Things in RPGs that you used to like but don’t anymore

[RandomPeasant]

The biggest issues 4e had is that it didn't "feel like" D&D to many people. 5e is closer to 4e than most people seem to think, but it expertly handled the perception issues as well as some of 4e's other failings.

The biggest issue 4e had is that it just wasn't very well designed, especially at release (I've been told it got better, but like many people, I never cared enough to check). The game came with two systems, and neither one worked terribly well. Skill Challenges had bad incentives and were too difficult, and combat was very boring, particularly against high-level solos (e.g. boss monsters). There were also various editing fails, where race/class combos didn't line up properly, or specific things were imbalanced, but the way in which it "didn't feel like D&D" was largely that people weren't having fun with it. AD&D to 3e was a big change too, and that caught on like gangbusters.

Yeah, but there was a bunch of pushback to martials having Fun Toys. I don't think you can directly blame Mearls.

My impression of Mearls was that he was never all that good at executing on a vision, and (especially with 5e) was desperately trying to please as many people as possible by doing whatever he thought would be popular. I don't blame him for the backlash, but I do blame him for caving to it.

because its core identity is "I participate in the combat mini-game" which is the opposite of unique in D&D.

Honestly, "Fighter" is just kind of a bad name for a class. Having "good at fighting" as your identity is simultaneously too narrow and too broad. It's too narrow because, as you note, all it gives the class a mandate to do is "combat stuff" and that's not a complete character in D&D (or, frankly, most games). It's too broad because it doesn't give you any mandate for what you do in combat, because everything that happens in combat is by definition fighting. Is the Fighter supposed to contribute by killing the enemies? By stopping them from killing his friends? Is he supposed to fight up close and personal, or at a distance? Is he supposed to try to end fights quickly, or grind out advantages? Is he a solo combatant, or a leader of men? I can show you "Fighters", either from D&D or elsewhere in the fantasy genre, who have either of the answers to any of those questions. Unlike "Berserker" or "Necromancer", it's very difficult to pin down what a "Fighter" is supposed to do, which has tended to result in a class that struggles with identity.

Some of the pushback came from "my fighter doesn't have magic" purists, who wanted their archetype kept clean.

I have to say that 4e's had an absolutely perfect solution to this problem: tiers. You don't have to worry about what the Fighter does to keep up with the guy who can travel between worlds and call down fire from the sky, because you can't do that stuff in Heroic Tier and when you upgrade to Paragon Tier the Fighter becomes a Death Knight or Beast King and has a mandate to get abilities that keep up with what the spellcasters are doing.

[Tanarii]

I never understood the pushback to the martial improvements (as my caster/martial disparity threads will attest), although from what I understand of the fighter sub-classes there is some attempt to fit both in. Not that I have ever played a fighter in D&D 5e. I'll probably never play a fighter in D&D ever - even though some of my favourite characters in other systems have been fighters in the archetype sense - because its core identity is "I participate in the combat mini-game" which is the opposite of unique in D&D.

The push-back seemed to specifically be against Encounter and Daily resource renewal, especially on the same schedule and format as "spells". But also even having at-will in a "spell format"

So what they did in 5e was make them (most) spell-casting long rest, and make (most) martial feature renewal short rest or at-will. And disassociate both from the actual attack by making them an independent add-on feature.

So instead of Spinning Sweep (encounter) we get "I attack"+BM's Trip Attack (4x short rest).

But what I really miss is at-wills like Tide of Iron. They didn't get used much once you had enough encounters and dailies, but they made low level martials feel amazing.

[Talakeal]

Yeah, but there was a bunch of pushback to martials having Fun Toys. I don't think you can directly blame Mearls.

But still it was hilarious seeing them do the whole "oh, no, fighters don't have abilities any more. They have.... stances! That they can change whenever they want for free, that make their basic attack do different things! Yeah, that's the ticket!"

I know in my case it was specifically that the abilities they gave them were all “fire and forget”. If they ever decided to make a fighter that played like a warlock with lots of interesting at will abilities, I would be all over that.

[oxybe]

4e definitely could've used a few more months in the oven, but D&D at that time wasn't in the best position.

