules for melee characters seem awesome, and I hope something like that crops up again in DnD. It could make for a great "Weapon Master" subclass or somesuch, honestly.

Am I the only one who really misses the first few iterations of 5E fighter? What the heck happened to the badass who got a bunch of extra d6 damage, and could trade those off for special effects on hit?

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-02, 08:24 AM

Your first two don't even need that qualifier... people just need to remember what "HP" actually is in DnD. I can easily see a fighter being able to tire their opponent to some extent every time they do an attack routine against them, it is stranger that this doesn't happen. Getting a second wind as it were is really just getting a second wind. Second wind is a pairing of words in our language not because it is some mystical thing that only demi-gods are thought capable of, after all.

RC rules for melee characters seem awesome, and I hope something like that crops up again in DnD. It could make for a great "Weapon Master" subclass or somesuch, honestly.

Am I the only one who really misses the first few iterations of 5E fighter? What the heck happened to the badass who got a bunch of extra d6 damage, and could trade those off for special effects on hit?

Baby steps my friend, baby steps. Yeah I agree but so many people lose their mind when you explain that HP doesn't always mean meat. They also for whatever reason don't believe in adrenaline and such, but as someone who was a jock all through school and until I got out of college I can really say that it is quite realistic. There are a ton of d&d people who never played sports or been in situations where adrenaline would be pumping (yes I know, stereotyping) and thus have a hard time grasping that concept. I saw a guy disregard a broken arm in order to tackle a guy... He didn't feel the pain till afterwards.

I miss that fighter. I miss the fighter that could say "no" to magic users. Throw a fireball? Parry! Throw a Magic Missile? Parry! Obviously the Fighter wouldn't be able to do it every time he or she was attacked but enough of a time that it would be awesome.

I love the image cutting through a magical effect, like dragons breath.

da_chicken

2014-07-02, 08:29 AM

Am I the only one who really misses the first few iterations of 5E fighter? What the heck happened to the badass who got a bunch of extra d6 damage, and could trade those off for special effects on hit?

The default path presented in Basic is fairly boring. That's where the extra crit range comes from. The final play test still had the combat maneuver path, too, so we will probably see it in the PHB.

Fwiffo86

2014-07-02, 08:33 AM

it should be a goal of the system, will they reach it perfectly? no but that does not mean they should not try.

This. This right here. So you admit that they should try. Which many believe they have. And then realized they couldn't, and changed their goals.

You cannot say this about making all characters useful and then turn around and say they lied about about making a game for everyone.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-02, 08:40 AM

obryn

2014-07-02, 09:02 AM

Your first two don't even need that qualifier... people just need to remember what "HP" actually is in DnD. I can easily see a fighter being able to tire their opponent to some extent every time they do an attack routine against them, it is stranger that this doesn't happen. Getting a second wind as it were is really just getting a second wind. Second wind is a pairing of words in our language not because it is some mystical thing that only demi-gods are thought capable of, after all.
People are losing their minds over this, though.

Here's the thing. If you make an argument about Second Wind or HP recovery and base it on flimsy justifications about what a Hit Point means - and that goes for quick and slow healing crowds, magic-only and martial-permissible healing crowds, etc. - you're not making a persuasive argument. You might be quite convinced that you've come up with an airtight justification for why your pet theory is correct, or why 4e hit points (are/are not) the same as pre-4e hit points, but you're still just expressing a preference.

The only thing Hit Points are is ridiculous. Their "mapping" to game-world events is basically nil until you hit zero. There's so many debates about them because any argument you make runs into problems at some point. They're best considered a gameplay and pacing mechanic, just like experience points, and should IMO be left at that.

So given that, I think there are perfectly valid gameplay reasons to have a problem with mechanics like Second Wind. If you like your games better when, say, a dungeon crawl is a long, strategic campaign*, getting all your HP back overnight can be a real issue. I can empathize with this approach, and of course I run it this way when I run oldschool D&D. The designers have promised some modules to account for that, including a VP/WP module if that's your cuppa.

* This is, naturally, ignoring all the various quick-healing methods in every pre-4e edition. In 3.x you had CLW wands, and failing that, the same quick-healing methods AD&D had. That's the "cast your healing spells, rest, cast them again, rest" chain that should be familiar to anyone who ever played an SSI Gold Box game. It's also ignoring all the sneaky get-out-of-dungeon-free spells, like Rope Trick and Leomund's various extradimensional hideaways. 4e just formalized what everyone in 3e was doing anyway, just without the wands.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-02, 09:14 AM

People are losing their minds over this, though.

Snip

I want to turn your entire post into a Nerf baseball bat and smack the crap out of people with it. Figuratively of course.

Millennium

2014-07-02, 09:24 AM

it should be a goal of the system, will they reach it perfectly? no but that does not mean they should not try.
There is nothing wrong with striving to reach a good but unattainable goal, but I'm not trying to say that Wizards should give up on a good goal. I'm trying to argue that the goal isn't good.

the best way I know to approach it is to have each player be good at one part of each pillar. so everyone is good at something within combat, social situations, and exportation. so in the least no one is useless (or can only aid another, the next best to useless) in a whole section of the game.
You sound like you're arguing for a party where everyone is good at everything all the time: small gods, essentially, rather than people. Heroes are still people, with the same frailties we all exhibit. Nobody is good at everything, and frankly, most situations are not complex enough to warrant putting in enough "pillars" to support a whole party of adventurers.

Just because someone isn't in the spotlight at the moment doesn't mean they're useless, and frankly, most people (characters or players) don't want to be in the spotlight all the time anyway. If you do, that's your problem, not the game's.

if someone WANTS to be useless in an area they can easily make themselves that way, but its much harder to make up an entire new sub-system so your fighter can be useful in social situations.
I'm not sure I understand where this is going. It sounds like you've just made an argument against your own position. Could you explain your line of reasoning?

the problem with just paring down the number of creatures is that that one creature is not a threat to the party but could still kill someone because they do too much damage. there needs to be creatures that do no more then 1/4hp of the lowest hp possible for level 1.
Why are you even bothering to run combat at that point? When the PCs can't lose, the mechanics of combat become tedious rigamarole that slows the game down unnecessarily. It would be far better to just say "...and you kill them easily," award the XP, and get on with the game. Things would move forward much faster, and the PCs would reach higher power levels more quickly.

Fwiffo86

2014-07-02, 11:07 AM

I'm curious how winning combat is defined by Captpike. I get the impression that its only a combat win if all the characters are standing when the combat is over.

