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Rulebook Heavily posted:The other big difference in 4e is that every spell was listed in the monster's statblock, and was statted to be appropriate to a monster using it. You'd never have to know how a player-available spell worked, look anything up or have to worry that really powerful spells in the PHB would randomly end encounters because players didn't have a specific defense against it. ...with the benefit is that you could swap a few keywords around and turn a fire genie into an ice spider with practically zero effort. Since 5E monsters explicitly relies on a limited spell list, there's a lot less reuse you can do.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:24
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P.d0t posted:Please play some 4e, GM-to-GM house rulings and all that were normal, so that part of 5e doesnt even make me twitch. The "actual casting" seems normal too. (Plus I like differentiating "casting 'normal' magic so it can be interrupted" vs innate gently caress YOU abilities of demons/tannari etc... Thats assuming that spells can be interrupted of course.) From what people are saying Im more worried about the number-inflation not working well and whether or not Ill give a poo poo about whatever settings/adventures they come up with.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:27
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Being able to interrupt spells is important if they're horrible save-or-die spells but guess what 4e didn't do that, either. Or level drain, or ability drain. It's really just an all-around less lovely experience for players and a lot easier to run as a GM (compared to 3.X anyway) 5e content, like seriously if I was to GM this edition, I would ban spells because goddamn. Right now I'm playing in a couple PbP games on SA and I enjoy my Rogue, but I just KNOW it will not be fun or at all useful beyond a certain level. The enemy casters will far outstrip anything a Rogue could do. They didn't even try to make classes equally valid choices. And anecdotally, I'd say we can pretty much confirm magic weapons as being Not-Optional.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:34
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FRINGE posted:3e was lovely so we stayed in old grog land. (Although I did end up with some of the 3e FR books for easy infodumps.) In the basic pdf, rather than sort spells in a sane way like Class->Level->Alphabetical, Next chooses to sort all spells alphabetically. In the starter set, enemies in a room don't appear in-line with the room description. Both of these are things that are formatted better in the very earliest of D&D editions.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:41
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P.d0t posted:Being able to interrupt spells is important if they're horrible save-or-die spells but guess what Like if you saw a flock of wraiths it was not by "surprise!" and the players had plenty of table-time to sort out what to do (including "run to the temple of the Sun priests"). SoD should also be reserved for special "shits getting real" Big Encounters. Poison was something I auto-ruled as being damage or detriment causing and not "death". (And it was rarely seen specialized knowledge unless the players pursued its use.) I also do not like how 3e made it so every caster had all the same spells no matter what, and those spells messed with other roles. If theres a thief (who wanted to be an actual "thief-thief") in the party odds of finding Knock were pretty loving small. Difference of opinion I guess: accounting for spell interruption was one of the things that made the group work together, instead of just belting out DPS in different colors. I know some people dislike at least two parts of that ( 1) defend the spellcaster, 2) caster might lose spell) If they were actually serious about this "Modules" thing (I kind of hate that they used that word for this meaning in a DnD context) they should have at least three fundamental sets of tweaks for playstyles. The "Shitfarmer -> Viet Nam" option ala (early) Black Company, the "Tavern -> Anime" option ala Malazan, and the "aspiring demigod" option ala (lol I keep thinking Hercules/Xena but you know what I mean). DalaranJ posted:Next chooses to sort all spells alphabetically.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:57
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If spells are going to appear on several different spell lists (for example, druids and bards both having some cleric spells but also some wizard spells), I'm not sure what a better choice would be rather than just an alphabetical list.
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Jul 31, 2014 03:19
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zachol posted:If spells are going to appear on several different spell lists (for example, druids and bards both having some cleric spells but also some wizard spells), I'm not sure what a better choice would be rather than just an alphabetical list. At least sorting them by spell level would be nice, so that you can just look in the contents and see "Oh, 5th level spells are between pages blah and blah", rather than "Well it starts with an S, so I guess it's somewhere in the latter half of this 90 page clusterfuck"
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Jul 31, 2014 03:24
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zachol posted:If spells are going to appear on several different spell lists (for example, druids and bards both having some cleric spells but also some wizard spells), I'm not sure what a better choice would be rather than just an alphabetical list. If there are repeats then the actual section holds the place with the Spell name and basic casting requiremenst (VSM, CT, etc) and range/area, and then a simple line like: "As 2nd level Wizard Spell page xx"  
FRINGE fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 03:26
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5e has lists like that at the start of the spell list. If the pdfs had hotlinks from there to the spell description in the alphabetical list it'd be fine, but at the moment it's just tedious.
