[D&D] What's left for 6th edition? [Archive] - Page 2

Psyren

2015-05-27, 08:41 PM

For example, 4e's encounter powers simulate how the same trick won't work on an enemy multiple times in a fight whereas 3.5 has that unrealistic thing where a dude will spend an entire fight just tripping enemies, and those enemies won't somehow adapt against it. If I was trying to prove that 3.5 is closer to WoW than 4e is, I would cite that in WoW, a rogue can use the same dirty tricks against an opponent ad infinitum, and since 3.5 characters can do the same thing while 4e characters can't, it's obvious that 3.5 took design cues from WoW while 4e moved away from it.

And yet, your dude's even more rudimentary at-will moves will work all fight and all day long; why aren't the enemies "adapting" to those? 4e is not simulationist, and any attempt to explain it in simulationist terms just falls flat. That's not a bad thing, but there's just no point in trying to justify its mechanics in-universe like that, they should be accepted for what they are.

And even if you did want a game that models the concept you described above, 3.5/PF would still be the way to go. Throw in a Truenamer-style mechanic where X gets harder the more you do it. Add in Pathfinder's Stamina system where players have to spend points to do special things and get fatigued if they run out. Add a ToB recovery mechanic. Add Wound Thresholds so that as characters get injured, pulling off various moves is harder. There's all kinds of things you can bolt on because the system is so modular, that 4e's AWED doesn't allow for without more extensive modding.

Which I would argue against. I hate DnD 3.5 and like WoW, mostly because WoW isn't like DnD in that the horde is an actual good faction of the setting- or at least as morally grey as the Alliance- that I can play it without any guilt or Drizzt bull, and the mages there are mostly just blasters with ice and fire magic, and you get to summon demons without this actually impacting your morality at all. want to be a demonic warlock who joins all the good factions like the Argent Dawn, made up of holy people who fight undead, as well as the Cenarion Circle druids who recently FOUGHT AGAINST DEMONS? done, you even get cool mounts from them! want to be a death knight who wields necromantic magic while in heavy armor and a sword? you can be that, no morality or alignment bull to get in your way, and your entire origin story is saying SCREW THE LICH KING! and doing your own thing. as a roleplayer there is an appeal to WoW that DnD will never have: its called "more than two sides" and "moral complexity beyond This Thing Always Good and This Thing Always Bad" also I get to do cool stuff that DnD would guilt trip me for. so....

WoW's roleplay is sorely lacking. You can't even learn the other faction's language (no matter how smart your character is) or opt out of the "war" (except by picking flowers to 90.) And the war itself only gets more contrived as time goes on and bigger threats show themselves. Bleh.

Lord Raziere

2015-05-27, 09:09 PM

WoW's roleplay is sorely lacking. You can't even learn the other faction's language (no matter how smart your character is) or opt out of the "war" (except by picking flowers to 90.) And the war itself only gets more contrived as time goes on and bigger threats show themselves. Bleh.

Good point, those are the limitations of a videogame after all. a WoW roleplay however can bypass such things. but don't mention the actual WoW roleplaying game. it kinda sucks and is a disappointment.

Vitruviansquid

2015-05-27, 09:23 PM

And yet, your dude's even more rudimentary at-will moves will work all fight and all day long; why aren't the enemies "adapting" to those? 4e is not simulationist, and any attempt to explain it in simulationist terms just falls flat. That's not a bad thing, but there's just no point in trying to justify its mechanics in-universe like that, they should be accepted for what they are.

Now if I felt like continuing this charade, I could point out that in 4e, at-will powers are so rudimentary, they are meant to model those bread-and-butter moves that always work on people, and that a Spinning Sweep or Steel Serpent Strike are described as far more complex maneuvers, and so you wouldn't expect them to keep working.

But that would be asinine and get us nowhere, as you've seen from the post you quoted. Yes, the example falls flat as an argument about why 4e is more realistic than 3.5. It is supposed to fall flat because it demonstrates the poor logic at work with all arguments whereby the standards set in one RPG are used to judge another RPG. In the example, I have tried to pass off 4e-logic, including the excuses we make for it, and the flaws we are blind to, as universal logic. You can see why it doesn't work.

And even if you did want a game that models the concept you described above, 3.5/PF would still be the way to go. Throw in a Truenamer-style mechanic where X gets harder the more you do it. Add in Pathfinder's Stamina system where players have to spend points to do special things and get fatigued if they run out. Add a ToB recovery mechanic. Add Wound Thresholds so that as characters get injured, pulling off various moves is harder. There's all kinds of things you can bolt on because the system is so modular, that 4e's AWED doesn't allow for without more extensive modding.

You are applying 3.5/PF logic to 4e now, running into the exact same problem as the example above. Because 4e doesn't feature the same approach to modularity, you have mistakenly assumed that 4e is not modular. But 4e is modular, and if you were for some reason really really particular about not being able to use the same move on an enemy twice, you have the Essentials classes that just "attack" and you are left to imagine for yourself how that attack is executed. And you could build a class with only encounter powers and basic attacks if you wanted to. And you could fit in all sorts of homebrews that simply aren't the same as the homebrews you've seen in 3.5.

KorvinStarmast

2015-06-02, 10:36 AM

5e and Bounded Accuracy leading to 6e and what?

I suspect that a motivation for bounded accuracy was to create the following effect: even at high levels, it takes teamwork and synergy to defeat the harder challenges at higher levels. Won't judge its success or failure.

The story line and archetype of the single hero who does it all is one of the feeds to the basis for the game. So too is the hero with the sidekick (Eternal Champion, Moorcocks's story cycles) or the tag team (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser) and of course a group (fellowship of the ring, Fantastic Four, etc) trying to accomplish a goal/defeat bad guys. The last model that seems to have been agreed as most successful to build the game from, and it remains at the game's core, but I have played in D & D campaings where it was one guy and the DM and the world, and a few where it was two and the DM and the world. That the model for the modules is "four player party of varying composition" adheres to the original model nicely.

If 6e ever happens, what I would hope for would be way to scale up for large fights so that those elements of a long running campaign are easier to play. It would aid and abet role playing as the PC's grow in status or stature. (Back in pre 1st Edition AD&D days, the Swords and Spells supplement was an attempt that we used for some large scale battles. We had fun with it. It wasn't without its shortcomings. The following year we all fell in love with Micro Armor, and fantasy playing took a break).

This desire I have may be hard to do, as it requires the ability to scale
from individual fights to
squad-platoon scale fights to
company-battalion scale fights to
regiment-division scale fights
and so on.

Just a note: Avalon Hill made games for those sized fights, but I don't remember any of them being all in one game. It took a variety of games. SSI did likewise. The US Army runs numerous different simulations and war games using different tools for differing sizes of battles. Training. It's not cheap.
An RTS like StarCraft or Warcraft can get you something like a one to two company versus one to two company sized fight, albeit both are modeled on a combined arms task force concept. Other RTS's scale to larger numbers, but I haven't played any in over a decade so I am out of touch on what's current. (Wait, has WoW really been out for ten years?)

In terms of being able to scale up to battles, and even epic battles with earldoms, duchies, and kingdoms a stake (a large campaign which is sort of where D&D started) what I am hoping for may be too expensive to do. The posts on the Hasbro WoTC relationship were very interesting, thank you so much for the insights.

Perhaps what can be hoped for is a supplement to 5e that can handle something bigger than the squad to platoon sized fight that can now be accommodated. (And the upper end stretches it unless the DM has an assistant).

Do people want to play miniatures on table top anymore?
Have computer games replaced that feature with various RTS tools?

I don't know.

If they do release such a supplement, I would be motivated to paint up the other half of my many hundreds of miniatures and then find people who'd want to play.

PS: I may be old, but I can only be called a grognard in its original sense .. a grumbling old veteran. 5e I like.

neonagash

2015-06-03, 01:19 AM

I don't see what's so objectionable about having a computer program or app that automates the nitty gritty of DnD. I don't see why it would have to restrict the game's mutability or make it more clumsy, and apparently this is never going to get explained in the thread. It seems quite obvious to me that if Wizards of the Coast wants to introduce more technology into DnD, they'll both want to and know how to do it without compromising on these things.

What I'd like to see from Wizards of the Coast on the technology front is some kind of companion program that comes with a mandatory book like the PHB 1. There is no subscription; the book comes with a unique key that lets you register ownership to an account on WotC's website as a customer of DnD Xth edition (X the variable, not the Roman numeral). Alternately, you can set up a WotC account and then for slightly cheaper than the DnD Xth books, purchase everything in the digital companion online, without any exchange of printed books.

Your "DnD Xth" account then gives you the option to download a program that works on a computer's browser or as a cell phone app. The program presents every book you registered as well as a character generator/manager, a DM manager, and a virtual tabletop.

The character generator/manager should be constantly up to date on errata for the books that you have registered, and every time it updates you should get "patch notes". It should have an ergonomic UI that allows you to build characters like in computer RPG's like Neverwinter and Baldur's Gate, giving you each option to pick as you need them. At the end of the process, the generator should give you a character sheet that is considered a "Legal" DnD character - but you can change the sheet at any time to "Modified" and re-write any words or values on the character sheet, letting you homebrew as you please. You can also customize the appearance of your characters on a 3D model (in the vein of any computer RPG where you can customize your character), which is how they will end up being represented on the virtual tabletop. Each character then goes into a folder with all your other characters, and can be pulled up when you play on the virtual tabletop to interface with it.

The DM manager is simply the DM's analogue to the character manager, and allows DM's to pull monsters from the Monster Manual for use on the virtual tabletop. It should also allow DM's to modify and homebrew monsters by re-writing any value or wording attached to the monsters, or just generate one from scratch. The DM manager might also contain ways for the DM to easily make campaign notes and notes about particular places, NPC's, world events, and so on. You could construct environments in the virtual tabletop using a small, basic number of unique tilesets and doodads, and then store them away as potential locations for use on the virtual tabletop.

The virtual tabletop is simply the program that links the DM manager and the character generator by allowing the DM to create a password-guarded room that players join to play the game. It allows a player to declare his character casts magic missile at a monster on the DM's end, and then the relevant rolls happen instantly, and the DM's profile for the monster instantly updates with the damage dealt. If the DM designed an environment, the virtual tabletop also allows everything to be graphically represented on it, but it should also support a theatre-of-the-mind style without an environment. The virtual tabletop should allow everything to be over-written, re-written, or generally modified on the fly by the DM, or if the DM chooses, he can give special permission for players to modify anything on the virtual tabletop. The virtual tabletop should support webcam and voice chat, and act as a chat room, as well as a Play-by-post style where not everybody is present at everybody else's turn.

Finally, the digital companion should support pick-up games and allow players to find and network with other players. Players looking for a game should be able to set up a profile with their real-life schedule, game style preferences, a description of themself, and so on, for other players to browse. Thus, if you are in a game that could use more players, you could browse free players' profiles and find a random stranger to play with. DMs should also be able to set up a profile for their games that strangers can apply to join.

Exactly what I am hoping for. I didn't pay for 4e or 5e. But I would buy this in a heartbeat

Psyren

2015-06-03, 09:00 AM

Exactly what I am hoping for. I didn't pay for 4e or 5e. But I would buy this in a heartbeat

Agreed, the beauty of that brought a tear to my eye.

I can't wait until Surface Tables (gigantic tablet PCs, essentially) are affordable for the masses too to stick this on, along with a virtual tabletop program.

Lorsa

2015-06-03, 10:54 AM

Show of hands - is there anyone who compares DND 4e to WoW and doesn't mean it in a derogatory way? Be honest.

While I did enjoy WoW for over 5 years, and still remember those days fondly (I am one of those who thought WoW changed for the worse during WotLK), I do admit that if I were to compare D&D 4e to WoW, it would be derogatory.

I wouldn't compare it to WoW per se, but I do agree that D&D 4e felt very computer-gamey to me. There were several factors involved in this, but if people enjoyed them, that's all good. Roleplaying games are supposed to be enjoyed.

First of all, the artwork. Compared to the art in 3.5, the 4e PHB was very cartoony. It didn't provide me with an immersive feeling of a "real" (fantasy) world, it gave me a feeling of a computer game without realism or soul. Second clue was the encounter-power / resting system. This is similar to how many computer games have worked, where you use up all your powers and then hit the "rest" button to get them back. Then there was the fact that basically all classes within the same "role" were more or less identical in their performance. This is similar to how WoW became actually, where every dpser simply did "dps", and even though the visual was different, the result was equal. Not to mention that the skill system was streamlined into something that felt like it was never intended to be used. Oh, and I almost forgot, the choice of calculating all distances in "squares" instead of feet (or, as I would prefer, meters). Basically, D&D 4e felt like a tactical mini-map small-size group fight simulator. It never felt like something meant for you to personalise your character, or interact with a large, immersive world. Tactical fight simulators is computer game territory in my view. Therefore, 4e felt more like a computer game and less like a roleplaying game to me. Others can have different views, unless we know the intent behind the design (that is, if it was meant to be a tactical mini-map fight simulator without regard for personality), it will only be subjective.

The largest thing that bugged me about 4e was not that though. It was the fact that the game seemed to assume you were a child. The descriptions were overly specific, and removed all the need for you to think. Not to mention that it tried to tell you why you should play a certain race or class. "Play a Dragonborn if you think dragons are cool". Uhm, ok? Despite all this, the actual rules descriptions seemed very convoluted. They took something rather simple and managed to explain it in a very contrived way that left me confused. While I am pretty sure I understood it well enough, the Burst and Blast thing and their respective sizes, confused my group to know end.

----

All that said, I didn't answer the question. What's left for 6th edition? Perhaps less focus on battle and dungeon crawling, and more on roleplaying and immersive world building/interaction?

Flickerdart

2015-06-03, 11:49 AM

I can't wait until Surface Tables (gigantic tablet PCs, essentially) are affordable for the masses too to stick this on, along with a virtual tabletop program.
It's not an issue of being affordable - smart tables ask a lot more of their owners than tech usually does because they take up tons of space and require owners to rearrange all their furniture to fit it in, so before anyone starts mass-manufacturing them there needs to be a compelling reason to own one. And playing tabletop games is not that reason.

Frozen_Feet

2015-06-03, 12:51 PM

I disagree with that notion on the basis of people who bought a billiard board for precisely that reason. It's still something of a niche market, though.

JAL_1138

2015-06-03, 03:12 PM

If I'm playing at a table, in-person, then I'm rolling honest-to-god dice. I trust electronic dice as far as I can throw them, which, given that they aren't tangible, isn't exactly far. I'll stick to the Gamescience dice I trimmed the sprues off of with an Xacto and filled the numbers in myself with a wax pencil, thank you kindly. Dagnabbit, git off my lawn, dadgum whippersnappers, etc., etc., so on and so forth.

Hawkstar

2015-06-03, 03:23 PM

This is similar to how many computer games have worked, where you use up all your powers and then hit the "rest" button to get them back.You do know that this is a construct of the tabletop genre, right? The only games I've seen with a "Rest to get your powers back" are those built to emulate tabletop games.

Oh, and I almost forgot, the choice of calculating all distances in "squares" instead of feet (or, as I would prefer, meters).You mean like D&D originally used Tabletop Inches?

The largest thing that bugged me about 4e was not that though. It was the fact that the game seemed to assume you were a child. The descriptions were overly specific, and removed all the need for you to think. Not to mention that it tried to tell you why you should play a certain race or class. "Play a Dragonborn if you think dragons are cool". Uhm, ok? Despite all this, the actual rules descriptions seemed very convoluted. They took something rather simple and managed to explain it in a very contrived way that left me confused. While I am pretty sure I understood it well enough, the Burst and Blast thing and their respective sizes, confused my group to know end.
That was a conscious decision to avoid "Ivory tower" game design. Yes, the PHB was written with new players in mind.

Endarire

2015-06-03, 04:21 PM

Neon: That seems a bit (or a lot) like Roll20 (http://roll20.net) on the scheduling side.

Psyren

2015-06-03, 05:03 PM

It's not an issue of being affordable - smart tables ask a lot more of their owners than tech usually does because they take up tons of space and require owners to rearrange all their furniture to fit it in, so before anyone starts mass-manufacturing them there needs to be a compelling reason to own one. And playing tabletop games is not that reason.

What Frozen_Feet said - The home pool table market faces the same issue yet they are a solid industry, and this can be used for so much more once it gets going. The prices are beginning to reach consumer levels too, like the Lenovo IdeaCentre getting all the way down to 2k (albeit that one is pretty small at 27".)

Mr. Mask

2015-06-03, 05:18 PM

How about an electronically supported 6th edition? Similar stuff, but some with more complicated formulas which are actually easier, due to CPU support.

Brova

2015-06-03, 05:38 PM

How about an electronically supported 6th edition? Similar stuff, but some with more complicated formulas which are actually easier, due to CPU support.

Electronic D&D would definitely have advantages. You could errata stuff and it would just happen, no checking through hundreds of pages to see what happened to each and every character option you thought about using. You could also make random items work a lot smoother. Just plug in the books you're using, select party level and treasure type, then press "generate." Now, we are asking WotC to do this, and they are ... not particularly digitally competent (ask any MTG player who ever thought about playing online). There's obviously some demand for actual/physical books, but I'm not actually sure how large of a factor that is.

Psyren

2015-06-03, 05:47 PM

I think something like this would be perfect for a small D&D game (3-5 players plus GM):

http://www.performancepsu.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Microsoft-Windows-8-Touchscreen-Coffee-Table.jpg

Icewraith

2015-06-03, 06:05 PM

Electronic D&D would definitely have advantages. You could errata stuff and it would just happen, no checking through hundreds of pages to see what happened to each and every character option you thought about using. You could also make random items work a lot smoother. Just plug in the books you're using, select party level and treasure type, then press "generate." Now, we are asking WotC to do this, and they are ... not particularly digitally competent (ask any MTG player who ever thought about playing online). There's obviously some demand for actual/physical books, but I'm not actually sure how large of a factor that is.

So if the designers decide to rebalance or clarify something post-publication, their changes will be pushed to the electronic document I own whether I agree with the change or not? Hell, no.

Segev

2015-06-03, 06:07 PM

Honestly, an electronic RPG would likely be designed to link multiple tablets via bluetooth, wireless, or internet, with one as the "DM Screen" and the others just having their PC sheets and anything the DM shares, much like Roll20 and similar systems do for web access.

Psyren

2015-06-03, 06:15 PM

So if the designers decide to rebalance or clarify something post-publication, their changes will be pushed to the electronic document I own whether I agree with the change or not? Hell, no.

There would likely be something that lets you roll back to previous versions if you prefer those - or you could just plain use whatever custom/homebrew feature they include to make an identical rules element with the old wording. But yeah, the idea would be that if errata is issued, you should know about it. Not agreeing with it doesn't mean it never happened.

YossarianLives

2015-06-03, 06:16 PM

Honestly, I would never buy an electronic-only TTRPG. Call me old fashioned, (I probably am) but one of the main reasons I play D&D and similar games is because I like hanging out with my friends around a table and pretending to be wizards and elves. It just wouldn't be the same with digital dice and automatic erratas. It would be so artificial.

Amphetryon

2015-06-03, 06:20 PM

Electronic D&D would definitely have advantages. You could errata stuff and it would just happen, no checking through hundreds of pages to see what happened to each and every character option you thought about using. You could also make random items work a lot smoother. Just plug in the books you're using, select party level and treasure type, then press "generate." Now, we are asking WotC to do this, and they are ... not particularly digitally competent (ask any MTG player who ever thought about playing online). There's obviously some demand for actual/physical books, but I'm not actually sure how large of a factor that is.

Automated treasure creates wonky results, in my experience. There's a well-known online treasure generator that's twice given me an Eternal Wand of Anyspell.

Flickerdart

2015-06-03, 06:32 PM

What Frozen_Feet said - The home pool table market faces the same issue yet they are a solid industry, and this can be used for so much more once it gets going. The prices are beginning to reach consumer levels too, like the Lenovo IdeaCentre getting all the way down to 2k (albeit that one is pretty small at 27".)
Pool tables are a very different ball game (pun intended) - they are a very well entrenched cultural artifact, and require no supporting infrastructure of any kind. They are mostly purchased by bars and corporate rec rooms, so there was a market even before home use. Such a table is something you can drop in your basement and just leave forever.

On the other hand, smart tables are new (and therefore suspicious for everyone but a sliver of early adopters who are never a good indication of a product's marketability). They need to be plugged in, and with the couches or chairs around them, they also require more space to deploy properly. They need to be loaded with software, which needs to exist before people will buy the table (a cart-before-the-horse sort of thing, unless WotC is selling these tables too). They have no real market of any kind for a consumer spinoff to be created. In a few years, they will break and need to be fixed or thrown out.

Superficially they are both tables, but that's really where the similarity ends. You would need an amazing, Apple-grade marketing push to sell the concept of the smart table to a large enough market for the margins to be worth it, and WotC doesn't have that kind of mojo. What's likeliest is that touch tables will first take off in public-facing businesses as display surfaces, and then hobbyists will be able to buy surplus units on Craigslist.

---

The early adopters I mentioned before would be well-served with some DIY - which is actually a great way to spark the wave of "I didn't know I wanted this until it existed" that's key for a new product category to succeed. For that very same $2k you can grab a scratch-and-dent 50" HDTV and an IR touch screen overlay. I had this setup for a project last summer and it was a very nice little toy.

Psyren

2015-06-03, 06:46 PM

Hawkstar

2015-06-03, 07:03 PM

I also do not like the idea of electronic D&D. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I like TTRPGs to be about rolling all my shiny dice, with nothing but a book, paper, pencil, and collection of shiny dice.

Brova

2015-06-03, 07:20 PM

So if the designers decide to rebalance or clarify something post-publication, their changes will be pushed to the electronic document I own whether I agree with the change or not? Hell, no.

It is certainly true that the errata process should change. The thing where WotC went errata crazy in 4e and changed all sorts of stuff that was, bluntly, not all that good is unacceptable. But its also true that some things have needed to be changed. For example, 3.5 wish needed to have some limit on wishing for items. I don't care what it was - still costing XP for spell-like or supernatural wishes, a GP cap, confining it to existing items only, whatever. But that had to happen, because it broke the game. Similarly, shapechange needed to be reworked from the ground up. And there's a lot of stuff like that (for example, Monks).

If it's such a huge deal just set up the client to track what books you own, mark differently errata'd versions differently, and let you download whichever one you wanted. So you go to PHB and pick from "PHB 1.0", "PHB 1.1 - patched wish, buffed Fighters", and "PHB 1.2 - releveled evocations, added Warlocks". Then you could just download any version you wanted.

I would also note that the vast majority of games work like this. Hearthstone doesn't let you keep playing with the version of Undertaker that gets +1/+1 instead of +1/+0 just because you liked it. LOL or DOTA don't keep broken heroes around. Hell, even Magic straight up bans broken cards. The most important aspect of a new version of D&D is putting everyone on the same rule-set and allowing you to pick errata you like shatters that instantly.

Automated treasure creates wonky results, in my experience. There's a well-known online treasure generator that's twice given me an Eternal Wand of Anyspell.

While that is an interesting anecdote, that is not how random numbers work. Taken in aggregate, improbable events are wildly probable. Getting two of some item in however many times you've used that program is simply not all that improbable when you consider the number of items generated and the number of people who use it. Someone was going to have some weird experience where they got a Trident of Fish Command or a Monk's Belt way more often than they were "supposed to".

Hawkstar

2015-06-03, 07:47 PM

I would also note that the vast majority of games work like this. Hearthstone doesn't let you keep playing with the version of Undertaker that gets +1/+1 instead of +1/+0 just because you liked it. LOL or DOTA don't keep broken heroes around. Hell, even Magic straight up bans broken cards. The most important aspect of a new version of D&D is putting everyone on the same rule-set and allowing you to pick errata you like shatters that instantly.All of those games are fiercely competitive massively multiplayer games. And, actually, I can play a friendly home game of Magic: The Gathering with all the custom cards, Black Lotus, and Unhinged/Unglued cards I want.

And, no, the most important aspect of a new version of D&D isn't putting everyone on the same rule-set - it's getting people to buy and play the game. Making the system highly customizable for table use is the most valuable trait.

Amphetryon

2015-06-03, 08:20 PM

While that is an interesting anecdote, that is not how random numbers work. Taken in aggregate, improbable events are wildly probable. Getting two of some item in however many times you've used that program is simply not all that improbable when you consider the number of items generated and the number of people who use it. Someone was going to have some weird experience where they got a Trident of Fish Command or a Monk's Belt way more often than they were "supposed to".
Clearly, then, wonky results are how random numbers work. Your own conclusions bear out that "improbable events are wildly probable," which is exactly what I found in my 'interesting anecdote.'

Brova

2015-06-03, 08:28 PM

All of those games are fiercely competitive massively multiplayer games. And, actually, I can play a friendly home game of Magic: The Gathering with all the custom cards, Black Lotus, and Unhinged/Unglued cards I want.

Yes, but that sacrifices the possibility of transfer between tables. Do you ban Storm/fast combo/other "unfun" decks? Can I play Unhinged cards? Have you house-ruled mulligans? To pick up my deck and play, all those questions and more have to be answered.

And, no, the most important aspect of a new version of D&D isn't putting everyone on the same rule-set - it's getting people to buy and play the game.

The most important from the perspective of the game, not the perspective of the company. Obviously WotC would like you to buy the new edition, that makes them money. But the reason people switch to a new edition isn't because it's new. People switch for two reasons. First, because they think it's a better game. Second, because they expect people to play that game. Picking up a new edition of D&D is a trade-off between options (You can no longer play Ninjas! Boo!) and stability (You no longer have to wade through every tables house-rules! Yay!). The way to get people to buy a new edition is to convince them that they will be able to play that edition, and an unmodified version of that edition, at a wide variety of tables. If you can't do that, people will keep playing their heavily modded version of whichever edition they happen to like.

Making the system highly customizable for table use is the most valuable trait.

You can customize any system, and people do. It's a fair bet that the amount of custom content written for 3.5 on these boards is more than any published game. Possibly by an order of magnitude. If I cared about simply having a bunch of options, I would just play 3.5. Even counting only "published classes that are vaguely okay" it has more content than any new edition is ever going to have.

Hawkstar

2015-06-03, 08:53 PM

Yes, but that sacrifices the possibility of transfer between tables. Do you ban Storm/fast combo/other "unfun" decks? Can I play Unhinged cards? Have you house-ruled mulligans? To pick up my deck and play, all those questions and more have to be answered.

The most important from the perspective of the game, not the perspective of the company. Obviously WotC would like you to buy the new edition, that makes them money. But the reason people switch to a new edition isn't because it's new. People switch for two reasons. First, because they think it's a better game. Second, because they expect people to play that game. Picking up a new edition of D&D is a trade-off between options (You can no longer play Ninjas! Boo!) and stability (You no longer have to wade through every tables house-rules! Yay!). The way to get people to buy a new edition is to convince them that they will be able to play that edition, and an unmodified version of that edition, at a wide variety of tables. If you can't do that, people will keep playing their heavily modded version of whichever edition they happen to like.A new edition won't be played if it can't do what players want it to do. Part of the point of a TTRPG development cycle is to clean up and codify popular house-rules, and fix underlying problems with a system. Houserules get cleaned up, then drift again over the next 5-10 years, then get cleaned up again.

Flickerdart

2015-06-03, 11:46 PM

Well duh, of course pool tables are entrenched now - everything had to start somewhere. Your initial objection was around convincing people to move their furniture to accommodate such a thing, so the pool table comparison is not superficial - they ask consumers to do the same thing (as do air hockey. pinball machines and similar entertainment fixtures.) If anything, it's even easier with a table PC because you can actually use it as a table when gaming is not in the offing, such as shown in the picture above, and it's capable of a far wider variety of games.
My initial objection isn't discrete from the rest of them - it's all one unit, intended to highlight why the circumstances of smart table adoption are drastically different from that of pool tables.

It can be very difficult for people like us to imagine a bigger picture than their own lives, so I can see where you're coming from with your position. A considerable part of my post-secondary education revolved around this very thing - getting people to buy into technology - and I can tell you from experience that smart tables are a very hard sell.

Psyren

2015-06-04, 12:51 AM

Not denying that, I just think it's a leap from "they're a hard sell now" to "they always will be."

Lorsa

2015-06-04, 07:18 AM

You do know that this is a construct of the tabletop genre, right? The only games I've seen with a "Rest to get your powers back" are those built to emulate tabletop games.

I am well aware. This is why the 4e reminded me of a computer game, as it was trying to emulate a tabletop emulator built for computers. I do understand why tabletop emulators choose to go this route, but not why a real tabletop game would.

You mean like D&D originally used Tabletop Inches?

I am glad they moved away from that. I must admit I haven't read the orginal D&D.

That was a conscious decision to avoid "Ivory tower" game design. Yes, the PHB was written with new players in mind.

What do you mean by Ivory Tower design in this case? Most roleplaying rulebooks I have I read simply explain things in a very neutral, clean and precise way. The show some examples for those who have trouble understand just by reading. When I was a new player back when I was 13, I usually had little trouble understanding those books. The 4e PHB is the only one I've read that seemed to either insult my intelligence or assume I was 7 years old (at which age it would be really impressive if you could read that book at all!). Just about all rulebooks are written with new players in mind.

Mr. Mask

2015-06-04, 07:51 AM

Hawkstar

2015-06-04, 08:18 AM

I am well aware. This is why the 4e reminded me of a computer game, as it was trying to emulate a tabletop emulator built for computers. I do understand why tabletop emulators choose to go this route, but not why a real tabletop game would.Because real tabletop games were already doing that, and never moved away from that route in the first place.

What do you mean by Ivory Tower design in this case? Most roleplaying rulebooks I have I read simply explain things in a very neutral, clean and precise way. The show some examples for those who have trouble understand just by reading. When I was a new player back when I was 13, I usually had little trouble understanding those books. The 4e PHB is the only one I've read that seemed to either insult my intelligence or assume I was 7 years old (at which age it would be really impressive if you could read that book at all!). Just about all rulebooks are written with new players in mind.While I will admit that the "You want to look like a dragon" was a "What were they thinking" line, the 4e PHB decided to come with basic optimization handbooks written within it for the classes and races, so you wouldn't need to have significant system mastery to create characters competitive at the level the game assumes. The game flat-out states some races are better for certain classes than others (And explains where and why), as well as providing advice on selecting powers, class features, feats, and abilities that (Are supposed to) synergize well and create effective playable characters. They didn't want new players to be turned off of the game from going with stupid things 3.5 was known for such as Bastard Sword fighters with Toughness and Two Weapon Fighting.

Psyren

2015-06-04, 09:03 AM

I think a big reason no one would buy a smart table is... well, what are you going to play on it? Bejeweled? Clash of Clans? The appeal of those games is you can play them anywhere any time. Or, a PC table? Your neck is going to get soar looking down at that angle, and how you'll control it seems in question. Until you get good software for it, no one will want to buy it. And until people buy it, you won't get good software for it.

Air Hockey, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Monopoly (http://mashable.com/2013/01/06/lenovo-ideacentre-horizon/), literally any family-sized multiplayer board/table game. And you don't have to clean up the pieces afterwards, or have a separate board for every game.

Mr. Mask

2015-06-04, 10:13 AM

They have all the family boardgames on tablet tables? Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, etc.? Or do you mean that's what they could have?

Psyren

2015-06-04, 10:33 AM

They have all the family boardgames on tablet tables? Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, etc.? Or do you mean that's what they could have?

"All?" I'd have no way of quantifying that. I do know there's a bunch released by Hasbro/EA/Ubisoft already that are compatible with the table PC format, as shown in the CES video.

Segev

2015-06-04, 01:29 PM

To be far, few games would release errata totally free of charge. If they do, it's because they expect to still make money off of additional sales relating to it. Errata represents work, for which somebody got paid (or, if it's an indy project, time the writer spent working for free rather than doing something more fun or for which he could have been paid).

D&D releases errata "free" because they expect people to keep buying the splat books.

An electronic RPG releasing errata woudl likely do so only if they had in their model somewhere a means of making money off of it, whether selling "update package subscriptions" or tying it to a new splatbook purchase or just expecting that the good PR would ensure customer loyalty and interest enough to buy a new expansion.

If it worked as I'm sort-of envisioning it, the best way to play would still be around a table with your friends. You could use electronic dice to speed resolution up, or you could just use all the auto-calculation features to determine your bonus faster for a given roll and then use real dice. It would track hp, calculate totals, track rounds and durations, etc.

There exist programs that do a lot of that already. This would be designed specially for a given game system, and thus be more tightly integrated with less "setup" needed, though.

Mr. Mask

2015-06-04, 03:20 PM

Psyren: You're missing my point. Let me describe my experience to you, so you can see how it might reflect other's experiences.

That trailer? It doesn't want me to pay $1,600 for that thing, nor to pay even less for it, because I don't want to use it. I mean, Monopoly? I already own monopoly on a few systems, and I can play it without picking up the pieces already. More than likely the touch pad interface is glitchy, and while it is massive for a tablet, for a family table it is still rather small and will make any game you play crowded. As for the other games, what are they? Why would I want to play a game I know little about in a system of play I find dubious? In general, my preference for a multiplayer digital boardgame is either on a screen, or on multiple phones/tablets. It's easy to have several of those these days, and each having your own little screen which you can put on a table or sit it up or sit somewhere away from the group with it, it's a lot more flexible, allows for games where one player's element of the board is hidden from view, is more affordable, and more games seem to work with that system than work with the table tablet.

I don't see any advantage to watching videos on the tablet, it'd hurt my neck looking down at it for long, and if I'm sitting down at home for a long time, I'll watch TV or use a computer. Sharing videos? That'd only work if there were several headphones plugs so more than one of you could use a video at a time. And generally speaking, I'm not sure why I'd want to watch multiple videos on the same screen with family or friends, in a crowded setting. If I'm watching videos with a group, we tend to watch the same video together, which can be done more comfortably with a larger screen via a computer or TV. And stuff like sorting pictures and other stuff, I'm only likely to do that a couple of times with a group, so I won't pay that price for it, and even uploading all the pictures onto it from my cameras and other systems to start seems like more work than the experience is worth.

So in the end, great concept, but what is there that a consumer wants? How does you experience differ to make it seem a good experience?

What'd start to change my mind was if I could play just about any board game on it, particularly if I can't get them on other systems, and particularly if they're some games I really want. Metal Gear Solid 4 was enough reason to get a PS3, because I couldn't get it anywhere else, I wanted it, and the PS3 was steep but something I found worthwhile investing in.

Psyren

2015-06-04, 03:44 PM

JAL_1138

2015-06-04, 04:09 PM

Mr. Mask: that you don't want it is not relevant if other people do. And "I can fit hundreds of board games on it without needing to worry about a closet full of boxes and pieces, plus it's large enough that the entire family can gather around it and play" is reason enough for folks who are not you to want it. Plus it looks damn cool as a centerpiece/conversation starter. And while 1.6k is indeed pricey, it's still within consumer range, and will only get cheaper as the tech does.

The best part is that it runs Windows - you don't even need to wait for a specific D&D app to be made for it, just boot up MapTool or something and move the pieces with the touchscreen.

