|
I saw an article about creating encounters for 5e on the website. It looks like "Use monster XP as a point buy system and use CR to make sure you don't bring in anything that will overwhelm the players." They still have a few months to tie down encounter generation, so maybe it will be more substantial, but I don't think there's enough info yet to pass judgement one way or the other. I did like the mathematical precision of encounter generation on 4e, but the price you paid was that combat was EVERYTHING in 4e. I really felt like if minis weren't running around on a map I was wasting the game's time. Role playing was just a thing you did while setting up the next finely crafted encounter. If that's your bag, awesome, but it didn't sit well with the way I personally like to play.
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 00:55 |
|
|
FMguru posted:One of the big issues with 3e was that it didn't really get broken until the supplement treadmill roared to life 3e was so broken they had to push out 3.5 within a few years, making it the shortest-lived D&D edition to date. E: So beaten. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:26
|
|
|
Recycle Bin posted:I did like the mathematical precision of encounter generation on 4e, but the price you paid was that combat was EVERYTHING in 4e. I really felt like if minis weren't running around on a map I was wasting the game's time. Role playing was just a thing you did while setting up the next finely crafted encounter. If that's your bag, awesome, but it didn't sit well with the way I personally like to play. Nothing I've seen of any D&D edition emphasizes role playing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:28
|
|
|
Piell posted:The math of D&D Next was specifically NOT worked out until near the end of the process. There are no 4E-style accurate and easy to use guidelines for making enemies by level, and there never will be, because 5E has gone back to 3.x style monster creation which makes that impossible. Modules were never worked on during most of the design process and were created and tacked on afterwards. I'm sorry, but this is pretty much pure conjecture. I'm not expecting super tight monster math ala 4e, but pretending that it's free-wheeling "do whatever you want" when it comes to monsters is pretty obviously not true. From looking at the starter kit monsters it looks more like they're using some kind of point buy system or series of templates that modify a general base monster of X size. AC and proficiency for monsters either exactly or closely mimics player math for those same attributes (with CR acting as a rough equivalent to character level to determine prof). Personally I started playing D&D with 4e and have only come to experience 3.5 in the last couple years with a group at work. 5e is fun to play and I'm enjoying DM'ing it. Seems like, valid reasons or not, the people most angry about this whole situation are those with too much hate for 3.5 and too much love for 4.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:29
|
|
|
treeboy posted:5e is fun to play and I'm enjoying DM'ing it. What materials are you using to DM it? Do you have any tips for someone DMing it for the first time?
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:32
|
|
|
Generic Octopus posted:Nothing I've seen of any D&D edition emphasizes role playing. Inspiration.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:34
|
|
|
Recycle Bin posted:I did like the mathematical precision of encounter generation on 4e, but the price you paid was that combat was EVERYTHING in 4e. I really felt like if minis weren't running around on a map I was wasting the game's time. Role playing was just a thing you did while setting up the next finely crafted encounter. If that's your bag, awesome, but it didn't sit well with the way I personally like to play. Does 5e offer better mechanics than 4e did for outside-of-combat stuff? I didn't get the impression it was like FATE or Burning Wheel where there's well-developed mechanics for social interaction, adventuring, and such, but I haven't seen as much of the most recent material released. I had my issues with 4e combat (it doesn't scale for poo poo to anything that isn't essentially taking place in a 50x50y arena), but I don't quite get how the rules for those encounters being really dialed-in in 4e makes the more freeform portion of the game (everything else) less viable than a game where everything is loose.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:34
|
|
|
treeboy posted:5e is fun to play and I'm enjoying DM'ing it. It was fun for us until our wizard and cleric made our fighter and rogue largely irrelevant. slydingdoor posted:Inspiration. Not sure what you mean.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:34
|
|
|
Generic Octopus posted:Not sure what you mean.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:41
|
|
|