My definition.... If at least one character is still standing, the party wins. Doll out the xp. Downed players can be healed. Dead players resurrected, etc. Party win. I guess that's an old school thought process though.

You sound like you're arguing for a party where everyone is good at everything all the time: small gods, essentially, rather than people. Heroes are still people, with the same frailties we all exhibit. Nobody is good at everything, and frankly, most situations are not complex enough to warrant putting in enough "pillars" to support a whole party of adventurers.

Just because someone isn't in the spotlight at the moment doesn't mean they're useless, and frankly, most people (characters or players) don't want to be in the spotlight all the time anyway. If you do, that's your problem, not the game's.

<<SNIPPED>>

Why are you even bothering to run combat at that point? When the PCs can't lose, the mechanics of combat become tedious rigamarole that slows the game down unnecessarily. It would be far better to just say "...and you kill them easily," award the XP, and get on with the game. Things would move forward much faster, and the PCs would reach higher power levels more quickly.

I agree with this 100%. I get the same impression from his arguments. I get the same from Lokiare too.

da_chicken

2014-07-02, 11:46 AM

Why are you even bothering to run combat at that point? When the PCs can't lose, the mechanics of combat become tedious rigamarole that slows the game down unnecessarily. It would be far better to just say "...and you kill them easily," award the XP, and get on with the game. Things would move forward much faster, and the PCs would reach higher power levels more quickly.

I agree with this 100%. I get the same impression from his arguments. I get the same from Lokiare too.

My understanding is that they're looking for a game where tactical skill is rewarded. Thus, they want to minimize luck. Thus, they find solutions to ignore or eliminate the game's RNG (the d20), like increasing HP, increasing the number of die rolls overall, eliminating powerful CC effects, eliminating situations where players have no choice or no meaningful choice, shaping game element balance to be as narrow as possible (aka, "good math" and "eliminating traps"), and making combats so hard that only characters who have perfect or near-perfect builds and perfect or near-perfect tactics can survive and "win". The thing is, a large portion of the population finds games with high skill and low luck boring or unrewarding (i.e., not fun).

Dr. Richard Garfield has talked about Luck vs Skill before (see here (http://youtu.be/dSg408i-eKw), or here (http://youtu.be/av5Hf7uOu-o) for the same lecture given more cohesively but lacking body language). It's difficult to take that speech directly and apply it to D&D because D&D is a different style of game, but since skill and luck are both present in the game the lecture does apply. You just have to think about it first. Hint: To captpike and Lokiare, the game is the combat encounter. Everything else is just preparation for that. The only element of luck in the game is what opponent is in the encounter and what terrain the encounter takes place in.

captpike

2014-07-02, 11:51 AM

This. This right here. So you admit that they should try. Which many believe they have. And then realized they couldn't, and changed their goals.

You cannot say this about making all characters useful and then turn around and say they lied about about making a game for everyone.

when I see they are not even trying to make a game for everyone I can. if I saw indications they tried and failed that would be one thing. or if they changed their goals that also would be different. what they have done is say their goal is X then run from X as fast as they can.

what support has you seen for the 4e playstyle? have you seen even one thing that they have tried to do in that regard?

There is nothing wrong with striving to reach a good but unattainable goal, but I'm not trying to say that Wizards should give up on a good goal. I'm trying to argue that the goal isn't good.

You sound like you're arguing for a party where everyone is good at everything all the time: small gods, essentially, rather than people. Heroes are still people, with the same frailties we all exhibit. Nobody is good at everything, and frankly, most situations are not complex enough to warrant putting in enough "pillars" to support a whole party of adventurers.

Just because someone isn't in the spotlight at the moment doesn't mean they're useless, and frankly, most people (characters or players) don't want to be in the spotlight all the time anyway. If you do, that's your problem, not the game's.

in each area, combat, social, and exploration each PC should have at least one thing they are good at.

in combat the wizard may may cast huge spells that blind and move around enemies, the fighter may charge in and do massive damage to them one at a time. when your in a social situation the fighter may be good at intimidating, the wizard may be good at diplomacy.
no one will be good at everything in a pillar but everyone will have something they can do, even if its not as useful in every situation.

its not about the spotlight its about being able to do anything at all. its about being able to say "I want to be a good tracker" and not being told you have to be a rogue or a ranger, because only they can track.

I'm not sure I understand where this is going. It sounds like you've just made an argument against your own position. Could you explain your line of reasoning?

every PC should have the chance to pick their area of competence within each pillar. you should never be useless in an area simply because you wanted to be a certain class. you should only be useless if you decided at some point to be useless.

Why are you even bothering to run combat at that point? When the PCs can't lose, the mechanics of combat become tedious rigamarole that slows the game down unnecessarily. It would be far better to just say "...and you kill them easily," award the XP, and get on with the game. Things would move forward much faster, and the PCs would reach higher power levels more quickly.

because not every combat should be a possible TPK, how hard a combat is should and should only be the decision of the DM, not the system.

it also lets the DM use alot of weak creatures without having to worry that when 4 go at the same time they will kill one PC.

Kurald Galain

2014-07-02, 12:46 PM

Your first two don't even need that qualifier... people just need to remember what "HP" actually is in DnD.
Indeed. HP represents physical wounds in every edition of D&D except 4E, where it instead is something vaguely unknown that can change retroactively. Otherwise, all the game rules are consistent with hit points being physical wounds, and since that's also the most intuitive solution and the one used in pretty much every other game, that's what people expect and what they get.

rlc

2014-07-02, 12:48 PM

what support has you seen for the 4e playstyle? have you seen even one thing that they have tried to do in that regard?One thing? Easy. No ability score penalties from race.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-02, 12:48 PM

Fwiffo86

2014-07-02, 01:04 PM

what support has you seen for the 4e playstyle? have you seen even one thing that they have tried to do in that regard?

I contest that 4e is a playstyle.

It is a game system. You use it to effect playstyle. If I ran 4e with no combat, that would be a playstyle, using all of the rules that do not cover combat.

To the HP discussion....

I always thought HP was generally considered wearing down your opponents defenses until the killing blow. A representation of dodging, or nearly dodging melee attacks, having your armor battered but otherwise protecting you, etc. Further to that, essentially, everyone only had "few" real hp to take punishment on. Something like the Wounds vs. HP model I read earlier. Without that actual mechanic.