Having used Maptool before, I find the idea of sitting down at an RL table to use it for D&D instead of dice and (maybe) a grid map to be somewhat insane. It's massively easier to use paper/pencil and wet-erase markers than to fight with that program to accomplish even simple tasks, and the thought of using its godawful onboard dice-roller (which isn't even vaguely truly random, as it runs on an algorithm that in my experience produces very streaky results) instead of real dice is somewhat horrifying.

Psyren

2015-06-04, 04:26 PM

Having used Maptool before, I find the idea of sitting down at an RL table to use it for D&D instead of dice and (maybe) a grid map to be somewhat insane. It's massively easier to use paper/pencil and wet-erase markers than to fight with that program to accomplish even simple tasks, and the thought of using its godawful onboard dice-roller (which isn't even vaguely truly random, as it runs on an algorithm that in my experience produces very streaky results) instead of real dice is somewhat horrifying.

roll20 then. *shrug*

The specific interface/program being used is far from the salient point here; obviously you'd use one you feel sufficiently adroit with, otherwise yes, there would be no point in deviating from papyrus, knucklebones and sticks of graphite.

Kurald Galain

2015-06-04, 04:42 PM

While I will admit that the "You want to look like a dragon" was a "What were they thinking" line, the 4e PHB decided to come with basic optimization handbooks written within it for the classes and races, so you wouldn't need to have significant system mastery to create characters competitive at the level the game assumes.
That may have been the goal, but they vastly dropped the ball on that one. It took several years of errata and adding splatbooks to get to this "basic optimization" you mention (and aside from that, rules-savvy players could make characters well above this basic optimization level straight from day one; for example, the Orcus Slayer).

That's beside the point though. WOTC tried for a certain kind of market appeal, the method they chose alienated them from a lot of fans, and they lost marketshare as the result. Standard business trope, really.

Mr. Mask

2015-06-04, 04:44 PM

Brova

2015-06-04, 05:14 PM

Flickerdart

2015-06-04, 05:43 PM

Not denying that, I just think it's a leap from "they're a hard sell now" to "they always will be."
Oh, I'm not saying they will never be. They might not be - a smart table isn't the best form factor for a large touch screen - but there's a decent chance that a meaningful use case will appear.

I think a big reason no one would buy a smart table is... well, what are you going to play on it? Bejeweled? Clash of Clans? The appeal of those games is you can play them anywhere any time. Or, a PC table? Your neck is going to get soar looking down at that angle, and how you'll control it seems in question. Until you get good software for it, no one will want to buy it. And until people buy it, you won't get good software for it.
A game will never be what propels smart tables into the mainstream. They are good (currently) for exactly one thing - touch-based interaction between strangers who are uncomfortable sharing personal space, and yet are brought together by circumstances beyond the table itself (since tables are terrible at attracting people who aren't already close). The first mass commercial software for them will be demo kiosk type software.

Something like HoloLens has a much better chance of catching on for personal use, and game table apps for it will also be better (assuming someone owns a couple of the headset). Attaching 3D models to pre-designated physical objects is dirt simple with AR, and would work quite well. A Cardboard-style phone wrapper that takes advantage of the camera to feed in video would also work.

Psyren

2015-06-04, 06:01 PM

Psyren: Well, you obviously like that thing a lot. I was just demonstrating reason why someone may not like it. I don't feel my experience and thought process with it was unusual or uncommon. If I wanted to use Maptool, I'd just use my computer, or a tablet. If it doesn't have boardgames I want to play, then it doesn't have the benefits of removing the storage space and not picking up pieces. And again, that gives it no advantage over phones and normal tablets, which also let you play without picking up the pieces.

I would like pieces of technology like it to succeed, but until it gets a high level of quality and software support, stuff you can't do with similar quality on other devices, it won't take off.

If it has no games on it that you want to play, I think that's a perfectly good reason not to want it. But it seems to me that there are plenty of folks out there who like Monopoly, and a good chunk of those who hate organizing the money and getting the pieces out every time. Plus the novelty of playing it in a digital space where nobody can cheat would be cool as well.

I then picture a future where tablets can interface with table PCs. You could have a card game where each person has their hand of cards on their tablet; they flick their finger and the "card" flies out onto the tablescreen. Or a future where one player (the GM) has a handheld tablet where he views information the players don't know, while the players play using the table, perhaps with their own tablets tracking their character sheets and updating on the fly for any buffs or debuffs.

To be far, few games would release errata totally free of charge. If they do, it's because they expect to still make money off of additional sales relating to it.

Or they're expecting future sales because their audience has faith that they will fix mistakes as they occur/are committed to quality work product overall.

Mr. Mask

2015-06-04, 06:06 PM

Flicker: Yeah, if you don't get good software for it, no one is going to buy it. I think games could sell a table tablet, if they were well designed for it and people really wanted to play them.

Psyren: Well, I agree that'd be cool. Just, at the moment, I can play monopoly on my phone with my friends using their phone, or on a console or PC, and get all the advantages you mentioned. If I can get it somewhere else cheaper, I tend to do that. That being said, if a tablet table becomes affordable, I probably would get one (they'll get cheaper if they start producing them in larger numbers, but they need demand to justify producing them in larger numbers).

Flickerdart

2015-06-04, 07:30 PM

Flicker: Yeah, if you don't get good software for it, no one is going to buy it. I think games could sell a table tablet, if they were well designed for it and people really wanted to play them.
It has nothing to do with people not buying it, and everything with it not coming to market before there is a compelling, exploitable use case. This is not a video game system where you wrap a computer in a small plastic box and tell people that you can plug it into the TV you have at home; the demands are much higher on the manufacturer (for various R&D and supply chain things, as well as operating system work), developers (who would be building for the nichest of niche systems - which means no profits), and customer (who would need an appropriate space for the device). People who put out hardware nobody wants and then try to convince customers to buy it are not people who succeed in business, and right now the answer to "why shouldn't I develop/buy games for a console/phone/computer/tablet" is "there is no reason."

What you need is not merely games but games for which you must have a table before anyone is going to think about making table games. If the device category ever takes off in the private sphere, people might port software on it, but not until "so I downloaded a new tablecloth" becomes a phrase that a rational human being might utter.

Mr. Mask

2015-06-04, 08:39 PM

"What you need is not merely games but games for which you must have a table before anyone is going to think about making table games." Umm... yeah. I don't think I have said otherwise.

Flickerdart

2015-06-04, 08:42 PM

You didn't say much of anything at all, frankly.

Mr. Mask

2015-06-04, 08:48 PM

:smallconfused:

Hawkstar

2015-06-05, 07:54 AM

JAL_1138

2015-06-05, 08:31 AM

I think there could be plenty of market for a smart table, if they can make it spill and feet-resistant, because a table that doesn't double as a footrest or drink-holder is a waste of living room space. But with so much interconnection between appliances, a 'smart' table could actually be pretty fun. A shame we don't have functional hologram projectors yet, though.

... we really need hologram projectors.

While it's not a projector (needs glasses), Microsoft HoloLens looks really promising. Strange to say about the company that brought us the Zune and Windows 8, but it does. For people who don't need glasses, anyway...*curses own abysmally terrible eyesight*

Psyren

2015-06-05, 08:40 AM

While it's not a projector (needs glasses), Microsoft HoloLens looks really promising. Strange to say about the company that brought us the Zune and Windows 8, but it does. For people who don't need glasses, anyway...*curses own abysmally terrible eyesight*

Language warning, because Penny Arcade:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2015/05/01
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2015/05/01/post-traumatic

JAL_1138

2015-06-05, 08:50 AM

Language warning, because Penny Arcade:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2015/05/01
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2015/05/01/post-traumatic

I was thinking of that one when I posted :smallbiggrin:

Flickerdart

2015-06-05, 09:36 AM

I think there could be plenty of market for a smart table, if they can make it spill and feet-resistant, because a table that doesn't double as a footrest or drink-holder is a waste of living room space. But with so much interconnection between appliances, a 'smart' table could actually be pretty fun. A shame we don't have functional hologram projectors yet, though.

... we really need hologram projectors.
The problem with a smart table isn't that it's not spill resistant - that part's easy. The problem is that the orientation of the display is so much worse than a vertical mounted display for most useful tasks.

neonagash

2015-06-05, 09:51 AM

It's not an issue of being affordable - smart tables ask a lot more of their owners than tech usually does because they take up tons of space and require owners to rearrange all their furniture to fit it in, so before anyone starts mass-manufacturing them there needs to be a compelling reason to own one. And playing tabletop games is not that reason.

Hell I wish my coffee table was a giant tablet. Make it safe to use as an actual coffee table and I'm watching my Netflix on it, reading my news on it.

You've basically replaced my laptop and my TV with one piece of furniture that I was going to buy anyway (coffee table)

Psyren

2015-06-05, 09:55 AM

The problem with a smart table isn't that it's not spill resistant - that part's easy. The problem is that the orientation of the display is so much worse than a vertical mounted display for most useful tasks.

Useful for the ones you'd need a vertical display for, that is. For the ones you'd normally do on a table or horizontal screen, it's made for that, especially those tasks that involve multiple users simultaneously - like a board game.

Hell I wish my coffee table was a giant tablet. Make it safe to use as an actual coffee table and I'm watching my Netflix on it, reading my news on it.

You've basically replaced my laptop and my TV with one piece of furniture that I was going to buy anyway (coffee table)

Now, watching TV/Netflix on it I don't really see unless you can swivel it to vertical.

Flickerdart

2015-06-05, 10:11 AM

Useful for the ones you'd need a vertical display for, that is. For the ones you'd normally do on a table or horizontal screen, it's made for that, especially those tasks that involve multiple users simultaneously - like a board game.
Note that I say useful tasks - which a board game is not.

There are really very few multi-user tasks that require this orientation; I've already discussed potential uses for it in this thread but they are largely in the public/business sphere. I can think of no private uses beyond "play board games" which as I've already mentioned will never be a compelling enough use case for a mass market release.

Hell I wish my coffee table was a giant tablet. Make it safe to use as an actual coffee table and I'm watching my Netflix on it, reading my news on it.

You've basically replaced my laptop and my TV with one piece of furniture that I was going to buy anyway (coffee table)
Using a table as a laptop doesn't really work for a number of reasons (such as lack of portability, privacy, keyboard, mouse surface). Using it as a TV doesn't work either due to extremely unfavorable viewing angles. Both are vanquished by the fact that surfaces accumulate clutter very quickly - you would have to clear off your table every time you wanted to do computer or TV stuff. Did you get a pizza to eat with your buds while you watch the game? Now you need a second table next to your table because otherwise the pizza is obscuring the screen.

JAL_1138

2015-06-05, 10:30 AM

Note that I say useful tasks - which a board game is not.

There are really very few multi-user tasks that require this orientation; I've already discussed potential uses for it in this thread but they are largely in the public/business sphere. I can think of no private uses beyond "play board games" which as I've already mentioned will never be a compelling enough use case for a mass market release.

Using a table as a laptop doesn't really work for a number of reasons (such as lack of portability, privacy, keyboard, mouse surface). Using it as a TV doesn't work either due to extremely unfavorable viewing angles. Both are vanquished by the fact that surfaces accumulate clutter very quickly - you would have to clear off your table every time you wanted to do computer or TV stuff. Did you get a pizza to eat with your buds while you watch the game? Now you need a second table next to your table because otherwise the pizza is obscuring the screen.

I could see a horizontal screen being extremely useful for drawing. Designers and artists of various stripes might get a lot of mileage out of a much bigger surface area to work on than a tablet allows.

Personally I can't draw stick figures worth a darn, and I wouldn't want to play D&D on one.

And now that you bring it up, I don't think people have given enough consideration to the Pizza Problem.

Flickerdart

2015-06-05, 11:21 AM

I could see a horizontal screen being extremely useful for drawing. Designers and artists of various stripes might get a lot of mileage out of a much bigger surface area to work on than a tablet allows.
Ugh, no. You draw on a drafting table, or if you're strapped for cash, a desk. Drawing on a coffee table will ruin your back and wrist faster than you can say "a 30 inch pen digitizer would cost a bloody fortune."

A key thing to remember here is that while a touch table has a large screen, it has the same number of pixels to work with as your laptop. Your standard 15" laptop might look crisp with a 1080p panel, but at 30 inches you need to scale that up to 4K, and at 50 inches even that will let you down.

And now that you bring it up, I don't think people have given enough consideration to the Pizza Problem.
The people working on these things have, I can assure you.

Segev

2015-06-05, 11:22 AM

Or they're expecting future sales because their audience has faith that they will fix mistakes as they occur/are committed to quality work product overall.

That would be part of the "sales related to it" I mentioned, yeah.

JAL_1138

2015-06-05, 11:47 AM

Ugh, no. You draw on a drafting table, or if you're strapped for cash, a desk. Drawing on a coffee table will ruin your back and wrist faster than you can say "a 30 inch pen digitizer would cost a bloody fortune."

Well yeah, if it's at coffee table height it'd wreck you. I have back problems with a regular desktop. But the screen being on, say, a desk, or not built-in to the table (like an oversized tablet or very thin TV with a flat back) might give it some application.

A key thing to remember here is that while a touch table has a large screen, it has the same number of pixels to work with as your laptop. Your standard 15" laptop might look crisp with a 1080p panel, but at 30 inches you need to scale that up to 4K, and at 50 inches even that will let you down.

Five years ago the idea of a 4k television would have been ludicrous. Now it's only slightly ludicrous, due to price. In a few years, it'll probably be the new consumer standard instead of the cutting edge.

The people working on these things have, I can assure you.

I don't mean from a mechanical standpoint, I mean the "now you need another table to put the pizza on" part.

EDIT: Aside from an extremely niche market, I'm agreeing with you--I mostly see these things for business use, or at least hobbyist-willing-to-shell-out-big-money-and-rearrange-the-furniture use.

Psyren

2015-06-05, 11:58 AM

Note that I say useful tasks - which a board game is not.

While I could quote statistics at you about the social and health benefits of familial interaction, it's shorter just to say that even if you see no purpose for board games, doesn't mean other families/households agree.

There are really very few multi-user tasks that require this orientation; I've already discussed potential uses for it in this thread but they are largely in the public/business sphere. I can think of no private uses beyond "play board games" which as I've already mentioned will never be a compelling enough use case for a mass market release.

And given that private people are still buying air hockey tables, pool tables, foosball, pinball machines, table-style arcade machines etc, you're just as wrong about this now as you were the previous times you mentioned it.

Flickerdart

2015-06-05, 12:07 PM

And given that private people are still buying air hockey tables, pool tables, foosball, pinball machines, table-style arcade machines etc, you're just as wrong about this now as you were the previous times you mentioned it.
Yeah, go saddle those companies with the R&D costs that developing software AND hardware incurs and see how well that works out for them.

JAL_1138

2015-06-05, 12:07 PM

While I could quote statistics at you about the social and health benefits of familial interaction, it's shorter just to say that even if you see no purpose for board games, doesn't mean other families/households agree.

And given that private people are still buying air hockey tables, pool tables, foosball, pinball machines, table-style arcade machines etc, you're just as wrong about this now as you were the previous times you mentioned it.

I think maybe "mass market" is being used two different ways here. To me, those are niche markets. Markets, yes, profitable ones on a limited scale, yes, but niche ones. TVs are "mass market," coffee tables are "mass market," pool tables and air hockey tables are a niche market. Musical instruments are a niche market. Not a lot of people buy pianos compared to the "virtually every household in the US" of coffee tables and televisions.

Flickerdart

2015-06-05, 01:29 PM

I think maybe "mass market" is being used two different ways here. To me, those are niche markets. Markets, yes, profitable ones on a limited scale, yes, but niche ones. TVs are "mass market," coffee tables are "mass market," pool tables and air hockey tables are a niche market. Musical instruments are a niche market. Not a lot of people buy pianos compared to the "virtually every household in the US" of coffee tables and televisions.
Pretty much this. Nobody in tech develops a brand new platform to cater to a tiny segment when the resources could be used to develop a platform that appeals to loads of people and rakes in mad cash.

Segev

2015-06-05, 02:29 PM

I know I risk gaining mass every time I go to the supermarket. Does that count?

Psyren

2015-06-05, 02:34 PM

I think maybe "mass market" is being used two different ways here. To me, those are niche markets. Markets, yes, profitable ones on a limited scale, yes, but niche ones. TVs are "mass market," coffee tables are "mass market," pool tables and air hockey tables are a niche market. Musical instruments are a niche market. Not a lot of people buy pianos compared to the "virtually every household in the US" of coffee tables and televisions.

Fine, niche market then. To which I say, so what? Niche markets can still be profitable. Tabletop gaming itself is a niche market, as you'll both recall.

Pretty much this. Nobody in tech develops a brand new platform to cater to a tiny segment when the resources could be used to develop a platform that appeals to loads of people and rakes in mad cash.

Nobody except Lenovo, Microsoft, Sony, HP, Dell... Yeah, but who ever heard of those guys :smalltongue:

Flickerdart

2015-06-05, 03:33 PM

Nobody except Lenovo, Microsoft, Sony, HP, Dell... Yeah, but who ever heard of those guys :smalltongue:
They're making expensive devices for business applications - a huge market that has no overlap with "table for your room to play Monopoly" except the very general shape of the thing. That would be like pointing to Cray in 1976 and saying "yeah, wouldn't it be cool if everyone could have one of these to play Chainmail on." Yes, it would be cool - but the tech isn't there yet, and the games will not be what brings it into the domestic space.

Psyren

2015-06-05, 04:33 PM

They're making expensive devices for business applications - a huge market that has no overlap with "table for your room to play Monopoly" except the very general shape of the thing. That would be like pointing to Cray in 1976 and saying "yeah, wouldn't it be cool if everyone could have one of these to play Chainmail on." Yes, it would be cool - but the tech isn't there yet, and the games will not be what brings it into the domestic space.

Several of the companies I listed including Lenovo are specifically targeting the private consumer/home space with their table PCs, and hyping up the board game utility at CES et al. In fact, I think the Microsoft Surface is the only one exclusively aimed at business applications, and even that is temporary.

neonagash

2015-06-05, 07:01 PM

Useful for the ones you'd need a vertical display for, that is. For the ones you'd normally do on a table or horizontal screen, it's made for that, especially those tasks that involve multiple users simultaneously - like a board game.

Now, watching TV/Netflix on it I don't really see unless you can swivel it to vertical.

I watch TV while I eat or read news. So usually I'm facing down (plate or at my phone) anyway. If I could split screen then I can browse through news articles, shopping websites, work reports, whatever while watching TV

Tvtyrant

2015-06-05, 07:04 PM

I think something like this would be perfect for a small D&D game (3-5 players plus GM):

http://www.performancepsu.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Microsoft-Windows-8-Touchscreen-Coffee-Table.jpg

It seems cool, but wouldn't that be fragile as heck? You can't put a glass plate over it without losing touch screen functionality, and computer screens aren't exactly tough IME.

Seerow

2015-06-05, 08:03 PM

It seems cool, but wouldn't that be fragile as heck? You can't put a glass plate over it without losing touch screen functionality, and computer screens aren't exactly tough IME.

Yeah, I think something like the gaming table designs that have a sunken in battle mat with a wooden cover to turn it into a regular table would probably be best for something like this. So you pull out the screen when you want/need it, but otherwise have a standard table.

Psyren

2015-06-07, 10:53 AM

Seerow

2015-06-07, 02:02 PM

Well the idea is that you wouldn't be rubbing minis and rolling dice all over it, all that would happen digitally. Though given the Lenovo H2's air hockey accessories (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnBICJH8uBc) that do involve capacitive pads rubbing all over the display, I'm not certain the screen is as fragile as you might think.

I think you're missing the bigger point.

It's not about wear and tear during gameplay. The complaint is not so much about "won't my dice break the screen?". It's about wear and tear during day to day life. I don't know about how you handle tables in your house, but for my household, we don't just ignore a table until it's time to play a game on it. You sit down on the couch and prop your feet up. You place stuff on it, sometimes even pretty heavy stuff. Kids play on it. Animals climb up on it (especially cats. frikken cats can't be kept off any surface ever for any reason). You set drinks and food down. Stuff gets spilled. These are all just basic day to day things that your smart table needs to be able to survive to earn a place in a household.

I mean yes, you could say "You're dropping a lot of extra money on a smart table, so you won't do that stuff"... but frankly if your smart table means taking up a ton of space in the house that is now unusable in the way a normal table would be, that makes it that much less likely people will get it. Most people simply don't have the floor space available in their house to set up a big table that they can't use as a table. Even fewer have a whole separate sitting room where they can set such a table up as a center piece and not miss having a table or extra floor space at all. People will expect the smart table to act as a giant table/computer when they want to use it, but still act as a completely normal table any other time (which will be most of the time, let us be perfectly honest).

Heck even if you have a space reserved just for gaming, are in a household with no children or pets, and have no problem not using your table outside of gaming, how many people sit around a central gaming table, and don't also use that table for their drinks and snacks/meals?

Psyren

2015-06-07, 02:55 PM

How would those arguments be any different than any other high-end glass or crystal coffee table? :smallconfused:
And putting your feet up is what a hassock is for, not a table, especially not one with a glass panel.

This argument sounds to me like saying "but what if we misuse our appliances, how will our appliances compensate for that?"
Also, 27-36" is not "a ton of space" either, unless you live in Manhattan or something.

Segev

2015-06-08, 10:25 AM

To me, the biggest problem is that tables are flat surfaces. Flat surfaces accumulate stuff. That stuff would then be in the way of using the flat surface.

I suppose it's no different than having to clear the kitchen table for games, though.

SouthpawSoldier

2015-06-08, 10:55 AM

I'm honestly turned off to the idea. I hate touch screens, and prefer minimal tech. One of my gripes with3.5 was dependency on spreadsheets to track spells, bonuses, etc. An issue with finding a group now is my difficulty navigating roll20 or other digital tabletops.

I'm no Luddite, but I'm very much not a power user of tech. I prefer simpler systems that do exactly what I expect. Give me XP or Win 7 set up to mimic XP, and I'm happy. All I need is browsing and word processing. Heck, I'm the only person at either of my jobs that still uses (and prefers) a flip phone.

It's really frustrating; being a nerd, every also expects me to be a tech head too. People are shocked when I explain that I don't do macros, I don't know programming or networking. My background is electronics, but very specific; hardware repair with a little radio signal theory mixed in. I can solder and splice, but
don't ask me to find an IP address or set up proxies.

Back to the main topic of conversation; I agree that a 5.5 may be in the future. A fix (or removal) of crafting rules, especially for Alchemy/Potion brewing. A better weapons system, a la Easy_Lee's Weapon Logic*. Feat tuning (especially Dual Wielder). A BM Ranger fix, or at least some optional rules.

*http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?378583-Weapon-Damage-Logic-How-to-Homebrew-and-Why-Some-Weapons-are-Trap-Options

neonagash

2015-06-08, 10:59 AM

I suppose it's no different than having to clear the kitchen table for games, though.

that's my thought. As long as the surface is sturdy enough for everyday use you've just added functionality to an everyday piece of furniture.

We can't forget that need isn't the only thing that drives sales either. Lots of people with disposable income will buy something because it's cool.

No one needs a 1000$ TV or 50,000$ car or the latest over priced iPad that you know is going to be buggy as hell for the first 6 months...... But all those things sell like crazy.

Lorsa

2015-06-11, 04:14 AM

So, I may be a little late to the party, but I would like to way in on the 4E= WoW discussion.

I personally played and enjoyed World of Warcraft for 10 years. Before that I played other MMOs and the Warcraft RTS games for another ten years. I would hardly say that I am someone who disliked WoW.

When I look at WoW vs. 4E I find three major sources of comparison:

1: Lack of Strategic Play

World of Warcraft allows characters to more or less come into every fight at full strength. Your performance in previous encounters rarely if ever influences your chances with the current encounter. In World of Warcraft I would say this is a very good thing. It allows every encounter to stand on its own and be exciting (at least in theory. A lot of trash pulls in dungeons now serves no purpose except to pad out the length of content).
I remember in Everquest trying to solo and having to sit for upwards of half an hour to heal to full between fights. Even in groups mana regen buffs were the most valuable thing in the game and players would have bards who did nothing but sit in the corner playing songs to speed up resource regeneration. This was terrible.
I remember a lot of people praising Halo with its regenerating shield system as a break through in FPS design as it allowed you to treat every encounter as a standalone showpiece challenge. Now it seems like every FPS has a similar mechanic whether or not it has any in universe justification like the Halo shield.

4E does something very similar. Few status conditions last longer than a few rounds, let alone an encounter. Healing surges allow people to recover from almost any injury in a matter of hours. The AEDU system allows you to, aside from daily powers, be completely refreshed between every fight.

In theory this should work out cool, as it eliminates the 15 minute adventuring day and frustrating situations where you have a run of bad luck / decisions and have to abandon the quest. But, on the other hand, it makes combats dull. Most fights have virtually no chance of actually killing the PCs (which is good, as you can't just respawn at the graveyard and try again), and therefore they don't do anything but slow the party down (see trash pulls in WoW above). Furthermore they reward static play where the only incentive is maximizing efficiency, and since the same powers are available every fight there isn't as much reason to deviate.

Now, don't get me wrong. A well done 4E combat is fun and plays like an exciting tactical board game. But if the combat isn't exceptionally well done it really has no bearing on the whole of the adventure and just slows everything to a crawl.

Note that pre 3E the game was very tactical and all about conserving and tracking limited resources. 3E kind of got rid of this with the whole 15 minute adventuring day thing, and 4E tried to just roll the 15MWD into the base assumption of the game rather than going back to earlier edition's style of play. This is a very WoW like decision.

2: Class Roles:
WoW didn't invent class roles, and in fact was a lot more lenient about them than most earlier MMOs. Note though, that WoW changed the landscape, and in my experience while class roles in MMOs were fairly common before WoW they were not ubiquitous like they seem to be now. IMO these were the worst parts of WoW. I don't know how frustrating it was to constantly be told that my class was only good for one thing or have the designers throw a "hybrid tax" and anyone who tried to play outside of their class's assigned role. Early WoW was very much bring the class not the player, and even within given roles there were many things that required a specific class. Not fun.

Now, earlier D&D kind of had roles, but they weren't clearly defined. Anyone could, theoretically, tank, do damage, or focus on ooc skills. Healing was pretty protected, and a lot of skill stuff was rogue / bard only, but it wasn't too hard to play against type. 0-3E warriors could easily out DPS rogues, rogues could, with the right build, easily out tank warriors, and casters could pretty much do anything you wanted them to.

4E comes along and gives everyone clearly defined roles, both in intent and practice. It is the first edition to actually spell out roles in the book. While there are a few cases where you can be OK at a secondary role (just like early WoW), but never as good as a "pure" class. Furthermore the game really doesn't reward unusual builds. Playing against type has gotten harder and harder in each edition of D&D. The 3E skill and saving throw system was really bad in this regard, but 4E made it worse.

The game also assumes that everyone is a combatant, which is a very Warcraft way to look at it. In earlier editions I could play a scholar or a healer or a diplomat or a scout and not have to get my hands dirty. 4E does virtually nothing to differentiate characters out of combat and one has to try very hard to play a pacifist character and still contribute in combat.

3: Lack of Realism

Ok, call it what you want. Lack of realism, lack of logic, lack of verisimilitude, lack of simulationism, disassociated mechanics, overly gamist / narrativist design choices, overuse of abstraction, what have you, the sentiment is the same.

Earlier editions of D&D like to keep up the appearance of a consistent world. Most every power in the game has an explanation, and they try and keep consistent with known real world laws (or consistent fantasy world laws). Things have explanations and generally follow common sense.

Most video games do not have anywhere near the fidelity towards logical cause and effect that D&D does. The game doesn't question why characters can't break down a locked door, or climb over a short obstruction, or how they can fit 2,000 round of ammunition in their pocket, or why simply touching the water kills them. These are accepted as limits of the programming or taken for convenience sake. D&D, with its living DM, generally has a much tighter reign on this sort of thing.

Warcraft is particularly bad about this. The game doesn't try and explain why people can heal from any injury in moments, why you can carry a dozen horses, five dragons, three suits of armor, and half a million gold coins around in your bags without being encumbered, why you can teleport in and out of dungeons, why your enemies respawn every week, why killing monsters gives you "points" that you can trade to NPCs for gear, why a wolf in Pandaria is higher level than The Lich King, why items become bound to you once you use them, why you can craft a motorcycle in 10 seconds, how you can have two different character builds that you can switch between but never mix, etc. etc. etc.

The developers of WoW are on record as saying that their policy is that if the gameplay conflicts with the lore the gameplay will always win out.

4E does not go to nearly the same levels as WoW does, but it is a lot closer than any other edition of D&D. Marks, minions, AEDU powers, healing surges, level requirements on items, spending on action to command a minion, enemies taking damage from powers with no apparent cause, tripping slimes and snakes, poisoning skeletons or making them bleed, the list goes on and on. These require a lot of mental gymnastics to justify, and more often than not the books don't even try.

So yeah, 4E and WoW are not the same game. But they have made a lot of the same design decisions and are a lot closer than any previous edition of D&D, and these design decisions do not always transfer properly across media.

I may also be a little late, and this has little to do with 6e, but that was a very well done analysis. You managed to do a clear analysis of some of the things that were only feelings to me. Especially the "fights doesn't matter unless 100% balanced" part.

CowardlyPaladin

2015-06-11, 07:15 AM

Just give it a little more time. I'm sure we'll come up with something eventually.

Does it eliminate the Tier system?

I mean honestly I think that 6th edition would try to expand the game to be more flexible than the existing system allows?

Segev

2015-06-11, 08:02 AM

Technically, there is no "tier system." To eliminate tiers as they exist would require either a design that curtailed the possible expansion of magic to "anything," or which managed to remove the concept that non-spellcasters can't arbitrarily expand their capabilities to cover "anything."

Tier 1s are almost universally prepared casters because they have a mechanical tool (spells) which can be designed to do anything, and they can change what their selection is doing on a daily basis (at a minimum). Spontaneous casters are usually Tier 2 because they have the same tool, but changing it out for situations that are not already covered by their loadout is more difficult (if doable at all). Mundanes tend to top out at Tier 3 because there is a strangely-agreed-upon definition of what can be done without spells. There are Tier 3 spellcasters, but they're expressly designed with holes in their spell sets to make them good at one or a few things without having the capacity to combine and mix and match until they are perfectly game-breaking even in one aspect.

The generi-casters would have to go if spells retained the flavor that, individually, a given spell could do anything, before you could get rid of Tiers 1 and 2. If you got rid of generi-casters (clerics, wizards, sorcerers, druids, Psions, etc.) who can pick up magic to cover just about any field, all on the same chassis, then you could have Tier 3 casters be the rule by designing the classes with a careful focus and selection of spells which cover the desired areas but which cannot be expanded to cover everything.

The idea that there are things you cannot do without magic - or that you must be a spellcaster to have flexible magic - would have to go to elevate "all" classes to Tiers 1 and 2. In truth, the best efforts at elevating the Tier 3 and lower classes aren't really trying to make them Tier 1 or 2; they're trying to make them not have obvious fatal gaps.

5e strives to keep spellcasters out of Tier 1 by severely restricting their slots per day. Game-breakers have still been found, but they are fewer.

One thing that I think helps, though it wouldn't be a full flected fix, would be recapturing 2e and earlier's differing exp charts. Yes, the casters would still get to be gods eventually, but they'd do it so, so much more slowly, and with so much more fragility "working their way up," that most of the desired feel of the need for all the kinds of classes would be retained.

Vitruviansquid

2015-06-11, 08:22 AM

JaronK's tier list is pretty flexible... It could probably handle any RPG that had classes that tried to specialize in stuff.

I can't picture a version of DnD that eliminated the tier system without being some outlandish artsy stunt done just to show it could be done rather than to make a fun game.

Brova

2015-06-11, 09:11 AM

Technically, there is no "tier system." To eliminate tiers as they exist would require either a design that curtailed the possible expansion of magic to "anything," or which managed to remove the concept that non-spellcasters can't arbitrarily expand their capabilities to cover "anything."

Getting rid of the power difference between classes is actually fairly easy. You just have to pick a set of challenges, set an appropriate win rate against them, and playtest them for each of your classes. Caster/Mundane inequality is a problem for two reasons - casters being better than mundanes and casters being able to do everything mundanes do. So the thing where cloudkill is just better than any plan a 9th level martial has needs to go, as does the Cleric archer problem where you can be a better Fighter than the Fighter as a Cleric.

One important thing to note is that it doesn't actually matter how many options your class has. It matters how many options you have. Making the somewhat generous assumption that options are of homogeneous power (i.e. polar ray isn't trying to compete with polymorph any object) and options don't have disproportionate synergy (i.e. you can't get both solid fog and summon swarm), it doesn't matter if the Wizard picks three options from a list of 20 and the Fighter picks three options from a list of 5. Each character has level appropriate power, the Wizard just has more options he could have had but didn't.

The idea that there are things you cannot do without magic - or that you must be a spellcaster to have flexible magic - would have to go to elevate "all" classes to Tiers 1 and 2. In truth, the best efforts at elevating the Tier 3 and lower classes aren't really trying to make them Tier 1 or 2; they're trying to make them not have obvious fatal gaps.

I don't really see a difference between T1 - T3 to any meaningful degree. I mean, it's not a difference in class power - the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are both T3. It's not a difference in ability to break the game - the Candle of Invocation exists and has a price in gold. The problem with bumping other classes up to the level of the Wizard isn't so much that magic is "too flexible" as that there isn't a good way to do out of combat stuff without magic at high levels. A Races of War Barbarian or Fighter is perfectly capable of kicking every bit as much ass as a Wizard of his level. He just doesn't have any out of combat powers to speak of.

One thing that I think helps, though it wouldn't be a full flected fix, would be recapturing 2e and earlier's differing exp charts. Yes, the casters would still get to be gods eventually, but they'd do it so, so much more slowly, and with so much more fragility "working their way up," that most of the desired feel of the need for all the kinds of classes would be retained.

I don't think that's a good idea. While it's certainly simpler design wise than making classes balanced, it has two major problems. First, it doesn't actually solve anything, it just pushes the issue off until the game is probably over. That's fairly obviously bad design, particularly if you have anything like scrolls which let you borrow high level powers. Second, while it's simpler to design, it's more bookkeeping in play. Having to figure out XP charts for each class is annoying in a way that simply having the Fighter be an actual class (instead of a glorified NPC class) isn't.

Flickerdart

2015-06-11, 09:38 AM

Unfortunately, it's not that easy to just say "magic does this and mundanes do this and never the twain shall meet" in a game where
a) the metric for victory is the same for everyone (enemy HP < 0 = win or skill check > DC = win) and
b) when one person's character is in the spotlight, there are 3 people at the table not doing anything.

4E tried to go in the opposite direction and that made a lot of classes play very similarly which many people hated.

So you must have overlap, and that overlap must take up a good portion of the game so everyone is able to do something most of the time. Wherever you have overlap, unless it's done exactly the same way, some classes will be better than others. Saying "it's fine that they are worse here because they have Unique Thing A elsewhere" just goes back to the spotlight problem - if Unique Thing A comes up as often as the overlap, then everyone else feels useless while character 1 parades their Unique Thing around.

I'm not saying it's impossible to reconcile these things, but it's hard. Creating a system where everyone can play "against type" and still be effective would be even harder, because now you have a class that's just as good as someone else at a thing and also has another thing they do.