Gort posted:What materials are you using to DM it? Do you have any tips for someone DMing it for the first time? I spent a couple days going over the starter kit bestiary after work and worked out a few rough guidelines if i needed to improvise my own monsters. Until the PHB is out we're running the Phandelver adventure and I'm using that time to plan the beginnings of a homebrew campaign for my players actual characters. As far as running it, the game has similarities to 3.5 in that at low levels your players are pretty squishy, but so are the enemies. Hit dice help ameliorate that to an extent so that your cleric isn't blowing all of his cures after the first fight. Obviously it's all chance, but we came out of our goblin ambush with a pretty severely wounded cleric (who, to his detriment, rushed into the middle of the fray) and a fighter at about half hp. They burned their 1HD and were either at about half hp, or full. The others were unscratched. The wizard was down a single 1st spell that he'd used to finish off a couple goblins the melee fighter and rogue had gotten down to a couple hit points the round before. Otherwise he used a couple cantrips. Combat lasted about 4 or 5 rounds (5 PCs vs 4 enemies) including the surprise round in which our ranged Fighter was able to act. Ranged is pretty beefy with our longbow fighter practically one shotting one of the goblins across the map. Melee suffered a bit since Charge is a feat, and to close distance they had to double move and wait a round to attack again. This was mitigated by the fact that switching melee/ranged weapons is now super easy, so our melee fighter would move, throw a javelin, then pull out his axe. So when you're laying out your game (we played on a grid, to me the TotM stuff is hilarious since I don't know why anyone wouldn't run it on a grid) take into account that pure melee characters with no ranged options will be at a bit of a disadvantage. Luckily thrown weapons work off the same bonuses as normal melee, so there's really no reason not to give fighters a throwing axe or something. On a generally really positive note, combat was fast and people felt they had options even if they weren't ideal. My wife played with us as the rogue and she loved it despite never having played an RPG before. Wednesday we're planning on doing another session where they'll be delving into the goblin caves, I'm curious to see how it goes. Confines are more cramped so melee should have an easier time, but healing will likely be an issue. I'm actually expecting they'll have to back out, camp and rest up, and then head back in to finish the fight. treeboy fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Aug 5, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:47
|
|
|
What level are your party now? I have concerns about how the game scales when a few levels are gained. (IE: HP inflicting gets worse and worse and save or die/suck spells get better and better)
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:53
|
|
|
Littlefinger posted:5e's revolutionary innovation is that now you can try to cajole the DM to give you a transferable reroll token by Ooooooh right, that. Our dm didn't even bother with it because all it did was give you advantage on a roll iirc. When I think of roleplay mechanics I think of stuff like FATE where it's pretty integral, not "hey, because you stayed in character, roll twice next time."
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:55
|
|
|
Sir Kodiak posted:Does 5e offer better mechanics than 4e did for outside-of-combat stuff? I didn't get the impression it was like FATE or Burning Wheel where there's well-developed mechanics for social interaction, adventuring, and such, but I haven't seen as much of the most recent material released. I had my issues with 4e combat (it doesn't scale for poo poo to anything that isn't essentially taking place in a 50x50y arena), but I don't quite get how the rules for those encounters being really dialed-in in 4e makes the more freeform portion of the game (everything else) less viable than a game where everything is loose. Generic Octopus posted:Nothing I've seen of any D&D edition emphasizes role playing. 5e emphasizes role playing in the sense that it doesn't emphasize combat. When I talk about role playing, I just mean the player's capacity to affect the world and story outside of physical combat. That doesn't mean there has to be a chart to consult for every NPC interaction. I like that 5e turns character backgrounds in to a semi mechanic and stresses the importance of bonds, flaws and ideals instead of just alignment. Making combat a secondary concern also means it can go faster and make room for storytelling. To put it another way, it took two or three sessions in 4e to clear out a small 1st level dungeon. In 5e my players, all new to the game, cleared out a similarly sized dungeon, made it back to town and started making connections with the locals in just one session.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:59
|
|
|
Generic Octopus posted:Ooooooh right, that. Our dm didn't even bother with it because all it did was give you advantage on a roll iirc. When I think of roleplay mechanics I think of stuff like FATE where it's pretty integral, not "hey, because you stayed in character, roll twice next time." Inspiration sounds a bit like Exalted's stunting mechanics I'm that the reward its somewhat significant but somewhat independent of everything
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:02
|
|
|