Per Ryan Dancey

"Sometime around 2005ish, Hasbro made an internal decision to divide its businesses into two categories. Core brands, which had more than $50 million in annual sales, and had a growth path towards $100 million annual sales, and Non-Core brands, which didn't."

to summarize: this hit D&D because of how Hasbro treats it's brands. D&D is not one product under the WotC brand, but one brand that's being developed by WotC. D&D in 2005 is not a 50mil brand and nowhere near a 100mil one, especially since at the time D&D's videogame license was being sat on and largely mothballed by atari I think. they made a legal kerfuffle and eventually got it back, but 4e was dead by then: this is why there was no 4e based videogames. With the current direction 3e was going in, it would likely have been mothballed.

add to this WotC was very anti-pdf at the time due the rampant, in their eyes, piracy of their books online. And to an extent I can vouch for this: I saw 4e about a week and a half before release when a friend showed me the printer's proof pdfs of the game. you know, the ones with the red, blue, black yellow splotches beyond the margins of the book? yeah. those were leaked. So WotC basically only had physical book sales for the longest time. I can't remember exactly when they pulled their pdfs or re-added them to places like drive through, but for a while, it was hard to find legit copies.

on top of that we have the murder-suicide that stopped the development of the original virtual tabletop before the game's launch and forced wotc to eventually outsource it's development.

And the fuster cluck that was the 4e licensing, largely because WOTC didn't want everyone and their dog making a 4e clone, or worst, having mom or grandma go looking for their new game at little Timmy's behest and seeing it on the same shelf as the book of erotic fantasy. They took too long to have something workable and most 3rd parties jumped ship, because they had bills to feed and mouths to pay.

Follow this all by the... chaotic yearly management shuffling at the D&D offices and we had a ship without a stable captain to helm the route. I remember the Xmas Layoffs being a meme for a few years. I was surprised at Mearls' longevity at the helm.

In retrospect, I'm quite frankly amazed at what we got.

[RandomPeasant]

add to this WotC was very anti-pdf at the time due the rampant, in their eyes, piracy of their books online.

It's interesting to see how that played out in the market. WotC stuck as hard as it could to purely physical printing and nearly drove their brand into the ground. Paizo put everything they published up online and went from "the people who make semi-official fanzines" to "the largest TTRPG on the market".

And the fuster cluck that was the 4e licensing, largely because WOTC didn't want everyone and their dog making a 4e clone, or worst, having mom or grandma go looking for their new game at little Timmy's behest and seeing it on the same shelf as the book of erotic fantasy. They took too long to have something workable and most 3rd parties jumped ship, because they had bills to feed and mouths to pay.

That was an absolutely wild decision. The open d20 system propelled 3e to the top of the market, I have absolutely no idea why they thought dropping it would do good things. It also doesn't really solve the "what if there are dirty books near D&D" problem, because D&D gets shelved next to FATAL no matter what you do. The Venn Diagram intersection of "people who are clued in enough to understand that BoEF is more related to D&D than FATAL is" and "people who are offended enough by BoEF to not buy maninline D&D" is a tiny, tiny group.

Follow this all by the... chaotic yearly management shuffling at the D&D offices and we had a ship without a stable captain to helm the route. I remember the Xmas Layoffs being a meme for a few years. I was surprised at Mearls' longevity at the helm.

There at least I think you've got the causation backwards. It wasn't that 4e was bad because they kept shuffling people out, it was that they kept shuffling people out because they failed to make 4e good. I have no idea how Mearls lasted as long as he did, or even rose as high as he did. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he has a folder somewhere with compromising photos of WotC senior management.

[Cluedrew]

Some of the pushback came from caster-supremacists in the player base.

Some of the pushback came from "my fighter doesn't have magic" purists, who wanted their archetype kept clean.

The push-back seemed to specifically be against Encounter and Daily resource renewal, especially on the same schedule and format as "spells". But also even having at-will in a "spell format"

I have been though multiple 30+ page threads on the issue, I know. I know the arguments, I may not understand them* but may have actually heard all of them by now.

* All of them. Some I do, but this isn't that thread.

The biggest issue 4e had is that it just wasn't very well designed,

Well that didn't stop the other editions of D&D from doing well. I'm mostly kidding.

