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MonsterEnvy posted:Yes this is minor and rather pointless But I don't see what the problem is...
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Jul 22, 2014 10:35
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Mexican Deathgasm posted:5E has been super fun, I've been running a game since the first playtest was released, we play 6-8 hours every Saturday. That's cool. What do you like about it?
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Jul 22, 2014 13:29
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PleasingFungus posted:... Seamless. [/quote] That is a stand alone comment not intended as an edition warring comment. Besides, it is an image. Who gives a poo poo about an image? Pretty much no one will give a poo poo about an image.
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Jul 22, 2014 13:38
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DalaranJ posted:"My character is known as a savage attacker! Tell me, what of your character?" yeah pretty normal, daytime is "gloomy" but the sun is still out. A particularly old vampire might be able to walk about during the day, but they wouldn't be able to use any supernatural abilities. Also working through the monster math a bit more, AC looks to be normal PC rules. Base AC10 or Armor + Dex. All monsters have a base +2 to-hit, that's modified by their str/dex/int/etc mods (depending on attack type). The only one to break this trend is the Young Green Dragon, it has an additional +1 which I would assume to indicate a magical weapon. DalaranJ posted:Okay, Treeboy, here are some monsters for you. Awesome just saw this as i was reading through the thread, thanks! edit: did you intend any of these guys to have saves on their strong stats? just wondering. treeboy fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 13:46
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Mexican Deathgasm posted:5E has been super fun, I've been running a game since the first playtest was released, we play 6-8 hours every Saturday.
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Jul 22, 2014 14:08
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Were those monsters seen before 13A started using natural even/odd attack, Nastier Specials, and fixed damage? That looks conspicuously familiar.
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Jul 22, 2014 14:15
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moths posted:Were those monsters seen before 13A started using natural even/odd attack, Nastier Specials, and fixed damage? Natural even/odd rolls have never been in Next. I was cribbing from a better game when I made those monsters.
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Jul 22, 2014 14:36
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Oh my bad, I thought those were from preview material.
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Jul 22, 2014 14:37
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I'm still kinda surprise that 5e wasn't basically a synthesis between 4eism and 3eism to make something more balanced but still looked more like 3e on the surface rather than just totally jettisoning all the 4e stuff and calling it a day.
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Jul 22, 2014 14:44
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Gorelab posted:I'm still kinda surprise that 5e wasn't basically a synthesis between 4eism and 3eism to make something more balanced but still looked more like 3e on the surface rather than just totally jettisoning all the 4e stuff and calling it a day. i still maintain there's more 4e in 5e than most people give it credit for. Still not *enough* in my opinion, but more than some will suggest. edit: also going through and double-checking some stats on that monster spreadsheet posted earlier, there are some errors. For instance stat mods for Young Green Dragon were listed as 4/4/6/3/4/2, that's using the YGD's saves for its stat mods, should be: 4/1/3/3/1/2, with saves in Dex/Con/Wis at +3 (so 4/6/4) this means that Con*HD = hp bonus is consistent, CR determines Proficiency Bonus (in a total duh moment I had about 2 seconds ago). So CR8 has +3 to saves/hit same as a lvl 8 character. treeboy fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 14:50
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There are some vestigial 4e elements present, but they're obfuscated in natural writing and pulled from their intended context. The biggest contributions 4e made, martial parity and concise rules, have absolutely been removed to appease the True Spirit of D&D.
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Jul 22, 2014 14:59
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moths posted:The biggest contributions 4e made, martial parity and concise rules, have absolutely been removed to appease the True Spirit of D&D. I could live without the 4e rules style (though I prefer it), but the Basic fighter killed 5e for me. Regardless of what options it gets in the PHB, it's pretty clear that 5e is back to caster supremacy, and that's not something I find fun.
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Jul 22, 2014 15:38
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Generic Octopus posted:I could live without the 4e rules style (though I prefer it), but the Basic fighter killed 5e for me. Regardless of what options it gets in the PHB, it's pretty clear that 5e is back to caster supremacy, and that's not something I find fun. Have you tried playing a caster?