Recycle Bin posted:5e emphasizes role playing in the sense that it doesn't emphasize combat. When I talk about role playing, I just mean the player's capacity to affect the world and story outside of physical combat. That doesn't mean there has to be a chart to consult for every NPC interaction. I like that 5e turns character backgrounds in to a semi mechanic and stresses the importance of bonds, flaws and ideals instead of just alignment. Everything you're describing is what I use Dungeon World for. Like, I understand combat slogs aren't everyone's cup of tea, and 4e's tactical combat can be pretty boring and/or overwhelming if you're not into it. That's a large part of why I don't play it anymore outside of pbp. But for the sort of stuff you're talking about, DW beats the pants off D&D.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:04
|
|
|
Generic Octopus posted:Our dm didn't even bother with it because all it did was give you advantage on a roll iirc.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:04
|
|
|
Littlefinger posted:And 6) Just make the monsters attack them, because giving fighty guys any serviceable defence mechanic is terrible MMO bullshit for babies. Every one of the mean DM things is something my dm does, to the point where almost no one would play low level wizards since it was basically a death sentence. It's weird realizing that isn't standard, because it's obviously the 2e intent that wizards are balanced that way. We got back at him by rerolling to wizards when midlevel characters died, to circumvent that issue. Also that same dm would have townsfolk attack any pc drow on sight, leading to again, no one playing them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:07
|
|
|
FMguru posted:One of the big issues with 3e was that it didn't really get broken until the supplement treadmill roared to life and filled shelves with tons of (official!) prestige classes and feats and spells and magic items. 5e may be slightly less burdensome and unbalanced that 3e now, but we'll see how it looks after a dozen or big meaty crunch books hit the shelves. It's nice that they made concentration a check against spellcasters going nuts with buffs; how long until you can bypass all that with an "Improved Concentration" feat?
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:08
|
|
|
Gort posted:What level are your party now? I have concerns about how the game scales when a few levels are gained. (IE: HP inflicting gets worse and worse and save or die/suck spells get better and better) they're still 1st level. I'm not super concerned about Save-or-die, the only one I'm aware of is Power Word Kill, it's 9th level and doesn't affect any creature/character above 100hp (which is pretty much just your wizard at higher levels) I'm fully expecting this to be a more lethal game than 4e, it's quite easy to drop to 0, but there's a fair amount of mechanics to stabilize and save a dying character, especially once healing isn't as limited. Certain classes like the rogue had almost constant sneak attack and managed advantage more than once. Concentration makes dominate and similar moves far more bearable than 3.5. Once the Vampire (or whatever) dies, or is interrupted, the magic goes with it too. None of the bullshit about still being dominated a week later until it wears off. edit: also Clerics get a lot better at healing a lot faster. Prayer of healing is a 2nd level spell that targets up to six creatures for 2d8+Mod. Casting at higher levels improves it by 1d8 per level above 2nd. Definitely the intended "post combat" refresh. treeboy fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Aug 5, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:08
|
|
|
Recycle Bin posted:5e emphasizes role playing in the sense that it doesn't emphasize combat. When I talk about role playing, I just mean the player's capacity to affect the world and story outside of physical combat. That doesn't mean there has to be a chart to consult for every NPC interaction. I like that 5e turns character backgrounds in to a semi mechanic and stresses the importance of bonds, flaws and ideals instead of just alignment. I know it's not what you mean, but this almost sounds like one of those bullshit job interview answers. "My one flaw? I'm too dedicated to results." "4e's combat is just too good, we need a mediocre combat engine so people will stop interacting with it so much." 4e's combat mechanics were perhaps too involved and I definitely think a lot of people here would agree with that. Even after years of playing 4e, mid-level combat can take up to an hour to run effectively and an hour of combat is an hour people can't spend talking or investigating or traveling, and I think that's fair. In fact, that's what I wish they had iterated on. That's pretty much the only source of aggravation in 5e for me. They could have just tuned encounters to be even faster but instead they just went full 3.75. It is faster, of course - but they threw out a lot of babies to accomplish it. You don't have to have a sub-par combat system to use less of it. It just needs to take less time. Mearls made a post pretty early in the L&L cycle where he talked about how combat in previous editions had been really fast, and that was good, because it meant it was over with quicker and you could move on to 'the good stuff'. I think the thing about that attitude that rubs people the wrong way is that 80-90% of character resources are all about interacting with combat. D&D has always been awful for this. "Our game is a Game of Thrones inspired political drama." "Okay, how do you model all the stuff that isn't combat?" "Freeform roleplay, occasional Charisma check."