[Tanarii]

Well that didn't stop the other editions of D&D from doing well. I'm mostly kidding.

Truth.

What's really weird is almost no one talks about how 3e divided and shattered the player base. Because it did so well expanding the player base and bringing in new players, very few people that came in as part of that edition or later are even aware that it was TETSNBN (The Edition That Shall Not Be Named) to many AD&D players.

If 4e had managed to bring in enough new players by expanding the player base, 5e could easily have divided and shattered a large player base while still being considered successful by expanding it, just like 3e.

[RandomPeasant]

What's really weird is almost no one talks about how 3e divided and shattered the player base. Because it did so well expanding the player base and bringing in new players, very few people that came in as part of that edition or later are even aware that it was TETSNBN (The Edition That Shall Not Be Named) to many AD&D players.

There are 4e grognards too. I'm sure there were AD&D players who hated 3e, but the reality really is that it mostly took over the playerbase.

[Vahnavoi]

During each transitional period from edition to edition, there have been people who refused to move into the new edition, people who only started with the new edition, people who started with a new edition but went back to an earlier one, people who abandoned D&D in favor of another game brand and people who stopped gaming entirely. You need to talk of statistics or establish another reason why a group is noteworthy, else you're only stating trivialities.

This said:

People who refused to transition from earlier editions to 3rd edition are worth talking about because they created the OSR, and some of them later influenced 5th edition.

People who refused to transition from 3rd to 4th edition are worth talking about, because they more or less allowed two editions of Pathfinder plus Starfinder to exist and become competitive.

I'm not sure if people who refused to transition from 4th to 5th edition have done anything of similar scope.

[RandomPeasant]

People who refused to transition from earlier editions to 3rd edition are worth talking about because they created the OSR, and some of them later influenced 5th edition.

People were creating clones of AD&D when AD&D was the current edition of D&D. They certainly kept doing it when 3e happened, but I don't think the OSR is notable as a response to 3e.

[Willie the Duck]

People were creating clones of AD&D when AD&D was the current edition of D&D. They certainly kept doing it when 3e happened, but I don't think the OSR is notable as a response to 3e.

I suspect others will disagree. Personally, I'd call it a response to WotC-era D&D in general, or possibly just a response to the legal and technical framework emergent at that specific time (plus that those people who cut their teeth on BX or 1E or the like included a lot of established adults with a certain amount of free time, money, skills, drive to revisit their old faves).

[kyoryu]

I know in my case it was specifically that the abilities they gave them were all “fire and forget”. If they ever decided to make a fighter that played like a warlock with lots of interesting at will abilities, I would be all over that.

Honestly, I wish they had given different "chassis" even if they used the same basic ingredients. Rename them if you want.

But fighters that had a wealth of at-wills, and were masters of flexibility and adapting to the environment and situation? That would have been awesome, and I was hoping they'd have gone that way. They didn't :)

[Telwar]

Honestly, I wish they had given different "chassis" even if they used the same basic ingredients. Rename them if you want.

But fighters that had a wealth of at-wills, and were masters of flexibility and adapting to the environment and situation? That would have been awesome, and I was hoping they'd have gone that way. They didn't :)

One of the things that amuses me is that, practically, the number of abilities one got in 4e roughly matched the number of spells and abilities people tend to use in 5e or PF1.

From my current 5e games, the sorcerer typically uses the same cantrip and couple of leveled spells. My light cleric tends to use his CD, one or two cantrips, and 3-4 spells. The artificer casts a couple of buffs and then plinks away on his bow. The other game's artificer tends to use his cannon and cantrips. My wizard uses 1-2 cc spells, magic missile, and cantrips. The twilight cleric casts longsword a lot in addition to the usual melee cleric spells. Most everything that's not usable in combat would be handled as a ritual.

And this weekend I was in on a friend's PF1 game. The two full casters almost always cast the same three spells each.

So, and of course this is ten years too late, I wonder if maybe one of the main errors with 4e was not giving people more at-will abilities and more encounter abilities to have so it wasn't always necessarily the same thing over and over and over. Because while my wizard typically casts slow or hypnotic pattern and then cantrips, sometimes she busts out an Agnazzar's Scorcher.