I think the best way to go here would be a variant on the action economy. Give everyone a huge pool to pick from, but only a few things they can commit to doing at any one time, with different classes sharing many of these abilities. So you don't just go "well fighters can use the roll-to-attack mechanic and then wizards get MOAR" but have a strong core set of things that everyone uses and then give them equal small amounts of MOAR. Sort of like if there was a second Binder class, they shared 50% of the vestiges (say, the combat ones), but then one had more utility focused vestiges and one had more scouting focused ones. Then they could both be equally good at the core thing in the game (combat) but have different, diverse contributions to make outside of it, and could calibrate how good they wanted to be at their unique thing VS how many resources to devote to operating effectively during the spotlight sharing phase.

Seerow

2015-06-11, 09:44 AM

Unfortunately, it's not that easy to just say "magic does this and mundanes do this and never the twain shall meet" in a game where
a) the metric for victory is the same for everyone (enemy HP < 0 = win or skill check > DC = win) and
b) when one person's character is in the spotlight, there are 3 people at the table not doing anything.

4E tried to go in the opposite direction and that made a lot of classes play very similarly which many people hated.

So you must have overlap, and that overlap must take up a good portion of the game so everyone is able to do something most of the time. Wherever you have overlap, unless it's done exactly the same way, some classes will be better than others. Saying "it's fine that they are worse here because they have Unique Thing A elsewhere" just goes back to the spotlight problem - if Unique Thing A comes up as often as the overlap, then everyone else feels useless while character 1 parades their Unique Thing around.

I'm not saying it's impossible to reconcile these things, but it's hard. Creating a system where everyone can play "against type" and still be effective would be even harder, because now you have a class that's just as good as someone else at a thing and also has another thing they do.

Well as far as actual effects go, you can't just say things like "Only mundanes are allowed to deal actual damage" because that'd be dumb. But if you defined specific power sources to do specific things, you could definitely cut down on a lot of versatility, while still allowing for overlap. The trouble isn't so much narrowing down classes into a narrower role, it's convincing people "No, really, that guy is a Wizard even if he can't do literally everything".

Brova

2015-06-11, 09:50 AM

Vitruviansquid

2015-06-11, 09:56 AM

True balance between all classes is a pipe dream. Strategic games are fun because the options they present have varying values depending on the situation. Even in 3.5's Wizards can settle encounters real quick and easy, but fighters have the ability to go on all day as long as they don't run out of hp. People generally agree that the wizards' advantage here is more valuable than the fighters' advantage, but there are times when it's not so, and evening those out is not a mathematical operation you can undertake. Then you run into the problem of balancing the game where classes were not meant to be played alone, but in parties of varying size and composition.

Instead of true balance, what you can have, which 4e tried, is niche protection. If you have one class focused on doling out the right amount of damage to the right targets, and one class in charge of manipulating how enemies distribute their damage, and one class in charge of this other task, and one class in charge of that other task, it becomes much more difficult for just one class to dominate the entire game, and much more difficult for players to evaluate who in the party is making the most contribution (which leads to more difficult strategizing). So long as every role is needed, you are now also balancing only the classes within one role against each other, making the task of balancing easier.

edit: this post was written in response to Brova's 4 posts back. My how fast this thread moves.

I actually think it'd be pretty cool if in some version of DnD, spells don't do any damage, so casters always need a mundane to hit for them, and a mundane always needs a caster to manipulate the battlefield, inflict status effects, cast buffs, or whatever for them.

neonagash

2015-06-11, 11:43 AM

Flickerdart

2015-06-11, 12:31 PM

I would go a step further and get rid of vancian wizards completely as well. Make them all function like sorcerers. Then expand rituals to be able to cast spells in a long, laborious process. This will also make casters feel more like classic wizards and witches from mythology.
I think the Spirit Shaman's casting works best to compromise between sorcerers sucking and wizards dominating. An arcane wizard-sorcerer based on this mechanic would prepare spells from a spellbook into his Sorcerer Spells Known, giving him day to day versatility without making what he can do during the day too open-ended.

Brova

2015-06-11, 12:37 PM

I think the Spirit Shaman's casting works best to compromise between sorcerers sucking and wizards dominating. An arcane wizard-sorcerer based on this mechanic would prepare spells from a spellbook into his Sorcerer Spells Known, giving him day to day versatility without making what he can do during the day too open-ended.

Honestly, the problem with the Sorcerer isn't particularly versatility. While I'd probably bump up his spells known on getting a new level by one and his total spells known of a given level by 2 (to 2 and 6, respectively), it's not really a problem. The real problems the Sorcerer has are getting spells later than the Wizard for no reason and having to trade off combat time spells for down time spells. animate dead is totally sweet to have as a 4th level spell, but it's very hard to justify trading off polymorph or enervation or charm monster or evard's black tentacles for it. Little as I like to praise it, 4e had the right idea with rituals. Separating combat time powers from down time powers kills two birds with one stone - both resolving trade-offs in spells known and allowing Fighters to have out of combat powers.

Cybren

2015-06-11, 12:39 PM

If there is a true 6th Edition, I don't have any idea what it would fix. I mean, the only thing that 5th edition is missing is extremely high-power gameplay and more combat complexity. Both could easily be done in patches and supplements, but I don't really see those as flaws at all. 5E is elegant in its simplicity, with only a few things needing fixing like the Beastmaster.

Editions don't have to fix things, it can just incorporate all the errata that accumulates over the years. You know, like what the word "edition" means in literally all other fields

Psyren

2015-06-11, 12:43 PM

Well as far as actual effects go, you can't just say things like "Only mundanes are allowed to deal actual damage" because that'd be dumb. But if you defined specific power sources to do specific things, you could definitely cut down on a lot of versatility, while still allowing for overlap. The trouble isn't so much narrowing down classes into a narrower role, it's convincing people "No, really, that guy is a Wizard even if he can't do literally everything".

Indeed, if magic isn't capable of a wide variety of effects then it doesn't feel, well, magical. But I think where these games tend to slip up is that, you can retain that feel by having magic capable of anything, but not necessarily everything.

In other words, yeah, that guy is a wizard, and with the right spells/feats he probably could solve the mystery, or win the arm-wrestling contest, or rain fiery death upon the area, or silently take out that key target from across the battlefield, or assemble a castle from nothing, or sneak into the guarded vault. But doing these things with magic, the "quick and easy way", should have drawbacks - some obvious, and some less apparent that can come back to bite the spellcaster later. The problem with magic is not that it can do anything, but that there is little reason not to do it the magical way, and that is what makes the mage go from "anything" to "everything."

neonagash

2015-06-11, 01:23 PM

Psyren

2015-06-11, 01:42 PM

Flickerdart

2015-06-11, 01:42 PM

I'm not real familiar with the spirit shaman. The idea seems workable though. A little more powerful than my version but that's not the end of the world.
It's from Complete Divine (I think) and is basically the marriage between a favored soul and a druid. People put it somewhere between T2 and T3, depending on the day of the week.

JAL_1138

2015-06-11, 02:10 PM

Pathfinder is way ahead of you guys - this is exactly what the Arcanist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/arcanist) does, i.e. preparing spells known from a spellbook that he can then cast spontaneously.

It's also what every prepared caster does in 5e. I don't see how more flexible spell use (e.g., I can cast Fireball until I run out of slots, but I only prep it once, so I can prep a bunch of other spells besides a bucketload of Fireballs) does anything to solve the 'problem' without far fewer spell slots (which 5e has to an extent, but not as far as some would want it) or actually fixing problematic/gamebreaker spells.

PairO'Dice Lost

2015-06-11, 02:22 PM

I think a lot could be done to bring martails up just by reducing the other classes that divided up their schtick.

Roll rogues and fighters totally together. Evasion, precision damage, huge skill points, everything.

Give martials all good saves. And D12 hit dice.

Take all abilities from classes like palidan, monk, ranger, warblade, barbarian etc etc and put them on a big list.

Every level let the fighter pick a bonus feat or power from the list. Or even 2 picks.

You wind up with a physical beast whose the best at inflicting damage and avoiding direct harm while having lots of diverse skills and for those of us who like a lot of customization you can still get some neat powers and the ability to put just about any flavor you want on the character.

This approach is suggested a lot, but it has the big problem of reducing all martial characters to the same class, and while making the fighter a super-versatile class certainly helps bring it up to par it does so by shrinking the conceptual space for martial classes. It's like trying to duplicate all arcane casters with a wizard: yes, you can build one as a social manipulator, undead minionmaster, broad blaster, martial-focused gish, casting-focused gish, or an elementalist with varying degrees of effort, but having separate beguiler, dread necromancer, warmage, hexblade, duskblade, and wu jen classes gives you pre-packaged classes (to make expressing a concept easier) that have thematic spell lists and their own special mechanics (to reinforce the concept) and that feel different in play (to keep things fresh when playing similar concepts multiple times).

Adding additional arcane casting classes didn't detract from the wizard by "dividing up its schtick," because the designers didn't take that schtick away from the wizard, they just made other classes do it better. There's enough conceptual space to support dozens of different martial classes just as there's enough space to support dozens of different casting classes; there's no need to cannibalize all the existing martial classes to make one good one when one can simply enhance the existing ones. The paladin, ranger, barbarian, and rogue all have extensive source material to draw upon and a concept that easily extends to the higher levels. The fighter has its own concept which currently doesn't extend to high levels very well, so that should be addressed, not by killing other classes and taking their stuff but by delineating what a "fighter" is and what "high-level fighter" should mean.

I would go a step further and get rid of vancian wizards completely as well. Make them all function like sorcerers. Then expand rituals to be able to cast spells in a long, laborious process. This will also make casters feel more like classic wizards and witches from mythology.

As I mention every single time this is brought up, Vancian casting as expressed in D&D is a ritual system from mythology, it's just that Vancian wizards have figured out how to save rituals for later. In both cases, to summon a demon you pull out your musty old tome, inscribe a mystical diagram on the floor, wave your arms in mystic gestures, and chant arcane syllables and the demon's name for an hour. If you proceed to immediately follow that up with ten more minutes of chanting and then call "Demon, come forth!" and poof, a minor demon appears in your magic circle, you've cast a demon summoning ritual.

If you instead proceed to magically lock the current state of the ritual away in your mind, go grab a quick breakfast, double-check the cold iron filigree in your mystical diagram, cast a dimensional anchor on the diagram to make it extra secure, then finally chant for ten minutes and call out "Demon, come forth!" and poof, a minor demon appears in your magic circle, you've just prepared and later cast a Vancian lesser planar binding.

There are plenty of ways to make Vancian feel more ritual-esque (most of which involve bringing back AD&D casting rules, like requiring 10 minutes per spell level to prepare one spell instead of stuffing everything into 1 hour of prep), but they really aren't necessary from a flavor perspective; if you mechanically want all casters to be spontaneous because predicting spells to prepare is too difficult or something, that's a separate concern.

Indeed, if magic isn't capable of a wide variety of effects then it doesn't feel, well, magical. But I think where these games tend to slip up is that, you can retain that feel by having magic capable of anything, but not necessarily everything.

In other words, yeah, that guy is a wizard, and with the right spells/feats he probably could solve the mystery, or win the arm-wrestling contest, or rain fiery death upon the area, or silently take out that key target from across the battlefield, or assemble a castle from nothing, or sneak into the guarded vault. But doing these things with magic, the "quick and easy way", should have drawbacks - some obvious, and some less apparent that can come back to bite the spellcaster later. The problem with magic is not that it can do anything, but that there is little reason not to do it the magical way, and that is what makes the mage go from "anything" to "everything."

What "magic" can do doesn't matter, what matters is what an individual magic-user can do. A caster being able to solve the mystery or win the arm-wrestling contest or rain fiery death upon the area or silently take out that key target from across the battlefield or assemble a castle from nothing or sneak into the guarded vault, as you say, is perfectly fine, and doesn't really need to have drawbacks attached; whether you get into a vault because you're charming, you're sneaky, you're invisible, or you're the Kool-Aid Man, all of those should be relatively equally viable and not punished because a certain approach should be arbitrarily harder.

What's actually problematic is a caster being able to solve the mystery and win the arm-wrestling contest and rain fiery death upon the area and silently take out that key target from across the battlefield and assemble a castle from nothing and sneak into the guarded vault, whether all at once or after some downtime power-shuffling. Wizards can "do everything" because they have no limit to how far they can expand their spellbooks, clerics and druids can "do everything" because they have access to their whole list, and that's the real problem. Capping the spellbook size (as was done in AD&D) and restriction clerics and druids to certain much smaller subsets of their list (as was also done in AD&D) fixes that problem, and addressing individual spells fixes the rest of the Casters Are Better Than You problem. In such a scenario, even if magic itself can do absolutely everything, individual casters are balanced just fine.

Psyren

2015-06-11, 02:42 PM

What's actually problematic is a caster being able to solve the mystery and win the arm-wrestling contest and rain fiery death upon the area and silently take out that key target from across the battlefield and assemble a castle from nothing and sneak into the guarded vault, whether all at once or after some downtime power-shuffling.

See, I would even argue that this is still fine if it requires downtime to either switch roles or recover uses. If said wizard can't do all these things in a single day/session, that's fine. If he can, but only once each and then must rely on the mundanes for repeat uses or to deal with the unexpected, that's fine too. And the standard drawbacks of magic (components, dispellability, antimagic etc.) should still apply, though they may not be relevant to all challenges or all foes.

Flickerdart

2015-06-11, 03:38 PM

It's also what every prepared caster does in 5e. I don't see how more flexible spell use (e.g., I can cast Fireball until I run out of slots, but I only prep it once, so I can prep a bunch of other spells besides a bucketload of Fireballs) does anything to solve the 'problem' without far fewer spell slots (which 5e has to an extent, but not as far as some would want it) or actually fixing problematic/gamebreaker spells.
It solves the problem of what happens when you make spells worse. Now you can prepare mordenkainen's slight discomfort without worrying that it's too narrow in use, whereas before you could prepare nothing but gate and still come out on top because it's applicable to any situation.

neonagash

2015-06-11, 04:00 PM

This approach is suggested a lot, but it has the big problem of reducing all martial characters to the same class, and while making the fighter a super-versatile class certainly helps bring it up to par it does so by shrinking the conceptual space for martial classes.

I strongly disagree. I dont think it shrinks the conceptual space at all. I think with just slightly more work on the players part the customization aspect actually vastly INCREASES the conceptual space into being limited more by the players imagination instead of being constrained into whatever combination a game writer happened to write in a book.

Added benefit of less wasted pages on fluff descriptions, default starting packages, yada yada.

It's like trying to duplicate all arcane casters with a wizard: yes, you can build one as a social manipulator, undead minionmaster, broad blaster, martial-focused gish, casting-focused gish, or an elementalist with varying degrees of effort, but having separate beguiler, dread necromancer, warmage, hexblade, duskblade, and wu jen classes gives you pre-packaged classes (to make expressing a concept easier)

I dont consider a bunch of pre-packaged classes replacing player freedom and creativity to be good.

Although there certainly is an analogue in that the wizard can do all those things and better then the niche classes and my martial would be able to do all the things the niche classes can do now, and better. But that sounds like eliminating redundancy and wasted pages to me.

We get rid of enough of this redundancy and we can all pay less for books and have less need to buy splat books that mainly collect dust and take up space.

Adding additional arcane casting classes didn't detract from the wizard by "dividing up its schtick,"

Thats because they didnt divide up his schtick. The wizard can still do what all those other classes can do and do it better. The other arcane casting classes are almost without exception mechanically inferior choices just taking a wizard.

The martials DID divide up the schtick though and take options away from the base class. Big difference.

As I mention every single time this is brought up, Vancian casting as expressed in D&D is a ritual system from mythology, it's just that Vancian wizards have figured out how to save rituals for later. In both cases, to summon a demon you pull out your musty old tome, inscribe a mystical diagram on the floor, wave your arms in mystic gestures, and chant arcane syllables and the demon's name for an hour. If you proceed to immediately follow that up with ten more minutes of chanting and then call "Demon, come forth!" and poof, a minor demon appears in your magic circle, you've cast a demon summoning ritual.

Except in Vancian its more like "handwaved research while everyone is sleeping and then 6 seconds of chanting when everyone is paying attention and boom your done"

I vastly prefer all that chanting to be done on screen, when it matters to the action and the players in question then to be able to be hand waved in the background into basically narrative fluff, when its even granted the level of relevance to get that much. Which is rarely.

There are plenty of ways to make Vancian feel more ritual-esque (most of which involve bringing back AD&D casting rules, like requiring 10 minutes per spell level to prepare one spell instead of stuffing everything into 1 hour of prep), but they really aren't necessary from a flavor perspective; if you mechanically want all casters to be spontaneous because predicting spells to prepare is too difficult or something, that's a separate concern.

There probably are some ways to make vancian better. But they are all a hell of a lot more work then just ditching. And since a lot of people dont really like it anyway, why keep it?

Sure nostalgia can be nice, but sometimes that dusty old highschool trophy needs to get shoved in a box in your attic to make way for newer, better stuff.

Its time to Vancian to be boxed.

Vitruviansquid

2015-06-11, 04:54 PM

Getting rid of almost all martial classes is not the answer for DnD. Maybe in another game with another brand, but not DnD. Players want to have their character concepts couched neatly into classes that have unique identities and unique abilities.

What's called for isn't axing classes and turning the game into mostly point-buy within a few archetypes, which is sort of what 3.5 already perversely does by creating a bewildering multitude of classes and sub-classes to fit every imaginable mechanical and fluff situation that could've been executed by point-buy. What's called for is the 4e way of having your bunch of classes, but with good enough niche protection and a sure-fire way to kill redundancy (for example, giving every class a unique powers list)

neonagash

2015-06-11, 05:07 PM

I don't think we need to be taking any ideas from the edition that killed d&d brand dominance.

If the early success of 5e and the continued rise of simpler retro clones is any indication a huge section of the gaming market is tired of rules heavy systems that lock you small, highly focused niches.

Psyren

2015-06-11, 05:37 PM

Vitruviansquid

2015-06-11, 07:04 PM

DnD can't survive without being rules-heavy because that's its niche. DnD can be much bigger and more complex than other systems because Wizards of the Coast has the money and the staff to do it, and other developers can't enter the niche because they don't.

If DnD ever gets significantly on the rules-light side of RPG's, they will be no better than any of the hundreds of systems cooked up by two guys in a basement.

PairO'Dice Lost

2015-06-11, 09:17 PM

See, I would even argue that this is still fine if it requires downtime to either switch roles or recover uses. If said wizard can't do all these things in a single day/session, that's fine. If he can, but only once each and then must rely on the mundanes for repeat uses or to deal with the unexpected, that's fine too. And the standard drawbacks of magic (components, dispellability, antimagic etc.) should still apply, though they may not be relevant to all challenges or all foes.

Downtime respeccing is fine if everyone can do it. A party of wizard/cleric/druid/erudite can handle hopping from a mystery to a journey to a battle to an assassination just fine, but a party of fighter/wizard/rogue/cleric has half the party able to adapt to new challenges and half stuck with whatever choices they made at character creation. Given the choice between making everyone as versatile as a cleric or wizard-with-a-huge-spellbook, or reducing cleric and wizard versatility to sorcerer or beguiler levels, I favor the latter approach, as it's much more manageable on both the player and DM side of the screen.

I strongly disagree. I dont think it shrinks the conceptual space at all. I think with just slightly more work on the players part the customization aspect actually vastly INCREASES the conceptual space into being limited more by the players imagination instead of being constrained into whatever combination a game writer happened to write in a book.

The conceptual space for anything in a game is always going to be limited by "whatever a game writer happened to write"--subject to expansion by houserules and such, of course, but limited just the same.

In this particular case, it's an issue of conceptual space being limited by how concepts are expressed mechanically. The wizard has a certain base flavor and certain base mechanics, and while you can reflavor it quite a bit you're still dealing with Vancian casting. There are concepts much better served by a warlock's at-will magic, a psion's point-based magic, a truenamer's skill-based magic, or other official and homebrew subsystems that can be expressed as a wizard but can be expressed better with more suitable mechanics.

Stuffing everything into the fighter class means you either give it a robust and complex resource system allowing it to duplicate many classes' mechanical feel (which many have tried and failed to do over the years), you let everyone frankenstein all sorts of resource systems together by taking a bunch of feats (which is certainly doable, but very inelegant and newbie-unfriendly), or you lose the mechanical feel of and support for partial casters like the paladin and ranger, state-based classes like the barbarian and marshal, maneuver users like the warblade and crusader, and so forth. Much better to give each of those their own class so as to give each the support it deserves.

I dont consider a bunch of pre-packaged classes replacing player freedom and creativity to be good.

Then it's a good thing that pre-packaged classes don't do that, isn't it?

From what I can tell, your perfect D&D would be a single-book point-based effects-based highly-customizable system. And you're in luck! It already exists! It's called GURPS, or HERO System in a pinch. It's certainly not D&D.

Yeah, yeah, I know, everyone says "It's not D&D!" to any changes, but there are some very good reasons to have a class-based system with more focused classes over one with a few broad classes:

1) Chunking. We humans can work best with groups of 7 ± 2 options at once, and being able to iteratively narrow things down rather than choosing from every single option at once reduces option paralysis. When Shadowrun moved from a priority-based system in 3e (where you prioritize metatype, attributes, skills, etc. and get more benefits in your higher-priority categories) to a purely points-based free-for-all in 4e, many people complained, even though the priority system was pretty badly borked in some ways (e.g. you might decide to put a 6 in Charisma instead of 5, but to do that you need more attribute points, so you need to bump up Attributes from Priority C to Priority B, which means recalculating everything on your sheet as every category is shuffled around) and even though you could still create exactly the same characters with pure point buy.

Why is that? Because people liked being able to take the initial step of ranking certain areas of their character, then addressing them one at a time, instead of just being given a pool of 400 points and told to go wild. Similarly, in D&D, saying "Here's a laundry list of abilities that can be used in various combinations to build any character from history or fiction. Have fun!" would be overwhelming for many people, even experienced players, and being able to say "I want to mainly be a magic-user, so that cuts out 3/4 of the options. I want to mainly blast people, so that cuts things down to wizard, sorcerer, wu jen, warlock, and warmage. I don't just want to blast people, so that cuts things down to wizard, sorcerer, and wu jen. Welp, don't like the fewer spells known, so sorcerer's out, and I want my special ability to be about fire, not Evocation, so wu jen it is!" is very helpful.

2) Flavor-mechanics consistency. When 5e initially pitched its character creation as "Pick race, pick background, pick class, go!" that was really popular, because people want to have flavor labels mean something. Many people come up with concepts based on remixes of fictional characters they know, like "I wanna be an archer who hunts criminals down, like a mix of Batman and Robin Hood!", so being able to just pick the Human race, Bounty Hunter background, Archer class, and Chaotic Good alignment and have that just work is perfect for them. People get upset when your barbarian doesn't rage and your Barbarian is a cultured, honorable warrior, and when their Swashbuckler is worse at swashbuckling than your Rogue. This isn't a reason to restrict reflavoring for those who like it, but it is a reason to provide nice big flavorful chunks in character creation rather than lots of small moving pieces.

3) Differing skill and investment levels. Every class in D&D provides a different play experience in four areas: optimization floor, optimization ceiling, difficulty of build, and difficulty of play. A warblade has a high optimization floor, low optimization ceiling, low build difficulty, and low play difficulty: as a player, you can throw something together by picking maneuvers at random, enter battle and use maneuvers at random, and you'll contribute fairly well, and you don't need to worry about breaking things with an accidentally overpowered combo. A wizard has a low optimization floor, high optimization ceiling, high build difficulty, and high play difficulty: If you don't put a lot of thought into building and playing your wizard, he's gonna suck, but if you do put a lot of thought into it--or just happen to stumble upon a broken combo--you can break the game in half.

The "break the game in half" thing is undesirable and an issue of balance rather than class design, but in general those four factors are important for satisfying different playstyles. Some people love playing Spreadsheets & Dragons, some people just want to smash or blast people all day. Some people like complex tactics but don't have lots of time to invest in building their characters, some will spend hours dumpster-diving for great things in all their books but when game day rolls around they've worked a 14-hour shift and don't want to have to think too hard. Varying class optimization and investment levels lets everyone play how they like best; AD&D's and 3e's problems are not being explicit about those divisions and leaning too much towards "casters are Hard Mode, fighters are for newbs."

So I doubt D&D is going to go classless any time soon, and I very strongly feel that they should not. If I want to play a more customizable game, there are plenty of others out there.

Thats because they didnt divide up his schtick. The wizard can still do what all those other classes can do and do it better. The other arcane casting classes are almost without exception mechanically inferior choices just taking a wizard.

The martials DID divide up the schtick though and take options away from the base class. Big difference.

That's exactly my point, that they didn't divide up the wizard's shtick to get other specialized caster classes. The specialized classes can coexist just fine with the wizard, each handling their own concept differently from the wizard's but still quite well, and the fighter can do the same with other martial classes.

Except in Vancian its more like "handwaved research while everyone is sleeping and then 6 seconds of chanting when everyone is paying attention and boom your done"

I vastly prefer all that chanting to be done on screen, when it matters to the action and the players in question then to be able to be hand waved in the background into basically narrative fluff, when its even granted the level of relevance to get that much. Which is rarely.

Then you're probably out of luck, because timeskipping is a thing in every game. In every single game I've played, long casting times--or downtime actions in general--get handwaved, because other players exist and don't want to sit there while Joe Wizard describes in detail how he lights the incense around his pentagram. Even in Dresden Files, where Thaumaturgy is a big thing for wizards and you're mechanically required to come up with roleplaying justifications for every bit of power goes into the spell, it almost always boils down to listing off the standard set of aspects you're tagging, figuring out if you're short a few plusses, having the other characters give a few sentences to get those last tags, and then the spell goes off and the game moves on, because wizards in DFRPG are spotlight-hoggy enough already.

If you want spell preparation to happen on-screen, do that. Roleplay the wizard's studying and chanting, the priest's daily prayers and minor religious ceremonies, the fighter's morning combat practice and sword-sharpening, the rogue's calisthenics and lockpick maintenance, and so forth. That's all up to your group's approach to roleplaying the small details; you can't mandate appreciation of flavor with rules.

There probably are some ways to make vancian better. But they are all a hell of a lot more work then just ditching. And since a lot of people dont really like it anyway, why keep it?

Sure nostalgia can be nice, but sometimes that dusty old highschool trophy needs to get shoved in a box in your attic to make way for newer, better stuff.

Its time to Vancian to be boxed.

Because "better" is a matter of taste, and in this case Vancian does exactly what it's designed to do both flavor-wise (emulate magical research and rituals) and mechanically (provide a toolbox of varying utility and combat effects via a strategic resource management minigame). Shadowrun uses drain casting for a reason (flavor-wise to allow mimicking real-world magic traditions with their totems and sacrifices and such, mechanically to make combat-time casting a matter of risk and reward like the rest of the game), Riddle of Steel uses aging-based casting for a reason (flavor-wise so that wizards are all very old Merlin types, mechanically to ensure that magic-users can be incredibly powerful but have a finite power over the length of the game), and so forth.

The fact that you don't like Vancian doesn't mean it's been outmoded, and ascribing its continued existence purely to nostalgia just shows you don't understand or don't care why it was (and is) used in the first place.

What's called for is the 4e way of having your bunch of classes, but with good enough niche protection and a sure-fire way to kill redundancy (for example, giving every class a unique powers list)

Assuming you mean a "unique powers list" in the sense that no two classes have the same power, that's a bad idea. Each class should certainly have many of its powers be unique, but enforcing uniqueness for every power just means that you get a lot of slightly-different-for-the-sake-of-difference powers as in 4e. Having a common pool of powers that PCs, NPCs, monsters, items, traps, and the like can draw upon is a good thing for the game, as it reduces bloat, makes it easier to learn what all the powers do, and ensures that you don't need to re-learn a whole big set of powers whenever you play a slightly different class.

Therefore I believe that rules-heavy is where the real growth potential lies. "Ask your DM" is an end-state, there's nothing left to refine there. But something like 3.5 or PF, which pages and pages of interactions/conditions/modifiers/general-to-specific-to-exception have a lot more room for distillation - particularly when it comes to digitizing/automating the calculation aspect of the game, as I was discussing above with the table PCs tangent.

Not to mention that having a lot of widgets and knobs to work with can spur creativity more than "ask your DM" does--the old "It's easier to come up with something to write about when given a prompt than when given a blank page" effect.

The Psionic Sandwich, the Borg Cube, decanter of endless water jetpacks, and similar silly D&Disms on the forums came about because someone saw interesting ways to work with and combine the mechanics and ran with them, whereas if you played nonhuman races via "ask your DM", got access to vehicles via "ask your DM", and could build devices via "ask your DM", there's not nearly as much there to spark the imagination. Hell, the whole Gramarie craze that swept the Playground a while back spawned dozens of games and hundreds of magipunk devices, all because people loved fiddling around with a complex system of interlocking parts to see what they could do; magipunk games where the DM says "standard rules, just refluff stuff or ask me to make a custom items" are far less successful.

Vitruviansquid

2015-06-11, 09:46 PM

Assuming you mean a "unique powers list" in the sense that no two classes have the same power, that's a bad idea. Each class should certainly have many of its powers be unique, but enforcing uniqueness for every power just means that you get a lot of slightly-different-for-the-sake-of-difference powers as in 4e. Having a common pool of powers that PCs, NPCs, monsters, items, traps, and the like can draw upon is a good thing for the game, as it reduces bloat, makes it easier to learn what all the powers do, and ensures that you don't need to re-learn a whole big set of powers whenever you play a slightly different class.

Luckily, the solutions to both of these problems have already been figured out in the system.

Individual powers can be like other individual powers because all powers are only part of entire classes, which do play notably different from each other. What matters is the entire package.

The difficulty of bloat is taken care of by a smoothed out character progression, so you give players only a few decisions to worry about every week or so.

PairO'Dice Lost

2015-06-11, 10:31 PM

Luckily, the solutions to both of these problems have already been figured out in the system.

Individual powers can be like other individual powers because all powers are only part of entire classes, which do play notably different from each other. What matters is the entire package.

It's not a question of whether classes play differently, it's a question of whether you have needless redundancy in the system. To pick on 4e for a bit, there are plenty of duplicate or near-duplicate powers: there's no reason to have both Sure Strike (fighter at-will, Str+2 vs. AC, 1[W]+Str damage on hit, 2[W]+Str damage on hit at 21st) and Careful Attack (ranger at-will, Str+2 vs. AC or Dex+2 vs. AC, 1[W] damage on hit, 2[W] damage on hit at 21st). Yes, the fighter version does slightly more damage and the ranger version works at range, but the important part of the attack is "you get a +2 to your next attack roll," and letting the fighter do things at range or letting the ranger do slightly more damage is not a game-breaking problem. In fact, slicing the class themes so finely that "fighter who uses big melee weapons" and "fighter who uses bows" are separate classes that can't cross pollinate is the kind of slightly-different-for-the-sake-of-difference thing I was talking about.

Given that there are so many [stat]+2 vs. [defense] powers in the game, making a single generic +2-to-attack power available to everyone would leave room for more distinct powers (and if giving every class a +2 on some attack rolls wrecks balance beyond recognition, the game has bigger problems). And that's not the only example, there are some much closer copies too, like the Kensai's Masterstroke encounter power which at level 21 is exactly the same as Sure Strike. And while we're at it, if we're heading in the direction of procedurally generating powers, why not do just that? Someone did (https://eternitypublishing.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/revised-4e-fighter/), and you can see that roughly 11 pages of fighter class features and powers can fit into 2 pages. Imagine if that kind of freeform power system were a generic shared system for martial classes and each one got its own set of mechanically interesting, non-numerically-based, differentiating powers.

That's what having a common set of shared powers is good for. The more identical or nearly identical powers go in that bucket, the more powers each class can have that are actually "unique" and different, and therefore the more distinguished and interesting each class is.

The difficulty of bloat is taken care of by a smoothed out character progression, so you give players only a few decisions to worry about every week or so.

First off, "a few decisions to worry about every week"? I hope you're talking about making a few decisions at level-up, and even then they should have more than a few decisions to make. Secondly, bloat is a matter of how large the decision pool is; even if you only get to pick 2 powers at each level, adding possible powers increases bloat, as we again saw in 4e.

Vitruviansquid

2015-06-12, 12:36 AM

It's not a question of whether classes play differently, it's a question of whether you have needless redundancy in the system. To pick on 4e for a bit, there are plenty of duplicate or near-duplicate powers: there's no reason to have both Sure Strike (fighter at-will, Str+2 vs. AC, 1[W]+Str damage on hit, 2[W]+Str damage on hit at 21st) and Careful Attack (ranger at-will, Str+2 vs. AC or Dex+2 vs. AC, 1[W] damage on hit, 2[W] damage on hit at 21st). Yes, the fighter version does slightly more damage and the ranger version works at range, but the important part of the attack is "you get a +2 to your next attack roll," and letting the fighter do things at range or letting the ranger do slightly more damage is not a game-breaking problem. In fact, slicing the class themes so finely that "fighter who uses big melee weapons" and "fighter who uses bows" are separate classes that can't cross pollinate is the kind of slightly-different-for-the-sake-of-difference thing I was talking about.

Well... no. There's no redundancy here because the existence of Sure Strike does not make the existence of Careful Attack unnecessary or vice versa.

Despite looking the same in a vacuum, Sure Strike and Careful Attack actually each have totally different purposes in-play. Fighters use Sure Strike to do some damage to an enemy and then keep them off other party members. Rangers use Careful Attack to kill people faster. Remember that both classes have class features that change the way all of their attacks work. And, of course, since the classes play different roles and have different jobs in the party, it's not redundant for them to have the same option, since they will use them in different contexts.

And then if you take away Sure Strike, you'll see that fighters will have fewer meaningful options. You are left with the Basic Attack or Reaping Strike for those situations where the enemy is not standing next to anyone, and it is inappropriate to push an enemy. Does Sure Strike and Reaping Strike have some niche overlap? Sure, they are both focused on doing extra single-target damage, but then they cater to different styles - Reaping strike is more about hedging one's bets.

If you take away Careful Attack, rangers also have fewer meaningful options. There are, of course, times when it would be inappropriate to shift and attack or attack and then move. Outside of specific twin strike optimization, there are also times when Careful Attack will be more attractive than Twin Strike as well as the opposite.

Given that there are so many [stat]+2 vs. [defense] powers in the game, making a single generic +2-to-attack power available to everyone would leave room for more distinct powers (and if giving every class a +2 on some attack rolls wrecks balance beyond recognition, the game has bigger problems). And that's not the only example, there are some much closer copies too, like the Kensai's Masterstroke encounter power which at level 21 is exactly the same as Sure Strike. And while we're at it, if we're heading in the direction of procedurally generating powers, why not do just that? Someone did (https://eternitypublishing.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/revised-4e-fighter/), and you can see that roughly 11 pages of fighter class features and powers can fit into 2 pages. Imagine if that kind of freeform power system were a generic shared system for martial classes and each one got its own set of mechanically interesting, non-numerically-based, differentiating powers.

