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Stormgale posted:I love the level 17 of the assassin, they make a save or take double damage from your attack? Level 17 is when level 9 spells become available and the Wizard starts Shapechanging into a Balor. So not really.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:50
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Stormgale posted:I love the level 17 of the assassin, they make a save or take double damage from your attack? DM's choice.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:52
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Lightning Lord posted:In the spirit of this thread, why would I play 5e when BECMI does this so much better? Good question! I note that, of previous D&Ds, BECMI is probably the one 5e feels most like to me. Reason I'd do it: The actual BECMI sets are a scattered collection of small booklets and you have to have four of them open to find anything. Rules Cyclopedia is at least somewhat cleaned up, but I really, really, do not like the "a table for everything and everything in its table" thing. XP to level varying by class. Saving throw table per class. Races are basically classes with completely different balancing issues, so the "dwarf" caps out at level 12 but then has special qualifiers that let them gain additional "attack rank" but not hit points. Some characters may have a 5% or 10% XP bonus. In short... Rules Cyclopedia is a neat game, but I really think that the AD&D switch to distinguishing between Race and Class was good. So I think 5e does it better.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:53
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eth0.n posted:Perfection is impossible. The question shouldn't be whether there's a rule set that's perfectly tight, but rather if a perfectly tight ruleset is even a goal of a given game. See, Magic is indeed very clear. But I have seen people who have been playing casually for years be *entirely unaware* of rules. (Like, two friends of mine who had been playing for maybe five years didn't know about mana burn. Although I think that's no longer a thing.) And I have spent time trying to figure out how things worked from the rulebook, and ended up not sure on occasion... But mostly, that is a very complicated set of rules. I am pretty sure that 5e's tolerance for "up to the GM" is an intentional design choice, specifically accepting a much broader range of ambiguity in exchange for a much, much, shorter set of rules. The net effect is that, overall, I think it's mostly clearer. I mean, Pathfinder is insanely carefully worked out... And I have seen their designers disagree on even fairly basic rulings, because it turns out that it's still not stable enough. The obvious one being fury's fall/agile maneuvers; the dev answer was that if you have fury's fall, and take agile maneuvers, yes, this actually *reduces* your bonus on trip attacks, because the dev in question believes that ability scores themselves are "sources". I mean, just read the Pathfinder rules forum sometime. If you cast Fabricate, does the fact that the material shaped into the thing you make was the "material component" mean that the material in question is then annihilated by the spell casting, leaving you with nothing? So far as I can tell, rules-as-written, yes. So basically: I don't think that "fewer ambiguities" and "clearer" are necessarily the same thing at all.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:58
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Jack the Lad posted:Here are a bunch more pages including the Rogue, Gnome, Half-Orc, Sailor, Charlatan and Gods. wait...what happened to Amaunator? Didn't they make a big deal about he really was Lathander and he's back...the gods page just says Lathander
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Aug 7, 2014 18:58
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seebs posted:See, Magic is indeed very clear. But I have seen people who have been playing casually for years be *entirely unaware* of rules. (Like, two friends of mine who had been playing for maybe five years didn't know about mana burn. Although I think that's no longer a thing.) And I have spent time trying to figure out how things worked from the rulebook, and ended up not sure on occasion... But mostly, that is a very complicated set of rules. I mean absolutely no offence when I say this, but I am 99% sure you would have a different opinion if you had read or played 4e.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:01
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Jack the Lad posted:I mean absolutely no offence when I say this, but I am 99% sure you would have a different opinion if you had read or played 4e. Gonna agree here. I've not played PF and got barely introduced to 3.5 ages ago, but 4e's rules are pretty tight. RAW is pretty drat easy to parse, it reads like a programmer wrote the rules (which I've heard is a mark against it according to some).