[Telok]

Of course you could embrace the fact that the three types of abilities don't have to be a set trade-off in a class. You can have a class of all at-will, another of all encounter, and another of all daily, and arious mixes, within a class concept space. Like "arcane spell slinger" in D&D 5e has warlock (at will & daily), sorcerer (at-will, encounter & daily), and 3.5 warlock was all at-will, while 2e wizard was all daily.

The refusal to embrace the breadth of character concepts you can cover within an archetype is puzzling to me.

Edit: The issue of people only using about 5 abilities consistently is mostly that for any player's style there are about 5 "ok to best" options for anything (in the past 20 years of D&D). So a mostly cc D&D caster really has about 2-3 decent cc choices, 1-2 appropriate damage choices, and 2-3 defense choices at any particular level. Partly because opposition mostly scales to the party and old options commonly become obsolete or there's never any other character/style appropriate option, and partly because the player controls which options they get so they always choose the best available.

[RandomPeasant]

So, and of course this is ten years too late, I wonder if maybe one of the main errors with 4e was not giving people more at-will abilities and more encounter abilities to have so it wasn't always necessarily the same thing over and over and over. Because while my wizard typically casts slow or hypnotic pattern and then cantrips, sometimes she busts out an Agnazzar's Scorcher.

That was absolutely one of the big problems 4e combat had. Encounters lasted long enough that you used all your encounter powers (plus your allotment of dailies for that fight), and you were left spamming whichever of your at-wills was better, which didn't make for much interesting tactical choice. That said, I'm not sure simply cranking up the number of at-will and encounter powers is enough, as people seem to want characters with a wider variety of play patterns (look at how successful Tome of Magic and Tome of Battle were for 3e).

Of course you could embrace the fact that the three types of abilities don't have to be a set trade-off in a class. You can have a class of all at-will, another of all encounter, and another of all daily, and arious mixes, within a class concept space. Like "arcane spell slinger" in D&D 5e has warlock (at will & daily), sorcerer (at-will, encounter & daily), and 3.5 warlock was all at-will, while 2e wizard was all daily.

The refusal to embrace the breadth of character concepts you can cover within an archetype is puzzling to me.

I would go even further. There's no reason to have a single set of resource management types for all classes. In 3e, classes had a huge range of resource management options, and I see no reason the game couldn't go even further. Classes should manage resources in a way that is appropriate to their concept, not be forced to fit within whatever unified framework you devise for the game. The way a Berserker's abilities work should be different from the way a Gadgeteer or a Warlock's do, and that should be deeper than just "how often can you use your powers".

[Telok]

I would go even further. There's no reason to have a single set of resource management types for all classes. In 3e, classes had a huge range of resource management options, and I see no reason the game couldn't go even further. Classes should manage resources in a way that is appropriate to their concept, not be forced to fit within whatever unified framework you devise for the game. The way a Berserker's abilities work should be different from the way a Gadgeteer or a Warlock's do, and that should be deeper than just "how often can you use your powers".

You could sell splatbooks off it if you had a decent idea what was appropriate to each level of power. Of course then it starts to look like a point buy system behind the scenes. Luckily you don't have to expose that to the customer, just put out the splat of "all at-will classes" while promising the "all encounter powers" set next quarter.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The issue with having radically-different resource management "classes" at top level[1] is that the problem of adventure-level resource management raises its ugly head in a huge way with different types in the same party.

Generally, the characters with the longest refresh cycle drive the resource-management game. This is the 5-minute working day, and avoiding it puts pressure on the types of adventures you can run (often having to have a fixed and obvious doom clock). 5e has this if the party doesn't explicitly decide to manage their resources together--it's really common to end up in one of the following pathological cases:

1) always having 1 big resource-depletion moment each day. That means that those with long-rest nova capability dominate and the poor short-rest recharge people are out of luck
2) Long-rest people, seeing that they're fine (and would get nothing from a short rest) demanding that the party press on (often due to a doom clock), meaning that the short-rest people are on fumes.
3) On long days, the long-rest people go nova...and then whine and complain or try to force a long rest.
etc.