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Jul 31, 2014 03:41
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Lord of Bore posted:At least sorting them by spell level would be nice, so that you can just look in the contents and see "Oh, 5th level spells are between pages blah and blah", rather than "Well it starts with an S, so I guess it's somewhere in the latter half of this 90 page clusterfuck" This would be neat. I'd respond with "what if some classes have them at different levels" but I absolutely hated when 3e did that, so eh.
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Jul 31, 2014 03:48
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Maybe all this is ploy to get you to buy Morningstar. "Buy Morningstar! It unfucks what we hosed up! Note: Morningstar will also gently caress up new and previously unfucked things."
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Jul 31, 2014 03:55
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zachol posted:This would be neat. I'd respond with "what if some classes have them at different levels" but I absolutely hated when 3e did that, so eh. One of the things that 4E did that I can't remember if 5E does was separating all of the "things you wouldn't/shouldn't cast in combat anyway" out into a class-agnostic list of "stuff anyone can do outside of combat with preparation." That simplified spell lists and how they worked tremendously, regardless of the rest of 4E's treatments. E: I guess I should ask as a refresher - did 5E keep anything from the ritual concept at all?
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Jul 31, 2014 03:57
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Daetrin posted:E: I guess I should ask as a refresher - did 5E keep anything from the ritual concept at all? Yes. It's now "Wizards can cast these specific spells without spending a spell slot". Clerics can do it too, but it has to be a spell they've prepared, whereas Wizards just need to have it in their spellbook.
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Jul 31, 2014 04:02
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FRINGE posted:The "Shitfarmer -> Viet Nam" option ala (early) Black Company, This is a nitpick because most of what you are saying seems reasonable coming from someone who never played anything past 2e, but this made me stop. At the opening of the books, the black company are crack soldiers with experts in strategy, tactics and even politics with three very dangerous war wizards. Not poo poo farmers. Pick another example. Also I would use 4e for black company skirmish-level combat no problem. For the big battles and out of combat stuff, 4e's skill list and task resolution are not a good fit. Something like burning wheel does better. Which is partly why I smashed those two together and simplified both in making SBBQ. The Black Company was very much in the front of my mind when I was working on it. I even made a short little guide to running a Black Company game in SBBQ with special roles for the captain and the annalist and more.
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Jul 31, 2014 04:13
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Daetrin posted:One of the things that 4E did that I can't remember if 5E does was separating all of the "things you wouldn't/shouldn't cast in combat anyway" out into a class-agnostic list of "stuff anyone can do outside of combat with preparation." That simplified spell lists and how they worked tremendously, regardless of the rest of 4E's treatments. They even made the Martial Practice feature so your tough old barbarian or thief could contribute as well. I don't think they had as much support as rituals did, but the gesture was nice. Wonder if they'll put them in 5e 
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Jul 31, 2014 04:16
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FRINGE posted:Ah. I guess I was used to that in the older editions. 3e was a terrible mess to look through though. Not really. Basically almost every offensive maneuver in the game came in the form of an attack roll made against one of four defenses: -AC, which is pretty similar to what it's always been -Fortitude, which is used to resist attacks against the body such as posion, along with some big hits that would otherwise knock you around -Reflex, which is used when it's something you have to dodge or counterbalance, be it a fireball or maybe an earthquake, as well as weapon attacks that went through armor, not unlike Touch AC, except it actually scales so it's not quite as much of an autohit at high levels -Will, which is used to resist attacks against your mind such as charms, illusion, fear, or feints Attacks can come in different forms, with ranged attacks such as arrows or magic rays and ranged AoE attacks like fireball or a volley of arrows provoking OAs and melee attacks (even if they're melee spells) don't provoke OAs. Successfully landing an OA doesn't interrupt a spell or attack barring certain specialized builds that sling around daze effects, but it does hurt and thus it's not a bad idea to get in the face of long-ranged opponent.
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Jul 31, 2014 04:21
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Martial Practices were good idea/bad execution because the idea of "cool, ritual-like effects you can do because you're just that awesome and don't need magic to do it" are great but the actual martial practices themselves were all things that you would honestly just expect to be able to do with a sufficient skill roll, like "you can predict if it's going to rain" or "you can forge documents" or whatever instead of "you are immune to the elements" or "you can leap great distances in a single bound."