Masterstroke is not as close to Sure Strike as you think. Remember that At-will powers compete with other At-will powers, whereas Encounter powers compete with other encounter powers. The existence of Masterstroke means you can take two much more situational At-Will powers, like Tide of Iron and Cleave, and then use your Encounter for when you badly just want to score a hit at all. Or on the flip side, the existence of Sure Strike means you can get another fancy Encounter power.

The procedurally generated powers system is cute and all, and possibly even appropriate to some of the more basic classes like Fighters and Rangers that WotC released for 4e, but if your impression is that all 4e classes could be handled like this, you have not read the Warlord.

You are going to have to explain to me what you mean by that last sentence in the above quoted section, because as I understood it, your argument was already that martial classes were using a "generic shared system" because powers are, in your opinion, so similar that nobody has anything unique. You are also going to have to explain what you mean by the construction "mechanically interesting, non-numerically-based, differentiating powers," because as I understand it, that already exists to a very far degree in 4e. Take Tides of Iron, for example, and you already have a power that has a fair amount of skill ceiling for a smart player to exploit (interesting), that is more or less powerful depending on how much you value pushing an opponent one space (non-numerically-based), and the ability to push 1 square isn't shared by any At-Will power from any other class in PHB 1 (differentiating).

That's what having a common set of shared powers is good for. The more identical or nearly identical powers go in that bucket, the more powers each class can have that are actually "unique" and different, and therefore the more distinguished and interesting each class is.

I think I've given a pretty fair explanation for why looking at powers in a vacuum doesn't say anything for how much redundancy there is in 4e, so let's switch gears and talk about this idea, that common sets of shared powers reduces redundancy.

So my opinion of this scheme is that no, it does not reduce redundancy. As an example, let's look at DnD 3.5, where common sets of shared powers exist.

Look at JaronK's tier list - the entire premise of tier 1, and to a lesser extent, tiers 2-3, is that there are some classes in the game that negate the need for other classes in the game. Talk about redundancy problems, this is probably the biggest one you'll ever see in any commonly played, popular RPG. The existence of a god tier is always worse for the game than the existence of a poop tier, because the god tier all the content below it, which is the majority of content, whereas the poop tier only erases everything in the poop tier. 4e definitely has its poop tier, but it has no god tier.

Common sets of shared powers has done DnD 3.5 no favors. In that game, they have always been too expansive, and thus too favorable toward the generalists, they have allowed wizards, clerics, and druids to do everything anyone else can do while also lacking identity compared to other power sets, except the martial "power set" of hitting guys, which has the unique identity of being good at nothing.

Now, do I think you *can* make a game with common shared power sets that does not blunder into all these redundancies that 3.5 has? Sure. But to do so would require a level of restraint that WotC did not have. All the common power sets should be themed and not generally break their themes, and then all the classes that share them should represent slightly different riffs on the set's theme, like wizard and sorcerer do already. But to do this would be to not leverage WotC's major advantage as an RPG developer - their money, staff, and brand name that lets them put out very complex systems with a ludicrous amount of high quality content. That's why I think unique power sets are the way to go for them.

First off, "a few decisions to worry about every week"? I hope you're talking about making a few decisions at level-up, and even then they should have more than a few decisions to make. Secondly, bloat is a matter of how large the decision pool is; even if you only get to pick 2 powers at each level, adding possible powers increases bloat, as we again saw in 4e.

The funny thing is, when the 4e edition warriors attack 3.5 for having classes so bad it basically means a player doesn't get to do anything, the 3.5 folks are quick to point out that it's healthy for a system to have simple classes alongside complex ones.

But anyways, I don't know why you'd bring up the decision pool on leveling up, because the decision pool for 4e is pretty manageable. There are a lot of powers in existence, but come on, you are only responsible for looking at the ones in your own class.

edit: replaced censored words for a common term used to describe a tier with a more socially acceptable word.

neonagash

2015-06-12, 01:17 AM

The folks who are tired of rules-heavy already have their product though. 5e already has plenty "ask your DM if they think this should work" or "just give them disadvantage if you're skeptical but want them to try anyway" and the bounded accuracy that allows that approach to remain plausible at all levels. At best you could make a 5.5 to continue in that trend and maybe provide a few more examples, but a whole new edition cannot revolutionize that formula further.

Therefore I believe that rules-heavy is where the real growth potential lies. "Ask your DM" is an end-state, there's nothing left to refine there. But something like 3.5 or PF, which pages and pages of interactions/conditions/modifiers/general-to-specific-to-exception have a lot more room for distillation - particularly when it comes to digitizing/automating the calculation aspect of the game, as I was discussing above with the table PCs tangent.

And we're talking about 6e.

Which trends say to me will be more open ended, more rules light and more gm adjudication heavy than 5e because that's how the market has been moving for a long time.

Also PF has the rules online for free. Their rise has been much less rules superiority then convenience, low barrier to entry and great adventures

PairO'Dice Lost

2015-06-12, 02:36 AM

Well... no. There's no redundancy here because the existence of Sure Strike does not make the existence of Careful Attack unnecessary or vice versa.

Despite looking the same in a vacuum, Sure Strike and Careful Attack actually each have totally different purposes in-play. Fighters use Sure Strike to do some damage to an enemy and then keep them off other party members. Rangers use Careful Attack to kill people faster. Remember that both classes have class features that change the way all of their attacks work. And, of course, since the classes play different roles and have different jobs in the party, it's not redundant for them to have the same option, since they will use them in different contexts.

That's exactly the point. It's not a matter of taking away a power from either class, it's a matter of consolidating those two powers into a single power that goes on both class lists. One power, +2 attack, normal basic attack damage, available to fighters and rangers (or, really, all martial classes). When creating the 3e warmage, they didn't write up an entirely separate spell list of new high-damage blasting spells, they just gave it a list of standard existing spells and gave the warmage Warmage Edge for the damage boost.

The procedurally generated powers system is cute and all, and possibly even appropriate to some of the more basic classes like Fighters and Rangers that WotC released for 4e, but if your impression is that all 4e classes could be handled like this, you have not read the Warlord.

You'll note that I said that should be a generic list of powers available to all martial classes, and that the fighter and ranger should fill out the resulting space in their lists with more interesting powers. Same thing with the wizard and sorcerer: a good half or so of their powers are XdY+Z damage of type W plus A effect and can be condensed quite a bit (like this, perhaps (https://eternitypublishing.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/revised-4e-wizard-class/)) to be replaced with more interesting effects. Fewer Force Orbs, Acid Arrows, and Frostburns, more Disguise Selfs, Levitates, and Arcane Gates.

You are going to have to explain to me what you mean by that last sentence in the above quoted section, because as I understood it, your argument was already that martial classes were using a "generic shared system" because powers are, in your opinion, so similar that nobody has anything unique.

No, I'm arguing that there are many powers that are similar and redundant, because the 4e paradigm is to have completely non-overlapping class power lists yet multiple classes want to have similar effects, and a hypothetical 6e class structure that uses relatively narrow classes (as was suggested above) should not use that model, but instead should provide a robust set of shared powers (as 3e does with spells, powers, maneuvers, etc.) to leave room for individual classes to have more different and interesting powers.

Tide of Iron, as you mentioned, is a good example of a power that sets the fighter apart and reinforces his theme (narrow as that theme may be); Cleave, Reaping Strike, and Sure Strike are not, because "hits multiple targets" and "does damage on a miss" and "gets attack bonuses" are not unique to the fighter, and there's no reason why any other martial class shouldn't be able to pick them up.

Common sets of shared powers has done DnD 3.5 no favors. In that game, they have always been too expansive, and thus too favorable toward the generalists, they have allowed wizards, clerics, and druids to do everything anyone else can do while also lacking identity compared to other power sets, except the martial "power set" of hitting guys, which has the unique identity of being good at nothing.

That's not an issue of shared powers, that's an issue of splatbooks favoring core classes. For most of 3e, the designers decided that they would only ever assume you have the core books when making new materials (which is obviously counterproductive when your marketing plan is "sell every book to everyone"), so every single book that came out with new spells had to give them to whatever new caster class was introduced in the book plus, optionally, the cleric, druid, and/or wizard. The problem is easily avoided if your new Spirit's Disapproval debuff spell in Heroes of Spookiness goes on the hexblade and wu jen spell lists instead of the wizard list, but if the wizard gets that spell because he's core and the hexblade and wu jen never see another spell officially added to their list, then there's obviously going to be a problem.

To take splatbooks out of the picture, consider core only for a moment. Just in core, each of the casters has a very distinctive character to their spell lists, because they haven't yet had all of their weak spots filled in and their strong spots reinforced because the devs were running out of ideas. Of the 39 1st level sorcerer/wizard spells in the PHB, there are only 12 that appear on that list alone. 14 out of 31 1st-level cleric spells appear only on the cleric list or domain lists, and 3 out of 20 1st-level druid spells appear only on the druid list, yet a starting druid is no less nature-y because he shares most of his selection of nature-y spells with the similarly nature-y ranger, and the cleric is no less cleric-y for sharing cause fear, obscuring mist, and summon monster I with two other classes each.

Now the designers could have split the summon monster line, for instance, into summon faithful servant, summon extraplanar minion, and summon dramatically appropriate companion to give clerics, wizards, and bards respectively their own summoning spell lines like the druid has summon nature's ally, but why do that when you can say "Celestial and fiendish creatures fit the theme of all three casters, let all three casters summon them"?

Notice further that each of these casters has at least 33 0th- and 1st-level spells to choose from, compared to a 4e wizard's 18 cantrips and 1st-level powers. Having overlap between lists lets you give classes more powers to choose from while writing fewer powers overall, which also means individual powers can be more complex and out-there as more time can be spent designing and testing each one. Having a known set of shared spells also lets you focus on class features more when working on a new class; the beguiler shares around half of his list with the bard or an enchantment- and illusion-focused wizard, but the remaining half and more importantly his class features set him apart from them.

Now, do I think you *can* make a game with common shared power sets that does not blunder into all these redundancies that 3.5 has? Sure. But to do so would require a level of restraint that WotC did not have. All the common power sets should be themed and not generally break their themes, and then all the classes that share them should represent slightly different riffs on the set's theme, like wizard and sorcerer do already. But to do this would be to not leverage WotC's major advantage as an RPG developer - their money, staff, and brand name that lets them put out very complex systems with a ludicrous amount of high quality content. That's why I think unique power sets are the way to go for them.

Oh, well, if we're talking what WotC is specifically capable of, yeah, the 8 remaining part-time guys working on D&D would have no idea what they're doing if tasked with writing 6e and it would go down in flames. Just as with all the 5e playtest threads, though, I thought we were talking about what they should do, not what they're likely to do. :smallwink:

The funny thing is, when the 4e edition warriors attack 3.5 for having classes so bad it basically means a player doesn't get to do anything, the 3.5 folks are quick to point out that it's healthy for a system to have simple classes alongside complex ones.

Of course it is, and I said the same above; that's one of the points of a class system. There's a difference, though, between "There should be classes where you only have to make a few decisions every few weeks" (what I said) and "You should give players only a few decisions every few weeks" (what you said). The former is adjusting the complexity of classes to suit different playstyles, the latter is enforcing the same simplicity on all the classes.

But anyways, I don't know why you'd bring up the decision pool on leveling up, because the decision pool for 4e is pretty manageable. There are a lot of powers in existence, but come on, you are only responsible for looking at the ones in your own class.

4e didn't suffer from too much bloat mostly because it lasted only a few years and not all of the planned splats materialized. But to take a look at martial types again, Martial Power roughly doubled the number of powers for each of the martial PHB classes, and Martial Power 2 added roughly the same number again, and even just 12 at-wills to choose from started lots of grumbling about power bloat shortly before Essentials came out. If 6e took the 4e route and didn't die a quick death, you're looking at essentially writing multiple whole new power progressions for every class, which quickly starts to run out of new and interesting powers and quickly starts to overwhelm newbies.

Contrast this to the 3e way: Complete Arcane landed with 26 new 1st level spells, exactly 2/3 the number of 1st level wizard spells in the PHB...but these are spells for the druid, warmage, wizard, and wu jen, not just one class. Much more room for diversity and interesting spells, less material overall to go through, better for both designers and players. And on the subject of only looking at the ones in your own class, a new player who plays a warmage and later plays a blasty wizard has already seen quite a few of his spells and doesn't need to learn as much, whereas a 4e newb who starts with a sorcerer and later plays a wizard needs to learn everything from scratch; the more campaigns someone plays, the more benefit you have from shared material between classes, which is an important consideration when people stick with an edition for a decade if not longer.

And we're talking about 6e.

Which trends say to me will be more open ended, more rules light and more gm adjudication heavy than 5e because that's how the market has been moving for a long time.

At the tail end of 2e, TSR was in dire straits and White Wolf ruled the RPG world with its highly narrative World of Darkness games. A lot of people predicted that D&D would take a page out of the WoD playbook and go more rules-light to try to draw back in the people who'd jumped ship from D&D to WoD. And yet, when 3e came out, it was as rules-heavy as D&D had ever been, because rules-heavy is D&D's thing, and it was the most successful D&D edition to date.

At the tail end of 3e, the industry was once again looking like it was leaning in a rules-light direction. Dogs in the Vineyard, Primetime Adventures, Mountain Witch, Serenity, Don't Rest Your Head, and other unbearably quirky indie games were the ones everyone had been talking about for the past few years, and OSR games like Castles & Crusades, Basic Fantasy, Dice & Glory, Mazes & Minotaurs, OSRIC, and Labyrinth Lord were extolling the benefits of less crunchy "back to basics" gaming. And yet, when 4e came out, it was as rules-heavy as D&D had ever been, because rules-heavy is D&D's thing, and while it fractured the playerbase it did do fairly well financially and got its own group of diehards.

When 5e came out, it went more rules-light than D&D has gone in quite some time...and the D&D dev team and D&D profits are also lower than has been the case for quite some time. Even the famously pro-most-recent-edition EnWorld has had a lukewarm reaction (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?457197-Unearthed-Arcana-Variant-Rules) to some of the latest previews.

I would be very surprised if WotC didn't lean more rules-heavy with 6e, trying to get back to what worked best.

Psyren

2015-06-12, 09:14 AM

Downtime respeccing is fine if everyone can do it. A party of wizard/cleric/druid/erudite can handle hopping from a mystery to a journey to a battle to an assassination just fine, but a party of fighter/wizard/rogue/cleric has half the party able to adapt to new challenges and half stuck with whatever choices they made at character creation. Given the choice between making everyone as versatile as a cleric or wizard-with-a-huge-spellbook, or reducing cleric and wizard versatility to sorcerer or beguiler levels, I favor the latter approach, as it's much more manageable on both the player and DM side of the screen.

Being locked in only matters though if there's no way to build in such a way as to address all these campaign types. For the rogue there most certainly is, and the fighter quite simply can't do much in a political intrigue campaign, which is kind of what I'd expect. It's right there in the name, you pick that guy for fighting, so it's the GM's responsibility to warn you "hey, you might want someone a little more versatile for this campaign, or at least be okay with following the others around until a fight does break out."

Then it's a good thing that pre-packaged classes don't do that, isn't it?

From what I can tell, your perfect D&D would be a single-book point-based effects-based highly-customizable system. And you're in luck! It already exists! It's called GURPS, or HERO System in a pinch. It's certainly not D&D.

Yeah, yeah, I know, everyone says "It's not D&D!" to any changes, but there are some very good reasons to have a class-based system with more focused classes over one with a few broad classes:

1) Chunking. We humans can work best with groups of 7 ± 2 options at once, and being able to iteratively narrow things down rather than choosing from every single option at once reduces option paralysis. When Shadowrun moved from a priority-based system in 3e (where you prioritize metatype, attributes, skills, etc. and get more benefits in your higher-priority categories) to a purely points-based free-for-all in 4e, many people complained, even though the priority system was pretty badly borked in some ways (e.g. you might decide to put a 6 in Charisma instead of 5, but to do that you need more attribute points, so you need to bump up Attributes from Priority C to Priority B, which means recalculating everything on your sheet as every category is shuffled around) and even though you could still create exactly the same characters with pure point buy.

Why is that? Because people liked being able to take the initial step of ranking certain areas of their character, then addressing them one at a time, instead of just being given a pool of 400 points and told to go wild. Similarly, in D&D, saying "Here's a laundry list of abilities that can be used in various combinations to build any character from history or fiction. Have fun!" would be overwhelming for many people, even experienced players, and being able to say "I want to mainly be a magic-user, so that cuts out 3/4 of the options. I want to mainly blast people, so that cuts things down to wizard, sorcerer, wu jen, warlock, and warmage. I don't just want to blast people, so that cuts things down to wizard, sorcerer, and wu jen. Welp, don't like the fewer spells known, so sorcerer's out, and I want my special ability to be about fire, not Evocation, so wu jen it is!" is very helpful.

2) Flavor-mechanics consistency. When 5e initially pitched its character creation as "Pick race, pick background, pick class, go!" that was really popular, because people want to have flavor labels mean something. Many people come up with concepts based on remixes of fictional characters they know, like "I wanna be an archer who hunts criminals down, like a mix of Batman and Robin Hood!", so being able to just pick the Human race, Bounty Hunter background, Archer class, and Chaotic Good alignment and have that just work is perfect for them. People get upset when your barbarian doesn't rage and your Barbarian is a cultured, honorable warrior, and when their Swashbuckler is worse at swashbuckling than your Rogue. This isn't a reason to restrict reflavoring for those who like it, but it is a reason to provide nice big flavorful chunks in character creation rather than lots of small moving pieces.

3) Differing skill and investment levels. Every class in D&D provides a different play experience in four areas: optimization floor, optimization ceiling, difficulty of build, and difficulty of play. A warblade has a high optimization floor, low optimization ceiling, low build difficulty, and low play difficulty: as a player, you can throw something together by picking maneuvers at random, enter battle and use maneuvers at random, and you'll contribute fairly well, and you don't need to worry about breaking things with an accidentally overpowered combo. A wizard has a low optimization floor, high optimization ceiling, high build difficulty, and high play difficulty: If you don't put a lot of thought into building and playing your wizard, he's gonna suck, but if you do put a lot of thought into it--or just happen to stumble upon a broken combo--you can break the game in half.

The "break the game in half" thing is undesirable and an issue of balance rather than class design, but in general those four factors are important for satisfying different playstyles. Some people love playing Spreadsheets & Dragons, some people just want to smash or blast people all day. Some people like complex tactics but don't have lots of time to invest in building their characters, some will spend hours dumpster-diving for great things in all their books but when game day rolls around they've worked a 14-hour shift and don't want to have to think too hard. Varying class optimization and investment levels lets everyone play how they like best; AD&D's and 3e's problems are not being explicit about those divisions and leaning too much towards "casters are Hard Mode, fighters are for newbs."

So I doubt D&D is going to go classless any time soon, and I very strongly feel that they should not. If I want to play a more customizable game, there are plenty of others out there.

+1 to all of this.

Not to mention that having a lot of widgets and knobs to work with can spur creativity more than "ask your DM" does--the old "It's easier to come up with something to write about when given a prompt than when given a blank page" effect.

The Psionic Sandwich, the Borg Cube, decanter of endless water jetpacks, and similar silly D&Disms on the forums came about because someone saw interesting ways to work with and combine the mechanics and ran with them, whereas if you played nonhuman races via "ask your DM", got access to vehicles via "ask your DM", and could build devices via "ask your DM", there's not nearly as much there to spark the imagination. Hell, the whole Gramarie craze that swept the Playground a while back spawned dozens of games and hundreds of magipunk devices, all because people loved fiddling around with a complex system of interlocking parts to see what they could do; magipunk games where the DM says "standard rules, just refluff stuff or ask me to make a custom items" are far less successful.

Agreed here as well.

And we're talking about 6e.

Which trends say to me will be more open ended, more rules light and more gm adjudication heavy than 5e because that's how the market has been moving for a long time.

But that's exactly my point - how do you get even lighter than 5e and still have a rulebook at all? It's a dead end.

Hell, they even issued errata (http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/ph_errata) recently; the playerbase was clamoring to know "hey WotC, when can I hide? The rules aren't clear." The official answer from the designers was literally "ask your DM." No guidance, no diagrams, no examples/scenarios, nothing.

Also PF has the rules online for free. Their rise has been much less rules superiority then convenience, low barrier to entry and great adventures.

Totally agreed - which is why there is so much more growth potential in this direction, the rules have a lot more refinement to go. Rules heavy is not easy to write and causes all kinds of snarls that you can literally spend years disentangling.

Flickerdart

2015-06-12, 09:19 AM

Being locked in only matters though if there's no way to build in such a way as to address all these campaign types. For the rogue there most certainly is, and the fighter quite simply can't do much in a political intrigue campaign, which is kind of what I'd expect. It's right there in the name, you pick that guy for fighting, so it's the GM's responsibility to warn you "hey, you might want someone a little more versatile for this campaign, or at least be okay with following the others around until a fight does break out."

The problem arises when the fighter is supposed to represent characters like knights, who were court-savvy noblemen in addition to their role as "dude on horse". There's nothing wrong with making sure that all classes can contribute to out-of-combat encounters.

"Guy who fights and does literally nothing else" is already represented by the Warrior, who is appropriately an NPC class.

Hawkstar

2015-06-12, 09:44 AM

Amphetryon

2015-06-12, 09:46 AM

At the tail end of 3e, the industry was once again looking like it was leaning in a rules-light direction. Dogs in the Vineyard, Primetime Adventures, Mountain Witch, Serenity, Don't Rest Your Head, and other unbearably quirky indie games were the ones everyone had been talking about for the past few years, and OSR games like Castles & Crusades, Basic Fantasy, Dice & Glory, Mazes & Minotaurs, OSRIC, and Labyrinth Lord were extolling the benefits of less crunchy "back to basics" gaming. And yet, when 4e came out, it was as rules-heavy as D&D had ever been, because rules-heavy is D&D's thing, and while it fractured the playerbase it did do fairly well financially and got its own group of diehards.It should be noted that two related reasons for the 'fracture' of the Player base were the discontinuation of the Dragon/Dungeon magazines (which forced the former publisher of said magazines to look for new revenue sources or close shop entirely), in combination with the OGL (which provided the former publisher, already with name-recognition and a decent sized fan base, with a ready-made option for new revenue). 3.5 Grognards who wanted new products but didn't want what they perceived as the radical switch to 4e could play Pathfinder without as much adaptation of new rules needed, as evidenced by the number of folks who talk about playing "3.P" games.

These were not the exclusive reasons for the perceived "fracturing," but they were exclusive to 3e because of that otherwise unusual combination of circumstances.

Psyren

2015-06-12, 10:17 AM

The problem arises when the fighter is supposed to represent characters like knights, who were court-savvy noblemen in addition to their role as "dude on horse". There's nothing wrong with making sure that all classes can contribute to out-of-combat encounters.

"Guy who fights and does literally nothing else" is already represented by the Warrior, who is appropriately an NPC class.

See, that's not what I think of at all. When I think of Warrior I think of the guy who fights for a living but isn't particularly skilled at it - the town guard, or the tavern rowdy/bouncer, or the common militia soldier. A Fighter meanwhile is the guy who becomes a blademaster, or special forces, or a high-demand mercenary. And none of those professions require much in the way of social skills at all, as it's your swordarm that will pay the bills.

I mean, if you want your fighter to be a court-savvy nobleman, you can definitely do that (at least in PF.) Have above-average Int and Cha, represent your upper-crust breeding with a couple of traits (that give you the face skills as class skills etc) and then devote a few points to those skills. But it is not inherent to the concept of being a "Fighter," and should not be part of the class for that reason. It should be based on your attributes, traits and skill selection instead. About the only change I would make to Fighter is giving them 4+Int skills and making the Stamina system baseline.

Segev

2015-06-12, 10:19 AM

The problem with magic is not that it can do anything, but that there is little reason not to do it the magical way, and that is what makes the mage go from "anything" to "everything."

This is actually an excellent point. Doing things "the magic way" - especially when "the magic way" is always the go-to solution for a particular class - should cost something significant that makes having "the mundane way" around a good alternative.

As it stands, "why bother with a rogue? We have Knock," is an issue. The cost to knock is supposed to be spell slots and gp (for wands et al), but these costs become significantly smaller as you level up and, if you don't encounter enough locked doors and chests to justify a person whose major schtick includes opening them, it's far less investment to just have a second wizard (able to do "anything") with one more casting of the spell than to "waste" an entire party slot on the one-trick pony.

(Yes, I am exaggerating, but I think the point is clear.)

5e approaches this problem by making spell slots far more sharply limited. I haven't really seen how they handle magic items, but I haven't heard about "just buy a wand" as a viable alternative, so it's likely they've tackled that a bit, as well.

So making it cost more so that the wizard has a good reason to be grateful when somebody who specializes joins the party - freeing him from one more concern in how to invest his own resources - is at least a big step in the right direction.

JAL_1138

2015-06-12, 10:28 AM

This is actually an excellent point. Doing things "the magic way" - especially when "the magic way" is always the go-to solution for a particular class - should cost something significant that makes having "the mundane way" around a good alternative.

As it stands, "why bother with a rogue? We have Knock," is an issue. The cost to knock is supposed to be spell slots and gp (for wands et al), but these costs become significantly smaller as you level up and, if you don't encounter enough locked doors and chests to justify a person whose major schtick includes opening them, it's far less investment to just have a second wizard (able to do "anything") with one more casting of the spell than to "waste" an entire party slot on the one-trick pony.

(Yes, I am exaggerating, but I think the point is clear.)

5e approaches this problem by making spell slots far more sharply limited. I haven't really seen how they handle magic items, but I haven't heard about "just buy a wand" as a viable alternative, so it's likely they've tackled that a bit, as well.

So making it cost more so that the wizard has a good reason to be grateful when somebody who specializes joins the party - freeing him from one more concern in how to invest his own resources - is at least a big step in the right direction.

In 5e, Knock is very, very loud. I'm AFB and forget if it's audible out to 100ft, 100yds, or 300yds, but it can't be done quietly. Spells like Charm Person wear off in a minute and the target knows they've been charmed. Magic items aren't supposed to be purchasable, and the crafting rules are odd enough and time consuming enough to amount to "don't," although arguably a little less harsh than 2e's were.

Segev

2015-06-12, 10:59 AM

Amphetryon

2015-06-12, 11:02 AM

Good starts, particularly on knock, though I think it could be codified a bit more simply: Not only should specialized, non-spellcaster means of doing things be more consistent, they should also be generally superior/more reliable.

This makes me wonder why Wizards, with their statistically superior INT scores, would consistently gravitate toward solutions that are generally inferior/less reliable.

Flickerdart

2015-06-12, 11:36 AM

But it is not inherent to the concept of being a "Fighter," and should not be part of the class for that reason.
One could make the same argument that spells which raise the undead are not inherent to the concept of being a "Wizard" and should belong to a Necromancer class instead, and yet they get them all.

Segev

2015-06-12, 12:55 PM

This makes me wonder why Wizards, with their statistically superior INT scores, would consistently gravitate toward solutions that are generally inferior/less reliable.

Why do computer scientists, who are statistically smarter than your average construction worker, not go out and build muscle mass and study construction techniques rather than develop code to do the things they do well?

The reason wizards wouldn't do "something else" is because they are good at what they do. The whole idea is to make it so that wizardry stops being the best at everything. Now, for a wizard who had a spell to do the thing he wants to do, and only needs to do it incidentally, it's probably worth the less efficient means for his personal convenience. But if he needs to do it regularly or at a high degree of skill (rather than "good enough,") he goes and gets a professional.

In other words, they do go for the most optimal solutions when practical. The optimal solution might be "hire somebody else." The most convenient solution might still be "do some magic," even if you're technically spending more effort for a lesser result than would somebody else you hired.

Psyren

2015-06-12, 12:56 PM

This makes me wonder why Wizards, with their statistically superior INT scores, would consistently gravitate toward solutions that are generally inferior/less reliable.

Quite simply, because it lets them do things they never trained for. Yeah waving your hand and unlocking a door might be worse in 5e than using a set of lockpicks, but if you can't use lockpicks at all then the point is moot, you'll use the tools available to you. You'll put it in your spellbook because knowing how to do something and not needing it is better than needing something and not knowing how to do it, but you will defer to the Rogue instead if that is an option, letting that player participate in the game.

For 5e Knock I think they went too far in the other direction personally - having a verbal component would have been enough, they didn't need to make it that loud - but maybe there's a way to mitigate that, I don't know.

EDIT: Segev said it better.

One could make the same argument that spells which raise the undead are not inherent to the concept of being a "Wizard" and should belong to a Necromancer class instead, and yet they get them all.

One could, but the game is better served by having wizards be a general caster class that the player can choose to specialize. Wizards are much more complex, needing to learn an entire separate chapter of the book (i.e. Magic) to function, so locking the player in to one school/set of spells without even knowing what they are, what they'll do or even whether they will find the ones they want isn't exactly fair.

Flickerdart

2015-06-12, 01:59 PM

One could, but the game is better served by having wizards be a general caster class that the player can choose to specialize. Wizards are much more complex, needing to learn an entire separate chapter of the book (i.e. Magic) to function, so locking the player in to one school/set of spells without even knowing what they are, what they'll do or even whether they will find the ones they want isn't exactly fair.
This attitude is exactly why magic can do everything and mundanes can't.

Lord Raziere

2015-06-12, 02:05 PM

This attitude is exactly why magic can do everything and mundanes can't.

yeah, its a double-standard. mundanes have to be specialized for their roles but casters get all the spells they could possibly want because its apparently more efficient to have one class able to specialize into many roles, yet we don't see any class designed for mundanes that allow one to have access to everything they can do but allow them to specialize in one role as well like the wizard.

Amphetryon

2015-06-12, 02:14 PM

Why do computer scientists, who are statistically smarter than your average construction worker, not go out and build muscle mass and study construction techniques rather than develop code to do the things they do well?

The reason wizards wouldn't do "something else" is because they are good at what they do. The whole idea is to make it so that wizardry stops being the best at everything. Now, for a wizard who had a spell to do the thing he wants to do, and only needs to do it incidentally, it's probably worth the less efficient means for his personal convenience. But if he needs to do it regularly or at a high degree of skill (rather than "good enough,") he goes and gets a professional.

In other words, they do go for the most optimal solutions when practical. The optimal solution might be "hire somebody else." The most convenient solution might still be "do some magic," even if you're technically spending more effort for a lesser result than would somebody else you hired.

But, the proposed fix was to make magic never the optimal solution for anything, as the mundane solution "should also be generally superior/more reliable." Computer scientists are the optimal solution for working with computers. That's a fundamental shift in the proposed paradigm. Why the folks with intelligence generally reckoned to be beyond real-life human capacity would study to always have a solution which is generally inferior/less reliable compared to another solution for any given problem is baffling to me, and is not represented by your computer scientist analogy, unless you're saying there's a better (superior/more reliable, not more convenient) choice for your Computer Science needs than calling a computer scientist.

neonagash

2015-06-12, 02:18 PM

The folks who are tired of rules-heavy already have their product though. 5e already has plenty "ask your DM if they think this should work" or "just give them disadvantage if you're skeptical but want them to try anyway" and the bounded accuracy that allows that approach to remain plausible at all levels. At best you could make a 5.5 to continue in that trend and maybe provide a few more examples, but a whole new edition cannot revolutionize that formula further.

A new edition doesnt need to revolutionize anything. I mean really, lets be honest here, the real reason for new editions is that WoTC thinks they cant sell any more PHB's for the last edition and want to get paid, so poof time for a new edition.

Rules light has lots of room for innovation anyway. Spells could be innovated in any number of ways, my personal favorite being an elements of magic style approach.

Martial fighting styles could be implemented for more flair in combat.

A psionic system that actually feels different then magic could be created.

Hell I'd love to see the sacred cow of HP slaughtered and slathered in sauce in favor of almost any other system of health.

I'd also like to see the game a little more divorced from Genre and with more built in dials and levers to adjust for more or less gritty settings. Like we were promised with 5e and not delivered on.

And finally some dang build in technological innovation. They are years behind even pathfinder in this and its ridiculous.

Segev

2015-06-12, 02:28 PM

Requiring specialization is one way to prevent the omnipotent character. Frankly, I'd prefer to see skills be at risk of the same sort of breadth that spells tend to be.

If the spellcaster is to be the jack of all trades based on "there's a spell for that," then the spells need to have significant individual drawbacks, or the casting of them needs to be costly or "weak" enough that specializing in it with repeatability is superior.

The other side of the coin, of course, is that "mundanes" should not really be all that mundane. They should be using ki, or nen, or chakra, or supernal will, or enlightenment, or supreme prowess, or whatever you want to call it to achieve effects that are currently restricted by the attitude "that's magic." If you have to laden the fighter and rogue at high level with (Su) abilities to soothe your sensibilities, by all means, do so. But they should have them.

The supreme skillmaster class (the rogue) should probably have some floating number of "phantom skill ranks" or even just "floating bonuses" that they can expend for one-off bonuses to skill checks, so that by level 15 or so they're regularly (if still not constantly) performing epic skill uses. And skills should do a LOT more. Not by having more skills, but by giving more mechanics to them. When writing a new splat book, one of the things that should come up is "new uses for skills," and they should rarely cost more investment. New feats cost investment. Skill tricks, sadly, cost investment. Spells rarely do, because spells are free additions to divine classes and just cost gp for wizards. (Spontcasters have it a little harder, but still not as harsh as feats for even fighters.)

Maybe fighters should be able to pick up new feats through "training techniques" that essentially cost gold and time, the way wizards can add spells to their spellbooks. Make that a fighter class feature, with some sort of tie-in to fighter level; maybe their "fighter bonus feats" are actually "feat slots" they can train in and out for the feats they've bought with "technique training." And every fighter level gets them +1 free technique, the way wizards get 2 spells/level.

Psyren

2015-06-12, 02:57 PM

This attitude is exactly why magic can do everything and mundanes can't.

And we've come full-circle, because I've already said I have no problem with magic being able to do anything. There simply has to be a trade-off/limited resource associated that keeps "anything" from becoming "everything." 5e managed this via the concentration mechanic and eliminating bonus spells - it worked, but personally I think the former was excessive.

yeah, its a double-standard. mundanes have to be specialized for their roles but casters get all the spells they could possibly want because its apparently more efficient to have one class able to specialize into many roles, yet we don't see any class designed for mundanes that allow one to have access to everything they can do but allow them to specialize in one role as well like the wizard.

Of course it's a double-standard. If magic weren't more universally capable, what would be the point of learning it?

The goal here is to make mundanes still a handy element to have around, not to make magic as a whole niche or pointless.

Lord Raziere

2015-06-12, 03:01 PM

Of course it's a double-standard. If magic weren't more universally capable, what would be the point of learning it?

The goal here is to make mundanes still a handy element to have around, not to make magic as a whole niche or pointless.

.....tell me, are you more universally capable than others just because you have a different job than them? or are you just one person doing one specialized thing of a bigger whole?

Flickerdart

2015-06-12, 03:42 PM

And we've come full-circle, because I've already said I have no problem with magic being able to do anything.
Then why do you have a problem with mundanes being able to do anything?