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:12
|
|
|
Recycle Bin posted:Making combat a secondary concern also means it can go faster and make room for storytelling. To put it another way, it took two or three sessions in 4e to clear out a small 1st level dungeon. In 5e my players, all new to the game, cleared out a similarly sized dungeon, made it back to town and started making connections with the locals in just one session. I think this is conflating 4e combat being "finely crafted" with it being full of fidley bullshit and slow as molasses (related problems). That is to say, the issue isn't 4e being focused on combat, but it being focused on big set-piece combats. If 5e did/does bring 4e's balance to smaller, faster encounters more suitable to dungeon-crawling I'd be all over it, but that's not what I've been hearing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:16
|
|
|
I'm kind of wondering how it wound up taking 2-3 sessions to get through a "small level 1 dungeon" myself, because I've been in 4E games where the GM thought "oh, it's D&D so I'll have a combat encounter in every 10x10 room" and those games have been a pure misery because yeah, no poo poo 4E is a boring slog if you literally just string fight after fight together without end, but I've also been in 4E games where the GM actually knew how to properly pace poo poo and we smashed our way through a dungeon in the better part of four hours while drinking.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:17
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:I'm kind of wondering how it wound up taking 2-3 sessions to get through a "small level 1 dungeon" myself, because I've been in 4E games where the GM thought "oh, it's D&D so I'll have a combat encounter in every 10x10 room" and those games have been a pure misery because yeah, no poo poo 4E is a boring slog if you literally just string fight after fight together without end, but I've also been in 4E games where the GM actually knew how to properly pace poo poo and we smashed our way through a dungeon in the better part of four hours while drinking. There are games that this works fine for, so if that's what you prefer, 4e isn't for you. I've played them in Dungeon World and, while I don't care for the system, it supports them competently. The question I was getting at above was whether 5e actually has good mechanics for them or if it's just fast enough that they don't take very long.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:23
|
|
|
Well you sort of touched on the point I'm making though with your correct observation that 4E isn't so much about combat as it is setpiece combat. A fight in 4E should be something that's at least marginally more interesting and special than "2d6 kobolds in a featureless 20x20 room, roll initiative" but I've been in games and read actual play reports from people where the GM just threw tons of boring, uninteresting fights one after another at a 4E party and that will absolutely turn the game into nothing but a slog because it's not really meant to do that. I can believe it would take 2-3 sessions to get through a small level 1 dungeon but it suggests to me that something along the line was causing it beyond 4E's baseline pacing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:34
|
|
|
I don't think we're disagreeing with each other so much as having different preferred framings as to whether it's that lots of small combats in a dungeon crawl is a bad fit for 4e or whether it's that 4e is a bad fit for lots of small combats in a dungeon crawl. I've been in dungeon crawls where, yeah, there's half a dozen combats per floor with multiple floors, and I can believe that would take days to resolve if you actually ran them all the way through with full 4e combat mechanics.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:37