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Jul 22, 2014 16:06
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i've been trying to discern what differentiates a CR 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2 creature from 1+ and so far the closest I can come is certain ranges of Net Stat mod. 1/8 CR creatures seem to have -10 to ~0 if you add up all their stat mods, 1/4 is about -5 to 0, and 1/2 is about 0-5. lower stat totals seem to be offset with more threatening special abilities, like the Stirge, whereas higher stat totals like the Cultist are pretty plain (essentially Commoners with a weapon and advantage on charm). They all use a standard lvl 1-4 +2 proficiency, though so far none of them use it on anything but attacks as none have saves. edit: a friend at work (a designer go figure) made a pretty key observation that i need to confirm but it sounds plausible. Monsters are created using a point buy system, 2pts are equivalent to a special ability, CR <1 could be a literal modifier to the number of available points when constructing the creature treeboy fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 16:08
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crime fighting hog posted:Have you tried playing a caster? Yeah man, was a wizard. And I'm sure a party of casters would be a blast. But if someone wants to be a fight man, they get to sit there looking sad that they're not doing as much as the spell slingers. (This is a thing that happened when my friends and I tried running 5e a few weeks ago. We've since moved on to DW and everyone is happier for it).
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Jul 22, 2014 16:29
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I'm having fun with the starter set as well. But, I've been playing D&D for a long time and don't mind TPKs. My players are experienced and have a good idea when to run away. It does seem like this system was made to placate the vocal grognards. Reading through some of the comments, the only thing that is confusing me is the "switched to DW" method as a better system. I love Dungeon World. It's actually my favorite game, but if you're concerned about not enough fiddly bits or things not being spelled out, DW seems counter intuitive. It's an entire game of players and DM just making stuff up as you go along.
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Jul 22, 2014 16:55
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fidgit posted:Reading through some of the comments, the only thing that is confusing me is the "switched to DW" method as a better system. Our switch to DW wasn't to find more complexity; it was actually because, as you said, there is a lack of that. We had people entirely new to ttrpgs at our table, Next confused them more than anything. DW was a lot easier to use, from chargen to gameplay. Sure, it's mostly "making stuff up," but honestly that's how we played 4e anyway; only difference is everything is way simpler in DW. I don't mean to keep bringing up DW in the Next thread, it's just the big competitor with D&D (both 4e and 5e) for me & my group's time, and it seems to me there's not a lot Next (and honestly, 4e) offer in comparison.
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Jul 22, 2014 17:23
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Generic Octopus posted:Yeah man, was a wizard. And I'm sure a party of casters would be a blast. But if someone wants to be a fight man, they get to sit there looking sad that they're not doing as much as the spell slingers. (This is a thing that happened when my friends and I tried running 5e a few weeks ago. We've since moved on to DW and everyone is happier for it). I see what you mean, in earnest if I played Next I would love to play a caster because why not? With all the discussion of the future books/modules and so forth, and there's some hope that fighters/fighty-mans could start climbing up in utility to be more than just dudes with sharp sticks. But that same power and option creep will be magnified much more for casters. I forget, is multiclassing a thing in this, can you do fighter 3/wizard 7 if you really want? Or is that DLC?
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Jul 22, 2014 17:24
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fidgit posted:Reading through some of the comments, the only thing that is confusing me is the "switched to DW" method as a better system. I love Dungeon World. It's actually my favorite game, but if you're concerned about not enough fiddly bits or things not being spelled out, DW seems counter intuitive. It's an entire game of players and DM just making stuff up as you go along. Yes, it's fiat heavy, but between the lack of scaling modifiers and the results choices the player moves actually give players a lot of agency. If the dice hit the table, there's generally a pretty good chance they're going to mostly succeed at what they're trying to do, and on a partial success they generally have a say in what kind of consequences they're facing.
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Jul 22, 2014 17:25
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fidgit posted:Reading through some of the comments, the only thing that is confusing me is the "switched to DW" method as a better system. I love Dungeon World. It's actually my favorite game, but if you're concerned about not enough fiddly bits or things not being spelled out, DW seems counter intuitive. It's an entire game of players and DM just making stuff up as you go along. I've seen DW referenced when people mention liking 5E's faster combat & reduced tactical fiddliness. It would indeed be pretty silly to recommend it for people who wanted a game more like 4E! Winson_Paine posted:That is a stand alone comment not intended as an edition warring comment. Besides, it is an image. Who gives a poo poo about an image? Pretty much no one will give a poo poo about an image. 