My preference is having everyone get something from all generic types of "rest". Theoretically, they all do in 5e (at minimum HD healing). Just...not nearly enough.

Edit: and as far as having 5 "best things", I personally find that having a long list of "things you could do" leads to a few problems
1) analysis paralysis. This goes up exponentially (or worse) with number of facially-valid options.
2) thinking to the character sheet. Meaning that people immediately think "do I have a button (character sheet option) for this" instead of "what would my character do here?"
3) a focus on "optimizing your turn", picking between things that are more or less equivalent with small differences. That brings the game to a crawl.

I strongly prefer each person doing one small thing per turn (maybe 2, if you include movement) and letting someone else take their turn. So complexity comes in reacting to other people's actions, not in trying to build the perfect "hand" of actions to take the perfect turn. Of course, this also means that "fight ending" abilities can't really exist, because that leads to a solved game. IMO, that's a feature, but I realize I'm probably not the norm there.

[1] meaning all equally valid for a group. If they were grouped so that you had your "Vancian" variants and your "At Will" variants and your "AEDU" variants, etc and you couldn't really mix them, then the problem mostly goes away.

[Telok]

Eh, across 6+ editions of D&D, pazio knockoffs, and many other game systems, I've never actually seen anyone suffer analysis/option paralysis.

I have seen "play the character sheet", especially in D&D 4e & 5e, and the pazio derivatives. But that was mostly because the system or DM put extreme hardship on doing stuff off-sheet. For example, D&D 4e was so focused on getting hit points to zero as the only combat solution and made non-AED so weak that doing anything that wasn't one of your combat powers was basically useless. Of course our DM didn't really go past the basic DMG encounter stuff and official modules either. On the other hand I've seen pretty creative zany antics in Traveller and Paranoia, where the characters are just stats, skills, equipment, and maybe a relationship or limited power.

[PhoenixPhyre]

1)Eh, across 6+ editions of D&D, pazio knockoffs, and many other game systems, I've never actually seen anyone suffer analysis/option paralysis.

2)I have seen "play the character sheet", especially in D&D 4e & 5e, and the pazio derivatives. But that was mostly because the system or DM put extreme hardship on doing stuff off-sheet. For example, D&D 4e was so focused on getting hit points to zero as the only combat solution and made non-AED so weak that doing anything that wasn't one of your combat powers was basically useless. Of course our DM didn't really go past the basic DMG encounter stuff and official modules either. On the other hand I've seen pretty creative zany antics in Traveller and Paranoia, where the characters are just stats, skills, equipment, and maybe a relationship or limited power.

1) I have. In fact nearly every group. Hand someone even slightly indecisive a full caster...Or heck, tell someone who doesn't have the proverbial PhD in 3e to make a mid-level caster from scratch.

2) I find this is worst when you have both highly mechanized individual abilities[1] and an emphasis on "following the rules". It becomes a game of "look for the right square block to put in this square hole" instead of thinking in character. Games where you have broader "skills and abilities and equipment" without the "roll XYZ, if > Q then do C, otherwise do N" explicit mechanization.

[1] 4e's design was the worst, because it made the air-breathing mermaid problem a reality. Unless you had <ability>, you couldn't do <thing>. 3e has some of it, mainly in the feats and spells which act as ability tokens--insert token, get result. And which, by their existence, imply that unless you have the token, you can't get the result. 5e still has it, and I hate it whenever it comes up. Tell me what your character does and we'll figure out how the mechanics can help us get there/resolve that. Mechanics are there to help us resolve uncertainty, not gatekeep cool. /rant

[Max_Killjoy]

1) I have. In fact nearly every group. Hand someone even slightly indecisive a full caster...Or heck, tell someone who doesn't have the proverbial PhD in 3e to make a mid-level caster from scratch.

2) I find this is worst when you have both highly mechanized individual abilities[1] and an emphasis on "following the rules". It becomes a game of "look for the right square block to put in this square hole" instead of thinking in character. Games where you have broader "skills and abilities and equipment" without the "roll XYZ, if > Q then do C, otherwise do N" explicit mechanization.