So if I pinned the rogue to the ground, and used my 2H axe on his face... he basically dies. I don't need to pound through 56 hp to actually kill him. After all, it only really takes one shot to kill anyone.

Kurald Galain

2014-07-02, 01:12 PM

Actually no, HP has always been both physical and not physical.

You're wrong.

Yes, there is a short paragraph disclaimer somewhere in the back of the DMG where Gygax said he may have meant something else. But what counts is that all the actual rules are written on the principle that HP equates to physical wounds. So they are. That's what players are familiar with, that's what they expect, and that's what gives a consistent playstyle. So you shouldn't be surprised to find that (outside of theory-based message boards) almost all players work with the rule that hit points are purely physical.

Jacob.Tyr

2014-07-02, 01:15 PM

Hm... it strikes me that the rulebooks are consistent with neither the idea that HP equals damage, nor with the idea that HP equals dodging-and-such.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=9289436&postcount=47

Kurald Galain

2014-07-02, 01:25 PM

what support has you seen for the 4e playstyle? have you seen even one thing that they have tried to do in that regard?

You should probably define a bit more what you mean by "the 4E playstyle".

That said, the main design philosophy of 4E is that the game has to be balanced, and it's ok if certain rules don't make any sense. However, the main design philosophy of 5E (and indeed, earlier editions) is that rules have to make sense, and it's ok if certain rules aren't balanced. Mind you, I'm not saying that either approach is wrong. But as these are opposites, I don't see a lot of options for WOTC to include both in the same game, except as lip service by throwing in e.g. a spell named Thunderwave.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-02, 01:26 PM

You're wrong.

Yes, there is a short paragraph disclaimer somewhere in the back of the DMG where Gygax said he may have meant something else. But what counts is that all the actual rules are written on the principle that HP equates to physical wounds. So they are. That's what players are familiar with, that's what they expect, and that's what gives a consistent playstyle. So you shouldn't be surprised to find that (outside of theory-based message boards) almost all players work with the rule that hit points are purely physical.

The rules still don't actually say HP = meat. There isn't rules for how many battle scars you get or anything of that nature. You can lose 100 HP and not have a scratch on you because all of that is fluff and can go either way.

I believe in one of the playtest they said if you are at 50% hp then you have wounds... But didn't really go into it.

In 4e, when you was bloodied there wasn't any hard rule saying you was actually bleeding and missing parts of your flesh or missing an arm or what not.

How much HP is a sundered arm worth? How many HP would that be? 25% 10%? Where are the rules for that?

No, HP has always been ambiguous. HP has been meat and not meat. That last blow that takes you out and kills you? Yeah that is meat but the rest is endurance and fluff.

Or are you saying that people with more HP have more mass? That will get a bit weird you know.

Can you make a system where HP = meat? Yes. Is D&D ever really been that system? No.

And guess what, I have never ran across anyone outside of message boards that believes that all HP is physical. Most people i played with didn't think about it all that much. So please keep telling me how everyone thinks, I'm sure you are a good rep for everyone outside the message boards.

da_chicken

2014-07-02, 01:28 PM

One thing? Easy. No ability score penalties from race.

Three success before three fails for checks when when dying.

Unlimited basic attack spells.

Ritual spells.

Poison as a damage type.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-02, 01:33 PM

Three success before three fails for checks when when dying.

Unlimited basic attack spells.

Ritual spells.

Poison as a damage type.

In all fairness, this was in 3e for the most part. People loved it and it pretty much pushed 4e and Pathfinder to include this in those games as well.

Warlock, Dragon Fire Adept, and Incarnum Classes all got At-Will basic magic attacks (coughspellscough).

I really didn't see 5e having a choice you know, people would be pissed about having their mage pick up a crossbow :smallfrown:

obryn

2014-07-02, 01:49 PM

You're wrong.

Yes, there is a short paragraph disclaimer somewhere in the back of the DMG where Gygax said he may have meant something else. But what counts is that all the actual rules are written on the principle that HP equates to physical wounds. So they are. That's what players are familiar with, that's what they expect, and that's what gives a consistent playstyle. So you shouldn't be surprised to find that (outside of theory-based message boards) almost all players work with the rule that hit points are purely physical.
This would be so great if people hadn't been arguing about hit points literally since the 70's without stopping through the present day. The facets of the conversation change, but at the core they're a game mechanic and it's crazy to look at hit point mechanics in any light other than, "how do I tweak these to fit my gameplay expectations?"

If you want slow healing because you like wars of attrition, strategic crawling, and/or dependence on magic items for HP recovery, let's start from there and have a real conversation. If your argument for "slow healing" is "meat points," all you're doing is playing for your base.

Most people i played with didn't think about it all that much.
I like to call this the "Zen of Hit Points." :smallsmile:

Kurald Galain

2014-07-02, 01:50 PM

Three success before three fails for checks when when dying.
That's not in 4E; it instead rules that you can only be stabilized by your allies, or by rolling a 20 on a death save.

Ritual spells.
Ritual magic existed in 2E, actually. Neither 2E rituals nor 4E rituals have anything to do with 5E rituals.

Poison as a damage type.
Existed in all earlier editions.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-02, 02:00 PM

I like to call this the "Zen of Hit Points." :smallsmile:

I think that should be a splat book. WotC could charge whatever they wanted and then not give an actual answer as to what HP really is.

That's not in 4E; it instead rules that you can only be stabilized by your allies, or by rolling a 20 on a death save.

Ritual magic existed in 2E, actually. Neither 2E rituals nor 4E rituals have anything to do with 5E rituals.

Existed in all earlier editions.

The thing is, most of the rules outside of the actual classes, and even then some of those, were the same or similar in 4e and they were in previous editions. 2e and 3e are just as similar to each other as 3e and 4e is to each oother.

I was/am hoping that the monster system will be as easy as 4e. As a DM if the monster system is good then I can, for the most part, be happy with the system. I can fudge everything else or help a player fudge things. But I shouldn't have to spend ungodly amount of time, like 3e, preparing for an encounter. I have other things to do haha (like plot!).

da_chicken

2014-07-02, 02:20 PM

That's not in 4E; it instead rules that you can only be stabilized by your allies, or by rolling a 20 on a death save.

Oh, that's right. We kept getting confused by that when we played, too. I think we subconsciously associated death with skill challenges. :smalltongue:

Ritual magic existed in 2E, actually. Neither 2E rituals nor 4E rituals have anything to do with 5E rituals.