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Jul 31, 2014 04:22
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Jimbozig posted:This is a nitpick because most of what you are saying seems reasonable coming from someone who never played anything past 2e, but this made me stop. At the opening of the books, the black company are crack soldiers with experts in strategy, tactics and even politics with three very dangerous war wizards. Not poo poo farmers. Pick another example. I could start from scratch, but the reason I picked them was the constant contraction of the company back to a handful of people and a bunch of miscreants and recruits, couple with the fact that even in the beginning they were (for the setting) young sheltered mercenaries* walking into a wizard-god war. It was the kind of setup that some people have expressed less affection for than the "everyone and their pet kitty is on the road to semi-divinity" Malazan style. (*The 3e Black Company book put The Lady at like 55th level or something. Croaker and Silence were like 10ish and towards the upper range of the group. ... The scenes with starvation and plague, the constant battlefield death due to insufficient medicine, etc.. are part of a completely different game than the 2nd or 3rd style.) Ideally the system would have some guidelines for starting all three styles out besides just saying "start at a higher level". The mud-war game should have some different advice for new people than the near-ascendant game. (Separate note: I really enjoyed the progression of The Instrumentalities of the Night from ... where it started to where it went. I dont want to say much for people that havent read it.) FRINGE fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 04:52
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Generic Octopus posted:None of these previews actually say anything about the mechanics of these classes. Or is the fluff supposed to make me rush to the store on release day? Gort posted:Pretty much no one will give a poo poo about mechanics Yeah, 5e isn't selling on it's mechanics. If you want to ask about the actual math, you're not the intended audience. Like there's literally an ENWorld thread dedicated to "stop talking about math!" DalaranJ posted:I wonder what the design rationale behind putting Basic's Weapon Mastery and 4th's Warlord into the same subclass was? I'm sure no one will ever tell us. Mearls hates the warlord. This gets forgotten. But every time he's talked about the warlord, it's been with COMPLETE scorn. It's also the only core class not to get an e-version once Mearls took the helm. Mearls hates the warlord.
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Jul 31, 2014 05:15
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ProfessorCirno posted:Mearls hates the warlord. Well he's a man with literally no charisma at all from what I can tell. The warlord concept that someone can inspire someone else to do something is foreign to Mearls.
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Jul 31, 2014 05:26
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FRINGE posted:(*The 3e Black Company book put The Lady at like 55th level or something. Croaker and Silence were like 10ish and towards the upper range of the group. ... The scenes with starvation and plague, the constant battlefield death due to insufficient medicine, etc.. are part of a completely different game than the 2nd or 3rd style.) One of the basic rules of DnD is that it's poo poo for translating characters from other media to game characters. Nothing about those levels really relates what a 10th level character should be able to do with what Croaker does or a 55th level character and The Lady. IIRC, the main BC characters also never go toe to toe with any of the Taken. If you want to run a normal powered BC game with BC vs some monsters and some dudes at the squad level then 4e is going to do as good a job as any of the systems. Also, the Malazan series tends to operate on the same concept as the BC series, where godlike beings nullify each other and leave a lot of the messy work to mere mortals.
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Jul 31, 2014 05:40
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Rosalind posted:Well he's a man with literally no charisma at all from what I can tell. The warlord concept that someone can inspire someone else to do something is foreign to Mearls. Yeah, Mearls. He was the guy in the game stream I watched, who was in character the entire time and even seemed to be weirding out his coworkers a little.
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Jul 31, 2014 05:40
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ProfessorCirno posted:Mearls hates the warlord. * please note, "sleeping it off" is an effective means of limb replacement, because adventurers are basically geckos.
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Jul 31, 2014 06:06
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HP equal how many limbs you have, a full night's rest will replenish 1HD of limbs.
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Jul 31, 2014 07:15
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Yeah, Mearls. He was the guy in the game stream I watched, who was in character the entire time and even seemed to be weirding out his coworkers a little. Oh, which game was that? I'd love to see Mearls play. (Watching the Pro Lead Designer of Deendee DM like an awkward teenager was pretty hilarious.)
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Jul 31, 2014 07:25
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NovemberMike posted:One of the basic rules of DnD is that it's poo poo for translating characters from other media to game characters. Nothing about those levels really relates what a 10th level character should be able to do with what Croaker does or a 55th level character and The Lady. IIRC, the main BC characters also never go toe to toe with any of the Taken. If you want to run a normal powered BC game with BC vs some monsters and some dudes at the squad level then 4e is going to do as good a job as any of the systems. Also, the Malazan series tends to operate on the same concept as the BC series, where godlike beings nullify each other and leave a lot of the messy work to mere mortals. I think that the game should have something in it to help new people manage games with the varying styles. Some actual advice, maybe examples, and some character building and gm tips and tricks that give some baseline ideas of where to go. It might not matter to most of us, but it will matter to any new people that jump in. starkebn posted:HP equal how many limbs you have, a full night's rest will replenish 1HD of limbs.