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Theoretically maybe, practically not really. Once you're trying to make a game that appeals to both people who are okay with things like martial daily exploits and Warlords and people who need a dedicated forum to hyperventilate over damage on a miss in, you're pretty much setting yourself up for failure. Remember that a vocal chunk of True D&D Fans find the concept of "solid mathematical underpinnings" to be abhorrent so even starting with that means you've already got a bunch of people telling you that you're literally Hitler. The best you can do in a situation like that is choose who you're going to cater to. I should amend that to step 1) ignore the Catpiss guys. Though, there is someone's thesis paper hidden in that mess. I can't think of any pop or nerd cultural touchstone that causes this much angst for people. If I had to speculate, some portion of the enjoyment that people got from 3.X was the fantasy particle simulator aspect. So efforts to realign the rules towards gameplay or expanded options aren't just a rules chance, they alter the way these guys' worlds work. I also wonder if the fact that a lot of gamer types don't just treat games as a hobby, but as part of their identity, plays a role in how strongly people react to these changes. I guess I'm optimistic though. I think if they kept the 4e HP/Healing Surge mechanic but called HP "Vitality" and Healing Surges "Hit Points." You'd avoid a lot of the groggy shouting meat back onto folks gripes. For all of the 4e isn't D&D, the biggest changes to game probably happened in the transition into 2nd ed. The game hasn't changed so much since then, its all killing stuff and taking their loot, coming up with crazy plans to overcome invincible overlords, and grand adventure arcs. The situations the rules need to adjudicate really haven't changed that much. I was actually hoping that some of the dungeon exploration rules would be good. There was some play test material that talked about dungeon crawling and exploration in some depth are those rules in Basic or is this another wait for the DMG things? I'm trying really hard to find reasons to check out the game.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:44
|
|
|
wallawallawingwang posted:I should amend that to step 1) ignore the Catpiss guys. Though, there is someone's thesis paper hidden in that mess. I can't think of any pop or nerd cultural touchstone that causes this much angst for people. Oh, tons. Superhero comics if you want something that probably overlaps with D&D in the Venn diagram of nerdly pursuits as an obvious one, but I'm led to believe that fanfiction communities are absolute drama-mines.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:48
|
|
|
I'm not as into the comics world as the table top world, so I miss a lot of its drama. Has anyone burned the their collection of Ultimates or anything? Did major figures in the scene support or apologize for it?
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:55
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Well you sort of touched on the point I'm making though with your correct observation that 4E isn't so much about combat as it is setpiece combat. A fight in 4E should be something that's at least marginally more interesting and special than "2d6 kobolds in a featureless 20x20 room, roll initiative" but I've been in games and read actual play reports from people where the GM just threw tons of boring, uninteresting fights one after another at a 4E party and that will absolutely turn the game into nothing but a slog because it's not really meant to do that. I can believe it would take 2-3 sessions to get through a small level 1 dungeon but it suggests to me that something along the line was causing it beyond 4E's baseline pacing. It was one of the original premade campaigns (Keep on the Shadowfell maybe?) and I admit it was more like 2 sessions, not three. I agree that a well crafted encounter in 4e is a lot of fun, but it made impromptu encounters like wandering monsters or wilderness encounters more of a slog for both the DM and the players. Investing most of your world-building time in to crafting encounters also meant they were way more precious. "You just teleported everyone in to the back of the necromancer's elaborate throne room and slit his throat? poo poo! Well, I didn't have time to come up with anything else for the night sooooo...random encounters?" I know I'm knocking 4e a lot, but let me be clear that I had plenty of good times with it. It's a perfectly legitimate way to run a campaign if that's what you and your players are looking for.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:55
|
|
|
wallawallawingwang posted:I'm not as into the comics world as the table top world, so I miss a lot of its drama. Has anyone burned the their collection of Ultimates or anything? Did major figures in the scene support or apologize for it?