JAL_1138

2015-06-12, 06:17 PM

6e: Just clean up/streamline 2e--using 2e's basic mechanics for the guts--the way 5e did with 3rd/D20. Make characters and monsters relatively cross-compatible, or at least drop-in-replaceable (e.g., run adventure as written, drop in the current edition's monsters with the same names, and it'll work). In other words, an updated, streamlined retro-not-quite-a-clone. Write the DMG more like 1e's, though (albeit better-organized); even as a 2e diehard I'll admit 1e's was generally more useful and typically had better DM advice. Don't let anybody who worked on the halfling art for 5e get near it.

Boom, there's your 6th edition.

Psyren

2015-06-12, 09:32 PM

.....tell me, are you more universally capable than others just because you have a different job than them? or are you just one person doing one specialized thing of a bigger whole?

I'm not a magic user, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Then why do you have a problem with mundanes being able to do anything?

Because it's not magic? The very word means "special." Should Dudley have equal potential to Harry Potter?

Milo v3

2015-06-12, 09:37 PM

I'm not a magic user, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Because it's not magic? The very word means "special." Should Dudley have equal potential to Harry Potter?

And this is why the only non-magical classes should be NPC classes in my opinion.

Seerow

2015-06-12, 09:41 PM

And this is why the only non-magical classes should be NPC classes in my opinion.

Yeah if your baseline for "nonmagical player character" is fricken Dudley, they need to be NPCs. Introduce something similar to Shadowrun Martial Adepts for people who want to play a dude with a sword/bow, they just get magical assistance in doing so to let them keep up.

But that's not really an option for a new edition of D&D, because having a non-magical Fighter standing next to the Wizard has been a thing since day one, and isn't about to go away anytime in the next few decades. So instead either the Wizard needs a massive trimming down, or the Fighter needs an increase in scope.

Lord Raziere

2015-06-12, 10:30 PM

Because it's not magic? The very word means "special." Should Dudley have equal potential to Harry Potter?

ok, yeah but why should rogues and fighters be Dudley? Dudley sucks! why should a fighter or rogue have to be Dudley!? why can't they be something just as cool as Harry Potter but y'know.....in a not-magical way?

Segev

2015-06-13, 12:07 AM

Harry Potter is a bad example.

Fighters should be able to be Ichigo. Monks should be able to be Gohan. Rogues should be able to be Kid Loki. Bards should be able to be Justy Ueki Tylor.

Hawkstar

2015-06-13, 11:41 AM

Of course it's a double-standard. If magic weren't more universally capable, what would be the point of learning it?
Because it's safer/easier to learn than more specialized tasks? Sure, that scorching ray and Mage armor spells you learned won't make you a God of War in combat, but it's much safer to learn and can keep you safe from getting jumped by most thugs, as opposed to a Fighter who, while much better at protecting and

Likewise, while "Knock" and "Invisibility" are nothing compared to what a talented rogue can do, they merely required a few years in a library where the biggest threat you might face is a papercut, as opposed to needing to skulk around in a bad neighborhood where a single wrong move could get you a knife in the back. And, magic can do a few things nothing else can.

Kish

2015-06-13, 11:45 AM

"Study magic because it's simpler, easier, and safer than the alternative."

Thematically I find that hilarious.

Psyren

2015-06-13, 03:38 PM

And this is why the only non-magical classes should be NPC classes in my opinion.

I find absolutes like this very silly because no class in this game is truly "non-magical" - even if their magic comes from items, using magic is an expectation unless you want to limit your activities to fighting bandits and bears. (And of course, even then any moderate or greater injury would take days if not weeks of recovery.)

Yeah if your baseline for "nonmagical player character" is fricken Dudley, they need to be NPCs. Introduce something similar to Shadowrun Martial Adepts for people who want to play a dude with a sword/bow, they just get magical assistance in doing so to let them keep up.

But that's not really an option for a new edition of D&D, because having a non-magical Fighter standing next to the Wizard has been a thing since day one, and isn't about to go away anytime in the next few decades. So instead either the Wizard needs a massive trimming down, or the Fighter needs an increase in scope.

Both 4e and 5e have "massively trimmed down" the wizard, so if that's what you were hoping for then go nuts :smalltongue:

ok, yeah but why should rogues and fighters be Dudley? Dudley sucks! why should a fighter or rogue have to be Dudley!? why can't they be something just as cool as Harry Potter but y'know.....in a not-magical way?

See, that's the disconnect I feel we're having here. I think you can still be "cool" without necessarily being "as cool as Harry." By all means beef the martials up, give them more capability - but in my opinion, magic should still be overall superior.

Segev

2015-06-13, 04:16 PM

Amphetryon

2015-06-13, 04:31 PM

By all means beef the martials up, give them more capability - but in my opinion, magic should still be overall superior.
And as long as there remain at least two distinct camps on this issue, with the 'mundanes should be as powerful as magic-wielders' folks at odds with the 'magic should be superior' folks, people will continue to argue about how wrong those in the other camp are.

Psyren

2015-06-13, 07:02 PM

You have to be careful with statements like "magic should be overall superior."

Why would you want to play Dudley when you could play Harry? Yes, some people might like playing a commoner or aristocrat "for the challenge," but generally, you don't go into an RPG thinking, "I want to play the scrub who isn't useful to the party." You don't even go in thinking, "I want to play the second or third fiddle; let another player play the important part." Just as every person is the main character in ihs personal story, most of the time, every PC is their player's "main character." Games are designed to be ensembles for that reason, and designing it such that one favored player is playing The Main Character is usually not done.

But you can be "useful to the party" without being "equal to the wizard." And the wizard isn't necessarily The Main Character either; Sturm, Tanis and especially Tasslehoff got more screentime than Raistlin did, and everyone contributed to the party's success in their own way. Goldmoon, the other T1 in the party, barely got a dozen lines.

And as long as there remain at least two distinct camps on this issue, with the 'mundanes should be as powerful as magic-wielders' folks at odds with the 'magic should be superior' folks, people will continue to argue about how wrong those in the other camp are.

I'm not even arguing really - after all, D&D is already designed the way I'm advocating for, and the one time they tried to enforce communism full class parity, well - their actions now say all I need to say about that. If you go to the D&D homepage, they are engrossed in pretending we were always at war with Eastasia and 4e is nowhere to be seen.

Lord Raziere

2015-06-13, 07:13 PM

and I don't want it to be the way your advocating! my vision of DnD is NOT: the adventures of the magical T1 classes and their useful pets. if it were up to me, god-wizards would be an optional splat meant for high-level cosmic play while the core caster classes would be more limited! if you want to go play such adventures fine, but please stop making it a core part of DnD and ruining things for everyone else.

PairO'Dice Lost

2015-06-13, 10:16 PM

I think the "casters and noncasters should be balanced" and "magic should be overall superior" camps generally agree on how things should be, but are talking at cross-purposes because they have different definitions of "magic."

There are two similar but importantly distinct uses of "magical" in these sorts of discussions. Something can be magical if it would let you circumvent the laws of physics of the real world, or it can be magical if it would let you circumvent the laws of physics of the fantasy world. For clarity, I'll refer to the former sort of things as "fantastic" and the latter as "magical." A wizard casting a fireball spell is both fantastic and magical, because duh, it's magic, right? :smallwink: A high-level barbarian falling from the upper atmosphere, smacking the ground at terminal velocity, then getting up and walking away without permanent injury, however, is fantastic (because while it's possible to survive that kind of fall in the real world, you're not walking away from it) but not magical (because "becoming stupidly tough and resilient" is something that happens to all powerful monsters and experienced people in the worlds of D&D and that's just how the physics works).

It's possible for fiction and games with "magical" features to have only the fantastic sort (like the Die Hard series, with all the action movie tropes, Rule of Cool, and such), or only the magical sort (like Harry Potter, where everything not explicitly magical works by real-world rules), or both together (like D&D), and settings with both kinds of magic usually make an in-world distinction between the two (and often the player- or viewer-base makes an out-of-world one as well): magic abilities can be turned off/dispelled/etc. while fantastic ones are just physics, magic-using characters are viewed as inherently different somehow (innately gifted, chosen by the powers-that-be, inherently evil, etc.) while fantastic ones are merely highly skilled normal people, Gandalf's magical light is a spell but elven rope is just really really well made, Superman is pure sci-fi while Batman is theoretically possible, and so forth.

So when people say they want their fighter character to be "nonmagical" they could be saying that they want him to never use any magic items, never gain HP past first level, never make any skill checks that would result in a real-world-impossible result, and so forth, and still expect to somehow contribute next to world-shaking wizards despite that not making any sense whatsoever...but usually it's not, because the important thing to them is wanting their high-level fighters to still fit the Legendary Hero or Badass Normal mold; "having really good equipment" and "not dying at insufficiently dramatic points in the story" and similar are things that are perfectly plausible in action movies and other realistic (or rather "realistic"), so using magic swords and having tons of HP is fine with them. Fantastic, but not magical. Likewise, when people say that "the only non-magical classes should be NPC classes" they usually mean that if you're a player character you should have fantastic abilities, or magical abilities, or both, but you have to have something that makes you more than just a purely realistic character, not that every single class has to be classified as a spellcasting character.

On the "magic is overall superior" side, generally speaking the more restricted an ability is the more powerful or useful it should be to compensate, and pretty much every game balances itself around that principle. Thing is, when comparing magical and fantastic characters the magical character is usually going to have more restricted abilities because, again, it's "magic" and therefore somehow set apart from physics. Wizards have limitations on their use of magic (preparation time, local mana levels, mystic energy reserves, whatever), while fighters can keep using their tricks until they get tired; wizards might need special foci for their magic, while for a fighter any ol' sword will do; wizard spells might rely on certain external factors like the position of the stars or the approval of a god, while a fighter only relies on himself. So saying that magic should be superior to non-magic is like saying that more use-restricted abilities should be better than less use-restricted abilities, which is plenty logical, and similarly saying that magic should be cooler than non-magic is like saying that each individual use of a more-restricted ability should be more noteworthy/flashy/impactful than each individual use of a less-restricted ability, which is similarly logical.

On the "casters and noncasters should be balanced" side, though, that doesn't need to be the case; fantastic-but-not-magical characters can have more use-limited abilities by various means, whether in-game (spend stamina to use bigger attacks, require special circumstance or positioning to activate certain abilities) or out-of-game (have metagame limits on bigger attacks, make certain abilities only usable at suitably dramatic points). That's exactly how D&D has tried to beef up martial types in the past (barbarians use stamina to justify and limit rages, rogues use circumstantial abilities to pull off sneak attacks and certain rogue special abilities, crusaders have the "divine inspiration" maneuver refresh mechanic, knights use their dramatic Knight's Challenge to power class features) and how most fighter fixes attempt to do so, and it works quite well...as long as the particular restrictions make sense for the particular abilities being restricted, a difficult (but not unsolvable) problem that has stymied most such prior attempts.

So if caster classes get magical abilities and noncaster classes get fantastic abilities such that the two are balanced with one another (like how duskblades are magical and warblades are fantastic but both are tier 3), but the casters' high points are higher than the noncasters' high points in terms of utility, flashiness, or whatever (like how a 20th-level duskblade and warblade can both overkill a single target with hundreds of damage with their top-level abilities, but a duskblade's disintegrate has more building-destroying and tunnel-carving utility than a warblade's Strike of Perfect Clarity), both sides can get what they want. It's just a question of actually holding to that design philosophy rigorously, which WotC has shown they're basically incapable of and/or unwilling to do.

Hawkstar

2015-06-14, 07:32 AM

On the "magic is overall superior" side, generally speaking the more restricted an ability is the more powerful or useful it should be to compensate, and pretty much every game balances itself around that principle. Thing is, when comparing magical and fantastic characters the magical character is usually going to have more restricted abilities because, again, it's "magic" and therefore somehow set apart from physics. Wizards have limitations on their use of magic (preparation time, local mana levels, mystic energy reserves, whatever), while fighters can keep using their tricks until they get tired; wizards might need special foci for their magic, while for a fighter any ol' sword will do; wizard spells might rely on certain external factors like the position of the stars or the approval of a god, while a fighter only relies on himself. So saying that magic should be superior to non-magic is like saying that more use-restricted abilities should be better than less use-restricted abilities, which is plenty logical, and similarly saying that magic should be cooler than non-magic is like saying that each individual use of a more-restricted ability should be more noteworthy/flashy/impactful than each individual use of a less-restricted ability, which is similarly logical.
Except the magic ISN'T restricted, and attempts to restrict the magic are "Punishing someone for playing their class".

Kurald Galain

2015-06-14, 07:40 AM

Except the magic ISN'T restricted, and attempts to restrict the magic are "Punishing someone for playing their class".

Yes, magic is restricted, in the sense that a wizard has a limited amount of "spell slots" per day.

Of course, if this restriction is set too high then it's not a meaningful restriction any more, but it's not a priori a bad idea.

Psyren

2015-06-14, 07:47 AM

Except the magic ISN'T restricted, and attempts to restrict the magic are "Punishing someone for playing their class".

This is the crux of the issue - it's possible to restrict magic currently, and even to do so without being harsh to the casting player. But right now, the onus is way too much on the GM to do so. The GM has to:

- Have enough encounters per day that the casters are in danger of running out of spells. (This makes martial longevity matter, and the players have more fun because there are more fights.)
- Have utility/non-combat obstacles that force the casters to prepare a mix of spells and consumables, decreasing their combat loadout further.
- Tailor some of your challenges to magic's weaknesses. Use Antimagic/Dead Magic sparingly as that is too obvious, but it should occasionally come up; rather, rely on the simpler things as well, like sentries that can hear verbal components/chanting on a stealthier mission, or traps that trigger when they see magical auras or detect spellcasting, encouraging mundane stealth and disguises instead.
- Include enemies that are more threatening to the casters than the non-casters, e.g. sticking a few shamans, cultists or other spellcasting foes in that counterspell and dispel.
- Engage the team's "backup casters," like the rogue's UMD or the Paladin's spells; figure out ways to get these folks into the action too.
- Have some negative afflictions that persist between battles (e.g. curses and poisons) unless the caster can remove them. Use ones that require CL checks to diminish the value of relying on items to solve these. For example, PF Knock requires a CL check - if you have to burn through 4-5 charges on your Wand of Knock to bypass a given lock, you'd probably just rather the rogue do it. Knock also has a verbal component, which is not ideal on a stealth mission as above.

5e took some of the pressure off the GM in this regard, and it wasn't a bad change, but I think they went a bit too far with their concentration mechanic - it really crimps a buff-user's ability to shine.

and I don't want it to be the way your advocating! my vision of DnD is NOT: the adventures of the magical T1 classes and their useful pets. if it were up to me, god-wizards would be an optional splat meant for high-level cosmic play while the core caster classes would be more limited! if you want to go play such adventures fine, but please stop making it a core part of DnD and ruining things for everyone else.

WotC (and Paizo) seem to be of the opinion that powerful wizards in core sell books. I couldn't tell you one way or the other whether that perspective is inviolable, but again I point out that pretty much the only example we have where they broke away from that was 4e. And even there wizards were still special, by virtue of having the most rituals.

So if caster classes get magical abilities and noncaster classes get fantastic abilities such that the two are balanced with one another (like how duskblades are magical and warblades are fantastic but both are tier 3), but the casters' high points are higher than the noncasters' high points in terms of utility, flashiness, or whatever (like how a 20th-level duskblade and warblade can both overkill a single target with hundreds of damage with their top-level abilities, but a duskblade's disintegrate has more building-destroying and tunnel-carving utility than a warblade's Strike of Perfect Clarity), both sides can get what they want. It's just a question of actually holding to that design philosophy rigorously, which WotC has shown they're basically incapable of and/or unwilling to do.

Yeah, I'm totally fine with spellcasters being Magical and martial classes being Fantastic or whichever terms best convey that divide, as long as the size of the various peaks is kept diverse as you mentioned.

Segev

2015-06-14, 11:41 AM

Frozen_Feet

2015-06-14, 12:30 PM

If magic is always the superior way to go, why would you have a party that included Tanis, Tasselhoff, and Caramon rather than just Raistlin and his 3 mage buddies?

Because in-universe, there are no other 3 mages to be his buddies.

The metagame reality of players being able to choose to play whatever does not mean the theoretical player choices translate to actual game choices.

In the case above, the players wanted to play non-wizards, and their choice means for the universe that those non-wizards were the best people available. How powerful said non-wizards are compared to the wizard might have been a factor in the player choice, but character power is only a part of what makes one character archetype or another alluring. There are loads and loads of players who do choose to play "Dudley", or some other weak, foolish or support-role character, because they either like the challenge or do not want the spotlight of a "main character".

If most RPGs don't seem to acknowledge or cater to this crowd, I'd say it's more because the concept is overlooked, rather than because so few players are interested in it.

But, all the same, the above is in no way a convincing reason for mages to be superior as a general rule. Magic is entirely arbitrary in context of fantasy settings. Beyond paying lip service to real-life magical thinking (in order to feel magical to real people), magic can be and do anything the author decides. It can be stronger. It can be weaker. It can be easy. It can be difficult. It can be for smart people, or for really dumb people.

Questions like "why would supremely smart people choose suboptimal ways of doing stuff?" are loaded questions. They assume wizards are smart and interest in optimization. But that's largely a D&D conceit (it's not found in many of its inspirations), and limited to one specific style of magic - even in context of D&D, we have other casters who are not smart, and magic which is not only suboptimal, but actively dangerous.

Segev

2015-06-14, 03:04 PM

Steampunkette

2015-06-14, 03:16 PM

I'm calling it. D&D 6e: The d12 system.

More seriously.

6e will, more than likely, represent technological advancement and integration. As cell phones and other portable devices become more and more ubiquitous, we're going to see new media formats and ways of storing and accessing data. As holograms advance in complexity and availability, whether through Windows 10 or Google Glass HUDs or some other method, we're going to see the rules change in a way that makes them more complex, but easy to communicate the end result...

Expect to see a greater variation in results, possibly with a shift from d20s to d100s since people won't actually have to roll the dice and consult the tables themselves, taking up precious minutes at the table to determine outcomes. Instead things will become automated. Rules-lookup as voice-activated book-searches for headings and scanning of materials.

Expect Crit Charts to make a serious comeback since it won't require extra effort on the parts of the players and DMs. Meanwhile homebrew charts will be more common. Class features will gain greater granularity while maintaining simplistic rules to cover situations that aren't in the dice rolls. Mass Combat will become more common, since the rule complexity won't much matter thanks to automation, making epic battle and army campaigns easier to run.

All in all, I'm excited about the prospect of 6e. But I really like how 5e is set up, right now.

Lord Raziere

2015-06-14, 03:47 PM

I am of the design philosophy that one should not declare something rare in-universe and then have it be as easy or easier to play than something that is to be common, unless the goal is for the PCs to be playing the exception to the rule (e.g. Exalted).

If spellcasters are to be that rare, there should be something in their mechanical design that makes playing them more costly. This needs to be comensurate with or in excess compared to the power they ultimately get. If you have mechanical superior power "balanced" by saying "but they're rare in the setting," you're still punishing those who want to play that which is supposedly more common in the setting.

In other words, balance your difficulty-of-playing a thing with how common you want it to be in your party of PCs. If it's to be 1 out of 4, and the other 3 are each to fill other distinct roles, it needs to be no better overall than the other options. If it's to be the standard, by all means make it the easiest/most potent to play. You can absolutely have the Exalted be rare in the setting while having them be the standard party of PCs. But if your goal is to have "wizards are rare" mean you have 1 in every party (and not, in general, parties made up wholly of wizards), then you can't make wizards truly able to do anything and everything at least as well as anybody else.

When you can say, "I could play a fighter, but I can do it just as well as a wizard and get more versatility and power out of it," that's a design problem.

Quoted for truth. the fact that wizards are rare in setting have nothing to do with the fact that all PC's can be wizards out of setting. Solar Exalt PC's for example are meant to be only played with other Exalted because of their great power, Dragon-Blooded with Dragon-Blooded, no matter how rare they actually are- after all, the rarity is fake, there is only six people here: the GM and the players. it doesn't matter how rare a wizard is in the world aside from determining how often you find them being used as enemies.

plus the fact that taking a first level of wizard and a first level of fighter take an equal amount of effort, mechanically speaking. this effort doesn't actually matter for any of the NPC's, monster or anything like that, because they're all meant to serve the purpose of a DM, springing fully formed without any PC development. the only point at which the fact that it takes an equal amount of effort to become a wizard or a fighter is when the player is making one or the other. you cannot seriously expect everyone to sit down to play the same game and cooperate with one another just because one guy chose the god option, when it takes just as much choice and effort to choose something worse.

make one option the best option, and you make people wonder why everyone doesn't choose that option, and trying to justify it with an in-setting rarity doesn't help with an out-of-setting problem of some players not feeling useful because of the wizard's existence.

Segev

2015-06-14, 04:27 PM

The best solutions I've seen have been to exploit this. It's not perfect, and the system has other flaws, but one thing I think is a neat consequence of having L5R's Phoenix Clan have the BEST Shugenja schools is that the magic clan sees the most PCs created in a magic "class." Other Clans have their own shugenja schools, and people can and do play them, but they're a little rarer because they're not as good (but they have perks and advantages that those who like the particular Clan's flavor will enjoy).

Old D&D editions has different classes level up at different rates, essentially trading, to some degree, early-game power for late-game power. The fighter was powerful up front, and leveled faster, staying relevant throughout and more likely to REACH higher level due to survivability. The magic-user suffered through early levels, being weak and at constant risk, and took forever to reach higher levels; those who made it were rewarded with the well-known "god-like" power of 3e casters, but they really were rarer because it took so much more to GET there. (That D&D in earlier editions encouraged starting people at level 1 no matter the party's level drove this home even more.)

To get rarity in play to match fluff rarity, you need to either make the rarer things less rewarding for the investment they require, or require them to be that much more "work" to get to the point of being awesome, such that it really is an accomplishment to get there. The tactical decision to play something else that's easier should mean something good in the short term, at the least.

Steampunkette

2015-06-14, 04:41 PM

The problem with that design philosphy, Segev, is the same as it has always been: Lack of parity.

Sure, there is a sweet spot where 1e and 2e casters were "Right around" equal in power with the party's fighter. But being completely hampered in low end and overpowered in high end is bad game design. Especially when other classes do not have the same issues.

The real answer to the problem is to redesign the spells for parity. Make the story-advancing magic (Teleport, Scrying, Wish, Etc) non-combat spellcasting that might take a tiny bit longer but not reduce resources as much. While combat magic would need to more closely resemble the damage values that other characters put out in a given turn but with greater versatility and damage variety.

Sadly, thanks to the focus on Vancian Casting, that philosophy is ignored in favor of large quantities of power with limited uses.

If D&D 6e were to try and fix the balance of classes, Vancian Casting would either go the way of the dodo, or change into something more closely resembling D&D 4e.

SouthpawSoldier

2015-06-14, 04:52 PM

On a related note to caster rarity:

Why aren't ALL 1st level characters famous? Even a 1st level Fighter is supposed to be head and shoulders above NPC martials; one would think they'd at least be locally famous; tourney champions or the like.

This goes double for casters. If magic is as rare as fluff suggests, mage academies should be major regional landmarks. The same for any library containing spell books or magical theory books. Clerics should be well-known within their church hierarchy, if not out right canonized. And Warlocks? Can someone please explain how everyone is so blasé about someone manifesting Eldritch Blasts?

In short, level 1 characters should be more famous, local heroes at least. Either that, or scrap 1st level as a concept in it's entirety. Go with alternative options, like Easy_Lee's E10 setup. I've discussed variations on this theme elsewhere; start the party with NPC levels/classes, gaining PC classes once they actually become heroes.

That's what I'd like to see in 6E; consistency in concept.

Amphetryon

2015-06-14, 05:08 PM

Questions like "why would supremely smart people choose suboptimal ways of doing stuff?" are loaded questions. They assume wizards are smart and interest in optimization. But that's largely a D&D conceit (it's not found in many of its inspirations), and limited to one specific style of magic - even in context of D&D, we have other casters who are not smart, and magic which is not only suboptimal, but actively dangerous.
The question is loaded with the preconceptions built into D&D, though, which is that Wizards are Characters with above-average intellects, even intellects beyond human comprehension in ordinary life. What other caster-types do within the framework of D&D, or within frameworks that aren't D&D, is not in fact relevant to the question of why the brightest minds in a given RPG universe would actively and routinely make obviously poor choices.

Kurald Galain

2015-06-14, 06:47 PM

Even a 1st level Fighter is supposed to be head and shoulders above NPC martials; one would think they'd at least be locally famous; tourney champions or the like.

That is not generally true for D&D, except in fourth edition. Generally characters don't get to be famous (and above NPC martials) until they're level five or so.

Brova

2015-06-14, 07:05 PM

That is not generally true for D&D, except in fourth edition. Generally characters don't get to be famous (and above NPC martials) until they're level five or so.

QFT.

A Fighter has 2 hit points and a bonus feat over a Warrior at level 1. That's really a very small margin for fame to emerge.

Psyren

2015-06-14, 07:43 PM

If magic is always the superior way to go, why would you have a party that included Tanis, Tasselhoff, and Caramon rather than just Raistlin and his 3 mage buddies?

Magic should NOT be "overall superior," though I have no problem with it looking like it when played by a mage who seeks to make it seem so. Such a mage should be obfuscating the drawbacks and weaknesses of magic, and using it as if he were casually solving something he'd graciously left to the mundanes to do so they'd "feel useful." It should, however, be an act; yes, he CAN do that trivially...once or twice. Or, alternatively, he can make it LOOK trivial, but it actually took a lot out of him. Or other similar things. His mysterious reluctance to act until "needed" should be explained in game mechanics. He should have a REASON to need the rest of the party, rather than deigning to allow them to enjoy the adventure he could actually solve all by himself (or at least could better solve with his college buddies who also studied magic rather than wasting time on those lame mundane skills).

There are in fact REASONS to need the rest of the party - limited slots, verbal/material components, detectability/suppressability/dispellability. And the spells themselves, particularly in Pathfinder, have drawbacks that the mundane method does not - for example, Knock requiring a CL check (which are harder to optimize than skill checks) or detect magic having a hard 60ft. range limit while Perception can go all the way down the hall, and spot the mundane traps too.

D&D/PF just aren't good at encouraging GMs to make those drawbacks matter more than they currently do - but that's not the same as saying there are none at all.

I am of the design philosophy that one should not declare something rare in-universe and then have it be as easy or easier to play than something that is to be common, unless the goal is for the PCs to be playing the exception to the rule (e.g. Exalted).

The PCs are exceptional. You are already part of the 1-5% just by being a PC, even if the world or even your village doesn't necessarily recognize that fact until you've gained a couple of levels. The fact that, in game terms, it's easy for the player to get up one day and say "I want my character to be a wizard!" does not mean that in-universe, said character was able to do it as easily; the game merely glosses over the apprenticeships, long nights of study/failure and other trappings that go with that decision, and is better for it.

When you can say, "I could play a fighter, but I can do it just as well as a wizard and get more versatility and power out of it," that's a design problem.

Except the design is there to solve that problem. The fact that it continues to matter after that is actually a DM problem.

The problem with that design philosphy, Segev, is the same as it has always been: Lack of parity.

Sure, there is a sweet spot where 1e and 2e casters were "Right around" equal in power with the party's fighter. But being completely hampered in low end and overpowered in high end is bad game design. Especially when other classes do not have the same issues.

The real answer to the problem is to redesign the spells for parity. Make the story-advancing magic (Teleport, Scrying, Wish, Etc) non-combat spellcasting that might take a tiny bit longer but not reduce resources as much. While combat magic would need to more closely resemble the damage values that other characters put out in a given turn but with greater versatility and damage variety.

Sadly, thanks to the focus on Vancian Casting, that philosophy is ignored in favor of large quantities of power with limited uses.

If D&D 6e were to try and fix the balance of classes, Vancian Casting would either go the way of the dodo, or change into something more closely resembling D&D 4e.

As your last sentence notes, Steampunkette, the solution you've basically come up with here is 4e. But I posit that if enough folks had wanted 4e, we wouldn't now have 5e, and WotC wouldn't be shoving all references to 4e into their digital closet to never be seen by folks who didn't already know it existed.

Segev

2015-06-14, 07:47 PM

The problem with that design philosphy, Segev, is the same as it has always been: Lack of parity.

Sure, there is a sweet spot where 1e and 2e casters were "Right around" equal in power with the party's fighter. But being completely hampered in low end and overpowered in high end is bad game design. Especially when other classes do not have the same issues.

To a degree, I agree with you. It depends what you're trying to accomplish. If you're building a D&D-like game, you want all the major classes to be equally "valid," because you're looking for a balanced party. The rarity of wizards and commonality of thieves is irrelevant to the game where every adventuring PARTY will have one of each, on average. In such games, you want to design for parity as much as possible. (I will not go into why I did not care for how 4e achieved that, other than to say "I don't want to play a martial adept and call it a wizard.")

The design to encourage or discourage certain classes or builds is based on how common you want that build to be amongst PCs. The commonality in the rest of the world is fluff. (In truth, your "common thief" is not likely the PC thief; the PC adventuring thief is going to be a massively superior specimine, who hopefully is on par with the mighty (and rare) wizard.)

Flickerdart

2015-06-14, 08:54 PM

I dunno about you, Psyren, but I don't believe D&D should be "wizards, and the interns they decided to bring along."

Psyren

2015-06-14, 08:57 PM

I dunno about you, Psyren, but I don't believe D&D should be "wizards, and the interns they decided to bring along."

Good, because I don't think that either. Were Caramon and Tanis the interns? By my reading they were just as important even if they had less raw power.

Steampunkette

2015-06-14, 09:29 PM

Psyren.

I disagree that it would be 4e.

Spellcasters would look more like they did in 4e. Wherein their AoE spells did damage resembling the damage output of other characters divided across a larger total number of targets, rather than doing the same amount of damage as a Paladin to EACH target.

Leave the other classes where they are (more or less) and change the casters to more resemble 4e's classes. Or, more accurately, make the spells more resemble the 4e style.

That said, they kind of tried to do that, a little, with Ritual casting. It's just too limited and takes way too long for minor stuff. Stuff like Comprehend Languages taking 10 minutes is just ridiculous.

Brova

2015-06-14, 09:43 PM

Leave the other classes where they are (more or less) and change the casters to more resemble 4e's classes. Or, more accurately, make the spells more resemble the 4e style.

I don't understand why you would want to do this. We had a game where people tried to balance D&D by bringing casters down a peg. That game was 4e, and it was not a good game. 3e's problem was never really that casters were too good, it was that mundanes sucked. I mean, there were some broken things (weirdness with ignoring costs and components, shapechange as character replacement, ice assassin at all, wish without limits on items, gate as written), but casters got to compete in combat, do things out of combat, and most importantly they got to, as the saying goes, "go up to eleven". High level D&D lets you tell stories that cannot be, or at least are not, told in almost any other medium. The game can support Conan at low levels, but it shouldn't be tied to him at high levels. High level D&D should be looking at comicbook superheroes, Lord of Light, creation myths and MTG old-walkers as source material. High level powers should let you summon legions of angels, fuse planes together, and usurp the powers of the gods. And it can't do that if we try to balance it by dragging everyone down instead of lifting everyone up.

Segev

2015-06-14, 11:07 PM

4e's problem had nothing to do with "bringing casters down a peg." That may have been part of the motive behind what was done, but 4e's problem was not because of any change in the power of casters. 4e's problem was that everybody was a martial adept, and that made it not play nor feel like the D&D that people who'd played all the prior editions were familiar with.

Brova

2015-06-14, 11:38 PM

4e's problem had nothing to do with "bringing casters down a peg." That may have been part of the motive behind what was done, but 4e's problem was not because of any change in the power of casters.

4e had a variety of problems. It's certainly fair to say that bringing casters down wasn't the only problem, as problems such as "monsters don't exist outside of combat" have nothing at all to do with PC power. But cutting out the high power play that 3e casters had was a problem. It reduced the number of stories the game could tell and did so for no reason.

4e's problem was that everybody was a martial adept, and that made it not play nor feel like the D&D that people who'd played all the prior editions were familiar with.

Yes, homogenizing resource schedules was a problem. So was the massive errata, the interchangeable powers, and the broken stuff (i.e. yogi hat Ranger). 4e had a lot of failure points, singling one of them out as "the problem" isn't particularly helpful (although I'll admit to being guilty of doing it myself).

Steampunkette

2015-06-14, 11:56 PM

The huge angel legion calling spells should be rituals you use for a major event. Not something you pull out once a day, everyday, against a hard enemy.

As for buffing all the other classes up, we would need to buff monsters, too. Since oppositional balance would go out the window...

So redo most of the game or fix the ridiculous spells. I feel like the latter option is more reasonable.

Brova

2015-06-15, 06:51 AM

The huge angel legion calling spells should be rituals you use for a major event. Not something you pull out once a day, everyday, against a hard enemy.

Why? I mean, I could see the argument that angel summoning should be a noncombat spell as it is either very powerful in a straight fight (in the angels are close to you in power) or primarily useful in a mass battle (if the angels are weaker than you). But high level people should do high level things. If you have "summon angels" as a power, you shouldn't be fighting by hitting things for 2[W]+whatever damage.

As for buffing all the other classes up, we would need to buff monsters, too. Since oppositional balance would go out the window...

Not really. Essentially every monster that has SLAs, casting of it's own, or any abilities like that is by definition balanced with people casting spells. As long as a beholder is a threat because it's eye rays let it use Wizard spells, it's going to be balanced with a Wizard. Similarly, dragons (in 3e) just have Sorcerer casting.

So redo most of the game or fix the ridiculous spells. I feel like the latter option is more reasonable.

We're talking about writing a new edition of the game. The default is already "redo most of the game". Compared to 3e, 4e rewrote the game. Compared to 4e, 5e rewrote the game. 6e doesn't have to keep anything old editions did unless it wants to. There's no reason for mundanes to continue to suck.

Segev

2015-06-15, 11:11 AM

Yes, homogenizing resource schedules was a problem. So was the massive errata, the interchangeable powers, and the broken stuff (i.e. yogi hat Ranger). 4e had a lot of failure points, singling one of them out as "the problem" isn't particularly helpful (although I'll admit to being guilty of doing it myself).Perhaps I should say, then, that the homogenized resource schedules were what turned me off to it sufficiently that I couldn't have fun delving in deeper, and thus I never came across these other problems.

We're talking about writing a new edition of the game. The default is already "redo most of the game". Compared to 3e, 4e rewrote the game. Compared to 4e, 5e rewrote the game. 6e doesn't have to keep anything old editions did unless it wants to. There's no reason for mundanes to continue to suck.

Two different points being conflated here, I think:

Second point first, no, there's no reason mundanes have to suck. Were I designing D&D 6e, I would be aiming to have high-level EVERYBODY be epicly awesome with lots of choices of what to do and how. "Magic" would not be restricted to "spellcasters," and I would not be shy about making pretty much every high-level being use magic to a fairly large degree. The 3.5 (Su) tag would be open to most of what would otherwise be called "mundane" classes. (I'd have to think hard about the distinction between (Su) and (Ex).)

First point second: 4e's problem is that it changed the way classes were structured too much. At least, that's the biggest problem in terms of it being "an edition of D&D."5e changed a lot...but really, its core design structure for classes has returned to its roots. Classes have different subsystems to model different kinds of power again.