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Jul 31, 2014 07:26
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Littlefinger posted:Oh, which game was that? I'd love to see Mearls play. (Watching the Pro Lead Designer of Deendee DM like an awkward teenager was pretty hilarious.) They ran Scourge of The Sword Coast on Twitch.
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Jul 31, 2014 07:27
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Generic Octopus posted:5e has lists like that at the start of the spell list. If the pdfs had hotlinks from there to the spell description in the alphabetical list it'd be fine, but at the moment it's just tedious. When they do a print version, it needs to be organized for fucks sake. Like broken into sections, with both page headers and section headers. In whatever class order the lists are in. 
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Jul 31, 2014 07:34
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Thanks! Too bad he was surreptitiously replaced with another guy in the second session. 
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Jul 31, 2014 08:53
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This whole session just eats my hope. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 08:58
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QuantumNinja posted:This whole session just eats my hope. Thats what they feed on so makes sense.
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Jul 31, 2014 09:10
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Littlefinger posted:Thanks! Too bad he was surreptitiously replaced with another guy in the second session. He's back in the third. Obviously I'm not familiar with loads of D&D sessions, but somewhere in the third or fourth ep they start getting completely bogged down in pointless minutiae, to the point where they spend something like half an hour describing the layout of tiny section of town and what exactly they can see from their vantage point. "So, what can we see in silhouette here?" "Can we see the roof?" "Yeah, you can see the roof?" "What angle is the roof? What angle are we seeing the roof from?" "Do other building roofs mix with the other buildings silhouette?" "Here, let me draw you an arcane scribble that looks like nothing." "Can we see beyond the roof?"
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Jul 31, 2014 09:14
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Mearls does the best wallchat.
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Jul 31, 2014 09:22
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I love the DM's characterizations too. He can only do "Poorly Done Gruff Scotsman", or "Every Other Character Sounds Like A Small Child That Dropped Their Ice-Cream Cone".
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Jul 31, 2014 09:29
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:I love the DM's characterizations too. He can only do "Poorly Done Gruff Scotsman", or "Every Other Character Sounds Like A Small Child That Dropped Their Ice-Cream Cone". Wait gently caress have I been sleep-DMing 5e?
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Jul 31, 2014 10:39
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The other thing that bugs me about monsters that cast the same spells as players is how dull it makes monsters. "A wizard who memorised these spells today" is not an interesting monster. The spells they know are generally pretty random and themeless, which adds nothing to the feel of the monster. It's far better design for monsters to have their own powers, separate to those the players have, from a balance, interest and gameplay point of view.
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Jul 31, 2014 11:27
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ProfessorCirno posted:Mearls hates the warlord. Is there any professional RPG designer who currently doesn't hate 4e? Even Rob Heinsoo*, who's on record saying he had to fight against caster supremacy during 4e design, seems to have some regrets — his treatment of martial classes in 13th Age is clearly a step back in relation to their glory in 4e. *I won't say Heinsoo hates 4e because his Commander class (i.e. 13th Age's Warlord) is a thing of beauty. But he's clearly been damaged by grog criticism of 4e — 13th Age is full of grog-appeasing compromises.  It's... frustrating — instead of going forward, d20 designers got grog-scared and ran away back to the year 2000.
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Jul 31, 2014 12:48
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Nancy_Noxious posted:Is there any professional RPG designer who currently doesn't hate 4e? It seems to me that a lot of the designers that aren't groggy have abandoned d20, or at least D&D. Not sure what exactly constitutes a professional RPG designer though. It's not as if there's a direct objective criterion other than "has published a game," and that's not much of a filter. I mean, consider Mearls. Technically, he's on the design team for one of the most "professional" RPG systems to exist, but I'm not sure I'd consider his general behavior professional.
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Jul 31, 2014 13:39
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The thing with this hobby is that, outside of like one or two people, nobody who has a chance to leave it refuses it. Anyone who can escapes this industry and never looks back.
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Jul 31, 2014 14:23
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Nancy_Noxious posted:Is there any professional RPG designer who currently doesn't hate 4e? A Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 14:30
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