[1] 4e's design was the worst, because it made the air-breathing mermaid problem a reality. Unless you had <ability>, you couldn't do <thing>. 3e has some of it, mainly in the feats and spells which act as ability tokens--insert token, get result. And which, by their existence, imply that unless you have the token, you can't get the result. 5e still has it, and I hate it whenever it comes up. Tell me what your character does and we'll figure out how the mechanics can help us get there/resolve that. Mechanics are there to help us resolve uncertainty, not gatekeep cool. /rant

This is part of why I prefer systems where "Feats" or the equivalent are bonuses (or penalty removers) of some sort to do a thing, not a pass/fail on whether you can do that thing in the first place.

So anyone can try to trip their opponent, but the character with the "dirty infighting" talent gets a bonus, or doesn't expose themselves to a counter-attack when trying, or something.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This is part of why I prefer systems where "Feats" or the equivalent are bonuses (or penalty removers) of some sort to do a thing, not a pass/fail on whether you can do that thing in the first place.

So anyone can try to trip their opponent, but the character with the "dirty infighting" talent gets a bonus, or doesn't expose themselves to a counter-attack when trying, or something.

I prefer (on that particular example) to set the bar even higher--anyone can attempt to trip, but someone with the "dirty infighting" talent can also do damage (or something else). 3e tried the "anyone can do it, but feats remove penalties" tactic with what PF called Combat Maneuvers, and it meant that if you didn't have the feat, you shouldn't try, because the penalties were punishing.

But yes, in general, I agree.

Heck, I'd even be fine with that for magic--you don't need a class feature/feat/talent to cast spells. Having one makes it easier/faster/stronger/whatever. I've actually started thinking of a way to convert most of the "utility" magics in 5e D&D into incantations that anyone can learn and use, at the cost of expensive components and time. Those with the Ritual Casting feature (from feat or class) can do it faster or cheaper (or whatever), but anyone can do it. You might need a feature to be effective at combat casting, just like you might need a feature to be effective at weapon fighting (beyond a baseline).

[Max_Killjoy]

True, balancing the talent so that it's not a de-facto gatekeeper on bothering to try can get tricky.

[RandomPeasant]

The issue with having radically-different resource management "classes" at top level[1] is that the problem of adventure-level resource management raises its ugly head in a huge way with different types in the same party.

I think that's only really true with daily v non-daily. If your party has, say, a Berserker with a Rage Meter, a Gadgeteer with some Encounter gadgets, a Cleric whose prayers have a random Recharge, and a Rogue with At-Will stunts, there's no pressure towards a particular length for the workday, and the DM has the ability to tune encounters to allow a player whose underperforming to shine. So I think all you need to do is make Daily powers something that characters get in roughly equal amounts (the obvious things to be Daily are supermoves and strategic utility), and you can go hog-wild with resource management.

1) analysis paralysis. This goes up exponentially (or worse) with number of facially-valid options.

I think that's a false dichotomy. Resource management doesn't have to be "here are your five powers" or "here are your fifty powers". It could be something like the 3.5 Crusader, who gets a random subset of their powers each turn, giving them diverse gameplay on a round-to-round basis without ever confronting the player with an overwhelming number of options.

2) thinking to the character sheet. Meaning that people immediately think "do I have a button (character sheet option) for this" instead of "what would my character do here?"

I don't think that has anything to do with the number of options people have.

1) I have. In fact nearly every group. Hand someone even slightly indecisive a full caster...Or heck, tell someone who doesn't have the proverbial PhD in 3e to make a mid-level caster from scratch.

Neither of those is really universally true. A Sorcerer is pretty simple to play, as you rarely have even half a dozen viable options. And a Warmage-type caster is dead simple to build, as you get something like four ability choices from your class over a twenty-level campaign. You're not wrong that there need to be things that are simple to build and to play, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be things that are complex to build and to play. People want different things from the game, and you shouldn't tell the guy who enjoys having a range of tactical choices each turn he can't do that just because some people want a character that's straightforward to play.