Steampunkette

2015-06-15, 03:25 PM

Why? I mean, I could see the argument that angel summoning should be a noncombat spell as it is either very powerful in a straight fight (in the angels are close to you in power) or primarily useful in a mass battle (if the angels are weaker than you). But high level people should do high level things. If you have "summon angels" as a power, you shouldn't be fighting by hitting things for 2[W]+whatever damage.

Conservation of Awesome. Sure High Level People should do High Level Things. I just don't feel "Summon Horde of Angels" is one they should do every fight. And no. I'm not suggesting they should hit things for 2 times weapon damage. That's, like, 5th level 4e powers.

Not really. Essentially every monster that has SLAs, casting of it's own, or any abilities like that is by definition balanced with people casting spells. As long as a beholder is a threat because it's eye rays let it use Wizard spells, it's going to be balanced with a Wizard. Similarly, dragons (in 3e) just have Sorcerer casting.

So wrong. So very very wrong. A Beholder is designed to take on 4 level 11 characters. That includes 1 wizard, 1 cleric, 1 rogue, and 1 warrior. If you were to buff 3 of the 4 character classes in that fight the Beholder would drop like a lead balloon. The fact that it has spells -now- doesn't mean it would be balanced against fighters post-buff.

We're talking about writing a new edition of the game. The default is already "redo most of the game". Compared to 3e, 4e rewrote the game. Compared to 4e, 5e rewrote the game. 6e doesn't have to keep anything old editions did unless it wants to. There's no reason for mundanes to continue to suck.

See, this is just a difference of perspective. You're looking at the game as if mages are, in fact, the default. That everyone sucks but mages are average power. I see it the other way. Fighters, Rogues, Barbarians, Bards (Aside from Magic Secrets maybe), Paladins, Warlocks, and even Rangers are the average power and default characters. This is especially true when you look at the enemies they're designed to fight. While Sorcs and Wizards are the outliers on the high end. Druids and Clerics are in the same region, if not as egregious.

And while 3e to 4e and 4e to 5e were complete freaking revamps that's a terrible example, since 4e -was- a hugely massive rewrite of all systems and lore. Where 1e-AD&D was mostly an expansion and AD&D-2e was a rewrite of key components with cleanup, then AD&D-3e was a core dicerolling rewrite and formatting shift for ease of play. Heck, 5e is so close to 3e that you barely have to rebalance encounters from pregen adventures.

The problem I have with Wizards is the "You might suck at level 1 but you'll rip at level 9" mindset. Mainly because I hate running (and playing) in level 1 games. I'd rather start at level 5-8. And if you do that, the "Penalty" of being a low level wizard just isn't there and that "Balancing Factor" of the class's design (which is a TERRIBLE balance point) is out the window.

Lord Raziere

2015-06-15, 04:25 PM

See, this is just a difference of perspective. You're looking at the game as if mages are, in fact, the default. That everyone sucks but mages are average power. I see it the other way. Fighters, Rogues, Barbarians, Bards (Aside from Magic Secrets maybe), Paladins, Warlocks, and even Rangers are the average power and default characters. This is especially true when you look at the enemies they're designed to fight. While Sorcs and Wizards are the outliers on the high end. Druids and Clerics are in the same region, if not as egregious.

And while 3e to 4e and 4e to 5e were complete freaking revamps that's a terrible example, since 4e -was- a hugely massive rewrite of all systems and lore. Where 1e-AD&D was mostly an expansion and AD&D-2e was a rewrite of key components with cleanup, then AD&D-3e was a core dicerolling rewrite and formatting shift for ease of play. Heck, 5e is so close to 3e that you barely have to rebalance encounters from pregen adventures.

The problem I have with Wizards is the "You might suck at level 1 but you'll rip at level 9" mindset. Mainly because I hate running (and playing) in level 1 games. I'd rather start at level 5-8. And if you do that, the "Penalty" of being a low level wizard just isn't there and that "Balancing Factor" of the class's design (which is a TERRIBLE balance point) is out the window.

Exactly.

the Wizard is being treated as if its the standard and that everyone else is weaker, when its the other way around. DnD was NEVER meant to use wizards and all that it does as a standard thing that happens. dungeons weren't meant to be solved easily with a combination of spells as if the whole dungeon-crawling thing was a boring business rather than an actual adventure.

when really, its supposed to be a world of ADVENTURE every book says that your adventurers, DnD has always been about making it an exciting danger-filled kind of thing, when all the wizard players just want to do is turn it into Civilization but with less graphics, or solve everything with their super-utility as if the whole thing was a nine-to-five business day "oh look another trap, Wizard Joe, please destroy it" "kay"
"oh look another door, Wizard Joe, bypass it somehow." "kay" and that is just snores-ville to me. I don't want my characters going on adventures so some wizard who spent too much time reading books can protect them from everything effortlessly, sheltering them from harm in their warm protective bosom then destroying the BBEG in one blast or something.

even the "support" wizard is just another form of coddling everyone around them with spells, cause apparently their own competence and skill isn't enough to get any job done. the wizard has to be solution to everything- even when its making sure their allies are the ones who solve it. I don't want that. I mean you ever wonder WHY all the video games focus on blaster-caster kind of stuff? because they get what DnD was trying to do better than its fans! they refined that so that the wizards served a good focused role that doesn't tread on anyone's toes, and allows for good aventuring! sure its also because of game engine limitations, but there are also videogame summon classes, healing classes and whatnot that working perfectly well without being overpowered. DnD4e woke up and smelled the coffee for once, actually tried to retool itself to be more updated and suitable, and got rejected because it didn't include the problems it solved.

there is no question that the wizard needs rebalancing, its just a question of how to make people see that keeping it a wizardly god is not the way to go.

Amphetryon

2015-06-15, 04:50 PM

Exactly.

the Wizard is being treated as if its the standard and that everyone else is weaker, when its the other way around. DnD was NEVER meant to use wizards and all that it does as a standard thing that happens. dungeons weren't meant to be solved easily with a combination of spells as if the whole dungeon-crawling thing was a boring business rather than an actual adventure.

when really, its supposed to be a world of ADVENTURE every book says that your adventurers, DnD has always been about making it an exciting danger-filled kind of thing, when all the wizard players just want to do is turn it into Civilization but with less graphics, or solve everything with their super-utility as if the whole thing was a nine-to-five business day "oh look another trap, Wizard Joe, please destroy it" "kay"
"oh look another door, Wizard Joe, bypass it somehow." "kay" and that is just snores-ville to me. I don't want my characters going on adventures so some wizard who spent too much time reading books can protect them from everything effortlessly, sheltering them from harm in their warm protective bosom then destroying the BBEG in one blast or something.

even the "support" wizard is just another form of coddling everyone around them with spells, cause apparently their own competence and skill isn't enough to get any job done. the wizard has to be solution to everything- even when its making sure their allies are the ones who solve it. I don't want that. I mean you ever wonder WHY all the video games focus on blaster-caster kind of stuff? because they get what DnD was trying to do better than its fans! they refined that so that the wizards served a good focused role that doesn't tread on anyone's toes, and allows for good aventuring! sure its also because of game engine limitations, but there are also videogame summon classes, healing classes and whatnot that working perfectly well without being overpowered. DnD4e woke up and smelled the coffee for once, actually tried to retool itself to be more updated and suitable, and got rejected because it didn't include the problems it solved.

there is no question that the wizard needs rebalancing, its just a question of how to make people see that keeping it a wizardly god is not the way to go.
As indicated earlier in the thread, at least as many folks would argue, just as strenuously, that it's a question of how to make people see that removing a wizardly god is not the way to go. As that's essentially a 180 degree shift from your position, creating a single game that will make both types of Player happy seems a tricky proposition.

Steampunkette

2015-06-15, 05:43 PM

The wizard CLASS is pretty okay. But they need their spells revamped. More, and faster, rituals that are more easily accessed. Less instant-win buttons at high level, better baseline competence at the low end.

Brova

2015-06-16, 09:51 AM

Perhaps I should say, then, that the homogenized resource schedules were what turned me off to it sufficiently that I couldn't have fun delving in deeper, and thus I never came across these other problems.

That's fair.

Second point first, no, there's no reason mundanes have to suck. Were I designing D&D 6e, I would be aiming to have high-level EVERYBODY be epicly awesome with lots of choices of what to do and how. "Magic" would not be restricted to "spellcasters," and I would not be shy about making pretty much every high-level being use magic to a fairly large degree.

This is very much true. High level people should have new and interesting abilities that do things that are not only bigger but different from low level people. You can have a game where you fight orcs all game, but you can't have a game where you progress to fighting orc gods with the same mechanics as orcs. My solution to this problem is twofold. First, high level people should get powers that are crazy. Both crazy combat powers like "your blade glows with the energy of the sun" and crazy noncombat powers like "open a portal to hell". High level adventures should involve conquering hell, bargaining with demons and genies, and foiling the centuries long plots of ancient horrors.

On a more mechanical note, I think part of the transition to high level play should involve save or dies. The dynamic where high level 3e has instant death effects and personal resurrection at around the same point is definitely an interesting one, if perhaps not what was intended. While most people would like combats that last more than one round and have more interplay than "are you immune?" and "did you save?", I think that the idea itself feels high level. So you would start out with hit points and damage set up so that people killed each other in two or three rounds, but scale hit points faster than damage so that eventually people took a round or two to get each other down to "bloodied", then save or dies triggered off of that.

The 3.5 (Su) tag would be open to most of what would otherwise be called "mundane" classes. (I'd have to think hard about the distinction between (Su) and (Ex).)

Honestly, the whole Su/Sp/Ex division is unnecessary. The only thing it actually does is tell you what you get for using polymorph and friends, and polymorph and friends cannot be balanced as written. You could drop the whole thing and have some abilities with "counts as a spell" for things that needed to turn off in an antimagic field.

Conservation of Awesome. Sure High Level People should do High Level Things. I just don't feel "Summon Horde of Angels" is one they should do every fight. And no. I'm not suggesting they should hit things for 2 times weapon damage. That's, like, 5th level 4e powers.

Conservation of awesome conflicts with advancement. D&D is a level based system. Just as web is impossible for a 2nd level Wizard to cast and meaningless for a 20th level Wizard to cast, "summon a legion of angels" is going to be an I Win button at some level, a good power at some higher level, a niche power at an even higher level, and flavor text at some level after that. How much you scale powers is a choice you have to make, but anything except your highest level power will eventually become a lesser part of your power.

So wrong. So very very wrong. A Beholder is designed to take on 4 level 11 characters. That includes 1 wizard, 1 cleric, 1 rogue, and 1 warrior. If you were to buff 3 of the 4 character classes in that fight the Beholder would drop like a lead balloon. The fact that it has spells -now- doesn't mean it would be balanced against fighters post-buff.

Point of order, a Beholder is a CR 13 opponent. It is an easy challenge for a party of four 13th level adventurers, an even match (i.e. 50/50 to win or lose) against a party of four 9th level adventurers, and an even match for one 13th level character.

That being said, what actually happens is that the Beholder (or more generally, enemies of CR = character level) are about an even match for a Wizard or a Cleric, an even match for a Rogue, and a bad match for the Fighter. You obviously could balance things to be even matches with the Fighter, but that involves rewriting much more than balancing them to be equal to the Wizard.

See, this is just a difference of perspective. You're looking at the game as if mages are, in fact, the default. That everyone sucks but mages are average power. I see it the other way. Fighters, Rogues, Barbarians, Bards (Aside from Magic Secrets maybe), Paladins, Warlocks, and even Rangers are the average power and default characters. This is especially true when you look at the enemies they're designed to fight. While Sorcs and Wizards are the outliers on the high end. Druids and Clerics are in the same region, if not as egregious.

Per 3e's CR guidelines, Wizards/Sorcerers/Clerics are the default. They are the ones who measure up to level appropriate challenges in a level appropriate way. See: the Same Game Test (http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Dungeons_and_Dragons_Wiki:The_Same_Game_Test). Obviously you could balance your new edition at any particular point, I just don't see the appeal of balancing it at the point of people who don't get cool powers rather than people who do.

And while 3e to 4e and 4e to 5e were complete freaking revamps that's a terrible example, since 4e -was- a hugely massive rewrite of all systems and lore. Where 1e-AD&D was mostly an expansion and AD&D-2e was a rewrite of key components with cleanup, then AD&D-3e was a core dicerolling rewrite and formatting shift for ease of play. Heck, 5e is so close to 3e that you barely have to rebalance encounters from pregen adventures.

On a very basic level, every single edition of D&D has rewritten the Monster Manual, the Player's Handbook, and the Dungeon Master's Guide. Now, those rewrites have varied to some degree or other, but they have happened. You are correct that 3e -> 4e was a more radical rewrite than most, but every edition has rewritten entire books.

the Wizard is being treated as if its the standard and that everyone else is weaker, when its the other way around. DnD was NEVER meant to use wizards and all that it does as a standard thing that happens. dungeons weren't meant to be solved easily with a combination of spells as if the whole dungeon-crawling thing was a boring business rather than an actual adventure.

Look, I get it. You want to play a dungeon crawler. A game where a savvy theif, a wise priest, a powerful warrior, and a mystical mage go into a dungeon full of orcs and traps and murder their way through it until they get to a dragon. They kill the dragon, take it's treasure, and go back to town to drink and make merry. I totally get that, and done well it is a very good game. I would totally play that game.

The problem is that a game like that isn't D&D. Or at least, it doesn't need to be D&D. If all you want to do is go into dungeons and fight monsters in them, you don't need a lot of what D&D has to offer. You don't need the outer planes in any sense more than "demons come from there". You don't need a noncombat system that handles anything more than traps and athletics. You don't need high level play because you can jolly well fight demons at level one. Hell, you don't even need advancement, because your adventurers never change - your first session is "raid the dungeon, kill the dragon" and so is your last session.

Frankly, having a system like D&D run games like that hurts them. On a basic level, discussions of "good" and "evil" are a lot harder to have when your characters spend their time breaking into people's homes, murdering them, and taking their stuff. Having a big section of the MM dedicated to "kobold culture" or "goblin economics" turns them into people, and makes killing them a moral question. If I was writing such a game, I would set it in the Warhammer Fantasy universe or some other grimdark setting. Then you can just handwave that kobolds are "red dots" and move on to kicking down doors and having fun.

NomGarret

2015-06-16, 10:56 AM

Brova

2015-06-16, 11:20 AM

While D&D can and often is so much more than that, an edition that doesn't support the murderhobo dungeon delve wouldn't pass the "feels like D&D" test. Even with fully fleshed out kobold cultural practices, occasionally the adventure will involve the crypt of undead, the aberrant horrors, or the kobolds are Corrupted Nazi Kobold Cultists.

There's no problem with that style of play being supported. The problem is the idea that we should cut things like "utility spells" or "powerful Wizards" to support it. That's not a good idea, and we know it's not a good idea because 4e tried it and failed miserably.

Steampunkette

2015-06-16, 12:11 PM

Lord Raziere

2015-06-16, 12:39 PM

Look, I get it. You want to play a dungeon crawler. A game where a savvy theif, a wise priest, a powerful warrior, and a mystical mage go into a dungeon full of orcs and traps and murder their way through it until they get to a dragon. They kill the dragon, take it's treasure, and go back to town to drink and make merry. I totally get that, and done well it is a very good game. I would totally play that game.

The problem is that a game like that isn't D&D. Or at least, it doesn't need to be D&D. If all you want to do is go into dungeons and fight monsters in them, you don't need a lot of what D&D has to offer. You don't need the outer planes in any sense more than "demons come from there". You don't need a noncombat system that handles anything more than traps and athletics. You don't need high level play because you can jolly well fight demons at level one. Hell, you don't even need advancement, because your adventurers never change - your first session is "raid the dungeon, kill the dragon" and so is your last session.

Frankly, having a system like D&D run games like that hurts them. On a basic level, discussions of "good" and "evil" are a lot harder to have when your characters spend their time breaking into people's homes, murdering them, and taking their stuff. Having a big section of the MM dedicated to "kobold culture" or "goblin economics" turns them into people, and makes killing them a moral question. If I was writing such a game, I would set it in the Warhammer Fantasy universe or some other grimdark setting. Then you can just handwave that kobolds are "red dots" and move on to kicking down doors and having fun.

oh god, this is so backwards to me.

dungeon crawling and adventures is the only thing DnD is good for.

the alignment system is the most poorly thought out system of morality in existence! I could think of many better games that better equipped to handle moral questions like whether goblins are people! all of them basically say "yes goblins are people, because really lets all admit it the whole race/species thing is just an aesthetic that allows you to stand out visually to other characters in your mind, and won't really have any effect on how you roleplay them at all" as well as recognizing that: the enemies are just aesthetic as well! DnD keeps acting as if the race thing matters- IT DOESN'T! it doesn't. bunch of evil humans is just as killable as a bunch of evil goblins! thats what the alignment system MEANS!
Why? mostly because, it was never meant to BE a serious attempt at morality, its just as an excuse for you to kill guys, thats it. an excuse you don't really need anyways.

if I wanted politics and such, there are far better systems for that to! ones that don't have dungeon crawling at all! DnD is the only rpg aside from numerous heartbreakers that focuses on the dungeon crawl, because it invented the dungeon crawl, its Dungeon Crawl: The RPG. what your describing in the first paragraph is the essence of DnD to everyone who doesn't optimize the wizard to godhood and back, even WotC knows that! did the numerous fantasy videogames copy the super wizard god mode Dnd? no they copied the DnD thats actually in the book: fighting. looting. adventure. because between level up, treasure tables and go forth to fight evil in dungeons, DnD really doesn't do anything else-planes are just larger dungeons.

and I don't play grimdark settings to kick ass, thats like going into survival horror videogames expecting to be Master Chief. I don't play them at all, THEY'RE GRIMDARK, there is no hope or point for doing anything in it, not even kicking ass. its just that 3.5 forgot what it was originally built for, then when 4e finally reminded everyone what all this was originally supposed to do and assumed everyone knew that, people rejected it because they couldn't admit that what they thought was DnD was never actually the DnD that companies were selling. Ever.

YossarianLives

2015-06-16, 12:58 PM

snop
Quoted for truth.

As much as I love D&D at it's core it's about stabbing things in caves. There is a wide variety of things to stab and those caves can take many different forms. I also like to run D&D campaigns focused on plot and roleplaying, and that's definitely something that D&D can do.

However when you're playing the game as intended by the creators D&D is all about adventuring in dungeons.

EDIT: just as a disclaimer, I'm not saying that any particular play style is bad. I'm just voicing my opinion on how D&D was designed.

Flickerdart

2015-06-16, 02:12 PM

As much as I love D&D at it's core it's about stabbing things in caves.
That actually cuts really well to the heart of the issue:

Mundanes stab things in caves. Magic users stab the caves.

Brova

2015-06-16, 03:16 PM

4e did a lot of things different, not just Wizards. It was also RIDICULOUSLY SUCCESSFUL and made so many millions that Tunnels and Trolls, Hackmaster, and 80% of the freaking industry nearly pooped their pants at how the worst edition of D&D was still such a massive market share.

This is just factually false. 4e sold "hundreds of thousands" of books, compared to the millions that 3e sold. It lasted two years before essentials, to the three 3e lasted before 3.5. The actual edition lasted four years to 3e's eight. The head of D&D was fired every single year 4e was released. 4e wasn't just a bad game, it was a bad product. I mean, "some dude's 3e houserules" (a.k.a. Pathfinder) outsold 4e.

And I'm not suggesting CUTTING utility. I'm suggesting moving Utility into Rituals, making rituals more common, and revamping the rules by which they work. I.E. making some rituals a heck of a lot faster (anything under level 3) and others a lot longer (6+)

It's probably true that some powers should be moved to an out of combat accounting system. knock and web should probably not demand the same resources to function. But at the same time, there are a lot of spells that fill both roles. For example, wall of stone has both utility (making castles) and combat (battlefield control) uses.

I am suggesting taking Gate, Earthquake, and Magic Jar from the "In combat active spell lists" into "Ritual Only" versions to avoid Wishnanigans and the complete unraveling of epic spellcasting moments. There are a few others (Resurrection, Storm of Vengeance, etc) but it's really a case by case basis on what is supposed to be big and important stuff compared to things you throw around without a care.

gate is just a better version of summoning, which is obviously a combat power. The reason gate is broken in 3e isn't particularly because it can be cast as a standard action. After all, summon monster IX can be cast as a standard action (well, full round, but whatever) and no one complains that it's broken. gate is broken because it allows you to do things like gate in genies for wishes or call your enemy to the negative energy plane and force him to stand around doing push-ups while you murder him.

earthquake is absolutely an effect you'd want at combat time, particularly for epic level martial characters. I can hardly think of a better choice for "crazy high strength power" than triggering earthquakes on your attacks. Plus it fits nicely into a earth/battlefield control/terrain alteration power set.

magic jar is interesting. There are certainly examples of people getting possessed over a longer period of time, but there are also examples of people getting possessed over a shorter period of time. Presumably there's a ritual version out there, but there is probably also a selectable combat power that does it. After all, the basic effect is very close to dominate and people do that in combat time.

The Gate Spell is something the evil wizard must wait for the alignment of the 3 moons which occurs every 1,000 years and requires a blood sacrifice to open with a dozen chanting red-robed fanatics who maintain the spell while he does battle with the heroes in fiction. Not something he throws off on a lark mid-combat.

Why though? I mean, sure the image of mad cultists chanting to draw otherworldly horrors into the world is iconic and cool, but so is Sam going down into the Hellwell and just declaring "you are free" to a bunch of demons. You can have both things, so why wouldn't you?

the alignment system is the most poorly thought out system of morality in existence! I could think of many better games that better equipped to handle moral questions like whether goblins are people!

Sure, the alignment system sucks. But in this very thread people defended it as a vital part of D&D. And frankly, they aren't wrong. It is certainly true that the moral discussions D&D has had have been terrible. But it is equally true that people want to have those discussions. A new edition of D&D needs to incorporate a moral system that explains the morality of the game (i.e. why is it okay to murder sentients and take their stuff?) and the morality of the setting. You could totally have a reasonable and coherent explanation about how the "lawful good" archons are in conflict with the "chaotic good" eladrin not because of some poorly defined "law/chaos" divide but because the archons are Kantians (who believe in the importance of acting in accord with universal law) and the eladrin are Utilitarians (who believe in the importance of maximizing happiness).

its just that 3.5 forgot what it was originally built for, then when 4e finally reminded everyone what all this was originally supposed to do and assumed everyone knew that, people rejected it because they couldn't admit that what they thought was DnD was never actually the DnD that companies were selling. Ever.

I think this is the fundamental issue. I hate 4e and everything it stands for. I hate the idea that the difference between level 1 and level 30 isn't in how you fight, or what your powers do, but that you've gone from a cultist of Orcus who swings at +3 for 1d6 damage against AC 20 and 10 HP to Orcus who swings at +33 for 10d6 damage against AC 50 and 100 HP. That's boring. If high level play can't tell different stories, there is no point to high level play. For all the broken loops, poorly worded powers, and general weirdness, 3e understood that. Characters actually changed at higher levels in 3e and had new tools to fight new challenges. If all you want to do is delve dungeons, there is no reason for 20 levels of play. If you have the same adventure at level 20 you had at level 1, you are still level 1.

Lord Raziere

2015-06-16, 07:30 PM

Sure, the alignment system sucks. But in this very thread people defended it as a vital part of D&D. And frankly, they aren't wrong. It is certainly true that the moral discussions D&D has had have been terrible. But it is equally true that people want to have those discussions. A new edition of D&D needs to incorporate a moral system that explains the morality of the game (i.e. why is it okay to murder sentients and take their stuff?) and the morality of the setting. You could totally have a reasonable and coherent explanation about how the "lawful good" archons are in conflict with the "chaotic good" eladrin not because of some poorly defined "law/chaos" divide but because the archons are Kantians (who believe in the importance of acting in accord with universal law) and the eladrin are Utilitarians (who believe in the importance of maximizing happiness).

I think this is the fundamental issue. I hate 4e and everything it stands for. I hate the idea that the difference between level 1 and level 30 isn't in how you fight, or what your powers do, but that you've gone from a cultist of Orcus who swings at +3 for 1d6 damage against AC 20 and 10 HP to Orcus who swings at +33 for 10d6 damage against AC 50 and 100 HP. That's boring. If high level play can't tell different stories, there is no point to high level play. For all the broken loops, poorly worded powers, and general weirdness, 3e understood that. Characters actually changed at higher levels in 3e and had new tools to fight new challenges. If all you want to do is delve dungeons, there is no reason for 20 levels of play. If you have the same adventure at level 20 you had at level 1, you are still level 1.

well okay yeah, that boils down to WotC not caring about alignment because its mostly just an excuse for the fighting part. only nerds and fans take what is just a slapped on excuse and turn into something serious. so either we go your route, and try to get an actual coherent explanation of morality-good luck-....or we can all just acknowledge that it was never meant to be thing to be taken seriously and have them outright that alignment is a slapped on excuse. because the day WotC actually cares enough to fix these issues properly, is the day that the world ends.

and again WotC couldn't care less. are people using it to fight, loot and adventure? then it serves the purpose of DnD. sure they made 5e, and gone back to the 3.5 thing but with lightness and smoother polish but was only to make a meh middle ground for everyone to sort of agree upon.

5e at least makes sure the wizards aren't complete gods, even if they can still do broken stuff. I'd rather that they didn't any broken stuff really but apparently I can't win there. if I was design 6e, I'd probably include the wizard but slap warning label on it: WARNING THIS CLASS HAS BEEN KNOWN FOR ITS COMPLETE AND UTTER BROKENNESS. ONLY PLAY IF YOU WANT THE GAMEPLAY TO CHANGE DRAMATICALLY or something, y'know to actually let people know about the pitfalls of the system, because really thats like half the problem of DnD: the books don't bother to teach anyone what the flaws of the system are and how to responsibly work around or with them. then make the Sorcerer more down-to-earth and close enough to the rest of the classes so that there are two wizard-like caster classes: for one god-play and one for adventure-play, we already have them after all, we just need to make that their formal roles in book so that people know what they are doing.

like, if we had a DnD book that actually went into the tiers of power at work and actually talked openly about what kind of tier to work at and so on and so forth, I don't think this would be such a big problem. but nope, WotC doesn't care. god-wizard is a problem, because there is nothing to indicate wizards are gods.

Icewraith

2015-06-16, 07:41 PM

PairO'Dice Lost

2015-06-16, 07:51 PM

Conservation of Awesome. Sure High Level People should do High Level Things. I just don't feel "Summon Horde of Angels" is one they should do every fight. And no. I'm not suggesting they should hit things for 2 times weapon damage. That's, like, 5th level 4e powers.

"Guy who uses critters to fight for him" is a supported archetype from level one, in three different flavors (animals, outsiders, and undead). Summon horde of angels is quantitatively different from summon monster I in terms of number of critters summoned and the power of said critters, but there's not really a hard line where summoning 9 angels is insufficiently awesome to be fine in combat but 10 angels is so awesome it should be restricted to a ritual.

So wrong. So very very wrong. A Beholder is designed to take on 4 level 11 characters. That includes 1 wizard, 1 cleric, 1 rogue, and 1 warrior. If you were to buff 3 of the 4 character classes in that fight the Beholder would drop like a lead balloon. The fact that it has spells -now- doesn't mean it would be balanced against fighters post-buff.

1) The fact that it "has spells" isn't what makes it a threat to four characters, it's the fact that it can use 3 spells against each of those characters that makes it such a threat. Regardless of the power of an individual character, a disintegrate to the face is a disintegrate to the face.

2) A beholder is not designed to take on 4 level 11 characters, a beholder is designed to throw out large numbers of rays while disabling magical gear to keep enemies away. That can manifest as launching a few rays per round at 4 level 11 guys, or utterly murderizing 12 level 8 guys at one ray apiece, or desperately fending off 1 level 15 guy by giving him everything it has. The idea that the 3e CR system mandates exactly 4 encounters per day against exactly even-EL opposition is a complete misconception, and is the basis for many encounter-related problems that aren't at all inherent to 3e.

3) Replace the four characters in your example with 1 wizard, 1 cleric, 1 druid, and 1 psion. The beholder does not suddenly drop dead because they are more powerful than the CR-baseline party, it simply needs to handle them more intelligently with its rays and/or rely more on the AMF+bite combo. Now replace them with 1 warmage, 1 healer, 1 scout, and 1 fighter. The beholder does not suddenly curbstomp them because they are less powerful than the CR-baseline party (though not by much), they simply have a harder time dealing with it because they have fewer tools at their disposal. The same applies to facing a ghost with a cleric vs. facing it with a druid, facing a kraken with a barbarian vs. facing it with a fighter, and so forth: each class is good in some areas and bad in others, even those at the same nominal power level.

See, this is just a difference of perspective. You're looking at the game as if mages are, in fact, the default. That everyone sucks but mages are average power. I see it the other way. Fighters, Rogues, Barbarians, Bards (Aside from Magic Secrets maybe), Paladins, Warlocks, and even Rangers are the average power and default characters. This is especially true when you look at the enemies they're designed to fight. While Sorcs and Wizards are the outliers on the high end. Druids and Clerics are in the same region, if not as egregious.

It's funny that you mention looking at enemies they're designed to fight, because that's what shows that casters are, in fact, the default. Monsters get certain abilities (poison, incorporeality, curses, flight, etc.) at certain levels, and casters get the counters to those spells at similar levels (or casters get the offensive spells and monsters get the counters). In 3e, effective monster power doubles every 2 levels with the 2 CR X = 1 CR X+2 rule, and casters get new spells/powers every 2 levels which provide exponentially more power and options. Going up in level involves dealing with larger and larger scopes and traveling farther afield, and casters get spells that let them increasingly deal with larger and larger threats and travel farther, faster.

It is, and has always been, the noncasters who do not gain the capabilities to keep up with the basic threats, environments, and other challenges in certain level ranges. This isn't a big problem until mid-high levels because noncasters have various ways to compensate (you can sorta kinda deal with incorporeality at level 3 by using the magic weapon you need anyway, you can sorta kinda deal with planes-hopping adventures by seeking out portals, and so on), but a party of noncasters is at a distinct disadvantage.

The Gate Spell is something the evil wizard must wait for the alignment of the 3 moons which occurs every 1,000 years and requires a blood sacrifice to open with a dozen chanting red-robed fanatics who maintain the spell while he does battle with the heroes in fiction. Not something he throws off on a lark mid-combat.

Alternately, it's the thing that Rand al'Thor and the Aes Sedai use in every other scene in the later Wheel of Time books to transport their armies around. Putting all those sorts of restrictions on spells because it happens that way in some stories prevents you from mimicking different stories, and as a kitchen-sink fantasy it's best for D&D to be able to emulate many different works in several different genres.

if I wanted politics and such, there are far better systems for that to! ones that don't have dungeon crawling at all! DnD is the only rpg aside from numerous heartbreakers that focuses on the dungeon crawl, because it invented the dungeon crawl, its Dungeon Crawl: The RPG. what your describing in the first paragraph is the essence of DnD to everyone who doesn't optimize the wizard to godhood and back, even WotC knows that! did the numerous fantasy videogames copy the super wizard god mode Dnd? no they copied the DnD thats actually in the book: fighting. looting. adventure. because between level up, treasure tables and go forth to fight evil in dungeons, DnD really doesn't do anything else-planes are just larger dungeons.

and I don't play grimdark settings to kick ass, thats like going into survival horror videogames expecting to be Master Chief. I don't play them at all, THEY'RE GRIMDARK, there is no hope or point for doing anything in it, not even kicking ass. its just that 3.5 forgot what it was originally built for, then when 4e finally reminded everyone what all this was originally supposed to do and assumed everyone knew that, people rejected it because they couldn't admit that what they thought was DnD was never actually the DnD that companies were selling. Ever.

This is...I don't even know where to begin. D&D is not just all about dungeon crawling, despite the name and the common meme to that effect. The base OD&D game was an extension to Chainmail, which was obviously a wargame, not a dungeon crawl game; its equivalent to the DMG, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, placed the "dungeon" on the same level as wilderness adventures, setting it apart only because the different environments had different needs and constraints. Supplement I: Greyhawk introduced most of the things that we think of as "D&D" today, and its thief class was focused on climbing, sneaking, and exploration...but not trapfinding, because it was made as a general adventuring class, not a dungeon-delving class.

It may not have been all about dungeon-crawling, but OD&D was certainly heavy on the "adventure, loot, carouse, repeat." This changed with AD&D and BECMI. In the former, your characters adventured for a while, then retired to build fortresses, lead armies, control territory, and do other political things, before eventually hobnobbing with the good gods and taking out the bad ones. In the latter, your characters...did exactly the same things, with the Companion, Master, and Immortals sets, respectively. In both cases, "adventure, loot, carouse, repeat" is only the first few levels, because the point of the leveling system is that the game changes every few levels; there's not a hard cutoff, obviously, because (A) different classes leveled at different rates and (B) they were basically making the game do these things from scratch, but it's not exactly a secret either.

So no, the Essence of D&D is not fight-loot-repeat, and the reason video games copied that aspect of the game is because programming a Gauntlet Legends or a Diablo was a hell of a lot easier than programming Civilization-meets-Age of Empires-meets-Bioshock Infinite. Hell, the Wheel of Time game is a perfect example: the books describe a deep world full of continent-spanning plots, political intrigue, world-shaping magic, a diverse cast of characters, and so forth, but programming is hard so the WoT video game is basically a reskinned Doom where you shoot fireballs and lightning instead of bullets.

To think that 4e was at all a "back to basics" edition or that 3e rejected the "real" D&D is to completely ignore or misunderstand the underpinnings and entire history of the game.

well okay yeah, that boils down to WotC not caring about alignment because its mostly just an excuse for the fighting part. only nerds and fans take what is just a slapped on excuse and turn into something serious. so either we go your route, and try to get an actual coherent explanation of morality-good luck-....or we can all just acknowledge that it was never meant to be thing to be taken seriously and have them outright that alignment is a slapped on excuse. because the day WotC actually cares enough to fix these issues properly, is the day that the world ends.

As above: total misunderstanding of the game. Alignment is not simply a red team/blue team faction thing; Moorcock and archetypal high fantasy say hi. It did often get used that way back when it was a one-axis system, but that's despite the intent, not the whole of it.

Brova

2015-06-16, 08:07 PM

well okay yeah, that boils down to WotC not caring about alignment because its mostly just an excuse for the fighting part.

WotC released two entire books (the Book of Vile Darkness and the Book of Exalted Deeds) dedicated entirely to alignment. Now, it is true that those books were written by clowns (apparently stealing power from the gods is evil, despite the fact that there are evil gods), but WotC absolutely thought alignment was a meaningful part of the game. You may not agree, but even ignoring other settings like Planescape, WotC clearly thought alignment was more than a reason to go stab people in the face.

5e at least makes sure the wizards aren't complete gods, even if they can still do broken stuff. I'd rather that they didn't any broken stuff really but apparently I can't win there.

The vast majority of stuff that is "broken" in 3e isn't the fault of Wizards. It's either the fault of Fighters (for not being a real class) or adventure designers (for not acknowledging teleport). Yes, things like shapechange are broken and stuff like ice assassin probably can't be balanced. But that doesn't mean that we should reject the idea that people might do things other than "go to a place and kill a thing".

like, if we had a DnD book that actually went into the tiers of power at work and actually talked openly about what kind of tier to work at and so on and so forth, I don't think this would be such a big problem. but nope, WotC doesn't care. god-wizard is a problem, because there is nothing to indicate wizards are gods.