2e rituals as I recall were means to cast spells with multiple casters in circles. In 4e, ritual magic was a means to cast non-combat spells. 5e is much closer to that in spirit and letter.

Existed in all earlier editions.

Not as an explicit damage type until 4e. Prior to that it caused untyped damage. Prior to 4e the game would say "the poison causes 2d20 damage". Beginning with 4e, the game says "the character takes 4d6 poison damage". There was no poison damage resistance prior to 4e, either. You got save bonuses or outright immunity or nothing.

Millennium

2014-07-02, 02:22 PM

in each area, combat, social, and exploration each PC should have at least one thing they are good at.
Why? That's not how people work, real or fictional. People specialize.

its not about the spotlight its about being able to do anything at all. its about being able to say "I want to be a good tracker" and not being told you have to be a rogue or a ranger, because only they can track.
Track has been a feat since the days of 3e. Anyone can take it. This is one of the things that feats are good for.

you should never be useless in an area simply because you wanted to be a certain class. you should only be useless if you decided at some point to be useless.
Like, say, when you chose to specialize in one thing as opposed to another? If you want to be able to do something in absolutely every conceivable situation, play a factotum.

But you're also, once again, confusing "not epic" with "useless."

because not every combat should be a possible TPK, how hard a combat is should and should only be the decision of the DM, not the system.
I'd argue that if there is no chance of a TPK in an encounter, then you shouldn't be using the combat rules for that encounter. If an overwhelmingly-asymmetrical fight breaks out, then you say the stronger side wins, hand out the XP, and be done with it. This is a simple extrapolation from the classic rule of thumb for skill checks: if there's no chance to fail, and everyone knows it, then don't touch the dice. Reserve the combat rules for situations that are actually dangerous.

This doesn't mean that the risk of a TPK always needs to be high. Put a team of four standard Level 1 adventurers up against a team of three goblins, and the adventurers are almost certainly going to win. There are ways to make that risk even smaller: go with two goblins, or even just one, or swap them out for kobolds. But to lower it all the way to zero, while still insisting on playing out a combat that can only end in one way, is doing a grave disservice to your players and your game.

No player, and no decent DM, wants a TPK to happen. But fear of TPKs can be taken to unreasonable levels. Freaking out over the fact that the game doesn't supply you with a padded room to put PCs in, and you might have to use a house rule to put them into one, crosses the line.

it also lets the DM use alot of weak creatures without having to worry that when 4 go at the same time they will kill one PC.
Why are you so afraid of creatures you control? You're the DM. If you don't want to have four goblins ganging up on one PC, then don't have four goblins gang up on one PC.

Kurald Galain

2014-07-02, 02:43 PM

2e and 3e are just as similar to each other as 3e and 4e is to each oother.

I have no idea where you're getting that from, but 3E is clearly "2E with numerous changes" just as how 5E is "3E with numerous changes", whereas 4E is clearly rewritten from the bottom up.

da_chicken

2014-07-02, 02:47 PM

In all fairness, this was in 3e for the most part. People loved it and it pretty much pushed 4e and Pathfinder to include this in those games as well.

Warlock, Dragon Fire Adept, and Incarnum Classes all got At-Will basic magic attacks (coughspellscough).

Kind of, yeah, but Warlock-like classes were just about that basic attack in a lot of ways. They gave up a LOT to have those attacks. Like most of the game that's what they did as a primary feature.

We never got Magic of Incarnum. Most of us don't even like Psionics. Nobody was interested in yet another magic system, and beyond the weird magic it didn't sound like it increased the available characters you could play. I'm sure it has a fan who will try to sell me on it in about an hour, though.

Furthermore, it's one thing to have supplemental classes have an ability, and quite another for core base classes to have it.

I really didn't see 5e having a choice you know, people would be pissed about having their mage pick up a crossbow :smallfrown:

I think everyone recognizes that it's not broken to have a spell that deals damage kind of like a basic melee weapon or ranged weapon. It even fits a lot of fantasy literature, fantasy games, and video games. While I won't go as far as saying a Wizard must always be able to use magic, it's pretty lame to be a Wizard with only one or two spells. Having ray of frost at will just improves the game.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-02, 03:30 PM

I have no idea where you're getting that from, but 3E is clearly "2E with numerous changes" just as how 5E is "3E with numerous changes", whereas 4E is clearly rewritten from the bottom up.

Hahaha

Not even close. Each edition has its changes but they are way more similar than one would think.

The only part of 4e that is written from the bottom up (and really not even) is the class structure. However the mechanics that the classes use to attack and defend are all in 3e. Heck, even the class structure was used in 3.5 (Tome of Battle) and the classes are extremely easily converted to 3.5.

Everything else is modified. The skill system in 4e is modified from a variant rule of 3.5, rankless skill system works pretty good in 3.5.

Jumping from 2e to 4e is a huge leap, but the bridge known as 3.5 makes that leap a short walk.

Take an actual look at the systems sometime and compare them. They aren't all that different.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-02, 03:37 PM

Kind of, yeah, but Warlock-like classes were just about that basic attack in a lot of ways. They gave up a LOT to have those attacks. Like most of the game that's what they did as a primary feature.

We never got Magic of Incarnum. Most of us don't even like Psionics. Nobody was interested in yet another magic system, and beyond the weird magic it didn't sound like it increased the available characters you could play. I'm sure it has a fan who will try to sell me on it in about an hour, though.

Furthermore, it's one thing to have supplemental classes have an ability, and quite another for core base classes to have it.

I think everyone recognizes that it's not broken to have a spell that deals damage kind of like a basic melee weapon or ranged weapon. It even fits a lot of fantasy literature, fantasy games, and video games. While I won't go as far as saying a Wizard must always be able to use magic, it's pretty lame to be a Wizard with only one or two spells. Having ray of frost at will just improves the game.

Those classes didn't give up much compared against the game. They really showed people that at-will magic can be used and be balanced.

Incarnum is perhaps the best magic system WotC ever put out, even if it needs cleaned up quite a bit. I knowone of my first homebrew for 5e :)

Yup, I do agree with you with at-will magic helping the game. But I also like games where the wizard has to pick up a crossbow at some point. I like all types of play styles so I tend to get sad when one isn't in style with my current gaming group :p.

One of my favorite variant rules from 3.5....

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/rechargeMagic.htm

Somewhat borky within 3.5 but it has potential.

rlc

2014-07-02, 03:43 PM

Most games have mages who can do at least some kind of physical damage, so I'm not sure why people seem to hate it in dnd.