Mechanics are there to help us resolve uncertainty, not gatekeep cool. /rant

It's not an either-or thing. Mechanics exist to define the playspace, and that includes some level of gatekeeping. Both Conan and Thor: Ragnarok are cool, but that doesn't mean that a player in your Conan-inspired game should be able to pop out Thor's lightning powers. Similarly, character identity is good, and while role protection shouldn't be absolute, some amount of it is desirable. If the guy who can convince the DM he has a great plan for infiltrating the castle can infiltrate the castle as well as the player who invested their character resources in stealth, that's a problem.

True, balancing the talent so that it's not a de-facto gatekeeper on bothering to try can get tricky.

I think to some degree that's inevitable. If you let people pick up bonuses to an action, having those bonuses will either make that action overpowered, or be necessary for it to be worthwhile. The best you can do, I think, is have the bonuses apply mostly to the outcome of the action, so that players still have the option if it really is tactically ideal.

[Quertus]

I tried a couple different ways to address this but ultimately just realized that you misunderstood my post almost entirely.

Nah, I didn't misunderstand, I just needed clarification on whether you actually hated all sandboxes, misunderstood what sandboxes were, or, as is apparently the case, dislike a certain type of game (directionless hex crawls) and were inadvertently making it sound like you thought all sandboxes were hex crawls.

This is part of why I prefer systems where "Feats" or the equivalent are bonuses (or penalty removers) of some sort to do a thing, not a pass/fail on whether you can do that thing in the first place.

So anyone can try to trip their opponent, but the character with the "dirty infighting" talent gets a bonus, or doesn't expose themselves to a counter-attack when trying, or something.

I prefer (on that particular example) to set the bar even higher--anyone can attempt to trip, but someone with the "dirty infighting" talent can also do damage (or something else). 3e tried the "anyone can do it, but feats remove penalties" tactic with what PF called Combat Maneuvers, and it meant that if you didn't have the feat, you shouldn't try, because the penalties were punishing.

But yes, in general, I agree.

True, balancing the talent so that it's not a de-facto gatekeeper on bothering to try can get tricky.

I think I like the "anyone can trip" model, but only certain people a) get a free attack when they trip, or b) can trip multiple people with a single action.

And where very few people combine that with c) cast a spell when given / in place of a free attack, d) at-will Command with Reserve mind control level 3+ (command of max word length <mind control spell level> - 2), e) free trip after an attack; and F) at-will Reserve touch spell to reduce (defense for trip or command - say… "mind grease" lol).

I want everyone to be competent, but skilled individuals to get to feel their own flavor of awesome.

Heck, I'd even be fine with that for magic--you don't need a class feature/feat/talent to cast spells. Having one makes it easier/faster/stronger/whatever. I've actually started thinking of a way to convert most of the "utility" magics in 5e D&D into incantations that anyone can learn and use, at the cost of expensive components and time. Those with the Ritual Casting feature (from feat or class) can do it faster or cheaper (or whatever), but anyone can do it. You might need a feature to be effective at combat casting, just like you might need a feature to be effective at weapon fighting (beyond a baseline).

Agreed, but… aren't there systems that do this? I though 5e was already one of them…

1) I think that's only really true with daily v non-daily. If your party has, say, a Berserker with a Rage Meter, a Gadgeteer with some Encounter gadgets, a Cleric whose prayers have a random Recharge, and a Rogue with At-Will stunts, there's no pressure towards a particular length for the workday, and the DM has the ability to tune encounters to allow a player whose underperforming to shine. So I think all you need to do is make Daily powers something that characters get in roughly equal amounts (the obvious things to be Daily are supermoves and strategic utility), and you can go hog-wild with resource management.



2) I think that's a false dichotomy. Resource management doesn't have to be "here are your five powers" or "here are your fifty powers". It could be something like the 3.5 Crusader, who gets a random subset of their powers each turn, giving them diverse gameplay on a round-to-round basis without ever confronting the player with an overwhelming number of options

3) You're not wrong that there need to be things that are simple to build and to play, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be things that are complex to build and to play. People want different things from the game, and you shouldn't tell the guy who enjoys having a range of tactical choices each turn he can't do that just because some people want a character that's straightforward to play.

4) If the guy who can convince the DM he has a great plan for infiltrating the castle can infiltrate the castle as well as the player who invested their character resources in stealth, that's a problem.

Great post! Not much to add overall.