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Aug 7, 2014 19:13
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in all honesty if they're going for Save or Die kinda stuff like PWK, the Assassin Death Strike should just go ahead and deal 100 dmg outright which would actually make it better than PWK.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:14
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seebs posted:See, Magic is indeed very clear. But I have seen people who have been playing casually for years be *entirely unaware* of rules. (Like, two friends of mine who had been playing for maybe five years didn't know about mana burn. Although I think that's no longer a thing.) And I have spent time trying to figure out how things worked from the rulebook, and ended up not sure on occasion... But mostly, that is a very complicated set of rules. I don't think mana burn has been a thing for about five years now so it makes sense they haven't heard of it. It was removed along with damage on the stack and a few other weird edge cases to help make the game less confusing for new players and open up design space for cards new cards that would have been too powerful/confusing under the old rules. So you know kind of the opposite of the direction they're going with DnD at the moment. But considering that magic the gathering with the right set of cards is Turing complete, they basically want to do eventing they can to make it easier for new players.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:15
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One of my friends is trying to convince me that 5e is the greatest thing, simply because of the Advantage mechanic of "roll 2d20, use the higher result". What do people think about this single mechanic?
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Aug 7, 2014 19:19
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seebs posted:See, Magic is indeed very clear. But I have seen people who have been playing casually for years be *entirely unaware* of rules. (Like, two friends of mine who had been playing for maybe five years didn't know about mana burn. Although I think that's no longer a thing.) And I have spent time trying to figure out how things worked from the rulebook, and ended up not sure on occasion... But mostly, that is a very complicated set of rules. I probably should have capitalized "Comprehensive", because it's actually a separate thing from the rulebook you get in starter packs or whatever. If you just use that, and read what's on the cards, you'll probably run into ambiguities. But most of the time, it suffices for casual play. If you really want to know how something works, though, you can look at the Comprehensive rules, and it'll very likely be perfectly well defined. I'd like to see more of this in RPGs. Simple concise rules for usual play, but also comprehensive rules that fully define the game system. quote:I am pretty sure that 5e's tolerance for "up to the GM" is an intentional design choice, specifically accepting a much broader range of ambiguity in exchange for a much, much, shorter set of rules. The problem is that "up to the GM" is fundamentally bad when it comes to core gameplay. It makes it less of a game. 4E had this problem basically solved. The core system was concise, and quite well defined. quote:The net effect is that, overall, I think it's mostly clearer. I mean, Pathfinder is insanely carefully worked out... And I have seen their designers disagree on even fairly basic rulings, because it turns out that it's still not stable enough. The obvious one being fury's fall/agile maneuvers; the dev answer was that if you have fury's fall, and take agile maneuvers, yes, this actually *reduces* your bonus on trip attacks, because the dev in question believes that ability scores themselves are "sources". I mean, just read the Pathfinder rules forum sometime. If you cast Fabricate, does the fact that the material shaped into the thing you make was the "material component" mean that the material in question is then annihilated by the spell casting, leaving you with nothing? So far as I can tell, rules-as-written, yes. 3E/3.5/PF try to be carefully worked out, but they're actually terrible at it because they focus on trying to carefully work out all the details of a "realistic" fantasy world simulation, rather than simply define game rules.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:19
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Jack the Lad posted:I mean absolutely no offence when I say this, but I am 99% sure you would have a different opinion if you had read or played 4e. One sec, gotta go count a thing. Okay, I lost count, but I have somewhere on the close order of 30 4e hardcovers, nearly all of which I've read through at least once. I like 4e. I played it, and it was fun. I thought it was an entertaining game. I spent many cheerful hours in completely pointless flame wars with people who thought it "wasn't D&D". Finally I met someone who felt that way about it, but who is coherent enough about articulating beliefs that she could explain a thing this could mean that wasn't obviously false. (Oversimplifying: "Completely different resource management changes a big component of decisions about when to retreat and regroup and when not to.") I also note that, while I quite like the system, I think there is a serious foundational problem in that, for an otherwise extremely precisely-defined game, I don't recall ever finding a nicely clear-cut, well-defined, definition of "encounter". Does the presence of an invisible enemy you've not noticed who attacked you once during a fight and then somehow got overlooked mean that you are Still In An Encounter? GM call, I guess.  And yes, 4e's rules are pretty clear and pretty straight-forward. Downside, lots of errata for bugs. (e.g., the swap from marks affecting "attacks targeting people other than you" to "attacks that do not include you as a target".) I also quite disliked the splatbook power creep. There were a pair of feats, one in the PHB, one in one of the books shortly later, such that there was *absolutely no* benefit to the PHB feat that the other didn't provide, AND it provided additional benefits. I would have been really interested in a cleaned-up, standardized, 4.5e which got away from things like paladin builds having to choose between two primary stats while some other characters basically had one primary and choice of secondary. So there's a lot of rules creep. But yes, very clean, easy-to-read, rules. However! There's still a fairly large number of things to keep track of, and on the whole, I am not sure the additional complexity adds a lot of value.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:23