EvanWaters

2014-07-02, 04:43 PM

Why? That's not how people work, real or fictional. People specialize.

To quote Heinlein, specialization is for insects.

Also, this is a tabletop game, and making everyone potentially useful in a situation means nobody has to stand in the corner for however long said situation takes.

captpike

2014-07-02, 04:51 PM

Indeed. HP represents physical wounds in every edition of D&D except 4E, where it instead is something vaguely unknown that can change retroactively. Otherwise, all the game rules are consistent with hit points being physical wounds, and since that's also the most intuitive solution and the one used in pretty much every other game, that's what people expect and what they get.

...it NEVER was physical wounds, the earliest editions said it was a combination of luck, stamina and such.

You're wrong.

Yes, there is a short paragraph disclaimer somewhere in the back of the DMG where Gygax said he may have meant something else. But what counts is that all the actual rules are written on the principle that HP equates to physical wounds. So they are. That's what players are familiar with, that's what they expect, and that's what gives a consistent playstyle. So you shouldn't be surprised to find that (outside of theory-based message boards) almost all players work with the rule that hit points are purely physical.

even were you right, it would not matter. they are making a new editon, they can and should change things like HP if they become overly restrictive (and if the only reason they can't have a warlord is because of meat-hp then it is)

One thing? Easy. No ability score penalties from race.

that was part of 4e yes, but it was not part of what made 4e feel like 4e. healing surges or non-magical healing would be something that would work in that reguard but neither are in the game as of yet

You should probably define a bit more what you mean by "the 4E playstyle".

That said, the main design philosophy of 4E is that the game has to be balanced, and it's ok if certain rules don't make any sense. However, the main design philosophy of 5E (and indeed, earlier editions) is that rules have to make sense, and it's ok if certain rules aren't balanced. Mind you, I'm not saying that either approach is wrong. But as these are opposites, I don't see a lot of options for WOTC to include both in the same game, except as lip service by throwing in e.g. a spell named Thunderwave.

it was goal yes, but no edition even came close to meeting it. ALL versions of D&D are equally unrealistic and non-simulationist 4e was just the first one to not have that as a goal.

Why? That's not how people work, real or fictional. People specialize.

Track has been a feat since the days of 3e. Anyone can take it. This is one of the things that feats are good for.

Like, say, when you chose to specialize in one thing as opposed to another? If you want to be able to do something in absolutely every conceivable situation, play a factotum.

But you're also, once again, confusing "not epic" with "useless."

being realistic is not in any way relevant to this discussion.

becoming an evoker wizard should not mean you suddenly become worthless at anything and everything else. it should not mean that as soon as combat ends you can leave the table because you can do nothing else whatsoever.

in combat you may be a blaster
in social situations you may be sage like, with alot of knowledge and the ability to use them to influence others.
in exportation you know know enough history to help you navigate through ruins and such.

if your party is talking to a barbarian king who you want to stop fighting another tribe then your not so useful. but there will time times you are useful. it also means you can de-couple certain concepts. if you want to be good at out of combat thing X you don't have to be class Y.

I'd argue that if there is no chance of a TPK in an encounter, then you shouldn't be using the combat rules for that encounter. If an overwhelmingly-asymmetrical fight breaks out, then you say the stronger side wins, hand out the XP, and be done with it. This is a simple extrapolation from the classic rule of thumb for skill checks: if there's no chance to fail, and everyone knows it, then don't touch the dice. Reserve the combat rules for situations that are actually dangerous.

This doesn't mean that the risk of a TPK always needs to be high. Put a team of four standard Level 1 adventurers up against a team of three goblins, and the adventurers are almost certainly going to win. There are ways to make that risk even smaller: go with two goblins, or even just one, or swap them out for kobolds. But to lower it all the way to zero, while still insisting on playing out a combat that can only end in one way, is doing a grave disservice to your players and your game.

then don't run those combats, but that is not a reason to include them in the system, or to take away the DM's ability to make combat encounters how hard he thinks they should be

No player, and no decent DM, wants a TPK to happen. But fear of TPKs can be taken to unreasonable levels. Freaking out over the fact that the game doesn't supply you with a padded room to put PCs in, and you might have to use a house rule to put them into one, crosses the line.

Why are you so afraid of creatures you control? You're the DM. If you don't want to have four goblins ganging up on one PC, then don't have four goblins gang up on one PC.
because once I put creatures on the board I try not to metagame their strategy. if they are stupid that is how they act, if they are smart and bloodthirsty that is how they act.

so I want to know beforehand how dangerous they are, before I have to either have a creature act against type or kill a PC in a fight not worth losing a PC over.

rlc

2014-07-02, 05:20 PM

that was part of 4e yes, but it was not part of what made 4e feel like 4e. healing surges or non-magical healing would be something that would work in that reguard but neither are in the game as of yet

It's a pretty defining difference and kind of a big deal, so for a lot of people, it did make it feel like 4e.
And the Second Wind ability isn't magical. but I bet that "doesn't count"

Envyus

2014-07-02, 06:34 PM

Stats for a Young Green Dragon leaked.

http://i.imgur.com/SjnHxdR.jpg

Fwiffo86

2014-07-02, 06:46 PM

becoming an evoker wizard should not mean you suddenly become worthless at anything and everything else. it should not mean that as soon as combat ends you can leave the table because you can do nothing else whatsoever.

in combat you may be a blaster
in social situations you may be sage like, with alot of knowledge and the ability to use them to influence others.
in exportation you know know enough history to help you navigate through ruins and such.

if your party is talking to a barbarian king who you want to stop fighting another tribe then your not so useful. but there will time times you are useful. it also means you can de-couple certain concepts. if you want to be good at out of combat thing X you don't have to be class Y.

thank you, you have just stated what several people have been trying to tell you. Specifically, you don't have to be useful in all situations.

so I want to know beforehand how dangerous they are, before I have to either have a creature act against type or kill a PC in a fight not worth losing a PC over.