1) I don't know if this is true or not, but it's definitely worth investigating, IMO. (My groups tend to pick on unwise nibs characters for their lack of stamina, and drag them along until everyone else is ready to go home, too)

2) I find that form of chassis resource management quite fun, personally. The "what do I do with this" minigame.

3) preach it! (especially the bolded part). Down with simplification requests that don't take such into account!

4) now, here I think that I disagree. There's a time for dice, and there's plans that remove the need for dice or skill. If we flood the villain's base with lava, or blow up their space base, or similar, there's usually not much need to roll whether we completely overkilled them *right* or not.

IMO, the issue is with a) skills that try to take the place of role-playing / player skills / planning / the strategic layer, and b) ignoring that *most* plans only change *what* you roll, or minimize *how many* rolls you need to make, or even change your fail (or success) conditions (or results), rather than actually removing all rolls entirely.

[Telok]

1) I have. In fact nearly every group. Hand someone even slightly indecisive a full caster...Or heck, tell someone who doesn't have the proverbial PhD in 3e to make a mid-level caster from scratch.

And that's what I never see. I get people who, for their first character in Shadowrun 3e, build a full rigger with a custom car and two drones.

thinking... Do your people know what they want when they start? Like with the D&D caster thing, are they clear before they pick spells what they want to do? Is there a character concept before they start character creation?

Because what I have seen is people who want to make a Champions character, but don't have any direction beyond "superhero" before they open the book and start writing on the character sheet. But those are also the ones who can waffle for ten minutes on which stat to boost on a D&D 5e champion fighter (in a no feat game), or who can't decide which of the last two wounded goblins to one-shot. So I consider that less "option paralysis" than just a completely indecisive player.

[KorvinStarmast]

Tell me what your character does and we'll figure out how the mechanics can help us get there/resolve that. Mechanics are there to help us resolve uncertainty, not gatekeep cool. /rant

That's a good way to put it.
I am sure I've fallen into that trap before, though, of the gatekeeping bit.

[Calthropstu]

Political correctness.

I used to like seeing the challenge of stereotypes.

But now that it's the norm, I am honestly sick of it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Political correctness.

I used to like seeing the challenge of stereotypes.

But now that it's the norm, I am honestly sick of it.

To avoid the political implications here, I'll take this in a different tack--

Intentionally challenging/inverting tropes, or "How I learned to love the Trope". I used to like deconstructions or inversions. Then I realized that most of the time they were just as lazy and uninspired as the regular use of the trope. So focus on doing whatever you're doing well and let the tropes fall where they may. Tropes are tropes for a reason--they're things that people recognize almost automatically and the trope just gives it a name. Seeking them out or intentionally trying to avoid them are the same action, with the same costs and benefits.

[Max_Killjoy]

To avoid the political implications here, I'll take this in a different tack--

Intentionally challenging/inverting tropes, or "How I learned to love the Trope". I used to like deconstructions or inversions. Then I realized that most of the time they were just as lazy and uninspired as the regular use of the trope. So focus on doing whatever you're doing well and let the tropes fall where they may. Tropes are tropes for a reason--they're things that people recognize almost automatically and the trope just gives it a name. Seeking them out or intentionally trying to avoid them are the same action, with the same costs and benefits.

The only thing that makes me hesitate on that is that more than once I've had people leap to conclusions based on the tropes they're expecting, to the detriment of the game.

"Oh, you're doing this trope."
"No."
"Ah, so you're subverting it!"
"No."
*Blank Stare*
"How about you just let me create and play the character instead of jumping to conclusions?"
*Keeps reacting to and interacting with the character based on original assumptions.*

[Telok]

"Oh, you're doing this trope."
"No."
"Ah, so you're subverting it!"
"No."
*Blank Stare*
"How about you just let me create and play the character instead of jumping to conclusions?"
*Keeps reacting to and interacting with the character based on original assumptions.*

Like using the bard or rogue class because it's the only way to get a character with the right mechanics without a 10 level 3-way multiclass horror story build. Then you get the DM going "you learned in bard school" or "your thieves guild contact says", when it both directly contradicts your backstory and there aren't even "bard schools" or "thieves guilds" in the setting.