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^^^ i agree with many points, and complexity != depth.Iunnrais posted:One of my friends is trying to convince me that 5e is the greatest thing, simply because of the Advantage mechanic of "roll 2d20, use the higher result". What do people think about this single mechanic? its actually one of the most concise well designed aspects of the game imo. Generally i'm positive on 5e, though I also admit there are class design/balance issues which are not very far below the surface (or in some cases just blatantly obvious) treeboy fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Aug 7, 2014 |
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Aug 7, 2014 19:23
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Vorpal Cat posted:I don't think mana burn has been a thing for about five years now so it makes sense they haven't heard of it. It was removed along with damage on the stack and a few other weird edge cases to help make the game less confusing for new players and open up design space for cards new cards that would have been too powerful/confusing under the old rules. So you know kind of the opposite of the direction they're going with DnD at the moment. But considering that magic the gathering with the right set of cards is Turing complete, they basically want to do eventing they can to make it easier for new players. This was ten years ago, when it was still a thing, and had so far as I know *always* been a thing for the life of the game.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:24
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seebs posted:The actual BECMI sets are a scattered collection of small booklets and you have to have four of them open to find anything. How can you even say this while knowing the RC exists? It's literally the least scattered edition, with all the rules in a single book.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:24
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Iunnrais posted:One of my friends is trying to convince me that 5e is the greatest thing, simply because of the Advantage mechanic of "roll 2d20, use the higher result". What do people think about this single mechanic? I like it, honestly. It's a more elegant solution than having numerous +2s or +3s you have to remember to add to your roll.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:25
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Iunnrais posted:One of my friends is trying to convince me that 5e is the greatest thing, simply because of the Advantage mechanic of "roll 2d20, use the higher result". What do people think about this single mechanic? I am very fond of it. I recognize many ways in which it is less-nuanced than having 8 different bonus types with two or three different stacking rules. BUT! In about 90% of cases, maybe more, the net effect of the advantage/disadvantage system will be very similar from what you'd get from a whole lot of situational modifiers somewhere between +1 and +4 which may or may not have had their relative magnitudes considered. And you don't have to add 6 numbers to a die roll.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:25
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seebs posted:I also note that, while I quite like the system, I think there is a serious foundational problem in that, for an otherwise extremely precisely-defined game, I don't recall ever finding a nicely clear-cut, well-defined, definition of "encounter". Does the presence of an invisible enemy you've not noticed who attacked you once during a fight and then somehow got overlooked mean that you are Still In An Encounter? GM call, I guess. An encounter is essentially the interval between five-minute (or more) rests. This is defined in the PHB. If the invisible enemy interrupts your rest, it's the same encounter. If not, it isn't. Basically, "per encounter" is shorthand for "rest for five-minutes to get this back".
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Aug 7, 2014 19:25
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moths posted:How can you even say this while knowing the RC exists? It's literally the least scattered edition, with all the rules in a single book. I was under the impression (perhaps I am wrong) that BECMI is not precisely identical to Rules Cyclopedia.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:27
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eth0.n posted:An encounter is essentially the interval between five-minute (or more) rests. This is defined in the PHB. If the invisible enemy interrupts your rest, it's the same encounter. If not, it isn't. I was under the impression that you could have two encounters, but not have taken a "five minute rest" between them. Start searching corridor. Fight monster. Monster dies. Continue searching, without stopping to sit down. Encounter is over, but no five-minute rest has happened.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:29
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Iunnrais posted:One of my friends is trying to convince me that 5e is the greatest thing, simply because of the Advantage mechanic of "roll 2d20, use the higher result". What do people think about this single mechanic? It's okay I guess? It's basically just +4/+5 but it also prevents the GM from awarding more granular bonuses.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:30
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Jack the Lad posted:It's bad. It amounts to +4/+5 on most rolls and prevents the GM from awarding more granular bonuses. Roll with advantage: average 13.825 Roll with disadvantage: average 7.175 1d0 straight: average 10.5 So that's +/-3.325. And honestly... I don't actually care about more-granular bonuses, and I do care about having to add five or six numbers to a bunch of things, especially if which five or six numbers changes every round. (Posted before the edit to the previous post, which now says "okay, I guess".)