So you are unwilling to kill player characters? Is this what you are saying? If so, I understand much of your combat method. Unwilling (not wanting to be forced to kill a PC) suggests you strive to have "hard" combats (how you make a combat hard without any real danger of losing a PC is a concept alien to me) that don't cause player deaths. No wonder you like 4e's combat system. It's perfect for this sort of thing. My wife plays 4e, and she was informing me how her level 8 warlock got hit like 6 times and was only down 1/3 of her total hit points. And even she was saying... "I should be dead, not slightly inconvenienced" to me. Not that she dislikes it, just that she's used to how I run my games instead.

captpike

2014-07-02, 07:18 PM

thank you, you have just stated what several people have been trying to tell you. Specifically, you don't have to be useful in all situations.

which is exactly what I said the first time, next time read what I write or dont waste time with replying

in each area, combat, social, and exploration each PC should have at least one thing they are good at.

that is from post that sparked this, I said exactly what I meant.

So you are unwilling to kill player characters? Is this what you are saying? If so, I understand much of your combat method. Unwilling (not wanting to be forced to kill a PC) suggests you strive to have "hard" combats (how you make a combat hard without any real danger of losing a PC is a concept alien to me) that don't cause player deaths. No wonder you like 4e's combat system. It's perfect for this sort of thing. My wife plays 4e, and she was informing me how her level 8 warlock got hit like 6 times and was only down 1/3 of her total hit points. And even she was saying... "I should be dead, not slightly inconvenienced" to me. Not that she dislikes it, just that she's used to how I run my games instead.
how did you get that from what I wrote?

because not every combat should be a possible TPK, how hard a combat is should and should only be the decision of the DM, not the system.

my point is that the DM should decide what combats have what chance to kill PCs, not random chance, not the system. if I want to have a fight that can kill the PCs I can easily do that, if I want to have one that could, but almost certainly will not then I can have that too.

if a low level creature deals damage equal to half a level 1's hp there is no choice, every low level fight will have a high chance of a TPK.

Fwiffo86

2014-07-02, 08:16 PM

which is exactly what I said the first time, next time read what I write or dont waste time with replying

that is from post that sparked this, I said exactly what I meant.

If you would like, I will reference your Pillar claim. Which you have attempted to reword when the flaws in the logic your stated were presented to you. That is where this started from, not the post you quoted. And as I recall, I stated, and have always stated..."The classes cannot be good at everything. If they are all good in all situations, why is there a reason to have any of them?"

This is the baseline concept that I have been attempting to get you to understand. You have stated that if a character class can't do what they are built to do, they are useless. I have countered with there are other options, and the 5e system makes them equally viable for all classes. Sure those options are not optimal, but they are better than "being useless".

It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that the ability to BBQ a troll is useful. But so is the ability to out fast talk the swindler. They are not useful at the same time usually. And usually not from the same character. Which brings us to the spotlit analogy that both of us have used. I have said that every character class has to have opportunity to shine, thus having the spotlit. Not all of these have to be in combat.

If this does not provide you the mental ques to remember your own posts, I apologize. I do not have the ambition to go farming through all of your posts, and the posts of others who either prove you wrong, punch craters into your statements, or use your own argument points against you.

Lokiare

2014-07-02, 10:21 PM

There is nothing wrong with striving to reach a good but unattainable goal, but I'm not trying to say that Wizards should give up on a good goal. I'm trying to argue that the goal isn't good.

You sound like you're arguing for a party where everyone is good at everything all the time: small gods, essentially, rather than people. Heroes are still people, with the same frailties we all exhibit. Nobody is good at everything, and frankly, most situations are not complex enough to warrant putting in enough "pillars" to support a whole party of adventurers.

Just because someone isn't in the spotlight at the moment doesn't mean they're useless, and frankly, most people (characters or players) don't want to be in the spotlight all the time anyway. If you do, that's your problem, not the game's.

I'm not sure I understand where this is going. It sounds like you've just made an argument against your own position. Could you explain your line of reasoning?

Why are you even bothering to run combat at that point? When the PCs can't lose, the mechanics of combat become tedious rigamarole that slows the game down unnecessarily. It would be far better to just say "...and you kill them easily," award the XP, and get on with the game. Things would move forward much faster, and the PCs would reach higher power levels more quickly.

You are close on some points, but some of them are way out in left field. No, everyone shouldn't be good at all things all the time, but they should be good at enough things that they can always participate, and don't go long stretches without doing anything at all but holding the wizards tea or using their light spell so everyone else can have an rp encounter.

The idea is that the combat hinges on the skill of the players, not on the random rolls of the dice. If it comes down to who goes first and who rolls badly on a d20 one time, then that's not the "Mythic" play style we are looking for. If a combat goes badly we don't want the players to be saying things like "well, if I'd have made that saving throw we would have won." Instead we want to hear "Well, I should have used that ability over there and we would have won." We also want clear ideas of how things work. If we want a cake walk encounter, we should be able to make one. If we want a near death struggle, then we should be able to make that as well. We shouldn't aim for a cake walk and have a near death struggle.

I'm curious how winning combat is defined by Captpike. I get the impression that its only a combat win if all the characters are standing when the combat is over.

My definition.... If at least one character is still standing, the party wins. Doll out the xp. Downed players can be healed. Dead players resurrected, etc. Party win. I guess that's an old school thought process though.

I agree with this 100%. I get the same impression from his arguments. I get the same from Lokiare too.

Nope, not even close. We have the same standards as you do, we just want the reasons it happens to be different. You and others have expressed that you like extremely random combats. Where the rolls of the dice matter more than the choices of the players. We want the exact opposite. We want the choices of the players to matter more than the randomness of the dice. We want the players to be able to react to a bad roll or two, instead of being taken out of the game completely.

My understanding is that they're looking for a game where tactical skill is rewarded. Thus, they want to minimize luck. Thus, they find solutions to ignore or eliminate the game's RNG (the d20), like increasing HP, increasing the number of die rolls overall, eliminating powerful CC effects, eliminating situations where players have no choice or no meaningful choice, shaping game element balance to be as narrow as possible (aka, "good math" and "eliminating traps"), and making combats so hard that only characters who have perfect or near-perfect builds and perfect or near-perfect tactics can survive and "win". The thing is, a large portion of the population finds games with high skill and low luck boring or unrewarding (i.e., not fun).

Dr. Richard Garfield has talked about Luck vs Skill before (see here (http://youtu.be/dSg408i-eKw), or here (http://youtu.be/av5Hf7uOu-o) for the same lecture given more cohesively but lacking body language). It's difficult to take that speech directly and apply it to D&D because D&D is a different style of game, but since skill and luck are both present in the game the lecture does apply. You just have to think about it first. Hint: To captpike and Lokiare, the game is the combat encounter. Everything else is just preparation for that. The only element of luck in the game is what opponent is in the encounter and what terrain the encounter takes place in.