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:56
|
|
|
Recycle Bin posted:I agree that a well crafted encounter in 4e is a lot of fun, but it made impromptu encounters like wandering monsters or wilderness encounters more of a slog for both the DM and the players. I kind of wish there was some kind of super basic quick encounter resolution system where you roll a few dice, and depending on how well you do, the party loses X healing surges. Save the grand tactical combats for significant moments in the campaign, but still get the narrative feeling of negotiating a hostile environment.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 20:04
|
|
|
FMguru posted:The craziest comic fanboy thing I ever saw was "Hal's Emerald Attack Team", but even that didn't rise to the level of celebratory book-burning.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 20:11
|
|
|
Piell posted:Haha no 3.x was broke as gently caress from day 1. Later 3.5 supplements had the most balanced stuff and most of the actually good (i.e. Tier 3) classes. I always laughed when my home group wanted to run Core only as a balance measure. Then I played a druid.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 20:21
|
|
|
I didn't follow 5e during the pre-release play testing. Does anyone have a good summary of how that all went? Did the designers genuinely take player input to heart? Is the game we have now distinctly different from the game they originally put out?
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 21:00
|
|
|
I think there's a big unknown about what input they actually even got. I'm sure 4e players who were paying attention and cared were raising a stink, but there were also plenty of people complaining about how it wasn't going far enough the other way.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 21:05
|
|
|
Recycle Bin posted:I didn't follow 5e during the pre-release play testing. Does anyone have a good summary of how that all went? Did the designers genuinely take player input to heart? Is the game we have now distinctly different from the game they originally put out? i think there's a bit of a conspiracy theory that they started out with neat stuff they had no intention of keeping to placate fans of 4e. To be honest there could be some truth to that, but I get the feeling they honestly got a lot of feedback that said "make it more 3.5" time will tell if the die-hard Pathfinder players will bother to buy it the more closely it resembles the game they already own.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 21:11
|
|
|
Recycle Bin posted:It was one of the original premade campaigns (Keep on the Shadowfell maybe?) I'm not sure why any of us 4e fans are really surprised there's not that much in 5e for us when the lead designer was the perpetrator of most of the worst bits of 4e.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 21:16
|
|
|
Recycle Bin posted:I didn't follow 5e during the pre-release play testing. Does anyone have a good summary of how that all went? Did the designers genuinely take player input to heart? Is the game we have now distinctly different from the game they originally put out? I still maintain that the giant "open playtest" was 90% a marketing gimmick and that Mearls et al were going to go ahead and design the game they wanted regardless of feedback.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 21:30
|
|
|
Yeah, KotS was a big disappointment to me as well. They actually break their own encounter design suggestions (Irontooth fight is level 6 and eats starting characters for breakfast) in that module. To be honest, I thought that all of the 4e adventures were rubbish with too many fights. They would maybe have worked in a system where monsters went down in one or maybe two hits, but with the amount of time a 4e combat takes, you can't just have combats that are "Some kobolds attack, same as the last three kobold packs that attacked". I find two combats a common number in my 4e sessions. treeboy posted:they're still 1st level. I'm not super concerned about Save-or-die, the only one I'm aware of is Power Word Kill, it's 9th level and doesn't affect any creature/character above 100hp (which is pretty much just your wizard at higher levels) Huh, I honestly thought there were save-or-die spells, but I see that there aren't actually any I can see at all in the Basic rules. (Power Word Kill doesn't allow a save, it's just "have more than 100 HP or you're dead", no save allowed) Then I came across the abomination that is Otto's Irresistable Dance - "You suck at everything, no save allowed. But you can attempt a save as an action, at which point you get it cast on you again." Gort fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Aug 5, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 21:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 00:55 |
|
|
Gort posted:To be honest, I thought that all of the 4e adventures were rubbish with too many fights.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 21:37
|
|