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Aug 7, 2014 19:33
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seebs posted:I was under the impression that you could have two encounters, but not have taken a "five minute rest" between them. Start searching corridor. Fight monster. Monster dies. Continue searching, without stopping to sit down. Encounter is over, but no five-minute rest has happened. I forget what exactly counts as "rest" (so if searching isn't rest), but I'm positive that encounters are, as defined in the rules, delineated by rests. A GM should, of course, feel free to bend the rules to fit the narrative. And this is actually a case where I think a pure "GM decides" would be OK. After all, it's basically up to the GM anyway if the party can get in 5 minutes of rest or not.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:36
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seebs posted:I was under the impression (perhaps I am wrong) that BECMI is not precisely identical to Rules Cyclopedia. Oh, yeah RC incorporated some errata and a some new stuff but it's still essentially the same edition. People piss about B/X, BECMI, Basic, D&D, oD&D, etc and to some degree there are real differences, but the Rules Compendium is the most accessible portal into pre-AD&D D&D. I've been mad about this before, but I've got a  theory that RC got snubbed in the collector's reprints because it does Next better than Next.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:38
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Jack the Lad posted:It's okay I guess? It's basically just +4/+5 but it also prevents the GM from awarding more granular bonuses. strictly there's nothing preventing this. When I or my friend GM'd 4e it's not uncommon to get a +1 or 2 for a particularly well reasoned purpose. Flatter numbers means, personally, i would limit this to +1 at most, but it's still possible in addition to Advantage (which mathematically is more representative of Combat Advantage/Flanking)
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Aug 7, 2014 19:38
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seebs posted:Roll with advantage: average 13.825  I think it's fair to say that most rolls in D&D fall between requiring a 6 and a 16.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:41
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moths posted:Oh, yeah RC incorporated some errata and a some new stuff but it's still essentially the same edition. People piss about B/X, BECMI, Basic, D&D, oD&D, etc and to some degree there are real differences, but the Rules Compendium is the most accessible portal into pre-AD&D D&D. I don't think so. I agree that it's probably the closest thing to Next, but I think Next is a much cleaner game. I also note that I basically think that 4e and Next are the only systems which I think made a really solid effort to avoid being "haha casters only" past mid-level. Pathfinder's better than 3e/3.5e there, but there's still some significant issues. I am still sort of amazed at how hugely Next nerfs wizards, but I am actually pretty okay with it.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:43
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Jack the Lad posted:
Oh, that's a really interesting point. I was looking at the average, but that's very different from "how much of a bonus to a straight d20 roll would you need to make this roll". EDIT: And on reflection, the chance-of-natural-1 and chance-of-natural-20 are also significant.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:44
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eth0.n posted:I forget what exactly counts as "rest" (so if searching isn't rest), but I'm positive that encounters are, as defined in the rules, delineated by rests. No Strenuous Activity: You have to rest during a short rest. You can stand guard, sit in place, ride on a wagon or other vehicle, or do other tasks that don’t require much exertion.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:44
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seebs posted:Oh, that's a really interesting point. I was looking at the average, but that's very different from "how much of a bonus to a straight d20 roll would you need to make this roll". Yeah, the difference between Advantage and +3.325 is that Advantage can't allow you to do anything you couldn't have done already.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:45
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seebs posted:I am very fond of it. I recognize many ways in which it is less-nuanced than having 8 different bonus types with two or three different stacking rules. BUT! This exactly. A big advantage of, well, "advantage" is that it lets them hand out a substantial, meaty bonus all at once without having to worry about stacking issues. Taking the better of two rolls is equivalent to, what, something like a +4-5 on average? A +4 to a d20 roll is a big loving deal in 3.5e/4e! You don't see them very often because there are so many other modifiers floating around for the taking that they would add up in a big goddamn hurry, so the designers have to write things in as lovely +1s and +2s knowing that power gamers will stack those bonuses to high heaven. Which creates a problem, because then if you're not optimizing a given roll you take a feat or magic item that's supposed to make you really good at something and your odds of succeeding improve by like 10%. This gets particularly silly when you're dealing with things like skill rolls that have narrow application and are barely worth bothering to keep track of in the first place. No one gives a poo poo if you have +1 to climb rolls on rooftops. Advantage means you can just hand out advantage in place of all kinds of bonuses and not have to worry about powergaming repercussions. It's a sweet system and my only complaint with the mechanic is that they did not push it even harder.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:47