The game is not the combat encounter, but when in combat where luck applies the most we want the luck to be 25% of the game and the players decisions to be 75% instead of how 3E and 5E appear to be 75% luck and 25% player decisions. I also believe in role playing. I read the rules on how diplomacy, bluff, and intimidate work and realize that what the players say is more important than their rolls, but their rolls inform how effective what they say is. For instance if the players are threatening to cut the ear off a prisoner and successfully make their bluff or intimidate check, it still may not give them any information because the prisoner knows that if they tell the players anything they will be sent to the 3rd layer of Hades to be tortured for eternity. Their response is likely to be something along the lines of "Oh, cut my ear off ok, here I'll eve do it for you."

Indeed. HP represents physical wounds in every edition of D&D except 4E, where it instead is something vaguely unknown that can change retroactively. Otherwise, all the game rules are consistent with hit points being physical wounds, and since that's also the most intuitive solution and the one used in pretty much every other game, that's what people expect and what they get.

There are hundreds of other threads on this subject. Check them out please. This has been argued to death. The only way hp make sense is in an abstract 'what does it take to make this thing stop attacking' kind of way. Anything else is insanity.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=9289436&postcount=47

You should probably define a bit more what you mean by "the 4E playstyle".

That said, the main design philosophy of 4E is that the game has to be balanced, and it's ok if certain rules don't make any sense. However, the main design philosophy of 5E (and indeed, earlier editions) is that rules have to make sense, and it's ok if certain rules aren't balanced. Mind you, I'm not saying that either approach is wrong. But as these are opposites, I don't see a lot of options for WOTC to include both in the same game, except as lip service by throwing in e.g. a spell named Thunderwave.

Mythic play style is what I call it. Its where player choices matter more than random die rolls. Where players are a step above the common people of the world.

Why? That's not how people work, real or fictional. People specialize.

Track has been a feat since the days of 3e. Anyone can take it. This is one of the things that feats are good for.

Like, say, when you chose to specialize in one thing as opposed to another? If you want to be able to do something in absolutely every conceivable situation, play a factotum.

But you're also, once again, confusing "not epic" with "useless."

I'd argue that if there is no chance of a TPK in an encounter, then you shouldn't be using the combat rules for that encounter. If an overwhelmingly-asymmetrical fight breaks out, then you say the stronger side wins, hand out the XP, and be done with it. This is a simple extrapolation from the classic rule of thumb for skill checks: if there's no chance to fail, and everyone knows it, then don't touch the dice. Reserve the combat rules for situations that are actually dangerous.

This doesn't mean that the risk of a TPK always needs to be high. Put a team of four standard Level 1 adventurers up against a team of three goblins, and the adventurers are almost certainly going to win. There are ways to make that risk even smaller: go with two goblins, or even just one, or swap them out for kobolds. But to lower it all the way to zero, while still insisting on playing out a combat that can only end in one way, is doing a grave disservice to your players and your game.

No player, and no decent DM, wants a TPK to happen. But fear of TPKs can be taken to unreasonable levels. Freaking out over the fact that the game doesn't supply you with a padded room to put PCs in, and you might have to use a house rule to put them into one, crosses the line.

Why are you so afraid of creatures you control? You're the DM. If you don't want to have four goblins ganging up on one PC, then don't have four goblins gang up on one PC.

You are making our points out to be extremes of what they actually are in order to ridicule them. Please stop.

We mainly want a game that does what it says and allows player choice to be more important than random dice rolls.

Three success before three fails for checks when when dying.

Unlimited basic attack spells.

Ritual spells.

Poison as a damage type.

Not even close. Those don't have anything to do with the 4E Mythic play style. They are tools when combined into one can contribute to it, but in and of themselves they are meaningless to the 4E play style.

Fwiffo86

2014-07-03, 12:04 AM

I get what you are saying Loki. I guess I just see it this way...

Player decides to do X in combat/social situation/etc. (roll dice to determine success) : I see this as a player decision that forces the die roll. And I think you see it exactly the opposite.

All of your math examples make sense. But again, it ruins it for me. I guess I am stuck with thinking too much balance is just as bad as not enough. Let me see if I can elaborate properly here. To me, everything is binary. In combat, you either accomplish your goal, or you do not. You cause damage/effect, or you resist it. It doesn't matter how often you swing your sword. To me, they all have the same chance to deal damage. It doesn't matter how often Charm person is resisted. It still has the same chance to fail/be ineffective.

When a group of players makes the decision to enter combat, they are doing so willingly. (ambushes, no, not willingly) That is their first decision. Deciding to attack Mob A, B, or C is the next decision. Method of attack is the third decision. (roll dice) Determine outcome. Player decides to do x in response as their fourth decision. I think you can see where I am going with this. This is way more decisions compared to dice rolls.

The choice to play Character Class A, B, or C is one that players should understand. The wizard deals more damage and has more fun spells to sling, but is very frail and easily killed. The fighter has few options to play with, but is exceptionally tough. The Cleric is a mix of spell casting and armored melee goodness. I agree that 3.x did a terrible job in keeping with the old school logic of limiting their classes. (one of the major reasons no 9th spell casting wizard I have ever run for has more than 3 9th levels spells to choose from) By choosing to use this class over that class, they accept the limitations of that class. After all, they are simply representations of hero types.

I'm not saying this to be argumentative. I'm trying to get you to understand my take from your (and captpike's) arguments sounds more like this to me: you want the wizard to be able to take several blows before he goes down, which is the job of the fighter. You want the fighter to have a plethora of options to choose from, which is the job of the wizard. This sounds very similar to, all the classes are the same. Your math has done nothing but reinforce this for me. I even tried to point out to you that in the event that Class A and B are deprived of their main advantage, when they are forced to fall back on something, they are equally effective to each other, and still useful to the situation as a whole, which supports your opinion buy bringing the classes together more.

To be perfectly honest, I don't care who surveyed who, what company outsold which, or any of that nonsense. I care that people support their "facts" with cited and traceable sources. I care that people acknowledge someone's opinion without declaring they are wrong. I have said, and will continue to say this. You have an opinion, and I have mine. I don't believe you are right or wrong. I would appreciate the same courtesy.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-03, 08:19 AM

Stats for a Young Green Dragon leaked.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=62485&d=1404317618

The image isn't loading for me, I'll try to follow the location but could you repost here on giantitp? I have issues with enworld on my phone.