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Jul 22, 2014 17:27
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Yeah, while I think DW has it's place, I think saying that it totally obviates the need for 4e and 5e both is both kinda silly. D&D kinda scratches a different, more crunchy itch, and I think there's always going to be a market for it, as well as a market for a more rules-moderate game like 13th Age.
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Jul 22, 2014 17:34
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I feel like DW, 13th Age, and Fantasy Craft pretty much cover all the bases in terms of games that are like D&D but better. If you want retro, there's also the OSR, with something like Castles & Crusades. There's probably a more specific and appealing one for whatever flavor of retro you want to go for. If you're an old 3e hand with dozens of books, you have enough experience fixing the system and might as well stuck with it instead of buying a game that's just as bad but in new ways. Like, seriously, who is 5e for? Anything I can imagine that's appealing about 5e, there's a game that does it better. "Cost" is a weird excuse, since you'll probably end up paying $150+ on 5e. Lots of the alternatives are free, and the others tend to have a more compact single book model, with additional books optional in a way that the DMG and MM probably won't be. "Familiarity" is also weird. As some are fond of saying, 5e isn't out yet, so nobody's really had a chance to understand it as a complete game. You could pick any other game and learn it instead. The only thing 5e has going for it, as far as I can tell, is name brand recognition of WotC and "being D&D." If this game was being released by a different publisher, as some 2e/3e OSR thing, no one would give any shits. No one would give it the time of day, there'd be a tiny forum specific to that publisher talking about it and a single publicity thread somewhere and then nothing. Like, people are defending this game with stuff like "well I had fun," like the onus is on other people to definitively prove 5e is "a bad game." Why? At the very best, 5e is mediocre and unremarkable. Why bother buying and learning a mediocre and unremarkable game when there are actual good, strong games available, often for free?
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Jul 22, 2014 18:03
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I would say that 5e is for people who liked 3e but didn't invest themselves into it heavily or got too tired of their giant houserule matrices to keep at them. "3e with numerically stronger fighters and numerically weaker spellcasters" appeals to some people.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:10
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I guess I'm having trouble understanding what it is about 3e that kind of person actually likes that wouldn't be better served by, say, 13th Age. I mean, I don't particularly like 13th Age, but a lot of it feels reminiscent of 3e, and I don't understand how someone could care enough about 3e to feel like 13th Age loses something important or has irreconcilable differences who wouldn't also be the sort to have gotten super deep into 3e and made houserule matrices and so on.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:24
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Ferrinus posted:I would say that 5e is for people who liked 3e but didn't invest themselves into it heavily or got too tired of their giant houserule matrices to keep at them. "3e with numerically stronger fighters and numerically weaker spellcasters" appeals to some people. 5e is also for edition warriors who still place meaning in the name "D&D." 5e's shredding of nearly all 4e-isms appeals to them rather strongly. That's also the biggest group of pro-5e fans in ENWorld - people who thought 4e was a grand betrayal that killed D&D and proved WotC fired them forever, but were too obsessed with the name "D&D" to comfortably move on to even Pathfinder. The second biggest group would be AD&D -> 3e fans. Fans that never actually liked 3e mechanically but went with it because WotC revived D&D after TSR nearly killed it, and absolutely want "a simpler 3e with more AD&D inside." That's probably the group Mearls intended the game to be for.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:29
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zachol posted:I guess I'm having trouble understanding what it is about 3e that kind of person actually likes that wouldn't be better served by, say, 13th Age. The biggest group of ACTUAL 3e fans - people who like the engine, not the bullshit "culture" wars that popped up around it - would be the GitP and minmax forums crowds. They like 3e BECAUSE it's so easily broken. They're tinkerers. They kind who buy lovely torn apart cars explicitly to rebuild them or experiment with them. If you love super crunchy mechanics and weird obtuse combos 3e is easily the best edition of D&D for you.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:32
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If you like super crunchy mechanics and general goofiness then I could imagine playing 3e, Fantasy Craft, or Legend, but I have no idea why that sort of person would want to purchase 5e when they presumably already have years and years worth of toys to play with in their 3e storehouse. Heck that's why I personally like 3e, I love building characters I'll never actually use, but I also have no clue how that translates in any way to 5e. Like, my point is, any use I could imagine of 5e seems like it could be better served by another game. Whatever it is about 5e that you like, even if it's goofy unbalanced nonsense, there's a game that does it better, and 5e on its own is just mediocre.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:41