From the bottom.

There is absolutely something to indicate Wizards are gods: their spell list. Even if we accept that Wizards weren't supposed to get wish cheese, or shapechange stacking, or genesis tricks, it is absolutely true that the people writing D&D intended for Wizards to have noncombat powers (i.e. planar binding) and powers that circumvented parts of the adventure (i.e. knock). You could make a compelling case that those things should be moved around. You could certainly convince me to have disable device grant knock at-will at some number of ranks. Or for invisibility to be a part of the hide skill. Or for planar binding to be a noncombat power people could just use. All of that would be fine. But removing it entirely? Not a chance.

As far as power tiers go, 4e actually had the right idea with the Heroic/Paragon/Epic split. You could straight up say "heroic is for dungeon-crashing fantasy like LotR or Conan, paragon is for large scale and high power fantasy like Avatar or Codex Alera, epic is for crazy fantasy like Lord of Light or superhero comics". And that framework has a bunch of other benefits like letting you force people out of non-classes like "Fighter" or "Barbarian" when they stop being relevant. And again, this is a discussion of the next edition of D&D. Wizards could totally do that. Then you could have your "real D&D" where people do small unit tactics, and other people could go invade hell or build planar metropoli.

Did you actually play 4e once most of the material was out? I don't know about other classes, but my Bard got new and improved powers every level that also happened to deal more damage or heal more HP. We fought dramatically different enemies and went on different kinds of adventure at different levels.

Fighting different enemies is not what I'm talking about at all. That's a cosmetic change, not a substantive one. In D&D 4e, if you gave a level 1 character the same numbers (but not powers/gear/utility) as a level 30 one, he could fight the same challenges. In 3e, that's not true. There are encounters that a 13th level 3e character could overcome that a 3rd level one could not - even if his numbers were up to spec.

Different classes were daily heavy or encounter heavy or at-will heavy, leading to classes having the same sort of differentiation that 3e's various resource systems did.

No.

Seriously, 3e had all kinds of crazy resource management systems. You had prepared daily powers, spotaneous daily powers, at-will powers, powers that enhanced attacks and recharged on an normal attack, power points, winds of fate, incarnum, skill based magic, and "encounter" powers. The fact that some classes has "more dailies" or "more at-wills" doesn't begin to compare.

Steampunkette

2015-06-16, 09:28 PM

Brova: Hundreds of Thousands of books made them millions of dollars.

Even if 4e had made 1/3rd of 3.5's Profit it still would have blown it's competitors out of the water.

As it is, they went from a 75% market share down to a 55% market share.

It was successful, massively monetarily successful, by every measure that doesn't follow the vaunted line of infinite profit. They still made enough cash off every PHB for Hasbro to wipe their butts with money.

The fact that they used $5 bills instead of $50 bills to wipe up doesn't make it a financial failure. It was -still- the biggest name on the block.

As far as the argument RE: Beholders and Mages as default;

Nerp. Mages are supposed to be one part of a party, not the whole party themselves. Take a deeper look into action economy and opportunity cost for the mage/cleric/person pulling out a crapton of dispelling magic.

And yeah. A group made up of all spellcasters is going to DESTROY the Beholder. A balanced group is going to fight it with challenge. And a group without mages is going to have serious problems and maybe a TPK. That doesn't mean Mages are the baseline of combat, guys. It means that the game was built around having spells on the team. No one is suggesting the Wizard gets completely axed or nerfed to uselessness.

When it comes to spells, the epic is gone before the wizard hits 17. You can argue all you want about one or two or three examples of characters written with laughably ridiculous spellcasting ability, but it doesn't stand up to the landslide of pop culture and shared experiences that formed the basis of the collective consciousness which birthed the game and the interest of millions of players.

Cloud Strife does not an argument for all fighters to Limit Break make.

PairO'Dice Lost

2015-06-16, 10:05 PM

As far as the argument RE: Beholders and Mages as default;

Nerp. Mages are supposed to be one part of a party, not the whole party themselves.

And mages aren't a whole party unto themselves. They can be, but then so can a rogue, based on the kind of campaign being run and the skill level of the player. Wizards don't render the rest of the party obsolete, as is commonly touted, until the very high reaches of practical optimization territory, and then only if they're built to do so. In an actual game, a wizard rarely wins entire encounters with a single spell, unless you're going with the "fight exactly 4 even-CR monsters per day" model which I said above was flawed, but then that's like complaining that a turning-specced Sun domain cleric dominates in an undead-heavy campaign.

And yeah. A group made up of all spellcasters is going to DESTROY the Beholder. A balanced group is going to fight it with challenge. And a group without mages is going to have serious problems and maybe a TPK. That doesn't mean Mages are the baseline of combat, guys. It means that the game was built around having spells on the team. No one is suggesting the Wizard gets completely axed or nerfed to uselessness.

If the game was "built around having spells on the team" (which indeed it was), how can you say that casters are not the baseline of combat? If taking away a certain type of character violates the basic game assumptions, then by definition that type of character is the baseline of the game's power curve.

When it comes to spells, the epic is gone before the wizard hits 17. You can argue all you want about one or two or three examples of characters written with laughably ridiculous spellcasting ability, but it doesn't stand up to the landslide of pop culture and shared experiences that formed the basis of the collective consciousness which birthed the game and the interest of millions of players.

Spellcasters come from that very "landslide of pop culture." Every single spell in OD&D came from fictional magic-users, from myths and legends, from the Bible (for the cleric), and from other similar sources. I'm not sure what "the epic is gone" is supposed to mean, but if you mean that fictional spellcasters don't resemble high-level D&D characters you're sadly mistaken. Pug, Ged, Rand al'Thor, Jadis, Belgarath, the Crimson King, and many others say hi.

Cloud Strife does not an argument for all fighters to Limit Break make.

No, but Roland, Gilgamesh, Ragnar Lodbrok, Hercules, Achilles, Sigurd Dragon-Slayer, Lancelot, Egil One-Hand, Cu Chulainn, Odysseus, Beowulf, Maugris, Alyosha Popovich and many many more do.

Brova

2015-06-16, 11:26 PM

Brova: Hundreds of Thousands of books made them millions of dollars.

Even if 4e had made 1/3rd of 3.5's Profit it still would have blown it's competitors out of the water.

As it is, they went from a 75% market share down to a 55% market share.

4e didn't lose 20% of their market share. It lost 90% of it. They went from selling millions of books to hundreds of thousands.

And yeah. A group made up of all spellcasters is going to DESTROY the Beholder. A balanced group is going to fight it with challenge. And a group without mages is going to have serious problems and maybe a TPK. That doesn't mean Mages are the baseline of combat, guys. It means that the game was built around having spells on the team. No one is suggesting the Wizard gets completely axed or nerfed to uselessness.

First, any questions of current balance can be thrown out the window. This is a new edition of D&D, you could set it up so that a Beholder gets curb stomped by a bunch of Fighters or so that it eats those Fighters for breakfast.

Second, in the edition you appear to be discussing, there are rubrics for balance, and Wizards are balanced by them. A Wizard goes 50% on the SGT, or slightly better. That's exactly what the guidelines say he should. The Fighter struggles to hit 50%. The Wizard is not over preforming, the Fighter is under performing.

When it comes to spells, the epic is gone before the wizard hits 17. You can argue all you want about one or two or three examples of characters written with laughably ridiculous spellcasting ability, but it doesn't stand up to the landslide of pop culture and shared experiences that formed the basis of the collective consciousness which birthed the game and the interest of millions of players.

Giaus Sextus blows up a volcano, Aang and Ozai's fight at the end of A:TLA, any fight scene from First Lord's Fury, any fight scene from Lord of Light, Dr. Strange, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Wheel of Time, Sargeras, and mythology.

Kurald Galain

2015-06-17, 12:56 AM

Even if 4e had made 1/3rd of 3.5's Profit it still would have blown it's competitors out of the water.
But 4E didn't blow its competitors ouf of the water. Indeed, the exact opposite thing happened: WOTC's competitors blew 4E out of the water, to the point where WOTC lost its traditional position as market leader. This led to WOTC abandoning 4E entirely, and making a new game resembling 4E's predecessors instead.

Here, let me quote an industry insider, (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?315800-4-Hours-w-RSD-Escapist-Bonus-Column/page20&p=5765391#post5765391) "none of the current product line (the stuff being solicited and sold as new this year and last year) is even marginally profitable when you factor in the overhead of the sales & marketing teams, plus the RPGA ... If it were working financially, you wouldn't have seen Essentials. Essentials, to me, was the visible indicator that the strategy of selling the highest margin product - the core books, had failed for 4e, and that Wizards was seeking to make revenues (and profits) elsewhere. As I didn't see a huge groundswell of reaction to Essentials, I conclude that the strategy didn't work either."

So if WOTC has learned anything, 6E won't be anything like 4E. Rather, if 5E is successful, then there is no need for a 6E for a long time; if 5E is not successful, then WOTC will make a game more closely resembling the market leader.

Segev

2015-06-17, 10:12 AM

Did you actually play 4e once most of the material was out? I don't know about other classes, but my Bard got new and improved powers every level that also happened to deal more damage or heal more HP. We fought dramatically different enemies and went on different kinds of adventure at different levels. Different classes were daily heavy or encounter heavy or at-will heavy, leading to classes having the same sort of differentiation that 3e's various resource systems did.

Personally, I don't dispute that all the classes got new abilities as they leveled, nor that they got stronger and had more damage they could dish out and take.

The problem is that your bard used the same mechanics for his class abilities as the fighter, the rogue, the wizard, the psion, the warlock, the binder, and the incarnate. They were all martial adepts; there were no spellcasters, no incarnum-users, no psychics, no skill-monkeys. There were no new and interesting subsystems, because to introduce them would fly in the face of the fundamental 4e design that all classes use the martial adept paradigm.

I'm sure it was fun for some people. I'm sure it is easier to balance. I am glad for those who enjoyed it. Heck, if it didn't raise certain expectations in me, I might have been more tollerant of it.

As it was, 4e was a perfectly fine tactical fantasy combat game that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike D&D.

Hawkstar

2015-06-17, 11:28 AM

Personally, I don't dispute that all the classes got new abilities as they leveled, nor that they got stronger and had more damage they could dish out and take.

The problem is that your bard used the same mechanics for his class abilities as the fighter, the rogue, the wizard, the psion, the warlock, the binder, and the incarnate. They were all martial adepts; there were no spellcasters, no incarnum-users, no psychics, no skill-monkeys. There were no new and interesting subsystems, because to introduce them would fly in the face of the fundamental 4e design that all classes use the martial adept paradigm.

I'm sure it was fun for some people. I'm sure it is easier to balance. I am glad for those who enjoyed it. Heck, if it didn't raise certain expectations in me, I might have been more tollerant of it.

As it was, 4e was a perfectly fine tactical fantasy combat game that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike D&D.Sounds like you never actually played the game.

There were plenty of spellcasters. Wizards could change their daily spells known to a limited degree, and used long-range attacks that dealt weapon-agnostic damage and effects. Martial classes tended to have 'simpler' powers, but they were heavily tweaked and modified by weapon selection and feats. Psions had a flexible point system. Some classes, especially Classic Skill Monkeys like the Bard and Rogue got more skill proficiencies than other classes, a broader selection of skill proficiencies, and powers that gave bonuses to skill checks, or auto-achieved effects that previous editions required skill checks/tricks/nonweapon proficiencies for, making them continue to contribute to the skill-based game, and bring skills into combat.

The different roles (Defender, Leader, Controller, Striker) also brought multiple elements to the table, especially with every class generally fitting a primary role AND having a secondary role as well.

The bard's powers may be presented the same as the Fighter's or Wizard's, but they don't play the same. Heck, even Fighters don't play the same (Rageblood Vigor plays dramatically different from a Brawler, who plays dramatically different from... well, any combination of class talent, powers, and other things I'm forgetting).

Segev

2015-06-17, 12:56 PM

I did play it, trying it two different times. Each time, I could not tell the difference between my rogue's mechanics and my wizard's. Yes, they had different powers, but the underlying mechanics were the same. It was more akin to playing a swordsage vs. a warblade than playing a wizard vs. a rogue.

Yes, the different roles have different abilities. Yes, it's a good and varied tactical board game. In fact, I have enjoyed its mechanics more when adapted to board games (as in the Castle Ravenloft game that plays more in the style of Hero Quest) than when trying to call it D&D.

As I said: it's a perfectly fine tactical fantasy combat game that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike D&D.

SpectralDerp

2015-06-17, 01:38 PM

I think this is the fundamental issue. I hate 4e and everything it stands for. I hate the idea that the difference between level 1 and level 30 isn't in how you fight, or what your powers do, but that you've gone from a cultist of Orcus who swings at +3 for 1d6 damage against AC 20 and 10 HP to Orcus who swings at +33 for 10d6 damage against AC 50 and 100 HP. That's boring. If high level play can't tell different stories, there is no point to high level play. For all the broken loops, poorly worded powers, and general weirdness, 3e understood that. Characters actually changed at higher levels in 3e and had new tools to fight new challenges. If all you want to do is delve dungeons, there is no reason for 20 levels of play. If you have the same adventure at level 20 you had at level 1, you are still level 1.

I have no idea what game you were playing but it wasn't 4e.

Reverent-One

2015-06-17, 03:28 PM

But 4E didn't blow its competitors ouf of the water. Indeed, the exact opposite thing happened: WOTC's competitors blew 4E out of the water, to the point where WOTC lost its traditional position as market leader. This led to WOTC abandoning 4E entirely, and making a new game resembling 4E's predecessors instead.

Here, let me quote an industry insider, (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?315800-4-Hours-w-RSD-Escapist-Bonus-Column/page20&p=5765391#post5765391) "none of the current product line (the stuff being solicited and sold as new this year and last year) is even marginally profitable when you factor in the overhead of the sales & marketing teams, plus the RPGA ... If it were working financially, you wouldn't have seen Essentials. Essentials, to me, was the visible indicator that the strategy of selling the highest margin product - the core books, had failed for 4e, and that Wizards was seeking to make revenues (and profits) elsewhere. As I didn't see a huge groundswell of reaction to Essentials, I conclude that the strategy didn't work either."

So if WOTC has learned anything, 6E won't be anything like 4E. Rather, if 5E is successful, then there is no need for a 6E for a long time; if 5E is not successful, then WOTC will make a game more closely resembling the market leader.

Your "industry insider" demonstrates that they clearly have some blind spots when it comes to how Wizards makes it's money. He distinguishes Paizo from Wizards because "it has subscribers" and says that "4e is also exclusively sold through middlemen", ignoring Wizard's own subscription service that even people at Piazo have said they don't have anything like. You're also misrepsenting what he says, taking the section where he describes it as a failure in their self-imposed definition of success, based on of the set amount of money it was supposed to bring in (an amount that no RPG makes), not in terms of comparison to their competitors. Your editing to make some of what he says sound more objective, for example "I suspect that none of the current product line (the stuff being solicited and sold as new this year and last year) is even marginally profitable" turns into "none of the current product line (the stuff being solicited and sold as new this year and last year) is even marginally profitable", is poor form as well.

Kurald Galain

2015-06-17, 03:37 PM

Your "industry insider" demonstrates that they clearly have some blind spots when it comes to how Wizards makes it's money.
Suit yourself, I'll take the word of this credible business insider over that of a random anonymous forum user any time of the week.

Here, let me graph this for you: popularity of 3E vs 4E vs PF over time, as sourced from Google.
http://www.awesomedice.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/dd-editions-vs-pathfinder-trend.jpg

But hey, it's possible that 4E was the ultimate cash cow bestseller of all time and that WOTC just rebooted it on a whim, canceled several of its planned products on a whim, and then stopped selling it entirely (in favor of a 3E variant) on yet another whim. You know, because that makes business sense :smallamused:

Reverent-One

2015-06-17, 03:49 PM

Suit yourself, I'll take the word of this credible business insider over that of a random anonymous forum user any time of the week.

If you need a random anonymous forum user to tell you that Wizards made money from their own subscription service, I have no idea what to tell you. Seems like your head's buried in the sand for that one.

Here, let me graph this for you: popularity of 3E vs 4E vs PF over time, as sourced from Google.
http://www.awesomedice.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/dd-editions-vs-pathfinder-trend.jpg

But hey, it's possible that 4E was the ultimate cash cow bestseller of all time and that WOTC just rebooted it on a whim, canceled several of its planned products on a whim, and then stopped selling it entirely (in favor of a 3E variant) on yet another whim. You know, because that makes business sense :smallamused:

Moving the goalposts from not being blown out of the water by competitors to being "the ultimate cash cow bestseller" now? I don't think anyone questions there's a market that 4e left behind, one that Wizards has every reason to want to recapture, like being part of a larger company with higher standards than other RPG companies have.

Steampunkette

2015-06-17, 04:20 PM

Reverent-One:

I wanna thank you for tearing apart Gelain's terribly misleading response to my statement that 4e was still commercially massive even if it wasn't AS massive as 3e/3.5e thanks to it's economic and cultural position and inertia.

I was at work and then asleep, and couldn't make a post. But even if I hadn't been I don't think I could have said it better, myself. Well done!

Steampunkette

2015-06-17, 04:53 PM

To lay it out the timeline for people.

In 2007, 4e was released. It sold massively. The core books sold better than any single 3e product. Including the core. Though it can be reasonably argued that they sold so much better because of the relative obscurity to mainstream culture of the 3e launch, but after over a decade of rising awareness 4e got more new-gamer attention with it's flashy release.

Though WotC does not release it's market analyses or sales figures, by looking into private retailers coast to coast you'll find that in the year of it's initial release 4e made up between 70% and 85% of their RPG sales in that year.

After 2007 the numbers flagged by about 3% of the market share, quarter over quarter, until 2009. Which brought them down to, roughly, 50% of the market share for in-store purchases for tabletop RPG gaming.

In late Q3 2009 Paizo released the Pathfinder Core Rules to staggering success. And managed to -tie- D&D 4e's sales that quarter. That doesn't reflect in most of the store sales, because much of Paizo's success was digital distribution. And while WotC had their own DD Paizo's was the 'New Kid on the Block'. The other major component of Pathfinder's success was the pre-release open playtesting with feedback. This gave players a hand in balancing and experiencing the game before launch, creating a massive hook thrown as a wide net.

At that point, Warhammer's Adventures, White Wolf's Monsters, Hackmaster, Tunnels and Trolls... they represented a combined <15% of the overall market for tabletop RPGs by product sales. D&D 4e's only significant competitor was Pathfinder.

In 2010, WotC released two "Core" manuals, the PHB 3 and MM 3. And their "Essentials" line of 6 products. In 2010 Paizo released 3 core books and a large amount of supplemental materials.

WotC released a single book in 2012 and then began a 2 year widely known and eventually open playtesting of 5e (Next at the time)

In 2014, 5e sold harder than 4e ever did.

What we can learn from this is that while 4e is considered a "Failure" by WotC and most players, it was still massive by comparison to the REST of the market. It still represented 30% of the market share at it's lowest numbers, with Pathfinder representing a further 30% of the market share and all other competitors -combining- to represent 40% of the market.

Aside from Paizo, no one made nearly as much money as 4e did. And Paizo only managed to make a similar amount because of the previous successes and high sales rates of 3e and 4e bringing tabletop gaming into a resurgence and then STOPPED PRODUCING for 2 years while Paizo was still hitting it's stride.

5e has blown 3e's sales out of the water. It may blow 4e's figures out of the water. The Starter Set is already the biggest box sale that has ever hit tabletop gaming. 4e ended because it wasn't a big enough market share for WotC after Paizo came along with Pathfinder, and the feedback from the player base.

Commercially? It was still a massive success among tabletop gaming. And people can argue until they're blue in the face that it wasn't. But the numbers don't lie: It made more money than all the other products -combined- until Paizo's Pathfinder tied it.

Flickerdart

2015-06-17, 05:03 PM

There's two things to note here, though:

1) Despite 4e and 5e's earnings, for Hasbro, D&D is making garbage money. This is why all the good designers work on Magic.
2) Going from 70% to 30% of market share does not constitute success. WotC remains the market leader, but it started in such a position of power that no one edition could possibly lose all of that. Really, Pathfinder's success should have been WotC's success - "more of that thing you like and also better" is a really good pitch.

So 4e simultaneously did really well (compared to 3.5 sales) and really poorly (because it did not exploit the market as well as it could have), and then in absolute terms it's never actually done well. None of these things reflect on 4e's quality as a game - they have everything to do with the quality of exploiting a business opportunity.

Kurald Galain

2015-06-17, 05:23 PM

1) Despite 4e and 5e's earnings, for Hasbro, D&D is making garbage money. This is why all the good designers work on Magic.
Absolutely. This has been true since the beginning of WOTC; the only reason they could afford to buy the D&D brand in the first place (from TSR) is because of the Magic brand was making so much more money.

But bear in mind that just because 4E had a lot of revenue doesn't mean it had a lot of profit. Indeed, we know that it was barely or not at all profitable despite selling a lot of units. Why? Because of high costs; this is basic economics. The smart move for WOTC would be to make 5E for much lower costs, and it appears that's precisely what they've done.

2) Going from 70% to 30% of market share does not constitute success. WotC remains the market leader, but it started in such a position of power that no one edition could possibly lose all of that.
Sorry, but pretty much all public sources agree that WOTC stopped being the market leader several years ago (edit: in 2011, to be exact (http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1984-Top-5-RPGs-Compiled-Charts-2008-Present), even dropping below second place starting 2012), although 5E gives them a chance at recovering this. Indeed, the only reason 5E exists in the first place is because WOTC wanted to reclaim market leadership.

Also, everybody knows that 3E sold an order of magnitude more books than 4E did, although this is partly because 3E stepped into a mostly empty market, and 4E faced heavy competition right from the beginning. But 3E's print run is easily twice as long as 4E's, and 3E remained strong throughout whereas 4E petered out after two years, and the effort to reinvigorate it (i.e. HOFL) was controversial with the fanbase, and ultimately unsuccessful. WOTC stopped making 4E books well before 5E came out.

then in absolute terms it's never actually done well. None of these things reflect on 4e's quality as a game - they have everything to do with the quality of exploiting a business opportunity.
Agreed.

Frankly, there's little reason for players to care about the commercial value of the game. As long as you have the basic books and a bit of a community, the company going downhill isn't going to stop you from playing. And, a little market fragmentation goes a long way towards giving indie designers a chance.

Reverent-One

2015-06-17, 05:36 PM

Absolutely. This has been true since the beginning of WOTC; the only reason they could afford to buy the D&D brand in the first place (from TSR) is because of the Magic brand was making so much more money.

But bear in mind that just because 4E had a lot of revenue doesn't mean it had a lot of profit. Indeed, we know that it was barely or not at all profitable despite selling a lot of units. Why? Because of high costs; this is basic economics. The smart move for WOTC would be to make 5E for much lower costs, and it appears that's precisely what they've done.

No, we don't know that. We know it didn't meet the incredibly high standards Hasbro was sold on, but just because they saw a way to make more profit (by reducing costs and hopefully increasing market share) doesn't mean 4e wasn't profitable.

Sorry, but pretty much all public sources agree that WOTC stopped being the market leader several years ago, although 5E gives them a chance at recovering this.

Well, they also stopped making books for it several years ago. :smalltongue:

Also, everybody knows that 3E sold an order of magnitude more books than 4E did, although this is partly because 3E stepped into a mostly empty market, and 4E faced heavy competition right from the beginning. But 3E's print run is easily twice as long as 4E's, and 3E remained strong throughout whereas 4E petered out after two years, and the effort to reinvigorate it (i.e. HOFL) was controversial with the fanbase, and ultimately unsuccessful. WOTC stopped making 4E books well before 5E came out.

Again, we don't know that. 3e benefitted from doing a .5 edition that required rebuying the core books to remain compatible, and more importantly was made before Hasbro's "product lines must make either $50 or $100 million in yearly revenue" stance. This statement is also inconsistent with your previous point that 4e had more revenue. Book prices didn't increase so much that it could do that while selling orders of magnitude less books.

Brova

2015-06-17, 05:52 PM

I have no idea what game you were playing but it wasn't 4e.

Let's take a look at some 4e monsters to see how much the change over the course of the game's 30 levels. What stories can you tell with a 30th level monster that you couldn't tell with a 1st level one? How do their capabilities change? For this example, I won't actually look at a 30th level monster or at a 1st level one. I'm going to look at the level 33 Orcus and the Orc (as the Orc comes in a variety of levels, I'll look at the level 8 Orc Chieftain). So how do they compare?

Well, the level 8 Orc has some attacks, and no noncombat powers. The level 33 Orcus has a bunch of attacks, although they are thematically different and he has some kind of limited use instant-gib attack. But he still has no noncombat powers. He's got a 30ft aura of animate dead and a 30ft teleport. That's it. He is marginally more lethal, but not any fundamentally different from the Orc you fought 25 levels before him. That's the problem with 4e, there's no progress - stuff just looks tougher. It's exactly like playing Monster's Den or something - the enemies get bigger numbers, but never different abilities. To illustrate what I'm talking about, we're going to look at some examples from 3e.

4e changed some of the numbers vis a vis challenge calculations from 3e, so some corrections could be made. First, the elitle/solo/normal/minion divide didn't exist in 3e. A creature of whatever level was just an appropriate challenge for a party of its level. As such, while Orcus is nominally CR 33 in 3e terms, the Orc is only CR 6 (as two of him are needed to challenge a level 8 party). Second, the game went twenty levels instead of thirty. As such, I'll show off two comparisons, one scaled back (i.e. CR 6 / 30 * 20 = 4 v CR 33 / 30 * 20 = 22) and one as normal (i.e. CR 6 v CR 33, technically 30 because the "Creatures by CR (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Creatures_by_CR)" listing lacks granularity). Picking the first monster in each category, I have the following listings:

CR 4 - Arenea (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Aranea)
CR 6 - Advanced Megaraptor Skeleton (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Advanced_Megaraptor_Skeleton)
CR 22 - Anaxim (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Anaxim)
CR 30 - Atropal (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Atropal)

What's the CR 4 Arenea look like? Well, it's got some minimally effective casting, a ranged disable, poison, and shapeshifting. That's already more interesting abilities than both the Orc and Orcus, and this is even less of a challenge than the Orc is.

So how does the CR 22 Anaxim compare? What does it have going on that makes it interestingly different than the Arenea? Notably, at will ethereal jaunt requires players to show up with plane-hopping abilities to meaningfully fight it. The combination of greater dispel magic to strip buffs and greater invisibility to hide is also potentially effective. It can also summon Iron Golems.

Now, the CR 6 Advanced Megaraptor Skeleton is incredibly boring. It attacks for damage and is immune to cold. I don't even care.

Obviously the CR 30 Atropal is more interesting with three varieties of undead creation (animate dead, create undead and create greater undead), plane shift, teleport, speak with dead, and project image. That seriously might be more novel utility abilities than the entire 4e MM.

Flickerdart

2015-06-18, 07:27 AM

Sorry, but pretty much all public sources agree that WOTC stopped being the market leader several years ago (edit: in 2011, to be exact (http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1984-Top-5-RPGs-Compiled-Charts-2008-Present), even dropping below second place starting 2012), although 5E gives them a chance at recovering this. Indeed, the only reason 5E exists in the first place is because WOTC wanted to reclaim market leadership.

That chart has D&D back on top in the final line, though. :smallsmile:

Yora

2015-06-18, 07:43 AM

With their entire business consisting of Player's Handbooks, I wonder how long they will stay that way.

Hawkstar

2015-06-18, 07:51 AM

Suit yourself, I'll take the word of this credible business insider over that of a random anonymous forum user any time of the week.

Here, let me graph this for you: popularity of 3E vs 4E vs PF over time, as sourced from Google.
http://www.awesomedice.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/dd-editions-vs-pathfinder-trend.jpg

But hey, it's possible that 4E was the ultimate cash cow bestseller of all time and that WOTC just rebooted it on a whim, canceled several of its planned products on a whim, and then stopped selling it entirely (in favor of a 3E variant) on yet another whim. You know, because that makes business sense :smallamused:

That graph is out of date. You don't google "D&D 4e". You just Google "Dungeons&Dragons" to get 4e, until 2014.

Sorry, but pretty much all public sources agree that WOTC stopped being the market leader several years ago (edit: in 2011, to be exact (http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1984-Top-5-RPGs-Compiled-Charts-2008-Present), even dropping below second place starting 2012), although 5E gives them a chance at recovering this.
Whaddaya know... the same year they stopped publishing D&D books...

SpectralDerp

2015-06-18, 08:46 AM

But he still has no noncombat powers.

Noncombat powers don't show up on creature stat blocks, DMs are free to hand those out in whatever way they please.

He is marginally more lethal, but not any fundamentally different from the Orc you fought 25 levels before him.

You don't see a difference between a vanilla enemy and one with the ability to passively raise all dead creatures near it into its minions, except Atropals?

This threat is like a toilet-bowl for irrational 4e hate.

Segev

2015-06-18, 09:14 AM

So far, I haven't seen any real dispute that PF effectively split what was once D&D's exclusive market share in twain, pulling half of it off to its own interests. Interestingly, 3.5 continued selling and being searched as a primary competitor for 4e for much longer than is typical when a new edition comes out.

Nobody is claiming that 4e didn't make money. I don't think anybody is even claiming that it wasn't one of the biggest gorillas in the room. The issue is that it was, compared to 3.5, a much smaller gorilla, because PF managed, on the grounds that it was "3.75," to snag half the 3.5 market share that theoretically should have been inherited wholesale from 4e. It's telling that, even before PF, 4e was losing market share at a much faster rate than 3.5 ever did.

Yes, the big decline came when they stopped making new stuff, but they stopped making new stuff because they wanted to make 5e instead, because 4e was already declining and thus becoming a less and less attractive thing into which to sink resources. This is, in no small part, because 4e alienated a large segment of its predecessors' fan base in a way that 3e never did. It made up for it with a lot of new blood - this is good - but that wasn't enough.

If they could have kept their old audience and brought in the new, there never would have been a PF, and D&D 4e would probably only now even be slowing down.

Reverent-One

2015-06-18, 09:22 AM

So far, I haven't seen any real dispute that PF effectively split what was once D&D's exclusive market share in twain, pulling half of it off to its own interests. Interestingly, 3.5 continued selling and being searched as a primary competitor for 4e for much longer than is typical when a new edition comes out.

Nobody is claiming that 4e didn't make money. I don't think anybody is even claiming that it wasn't one of the biggest gorillas in the room. The issue is that it was, compared to 3.5, a much smaller gorilla, because PF managed, on the grounds that it was "3.75," to snag half the 3.5 market share that theoretically should have been inherited wholesale from 4e. It's telling that, even before PF, 4e was losing market share at a much faster rate than 3.5 ever did.

There's not really any good evidence of that as there's no complete source of sales. PF certainly held on to part of the market that never switched, but how much of that is up in the air since there's neither company releases their subscription numbers.

Brova

2015-06-18, 09:35 AM

Noncombat powers don't show up on creature stat blocks, DMs are free to hand those out in whatever way they please.

That's the Oberoni Fallacy, almost word for word. You haven't refuted my argument, you've proved it. Obviously the DM can declare that Orcus has non combat powers to blot out the sun, or call down a rain of burning demons, or blanket a city in a fog that raises the dead as zombies. But the rules do not let him do that. The DM could do that in any system. Frankly, if non combat powers rely on DM invention it cripples player agency because it means you can't know what your enemy is capable of. In 3e, if I'm going to go fight an Atropal I can expect undead minions, teleport, plane shift and all its other powers. In 4e, if I'm going to fight Orcus I have no idea what to expect. The "monsters only exist in combat" line that the authors of 4e pushed is an atrocity.

You don't see a difference between a vanilla enemy and one with the ability to passively raise all dead creatures near it into its minions, except Atropals?

All enemies within 30ft. It's slightly less terrible than I thought, because it does actually raise people who are already dead when he gets there. But it makes minions, which can be killed by (iirc) a level 1 Wizard power that deals damage on a miss. Of course, he can't do anything to influence the prime from his abode in the abyss. The level 33 Orcus literally has less to sell him as an interesting antagonist than the CR 8 Mind Flayer did in 3e.

But seriously, let's compare that to the Atropal. The Atropal does take actions to raise undead, but it can actually raise undead that challenge 1st level characters. It also no save kills anyone level 20 or lower (CL 30 blasphemy), has multiple save or dies (finger of death, slay living, weird), has an aura of negative energy, can speak to the dead (speak with dead), can send a projection of itself out to fight people (technically this doesn't work by RAW as project image only lets you cast spells not SLAs but I except most people would house rule that, project image), can travel across the world or between planes (teleport, planeshift), can remove magical protections (greater dispel magic), can turn invisible (greater invisibility), can summon and command undead, and cannot be slain except by "good weapons or sentient weapons".

And of course, the DM can still give it other powers.

SpectralDerp

2015-06-18, 12:09 PM

Frankly, if non combat powers rely on DM invention it cripples player agency because it means you can't know what your enemy is capable of. In 3e, if I'm going to go fight an Atropal I can expect undead minions, teleport, plane shift and all its other powers. In 4e, if I'm going to fight Orcus I have no idea what to expect.

You would first have to demonstrate the existence of a problem for the Oberoni fallacy to apply. You claim the problem is "Orcus has no non-combat powers", I respond with "Orcus has no non-combat powers on his stat block". I don't find this decision no more problematic than the decision not to have an ability called Basic Campfire (http://wowwiki.wikia.com/Basic_Campfire) to tell you which bandits and orcs are capable of creating one.

You are also completely abandoning the issue of non-combat powers. If you fight Orcus in 4e, you can expect undead minions, teleportation and all it's other powers. These are actually on the statblock.

But it makes minions, which can be killed by (iirc) a level 1 Wizard power that deals damage on a miss.

Minions never take damage on a miss, good job on having an informed opinion. Not sure how you even managed not to figure that out despite knowing the minion part, this rule has a reminder of every minion stat block. Also, these minions deal damage to nearby enemies when they die and they immobilize with their regular attacks. Also, the Wand of Orcus turns things into Dread Wraiths, which (and this is me openly speculating) also applies to minions Orcus decides to squash in order to upgrade them to something that has even nastier status effects.

Of course, he can't do anything to influence the prime from his abode in the abyss.

May I simply refer you to my point about campfires?

Icewraith

2015-06-18, 12:46 PM

That's the Oberoni Fallacy, almost word for word. You haven't refuted my argument, you've proved it. Obviously the DM can declare that Orcus has non combat powers to blot out the sun, or call down a rain of burning demons, or blanket a city in a fog that raises the dead as zombies. But the rules do not let him do that. The DM could do that in any system. Frankly, if non combat powers rely on DM invention it cripples player agency because it means you can't know what your enemy is capable of. In 3e, if I'm going to go fight an Atropal I can expect undead minions, teleport, plane shift and all its other powers. In 4e, if I'm going to fight Orcus I have no idea what to expect. The "monsters only exist in combat" line that the authors of 4e pushed is an atrocity.