Envyus

2014-07-03, 09:57 AM

The image isn't loading for me, I'll try to follow the location but could you repost here on giantitp? I have issues with enworld on my phone.

No Longer Enworld http://i.imgur.com/SjnHxdR.jpg

Callin

2014-07-03, 10:02 AM

Holy Begesus.... That breath weapon damage.

Composer99

2014-07-03, 10:06 AM

I'm really liking the simplicity of the monster stat blocks.

Envyus

2014-07-03, 10:08 AM

Holy Begesus.... That breath weapon damage.

This is a young one as well.

obryn

2014-07-03, 10:11 AM

No Longer Enworld http://i.imgur.com/SjnHxdR.jpg
Better saves than I was expecting. Good.

SpawnOfMorbo

2014-07-03, 10:25 AM

This is a young one as well.

That's what I thought first too...

I really really hope Lair Rules or whatever they are calling it will make an appearance.

Lokiare

2014-07-03, 08:28 PM

I get what you are saying Loki. I guess I just see it this way...

Player decides to do X in combat/social situation/etc. (roll dice to determine success) : I see this as a player decision that forces the die roll. And I think you see it exactly the opposite.

Nope. If a player wants to roll some dice in my game, they gotta come up with an RP reason and then it only changes how the creature feels about that character or whether they believe them or not, its not an instant win. Its this way in every edition (including 4E). People just don't bother to read and simply repeat internet memes they heard.

All of your math examples make sense. But again, it ruins it for me. I guess I am stuck with thinking too much balance is just as bad as not enough. Let me see if I can elaborate properly here. To me, everything is binary. In combat, you either accomplish your goal, or you do not. You cause damage/effect, or you resist it. It doesn't matter how often you swing your sword. To me, they all have the same chance to deal damage. It doesn't matter how often Charm person is resisted. It still has the same chance to fail/be ineffective.

A lot of this is caused by confusing balance with how similar things are. You can have dissimilar things balanced. For instance you can have SUVs and Trucks and motorcycles that all follow the same rules and laws when driving. You don't have to have multiple sets of laws for each. Its the same way in D&D. If an assassin character can deal 6d6 damage once every 3 rounds in combat, but a fighter can only deal 1d12 damage each round, then the two are balanced against each other within the average range of adventures (the fighter will pull slightly ahead in 5 round combats and the Rogue will pull slightly ahead in 6 round combats), but the two things are balanced, they are also completely different.

You don't have to have similar things to have balance and having similar things doesn't mean its balanced.

When a group of players makes the decision to enter combat, they are doing so willingly. (ambushes, no, not willingly) That is their first decision. Deciding to attack Mob A, B, or C is the next decision. Method of attack is the third decision. (roll dice) Determine outcome. Player decides to do x in response as their fourth decision. I think you can see where I am going with this. This is way more decisions compared to dice rolls.

It isn't just about having more choices than dice rolls its also about the choices you make mattering more than the dice rolls. For instance if getting into combat is a choice, which monster to attack is a choice, which method of attack (bull rush, melee basic, ranged basic, etc...etc...) are all choices, but then the Medusa forces a character to roll a save to keep from turning to stone, if they fail that saving throw none of the previous choices mattered. Their game ends there (at least until they can be fixed). Also if a single character chooses to start a fight in the group then the other characters likely will be drawn in or the character that made that choice is probably going to die. So some choices are made by others rather than you.

The choice to play Character Class A, B, or C is one that players should understand. The wizard deals more damage and has more fun spells to sling, but is very frail and easily killed. The fighter has few options to play with, but is exceptionally tough. The Cleric is a mix of spell casting and armored melee goodness. I agree that 3.x did a terrible job in keeping with the old school logic of limiting their classes. (one of the major reasons no 9th spell casting wizard I have ever run for has more than 3 9th levels spells to choose from) By choosing to use this class over that class, they accept the limitations of that class. After all, they are simply representations of hero types.

The limitations are arbitrary and made up by the developers though. If you like the old school roles, then sure they should definitely be an option in the game. Some of us like having options though (and even in 4E the wizard is still extremely squishy, the difference is they have time to flee if they get caught in a bad place). So they should have made it where we could get all the options we wanted, but they appear to have missed that opportunity.

I'm not saying this to be argumentative. I'm trying to get you to understand my take from your (and captpike's) arguments sounds more like this to me: you want the wizard to be able to take several blows before he goes down, which is the job of the fighter. You want the fighter to have a plethora of options to choose from, which is the job of the wizard. This sounds very similar to, all the classes are the same. Your math has done nothing but reinforce this for me. I even tried to point out to you that in the event that Class A and B are deprived of their main advantage, when they are forced to fall back on something, they are equally effective to each other, and still useful to the situation as a whole, which supports your opinion buy bringing the classes together more.

Actually we want all characters to be able to take a few blows without instantly dying. This is so the players can choose whether they want to put their characters in danger or not. For instance we have no problem with the fighter having 150+% of the hp of a wizard as long as the Wizard can withstand a blow or two so they can choose to stay in danger or flee to a safer position.

We want the player to choose whether they want a simple fighter that has fewer options, or whether they want to choose a fighter with many options. The same goes for all classes. If they want to build a Wizard that has nothing but one spell prepared and uses it with all their attacks, that's perfectly fine, but we feel it should be the players choice, rather than the developers.

I'm not wanting the classes to be brought together more. That's your misunderstanding. I want them to be wildly differentiated in how they do things and why, I want wizards flinging spells I want fighters swinging weapons, I want rangers shooting bows, etc...etc... What I don't want is for the fighters and rangers to be standing around doing nothing while the wizard uses spells to solve everything.

To be perfectly honest, I don't care who surveyed who, what company outsold which, or any of that nonsense. I care that people support their "facts" with cited and traceable sources. I care that people acknowledge someone's opinion without declaring they are wrong. I have said, and will continue to say this. You have an opinion, and I have mine. I don't believe you are right or wrong. I would appreciate the same courtesy.

If you believe the moon is made of green cheese, then someone is likely to point out that your opinion is in fact wrong (we all know its made of yellow cheese). If an opinion is formed with faulty information it can be just as wrong as a fact. Personally I don't care what you like or don't like. That's up to you, but when you try to express that do it in a precise factual way so that we can all benefit from the experience and further the conversation. If you don't and your opinion is based on faulty facts or logic be prepared to be called out on it. I only do that so that we can all come to a mutually beneficial understanding.