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All that, but also rolling a higher number because of the die is more enjoyable than doing so because of plusses. Also rerolls mean more crits, which always get a response.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:53
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Gabriel Pope posted:This exactly. A big advantage of, well, "advantage" is that it lets them hand out a substantial, meaty bonus all at once without having to worry about stacking issues. Taking the better of two rolls is equivalent to, what, something like a +4-5 on average? A +4 to a d20 roll is a big loving deal in 3.5e/4e! You don't see them very often because there are so many other modifiers floating around for the taking that they would add up in a big goddamn hurry, so the designers have to write things in as lovely +1s and +2s knowing that power gamers will stack those bonuses to high heaven. This ties into a thing that has been a big issue for me in 3.5/PF, just because I like diviners a lot. In 3.5, Foresight was an amazing spell, because it had language saying you got information about threats before they fired. That language was dropped in the SRD. So it's absent in Pathfinder. So Pathfinder Foresight is basically a +2 to AC and reflex and can't-be-surprised. Which is not a 9th level spell. In Next, Foresight gives you advantage on just about all rolls, and other people disadvantage on attacks against you. And... That's *amazing*. It means that, for 8 hours, you don't have to roll twice and take lowest. Ever. And no one attacking you gets to roll twice and take the best. Ever. And that's a very powerful effect, and I think it works well. The mechanism where any number of advantage/disadvantage cancel out has weird effects. It means that the marginal value of a thing giving you advantage can be zero, because you already had advantage. But it also means that the value of a thing which consistently gives you advantage is huge, because it provides absolute immunity to the roll-twice penalty. Compare this to our Pathfinder game, where I had to write a die-roller which has five optional flags to consider so it can determine the various bonuses on to-hit and damage for our rogue's attacks and roll his dice. Since he has to roll 9d6, reroll 1s (but you keep a 1 if you roll it again), +18, possibly +1, possibly +4, possibly +1d6 (reroll 1s, same deal), possibly +1, possibly +1d6 (no reroll). For every attack.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:56
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Jack the Lad posted:Here are a bunch more pages including the Rogue, Gnome, Half-Orc, Sailor, Charlatan and Gods.  . And they actually managed to make the Assassin even worse!Stormgale posted:I love the level 17 of the assassin, they make a save or take double damage from your attack? quote:A band of adventurers sneaks up on a bandit camp, springing from the trees to attack them. A gelatinous cube glides down a dungeon passage, unnoticed by an orc patrol until the cube absorbs one of the group
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Aug 7, 2014 20:35
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seebs posted:This ties into a thing that has been a big issue for me in 3.5/PF, just because I like diviners a lot. In fact I think it's so good as a mechanic that it got instantly put into SBBQ (if I'm remembering correctly).
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Aug 7, 2014 20:41
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It's still rubbish that half-casters don't get unique spells, they just get a sub-set of wizard spells.
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Aug 7, 2014 20:57
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ProfessorProf posted:Yeah, the difference between Advantage and +3.325 is that Advantage can't allow you to do anything you couldn't have done already. 3e and 4e have precisely one way to prevent experts from failing easy checks - getting the bonus so high that failure falls off the RNG. With Advantage, you can do similar without mathematically eliminating less skilled characters from participating in challenges. It's a much cleaner and better way to represent reliability, imo, and one of the only parts I really like.
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Aug 7, 2014 20:59
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Gort posted:It's still rubbish that half-casters don't get unique spells, they just get a sub-set of wizard spells. One of the things I did sort of like about 1e's crazy spell lists was that they created a situation where classes could *feel* a lot more distinct, because they got genuinely different spell lists, with subtle changes between classes.
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Aug 7, 2014 21:00
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Gort posted:It's still rubbish that half-casters don't get unique spells, they just get a sub-set of wizard spells.
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Aug 7, 2014 21:02
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Father Wendigo posted:Holy poo poo are those Rogue options terrible - except maybe the Caster Option, since yeah assassin is really terrible. Lvl 17 ability: guaranteed crit if target surprised. wow. that's amaaaaaaaaazing. How about : Death Strike - if you hit a target when surprised they die, no save. or Death Strike - if you have advantage on a target you automatically crit.
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Aug 7, 2014 21:09
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