All enemies within 30ft. It's slightly less terrible than I thought, because it does actually raise people who are already dead when he gets there. But it makes minions, which can be killed by (iirc) a level 1 Wizard power that deals damage on a miss. Of course, he can't do anything to influence the prime from his abode in the abyss. The level 33 Orcus literally has less to sell him as an interesting antagonist than the CR 8 Mind Flayer did in 3e.

But seriously, let's compare that to the Atropal. The Atropal does take actions to raise undead, but it can actually raise undead that challenge 1st level characters. It also no save kills anyone level 20 or lower (CL 30 blasphemy), has multiple save or dies (finger of death, slay living, weird), has an aura of negative energy, can speak to the dead (speak with dead), can send a projection of itself out to fight people (technically this doesn't work by RAW as project image only lets you cast spells not SLAs but I except most people would house rule that, project image), can travel across the world or between planes (teleport, planeshift), can remove magical protections (greater dispel magic), can turn invisible (greater invisibility), can summon and command undead, and cannot be slain except by "good weapons or sentient weapons".

And of course, the DM can still give it other powers.

Just about everything our group fought in 4e had one or more abilities that made fights very distinct. There were damage auras, various nasty statuses, some monsters flat out grabbed party members and squeezed them, and then there was the purple worm that killed one party member with hit-and-run burrow+swallow whole and almost killed everyone else. Some things exploded on death, or came back a round later, or dropped damage zones that screened out areas of the battle map, or teleported around, or ate healing surges.

The wizard had a bunch of nasty encounter solving powers but had to be very careful when he used them, the cleric had a bunch of heals and some ridiculous party buffs, I don't think the ranger even HAD dailies but he attacked a LOT, we had a bunch of melee characters that all worked differently from each other (we had a number of players that made some sessions but not others). My bard had some healing but not as thorough as the cleric, some situational abilities, and movement and attack granting powers. And by movement granting powers, at epic level he had enough teleportation abilities he was throwing out every round to make the love child of Nightcrawler and your favorite three chessmaster-type villains jealous. Yeah there were at-wills, encounters, and daily powers, but nobody had the same allotment (leading to different approaches to resource management for different classes), nobody's characters worked the same way, and the abilities granted to each class were distinct enough that there was never any confusion over whose class was doing what.

4e is only boring, samey, and "everyone's just throwing out damage" if the party is only ever fighting generic meatsack enemies (which every edition has) and only using their "I have nothing better to do at this time" at-will abilities. You get the same effect in 5e if you have a party composed of say, a battlemaster fighter, wizard, cleric, and bard but the casters just spam cantrips and the fighter never uses any maneuver dice, class abilities, or feats.

Orcus is a demon lord. The players SHOULD have no idea what to expect when dealing with him, because you don't stay a demon lord for long if you don't have ten different flavors of ace up your sleeve. Not detailing out of combat abilities isn't necessarily crippling player agency, it's enabling DM agency, removing the temptation for players to metagame, and reducing the occurrence of the plaintive whine "but that's not what's in the Monster Manual!". In 3e when a giant fetus rises out of the ground emitting a horrific aura of negative energy, you go "oh, it's an Atropal, it can do X Y and Z, let's fight it or run away depending on whether or not we have the abilities to counter its abillities". The DM's satisfaction comes from telling an engaging story and their chief weapon is surprise. Surprise, and fear. Fear and surprise. And ruthless efficiency...

Anyway, not having some mystery regarding powerful opponents completely tanks that. 4e may have taken it a little too far (sometimes a DM just isn't feeling creative), but DMs need to be able to have fun with the game too.

Incidentally, your orc to orcus comparison boils down to "if you ignore all of the things that make orcus fundamentally different from a low-level orc, like a 30 ft animate dead aura and limited use instagib, he's not fundamentally different from a low-level orc".

4e minions can seriously mess up a high level party if they're the right minions. Just because they have 1 hp doesn't mean they don't do something nasty like explode, charge someone in los and make a free attack, heal the boss, or leave behind a pool of poison when they die. They also take up space and constrain the party's movement options.

I'm pretty sure the Oberoni Fallacy applies to rules that are erroneous, inconsistent, or have unintended side effects (drown healing, for instance). There's a big difference between the designers providing you with a connect-the-dots book with missing or misplaced dots, and the designers providing you with a connect-the-dots book with some otherwise entirely blank pages that say "make your own puzzle here". Anyone who claims the book isn't broken because you can work the correct dot positions out from the "completed puzzle should look like this" picture is committing the Oberoni Fallacy. The fallacy doesn't apply to a situation where the designers give you a blank space, expect you to put your own dots in, and you don't.

Brova

2015-06-18, 12:46 PM

You would first have to demonstrate the existence of a problem for the Oberoni fallacy to apply. You claim the problem is "Orcus has no non-combat powers", I respond with "Orcus has no non-combat powers on his stat block".

Orcus (as a rules object) is entirely defined by the abilities in his stack block, and function calls those abilities make to the rest of the rules. That's it. Just as your character doesn't have powers not on his character sheet or implied by function calls on his character sheet (i.e. if you have the ability to cast fireball and fireball is defined in the rules, your sheet doesn't need to define fireball). Any attempt to address flaws in that rules object by claiming that the DM could modify it is the Oberoni Fallacy.

I don't find this decision no more problematic than the decision not to have an ability called Basic Campfire (http://wowwiki.wikia.com/Basic_Campfire) to tell you which bandits and orcs are capable of creating one.

Beyond the fact that there is an obvious difference between powers like "make a campfire" and "summon a legion of demons", there literally are rules for lighting a campfire:

Lighting a torch with flint and steel is a full-round action, and lighting any other fire with them takes at least that long.

You are also completely abandoning the issue of non-combat powers. If you fight Orcus in 4e, you can expect undead minions, teleportation and all it's other powers. These are actually on the statblock.

Yes, a 30ft distance teleport. The blink dog can teleport some 700 feet and it is CR 2. Orcus' "other powers" are attacks for damage, and one save or die that appears to be on some kind of recharge deal.

Minions never take damage on a miss, good job on having an informed opinion. Not sure how you even managed not to figure that out despite knowing the minion part, this rule has a reminder of every minion stat block.

My bad, I just went to double check that the abyssal ghoul was in fact a minion. You could just clear them with a magic missile which, as I understand it, has been errata'd to auto-hit with the release of essentials.

Also, these minions deal damage to nearby enemies when they die and they immobilize with their regular attacks.

You mean the 5ft burst that deals a whole five damage? Or the melee attack that immobilizes? Not only are those powers that were level one in 3e (the mane and the ghoul, respectively), they don't even happen if you kill the abyssal ghoul from range.

Also, the Wand of Orcus turns things into Dread Wraiths, which (and this is me openly speculating) also applies to minions Orcus decides to squash in order to upgrade them to something that has even nastier status effects.

It turns things it kills into dread wraiths. Undead are destroyed, not killed.

May I simply refer you to my point about campfires?

Or I could refer you to an entire edition of D&D to which this criticism does not apply. Which was designed before 4e. 4e took a solved problem, and unsolved it. You can fail harder than that, but it is difficult to do without releasing something that falls outside the bounds of good taste.

SpectralDerp

2015-06-18, 12:50 PM

Orcus (as a rules object) is entirely defined by the abilities in his stack block, and function calls those abilities make to the rest of the rules. That's it.

Again missing the point. Certain non-combat actions do not require hard rules. Does 3e have a rule for conspiring against the king? Would the absence of a rule imply that nobody can conspire against the king?

Beyond the fact that there is an obvious difference between powers like "make a campfire" and "summon a legion of demons", there literally are rules for lighting a campfire:

Is there a part in the rules for 3e which states which creatures of performing such an action? Would the absence of such a rule imply that nobody can use a flint?

Is there a part in the rules for 3e which states that humans are capable of breathing? Would the absence of such a rule imply that humans can not breathe?

The Monster Manual describes Orcus of being able to threaten gods. A typical sane person looked at that and came to the perfectly reasonable conclusion that he can do things out of combat his stat block does not speak about, which becomes trivial if you don't take a hardcore simulationist approach. The designers of 4e do not need to make a "be able to have contact with followers"-ability, they can just say "Orcus has followers he has contact with". The fact that you do not see that reveals your position as narrow minded and petty, nothing more.

Also, quoted for truth:

I'm pretty sure the Oberoni Fallacy applies to rules that are erroneous, inconsistent, or have unintended side effects (drown healing, for instance). There's a big difference between the designers providing you with a connect-the-dots book with missing or misplaced dots, and the designers providing you with a connect-the-dots book with some otherwise entirely blank pages that say "make your own puzzle here". Anyone who claims the book isn't broken because you can work the correct dot positions out from the "completed puzzle should look like this" picture is committing the Oberoni Fallacy. The fallacy doesn't apply to a situation where the designers give you a blank space, expect you to put your own dots in, and you don't.

Icewraith

2015-06-18, 01:07 PM

Orcus (as a rules object) is entirely defined by the abilities in his stack block, and function calls those abilities make to the rest of the rules. That's it. Just as your character doesn't have powers not on his character sheet or implied by function calls on his character sheet (i.e. if you have the ability to cast fireball and fireball is defined in the rules, your sheet doesn't need to define fireball). Any attempt to address flaws in that rules object by claiming that the DM could modify it is the Oberoni Fallacy.

Beyond the fact that there is an obvious difference between powers like "make a campfire" and "summon a legion of demons", there literally are rules for lighting a campfire:

Yes, a 30ft distance teleport. The blink dog can teleport some 700 feet and it is CR 2. Orcus' "other powers" are attacks for damage, and one save or die that appears to be on some kind of recharge deal.

My bad, I just went to double check that the abyssal ghoul was in fact a minion. You could just clear them with a magic missile which, as I understand it, has been errata'd to auto-hit with the release of essentials.

You mean the 5ft burst that deals a whole five damage? Or the melee attack that immobilizes? Not only are those powers that were level one in 3e (the mane and the ghoul, respectively), they don't even happen if you kill the abyssal ghoul from range.

It turns things it kills into dread wraiths. Undead are destroyed, not killed.

Or I could refer you to an entire edition of D&D to which this criticism does not apply. Which was designed before 4e. 4e took a solved problem, and unsolved it. You can fail harder than that, but it is difficult to do without releasing something that falls outside the bounds of good taste.

Out of combat abilities were not a solved problem in 3e. In fact, many of the criticisms regarding 3e involve both rules exploits of and the uneven distribution of out of combat abilities found in the core rules. The tier list was an attempt to codify these discrepancies and warn people of them.

Edit: I might even suggest that designers took the approach they did in the 4e MM precisely because 3e was such a mess. In fact, 3e's out of combat balance is so poor and its flaws so widely discussed and analyzed that I might suggest any attempt to hold up 3e or 3.5 as a paragon of out-of-combat utility balance will run headlong into the Oberoni Fallacy.

Brova

2015-06-18, 01:40 PM

Orcus is a demon lord. The players SHOULD have no idea what to expect when dealing with him, because you don't stay a demon lord for long if you don't have ten different flavors of ace up your sleeve.

No.

The players challenging Orcus are massively powerful mages with batteries of divination spells, knowledge checks, and scouting techniques at their disposal. Battling Orcus shouldn't be something you do in an afternoon. When Sam sets out to overthrow heaven in Lord of Light, he doesn't go up to heaven and start punching people. He robs a temple, spreads his own teachings to weaken the gods, frees demons from the Hellwell, fakes his own death, eliminates some of the gods, rallies his armies of demons, zombies, gods of his own, and other superhumans, fights the forces of heaven, dies, comes back, and then uses the political landscape to leverage heaven's weakness to his advantage. At no point does he go up to Brahma, say "let's see what you've got", and punch him in the face. Battling an enemy like Orcus shouldn't be like battling some orcs or barbarians. It should involve complex plays and counter plays, powerful tactics and threats, and a final confrontation that is both epic and satisfying.

Not detailing out of combat abilities isn't necessarily crippling player agency, it's enabling DM agency, removing the temptation for players to metagame, and reducing the occurrence of the plaintive whine "but that's not what's in the Monster Manual!".

Game design theory lesson.

Rules don't exist to constrain the players, they exist to constrain the DM. The reason rules exist is precisely so that when the DM says "rocks fall, everyone dies" the players can say "that's not in the book". Every time you encourage the DM to make up random crap instead of using the rules, you are failing as a game designer twice over. First, because you are releasing a game that is not finished. I can make up rules for noncombat powers with or without any rules, I don't need someone to sell me anything to do it. Second, you are handing one of five players disproportionate power to influence the story. Allowing the DM to do whatever he wants weakens players engagement with the story, because they can no longer influence the story. In this sense plane shift and teleport are the most important spells in the game, because they allow you to simply go somewhere else if the story being told where you are is not engaging.

This is not to say that the DM should never make things up. There will inevitably be situations where the rules do not cover, and the DM will inevitably have to adjudicate those situations. But the goal in these situations should be to provide a robust framework for the rules wherein both the players and the DM can have reasonable and grounded expectations as to what is fair and what will happen.

In 3e when a giant fetus rises out of the ground emitting a horrific aura of negative energy, you go "oh, it's an Atropal, it can do X Y and Z, let's fight it or run away depending on whether or not we have the abilities to counter its abillities".

What? Expectations of threat is vital to the ability of players, and by extension characters, to make informed decisions. Further, giving monsters unpredictable abilities makes D&D less social. If an atropal can have whatever grab bag of abilities the DM throws together, it means nothing to fight one. You can't tell that story to anyone. You'll be all "we fought an atropal, it was sweet" and they'll be all "those are super hardcore, they have fire breath and an ice aura" and you'll do a double take and go "wtf, no, atropals eat your dreams and command a bunch of constructs."

The DM's satisfaction comes from telling an engaging story and their chief weapon is surprise. Surprise, and fear. Fear and surprise. And ruthless efficiency...

D&D is a cooperative storytelling game. If you cannot tell stories that are both sufficiently robust within the rules and sufficiently engaging for the players, you should not DM. No part of allowing players to choose how they engage with the story undermines the DM, it simply provides a way for everyone to shape what is happening.

Anyway, not having some mystery regarding powerful opponents completely tanks that.

Mystery can be created without relegating huge swathes of the game to "wing it". An unknown dungeon is no less mysterious for abiding by the rules of the game. All of Orcus's defenses abiding by the rules does not make them less dangerous or easier to overcome. Frankly, finding out how something works within the rules is a much bigger moment of discovery than simply being told "it's magic, deal with it."

Incidentally, your orc to orcus comparison boils down to "if you ignore all of the things that make orcus fundamentally different from a low-level orc, like a 30 ft animate dead aura and limited use instagib, he's not fundamentally different from a low-level orc".

First, those are powers that occur in combat. The question was what different stories could be told. How is having Orcus in his throne room going to result in a different set of battles than having an Orc Chieftain waiting in his tent? In this sense, the combat powers are irrelevant. The challenge concerns itself with reaching the final boss fight, not with its contents.

Second, insofar as I did concern by gauntlet with combat it was in the context of characters with level appropriate numbers, but special abilities as if they were level one. I see nothing about Orcus that is a fundamentally different challenge than the Orc Chieftain. It is true that Orcus will snowball harder if he starts killing your party, because they turn into ghouls. But the strategic puzzle remains "reach Orcus, hit with sticks". Just as it was 25 levels ago.

I'm pretty sure the Oberoni Fallacy applies to rules that are erroneous, inconsistent, or have unintended side effects (drown healing, for instance). There's a big difference between the designers providing you with a connect-the-dots book with missing or misplaced dots, and the designers providing you with a connect-the-dots book with some otherwise entirely blank pages that say "make your own puzzle here". Anyone who claims the book isn't broken because you can work the correct dot positions out from the "completed puzzle should look like this" picture is committing the Oberoni Fallacy. The fallacy doesn't apply to a situation where the designers give you a blank space, expect you to put your own dots in, and you don't.

Maybe we differ in opinion as to what the Oberoni Fallacy is. Insofar as I am concerned, any deflection of criticism of rules of a game by claiming "the DM could deal with it" or "you could houserule it" or "you could make something up" is the Oberoni Fallacy. The fact that the flaw in question is drown healing, or ice assassin, or Orcus not having noncombat powers doesn't change anything. Fundamentally, you can change things regardless of what game you are playing. A defense premised on "you could houserule it to work" is admitting that, in this respect at least, your game is no better than cops and robbers.

Again missing the point. Certain non-combat actions do not require hard rules. Does 3e have a rule for conspiring against the king? Would the absence of a rule imply that nobody can conspire against the king?

D&D has general rules that allow you to simulate the specific situation of conspiring against the king, yes. You can hold whispered conversations that end just as he approaches. You can foment treason within his armies. You can slip cyanide into his mead.

Is there a part in the rules for 3e which states which creatures of performing such an action? Would the absence of such a rule imply that nobody can use a flint?

Is there a part in the rules for 3e which states that humans are capable of breathing? Would the absence of such a rule imply that humans can not breathe?

I think I have identified the problem with your line of logic.

On a basic level, a game is a set of rules for simulating a world. Insofar as there are no rules for a thing, that thing defaults to the way it behaves in our world. So the lack of rules for how fast things fall implies that they fall at 9.8 m/s^2, just as they do in our world. The lack of rules for number of human arms implies that humans have two arms, just as they do in our world. The lack of rules for summoning demons imply that you cannot summon demons, just as you can't in our world.

The Monster Manual describes Orcus of being able to threaten gods. A typical sane person looked at that and came to the perfectly reasonable conclusion that he can do things out of combat his stat block does not speak about, which becomes trivial if you don't take a hardcore simulationist approach.

There's no contradiction between Orcus being boring and terrible and Orcus being able to threaten gods. Presumably the gods are also boring and terrible. There's no cause or justification for inventing abilities whole cloth because you felt that Orcus should have gotten better swag than he did.

The designers of 4e do not need to make a "be able to have contact with followers"-ability, they can just say "Orcus has followers he has contact with". The fact that you do not see that reveals your position as narrow minded and petty, nothing more.

I could forgive not putting it in Orcus's stat block as "contact minions" is a very simple, very basic divine ability. It should probably be part of a power suite that Orcus, Pelor, and Yan-C-Bin all have for being superpowered extraplanar creatures, but I can sort of forgive just implying it. The issue is that Orcus has nothing going on. He can't scry on people. He can't curse people. He can't travel to other planes. He can't summon demons. He can't do anything. Any contribution Orcus has to a plot is the result of the DM handwaving his lack of powers.

Out of combat abilities were not a solved problem in 3e. In fact, many of the criticisms regarding 3e involve both rules exploits of and the uneven distribution of out of combat abilities found in the core rules.

I never said distribution of out of combat abilities, or power of out of combat abilities. I said having them at all. A thing 3e does and 4e demonstrably does not.

The tier list was an attempt to codify these discrepancies and warn people of them.

What the hell is with the tiers? Every thread, someone brings up the damn tiers. How did something that bad become that invasive in peoples thinking about D&D?

SpectralDerp

2015-06-18, 02:04 PM

The lack of rules for summoning demons imply that you cannot summon demons, just as you can't in our world.

The problem with your line of reasoning is that you start with what you want to be true and then ignore the facts and this is an example that illustrates it. You are imposing a view on this game the designers obviously do not share. Consider the following:

"Powerful deathpriests of Orcus can summon an aspect of the demon lord by means of a ritual."

This is from the "Aspect of Orcus Lore"-section in the Monster Manual, page 208. There's also

"Deathpriest hierophants are among Orcus’s most powerful worshipers. A few of them know the ritual to summon an aspect of Orcus."

from the "Deathpriest Hierophant Lore"-section on the following page. However, this ritual is absent from the statblock for Deathpriest Hierophants on the very same page. This perfectly illustrates the fact that in 4e, out-of-combat abilities do not need to be included in stat blocks.

Brova

2015-06-18, 02:15 PM

"Powerful deathpriests of Orcus can summon an aspect of the demon lord by means of a ritual."

Okay, how long does the ritual take? Do I need a bunch of virgins? Maybe some brazers? Can anyone do it, or is there some kind of aliasing that means only deathpriests can? Is this a generalized "summon demon aspect" ritual, or does it summon specifically an aspect of orcus? Is the aspect required to obey my commands? How long does the aspect stick around? Should I expect every deathpriest to have a big pile of aspects of orcus lying around?

However, this ritual is absent from the statblock for Deathpriest Hierophants on the very same page. This perfectly illustrates the fact that in 4e, out-of-combat abilities do not need to be included in stat blocks.

No, it perfectly illustrates that they do need to be included. As is, there is no way to know anything at all about the ritual. It's at best a poorly written rule, because none of the values are specified. It's like having an ability "you can attack people for damage" - what does that do? Answer: nothing, because none of the variables are defined.

Steampunkette

2015-06-18, 02:18 PM

Obviously, then, 6e needs rules for all possible contingencies, actions, decisions, and options.

Derp! You get started on the inhale/exhale rules while I work on bootlacing!

Lord Raziere

2015-06-18, 02:19 PM

What the hell is with the tiers? Every thread, someone brings up the damn tiers. How did something that bad become that invasive in peoples thinking about D&D?

oh I don't know, perhaps because they're TRUE and demonstrate how just screwed up the game is, or how its practically the whole system that optimizers use to justify their arguments about keeping wizards god-like? their whole argument is like this: since classes are differently designed and differently powerful, not all classes are appropriate for the same play. since they're not appropriate for the same play, they need to be sorted into different groupings that make it clear just how powerful they are, therefore tiers! this allows for people to supposedly better play DnD by knowing what to play, and what not to include in a game. that the system isn't completely borked at all, it just needs to played completely differently than how you expect it to be played from how the books would say you play.

problem is, its purely a fan construct. its one that is true, but its still just a fan construction. the game books never mention how powerful the wizard is in comparison to the fighter, because WotC Does. Not. Care. and optimizers are acting as if a game designed by people who don't care how good it actually is or what the consequences of their design are, is a good thing! then, the one time WotC finally cared about that, actually listened to the complaints, fixed the problems of wildly different powers of classes and made it balanced and well-designed such? they rejected it because they couldn't play wizard-god in 4e! they want the system to be a badly designed mess, so that all their time they spent pouring through sourcebooks and such that no one else bothers to even get is somehow worth it to them.

because really, thats what the optimizers seem to really want: to prove that they mastered the system by being willing to buy more books than other people then read through the tedious cumbersome rules that most people have don't have time for, then exploiting all that to whatever they think is its full potential or whatever. thing is, do we REALLY want a game like that? do we really want a screwed up game that only works right if you make an effort to buy lots of books, read up on a FAN CONSTRUCTION and its associated character building guides, and forget whatever the book says entirely about DnD being an exploration-adventure-action game? do we really want newbies coming in and getting whatever expectations of what they wanted to roleplay, shattered by some abuse of the rules or something? do we want DnD to be known as that "wizard god" game? do we want a game with vast mechanical imbalances between players who are supposed to work together on default assumption of an equal playing field, because thats the default assumption of every game: that when player sit down to play with each other, they are all equal in how powerful they are? one player being more powerful than the other should be the exception. not the rule. do we really want a game like that?

I certainly don't.

SpectralDerp

2015-06-18, 02:21 PM

Okay, how long does the ritual take? Do I need a bunch of virgins? Maybe some brazers? Can anyone do it, or is there some kind of aliasing that means only deathpriests can? Is this a generalized "summon demon aspect" ritual, or does it summon specifically an aspect of orcus? Is the aspect required to obey my commands? How long does the aspect stick around? Should I expect every deathpriest to have a big pile of aspects of orcus lying around?

No, it perfectly illustrates that they do need to be included. As is, there is no way to know anything at all about the ritual. It's at best a poorly written rule, because none of the values are specified. It's like having an ability "you can attack people for damage" - what does that do? Answer: nothing, because none of the variables are defined.

It should be obvious to anyone not actively trying to delude themselves, that the designers intend these variable to be for the DM to specify, which, as previously noted, is not an instance of the Oberoni fallacy, but a new paradigm in DM responsibility and working as intended. This is no different from making it the responsibility of the DM to specify the setting, the countries, their rulers, their population, their technological progress and so on.

Segev

2015-06-18, 02:40 PM

oh I don't know, perhaps because they're TRUE and demonstrate how just screwed up the game is, or how its practically the whole system that optimizers use to justify their arguments about keeping wizards god-like? their whole argument is like this: since classes are differently designed and differently powerful, not all classes are appropriate for the same play. since they're not appropriate for the same play, they need to be sorted into different groupings that make it clear just how powerful they are, therefore tiers! this allows for people to supposedly better play DnD by knowing what to play, and what not to include in a game. that the system isn't completely borked at all, it just needs to played completely differently than how you expect it to be played from how the books would say you play.

problem is, its purely a fan construct. its one that is true, but its still just a fan construction. the game books never mention how powerful the wizard is in comparison to the fighter, because WotC Does. Not. Care. and optimizers are acting as if a game designed by people who don't care how good it actually is or what the consequences of their design are, is a good thing! then, the one time WotC finally cared about that, actually listened to the complaints, fixed the problems of wildly different powers of classes and made it balanced and well-designed such? they rejected it because they couldn't play wizard-god in 4e! they want the system to be a badly designed mess, so that all their time they spent pouring through sourcebooks and such that no one else bothers to even get is somehow worth it to them.

because really, thats what the optimizers seem to really want: to prove that they mastered the system by being willing to buy more books than other people then read through the tedious cumbersome rules that most people have don't have time for, then exploiting all that to whatever they think is its full potential or whatever. thing is, do we REALLY want a game like that? do we really want a screwed up game that only works right if you make an effort to buy lots of books, read up on a FAN CONSTRUCTION and its associated character building guides, and forget whatever the book says entirely about DnD being an exploration-adventure-action game? do we really want newbies coming in and getting whatever expectations of what they wanted to roleplay, shattered by some abuse of the rules or something? do we want DnD to be known as that "wizard god" game? do we want a game with vast mechanical imbalances between players who are supposed to work together on default assumption of an equal playing field, because thats the default assumption of every game: that when player sit down to play with each other, they are all equal in how powerful they are? one player being more powerful than the other should be the exception. not the rule. do we really want a game like that?

I certainly don't.

I resent this on several levels.

First off, personally, I have made a few efforts and trying to bolster lower-tier classes precisely because I recognize this problem.

Secondly, "all of the complaints" were from a very vocal minority; surprisingly few players of D&D actually optimize to the level that makes the tier problems obvious. And even amongst those who do, the difference between PO and TO leads to a fair number of their actual game experiences not being quite so exclusionary to the non-casters. This doesn't mean there aren't games where the non-casters are left out; there are. But it is not quite so universal as advertised because most players just aren't that good at optimization.

Thirdly, I have a strong dislike for 4e for the mechanical reasons you listed as its solutions to the problem of tiers: every class is a martial adept. It has nothing to do with wanting my wizard to be ungodly more powerful than your fighter, and everything to do with not wanting to play a Swordsage that throws fireballs and calling him a "wizard." (Nor do I want to play a rogue that uses maneuvers as his primary schtick; rogues should have their own subsystem, and I would love to see one developed for them. 5e has something of one at least, though it's really just similar to what the other non-casters have.)

So I greatly resent the disparagement of my character as some sort of anti-social jerk who like to bully others with my "overpowered" character and wants to deny others the fun of playing useful members of other classes, as well as the characterization of 4e as some sort of panacea that responded to complaints supposedly created by a majority of players who then ungratefully turned away from the promissed land because they preferred to wander the wilderness, stubborn spoiled brats.

SpectralDerp

2015-06-18, 02:50 PM

Secondly, "all of the complaints" were from a very vocal minority; surprisingly few players of D&D actually optimize to the level that makes the tier problems obvious. And even amongst those who do, the difference between PO and TO leads to a fair number of their actual game experiences not being quite so exclusionary to the non-casters. This doesn't mean there aren't games where the non-casters are left out; there are. But it is not quite so universal as advertised because most players just aren't that good at optimization.

The problem is that very little (intentional) optimization of high-tiered characters is required for them to leave lower-tiered behind. That's the problem with the game-breaking aspects of the game, they can happen accidentally.

Brova

2015-06-18, 02:57 PM

Obviously, then, 6e needs rules for all possible contingencies, actions, decisions, and options.

Did you read my post? I mean, it was a little long and you might have skimmed it, but I mentioned both the need for improvisation and the expectation of conforming to reality for cases that aren't covered. Frankly we aren't even talking about having rules for tying shoes or walking dogs or cooking bees. We're talking about having rules that cover using noncombat powers.

then, the one time WotC finally cared about that, actually listened to the complaints, fixed the problems of wildly different powers of classes and made it balanced and well-designed such? they rejected it because they couldn't play wizard-god in 4e!

That's not why I rejected 4e. If I thought that D&D was good because Wizards are better than Fighters, I wouldn't like Frank & K's Tomes. Some reasons I think 4e is a crappy game:

1. Padded Sumo
2. Classes feeling the same
3. "Monsters only exist in combat"
4. "Your heroic power is to attack for 2[W] damage! Your paragon power is to attack for 2[W] damage!"
5. Errata cascade

they want the system to be a badly designed mess, so that all their time they spent pouring through sourcebooks and such that no one else bothers to even get is somehow worth it to them.

I don't want the system to be a badly designed mess, I want it to be well designed and allow play at high levels that is interesting, powerful, and distinct from low level play. I am strongly in support of nerfs to shapechange, wish, ice assassin, genesis, and other spells. I would love a system that tries to tone down the rocket launcher tag. I want martial characters to be viable. I just think that telling stories other than "go there, kill that" is worth doing.

I certainly don't.

Neither do I. But when one class can do things that are interesting, rewarding, and novel and the other class can't, you shouldn't nerf the class that's interesting.

It's obvious to anyone not actively trying to delude themselves, that the designers intend these variable to be for the DM to specify, which, as previously noted, is not an instance of the Oberoni fallacy, but a new paradigm in DM responsibility and working as intended.

So you're just flat out admitting that 4e is an incomplete game that cannot be played as sold? Okay, that does sort of undermine the argument I made, but in and of itself is a terrible thing. And again, 3e had out of combat abilities that existed independent of the DM finishing them. Also, recall all the point I made about the need to balance DM and player agency and the degree to which unrestricted DM fiat undermines that.

SpectralDerp

2015-06-18, 03:06 PM

So you're just flat out admitting that 4e is an incomplete game that cannot be played as sold?

So you are flat out admitting you are just attacking your own delusional straw men that have nothing to do with what I'm actually saying? If 4e is incomplete because it requires DMs to fill in blanks then so is any game with something like a DM is also incomplete.

Brova

2015-06-18, 03:23 PM

So you are flat out admitting you are just attacking your own delusional straw men that have nothing to do with what I'm actually saying?

Well, I was assuming that 4e was game and meant to be played as sold. If you're willing to admit that 4e is not a game, then yes, most of what I've said doesn't apply.

If 4e is incomplete because it requires DMs to fill in blanks then so is any game with something like a DM is also incomplete.

No. Games like 3e don't promise a setting and as such cannot be judged for requiring a DM to invent their own setting. If 4e marketed itself as a kit for creating games, I would not judge it for requiring the DM to write rules for it to function. Unfortunately, that is not how 4e marketed itself.

SpectralDerp

2015-06-18, 03:50 PM

If 4e marketed itself as a kit for creating games, I would not judge it for requiring the DM to write rules for it to function. Unfortunately, that is not how 4e marketed itself.

There's a difference between a rule that the people playing the game have to follow and a "rule" the setting or story has to follow.

"How is the defense targeted by an attack determined?"

is a question about rules that players concern themselves about and the answer is not a blank expected to be filled by the DM. On the other hand,

"What are the details of the process by which a Deathpriest Hierophant summons an Aspect of Orcus?"

is about setting or story the same way

"What are the details of the process by which the council of elders elects the next troll emperor?"

is. So if you are telling me that 4e is incomplete because the answer of the second question is up to the DM, then so is every game where the answer to something like the third question would be open to the DM.

Segev

2015-06-18, 04:04 PM

Might I suggest we attempt to get back on topic? People who don't like 4e aren't going to be convinced they're wrong for their dislike. People who do aren't going to be convinced it's a bad game or that it's not D&D-like. Arguing is fruitless.

SpectralDerp

2015-06-18, 04:23 PM

The issue of "Must future editions of DnD list every possible non-combat ability of a powerful NPC spellcaster on its statblock?" strikes me as very much on-topic.

Brova

2015-06-18, 04:24 PM

"What are the details of the process by which a Deathpriest Hierophant summons an Aspect of Orcus?"

is about setting or story the same way

"What are the details of the process by which the council of elders elects the next troll emperor?"

is. So if you are telling me that 4e is incomplete because the answer of the second question is up to the DM, then so is every game where the answer to something like the third question is open would the DM.

No.

First of all, those things are obviously different. One is a setting element, the other is a rules element. Your desire to have them be the same thing because you like 4e is strong, but not ultimately relevant.

Second off, having rules cover things (in fact, both those things) is better than not. Because with rules that cover a game element, players can meaningfully interact with it based on consistent expectations across games. The fact that 4e went from a system with consistent and predictable (if occasionally broken) rules for noncombat powers is a travesty. The fact that the DM could write rules to alleviate that fact means precisely nothing, because the DM could also patch the holes in 3e and have a better game.

Thirdly, even if we accepted your premise that "summoning monsters" and "troll succession arrangements" might theoretically occupy the same game space, 4e gives no indication that they do. There's not a suggestion that the DM should write up a ritual to summon an aspect of orcus, it's just mentioned that people can.

Might I suggest we attempt to get back on topic? People who don't like 4e aren't going to be convinced they're wrong for their dislike. People who do aren't going to be convinced it's a bad game or that it's not D&D-like. Arguing is fruitless.

I argue with people who have deeply set views not particularly for their benefit, but for mine and for people watching. Explaining with 4e sucks isn't going to convince a fanatic that it's a bad game, but it might convince someone who is undecided. And arguing with people allows you to hone your own position and develop insights into things you believe. That being said, we should get back to the topic at hand.

So, the take away here is that 6e should have a system for doing things out of combat that is robust, effective, and emulates things we want in the genre. Obviously, it's a fairly open question how to do that. I suggest that magic (or more broadly "superpowers") be divided into three categories:

1. Combat magic. This is the stuff you get from your class. It generally does things that are effective in combat, but under no circumstances should we do the thing 4e did and remove noncombat applications from it. If wall of stone is worth having as a combat power, it is worth having as a combat power. Even if it means that there are a bunch of stone walls everywhere. Intended outputs are "whatever you think combat should do", which is a much bigger question.
2. Skill magic. This is where you put utility spells like knock or invisibility. Skills give you actual SLAs as you put ranks in them, in addition to having scaling uses. So charm person is just something you get for being good at diplomacy. Also a reason to drop all those stupid "+20 to a skill" spells, and a way to avoid RNG explosion. Intended outputs are people who slowly develop superhuman skills in things they are good at.
3. Ritual magic. The genre has a strong demand for groups of cultists chanting and waving their arms until impressive stuff happens. D&D has a strong tradition of not delivering well on that, and that tradition should change. Ideally, something like epic spellcasting (where you can add onerous conditions to get powerful effects at low levels) but less broken. Also covers some of the utility spells like plane shift and teleport. Intended outputs are both cultists making sacrifices to summon demons and high level people simply deciding to destroy a city.