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Hasn't a recent rallying cry for 5E been "it's everyone's second favorite D&D"? Like, the idea is that 5E is the game you bust out when everyone around the table can't agree on which other edition of D&D to play like some sort of compromise. Because the only game anyone plays is D&D or something.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:45
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zachol posted:I feel like DW, 13th Age, and Fantasy Craft pretty much cover all the bases in terms of games that are like D&D but better. Is the unspoken assumption here that no one likes 4e's heavily cooperative, meaty combat, or that 4e isn't actually D&D? Because none of those games use 4e combat, and I remember being particularly disappointed when people here kept saying 13th Age was "4e but better!" when it didn't have the single defining characteristic of the edition well emulated. I admit that I've never played Fantasy Craft, but looking through the preview document it just looks like 3e-style stuff. :\
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Jul 22, 2014 18:46
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[quote="ProfessorCirno" post="432544773" The second biggest group would be AD&D -> 3e fans. Fans that never actually liked 3e mechanically but went with it because WotC revived D&D after TSR nearly killed it, and absolutely want "a simpler 3e with more AD&D inside." That's probably the group Mearls intended the game to be for. [/quote] Yeah, this is pretty much me.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:49
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Countblanc posted:Is the unspoken assumption here that no one likes 4e's heavily cooperative, meaty combat, or that 4e isn't actually D&D? Because none of those games use 4e combat, and I remember being particularly disappointed when people here kept saying 13th Age was "4e but better!" when it didn't have the single defining characteristic of the edition well emulated. I think it's more assumed that people here have generally played 4e, and those who like 4e are just gonna keep playing that, so game suggestions are for people who didn't like enough things about 4e.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:51
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As I can't make a judgement on the edition until the modules come out, I will hold off on buying 5E until the module that makes it a good game I give a gently caress about arrives, fixing all of the problems and dramatically reversing some of the core design choices and decisions made. I suggest everyone else do the same.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:59
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Countblanc posted:Is the unspoken assumption here that no one likes 4e's heavily cooperative, meaty combat, or that 4e isn't actually D&D? Because none of those games use 4e combat, and I remember being particularly disappointed when people here kept saying 13th Age was "4e but better!" when it didn't have the single defining characteristic of the edition well emulated. Yeah, I agree about 13A with regard to the "4E clone/4E but better" label people were throwing around at the start. 13A is a largely derivative d20 game with some neat mechanics bits to steal and port to other games and a reasonably interesting setting, but there's very little in there to scratch the same itch 4E does. The "problem" with 4E, I think, is that it's not a game you can just eyeball stuff and crap something out on paper without people calling you on it. The mechanics and math are transparent enough and easy enough to understand that a lot of the stuff various 3rd party publishers could get away with for a more obfuscated system are less likely to fly, so it's a natural barrier to seeing 4E-derived games in the sense that anyone who wants to make one needs to have some actual design chops or the target audience isn't as likely to bite. I also distinctly remember back when 4E was relatively new-ish that a lot of GMs were like "I wanted a more lethal game so I yanked healing surges out entirely, and my players won't stop complaining! Ugh, 4E won't let GMs like me tinker with the system as is our god-given right!" which probably plays a lot into MonsterEnvy's dumbshit "5E is designed to give the GM ~freedom~" thing. As for FantasyCraft, it's basically "what if 3.X was designed by people who actually knew what they were doing" and it does do a lot of interesting things...Fighters get more toys in FantasyCraft than they ever got in 3.X and casters are more reigned-in, you don't get characters made out of five different prestige classes, the laundry list of weapons actually has a lot of variance, it comes with built-in "hacks" that you can use to easily customize a campaign...but it's also very, very fiddly and crunchy in that 3.X way, maybe even a little bit moreso, and so it's absolutely not for casual game night where everyone just wants to roll up a character in five minutes and go punch some orcs.
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Jul 22, 2014 19:01
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ProfessorCirno posted:I think it's more assumed that people here have generally played 4e, and those who like 4e are just gonna keep playing that, so game suggestions are for people who didn't like enough things about 4e.
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Jul 22, 2014 19:05
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A'ight, because I keep flip flopping I'm gonna make a big old fat post speculating why the sloppy design might not actually be a bad thing. Or at least why not all of it is a bad thing (anything that makes the DM's life harder is unforgivable). So we start with the assumption that PCs are expected to hit ~60-70% of the time on average and with even moderate optimization will rapidly reach 90-95% with the vast majority of their attacks. We then give players the ability to quickly nullify most encounters. Combat now moves so fast and is so laughably skewed in the player's favour that it's basically a minigame diversion, not a gameplay challenge as much as a narrative punctuation mark. Excessive optimization is less desirable because it's so easy to hit a point of diminishing returns where you're rarely being hit, rarely missing, or overkilling everything anyway. From that point, feats that would otherwise seem like a mandatory tax aren't, because you're already laying waste without it. You don't need fiddly, deep interactions like complex support or defensive roles because fights don't last long enough to care, and characters are resilient enough (past the first two levels) to just rely on the Pony Keg of Healing Potion that the party hauls around. The first two levels are intentionally the hardest, and the only ones where PCs can reliably die, entirely to create the illusion of fragility, even though the reality of that fragility rapidly evaporates. I'm probably going to run 5e for a while purely because it seems to be a pretty good pick for the kind of haphazard, almost anti-Dragonlance campaign that I've had an itch for. No big, sweeping arc, just an awful lot of looting and adventuring. Characters getting turned to stone and poo poo becomes inherently less disruptive because it doesn't become an out of place plot cul-de-sac because the game is just one giant string of plot cul-de-sacs. If a character dies it's not breaking some ancient prophecy, it's just another body in the ground. I think it might work just fine as a more emergent type game, which is basically what D&D was before Dragonlance.
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Jul 22, 2014 19:07
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Countblanc posted:Is the unspoken assumption here that no one likes 4e's heavily cooperative, meaty combat, or that 4e isn't actually D&D? Because none of those games use 4e combat, and I remember being particularly disappointed when people here kept saying 13th Age was "4e but better!" when it didn't have the single defining characteristic of the edition well emulated. Maybe I'm just projecting, but the audience for 4e isn't quite a "cult of the new", more like a "cult of the well-designed". But once you're really familiar with the game and those flaws get tough to ignore then you start looking for something else. I was super disappointed when 13th Age didn't live up to the hype either (IMO). Personally, I've been away from 4e long enough playing lots of DW that I've got the itch again, but that's taken almost 3 years. And I'll probably try to get WFRP3 to (finally) hit the table first to see if that can fill the "crunchy-rear end fantasy RPG"-shaped hole in my heart instead.
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Jul 22, 2014 19:07
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah, I agree about 13A with regard to the "4E clone/4E but better" label people were throwing around at the start. 13A is a largely derivative d20 game with some neat mechanics bits to steal and port to other games and a reasonably interesting setting, but there's very little in there to scratch the same itch 4E does. This makes a lot of sense, yeah. WotC had significant resources (compared to the rest of the hobby) to spend on things like balancing and pushing through content, and it let them do a lot of stuff with 4e that simply wouldn't have been feasible for a small developer.
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Jul 22, 2014 19:07
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zachol posted:I guess I'm having trouble understanding what it is about 3e that kind of person actually likes that wouldn't be better served by, say, 13th Age. Because 13th Age is a small run by a small company, and D&D 5E will appear in Target and Toys R Us and wherever around the nation. I am prepared to suggest the veteran internet savvy player with a lot of options is not their target demo here.
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Jul 22, 2014 19:11
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I also remember some smaller press guys trying to make 3rd party classes and stuff for 4E when it was out and several of them gave up after realizing "holy poo poo, this takes actual work." Like, you could probably gin up 10 New Underwater Prestige Classes in an afternoon and sell it on Drivethru and half the people who bought it wouldn't even be able to tell that you were pulling numbers out of a hat and the other half wouldn't care, but making a single 4E class from level 1 to level 30 plus paragon paths and maybe an epic destiny, that takes a not insignificant amount of effort if you don't want people laughing at it.
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Jul 22, 2014 19:15
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ProfessorCirno posted:5e is also for edition warriors who still place meaning in the name "D&D." 5e's shredding of nearly all 4e-isms appeals to them rather strongly. That's also the biggest group of pro-5e fans in ENWorld - people who thought 4e was a grand betrayal that killed D&D and proved WotC fired them forever, but were too obsessed with the name "D&D" to comfortably move on to even Pathfinder. How did tsr nearly kill d&d with 2e?
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Jul 22, 2014 19:17
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