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MonsterEnvy posted:Also yes I do have a mental disorder if your wondering. Just the one?
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Aug 9, 2014 10:22
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Every time I see "But the DM can change it!" my first thought is "Or play another game." Literally every defense of 5e is based on "now, pretend you are actually FORCED to play or run it..." and that's just not the case. 5e is basically still trying to act like it's the only product you can buy, and it's defenders are doing a woeful job of defending it outside of that claim. Like, I don't need to fix all this poo poo. I can go somewhere else. Give me poo poo inside the rules that make me go oh man I wanna play that. Give me poo poo inside the rules that fixes problems.
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Aug 9, 2014 10:51
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goldjas posted:It's just an ogre and we think an ogre should do this because loving OGRES MAN. And yet, for some reason they decided to go with a system with a bunch of fiddly numbers rather than a system where an Ogre stat block looks like: Ogre Big And Strong Will Grind Your Bones To Bake His Bread Overly Fond Of Raw Onions I mean, if you're not going to have a system for all this poo poo, why not just boil it down to what you're actually thinking in your head and use a system that does that rather than gently caress around with will saves and hit dice?
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Aug 9, 2014 13:35
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Ratoslov posted:And yet, for some reason they decided to go with a system with a bunch of fiddly numbers rather than a system where an Ogre stat block looks like: And then D&D was Fate. (Actually that's a good question for another thread - can you use Fate to mimic the 'feel' of D&D without the fiddly bits). Seriously though...no swarm rules. Just, why? It wouldn't be hard; you could even say something like "Swarms always have Advantage" if you wanted to duplicate the working-togetherness.
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Aug 9, 2014 13:50
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So you beat up the vampire and chase it back to its coffin. If you stake it through the heart, it doesn't die, it's paralyzed. If you prod it anywhere else for 1 hp of damage, it dies instantly. In conclusion, the heart is the least vulnerable point of a vampire.
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Aug 9, 2014 13:57
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Daetrin posted:And then D&D was Fate. Fate Freeport does it pretty well.
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Aug 9, 2014 13:58
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Piell posted:Fate Freeport does it pretty well. Freeport is actually pretty bad, though, particularly the magic system. Jack the Lad posted:On one end of the scale, there's Charm, which lets you roll Charisma to create an advantage on someone, representing you having charmed them! Which... you can just do with Charisma, the skill, anyway.
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Aug 9, 2014 14:36
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MonsterEnvy posted:
I can't believe you had an argument with Ritorix. It'j just too beautiful to be true.
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Aug 9, 2014 14:43
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MonsterEnvy posted:Swarms would not really work for Kobolds as they are humanoids. And no I don't see an issue with rolling a ton of d20's it does not take that long. Hell you are not even doing normal attack rolls your just taking the high result for half of them and if you own at least 2d20's then it's even quicker and easier. Ok, please understand that I'm not picking on you; You're making a very common mistake that isn't obvious. The developers made the mistake, the play-testers certainly did, and it's easily filtered through optimism or excitement. In fact, unless you've had experience with it (or something similar) you probably wouldn't even notice until it manifests - and even then you could still do it wrong (indeed, the "easy way" that seems to work best) without even knowing. I absolutely have seen this before, in a different context where it was just as problematic. In some wargames, an ability will let you re-roll misses. I think we can agree that this is roughly equivalent to Advantage. Some players took to rolling two dice per soldier and counting half of results. This is cheating! Under that scheme, it's almost impossible for an individual model to roll two misses since you don't know which two dice correspond to which soldier. Rolling a pool also makes it such that one model can hit twice, instead of the redundant hit being wasted. With Advantage, you need to roll and resolve both dice for each attack before you roll two dice for the next attack. But you can't only re-roll the misses because of the significant outcome of a 20. Going back to our 10 kobolds: - You cannot roll 20 dice ignoring half of them, for the reasons above. - You also cannot roll ten dice, only re-rolling misses because a 20 result is a significant for either die. Advantage requires pairing two die rolls together. You can't roll two pools of 10D20 (One for regular attacks and one for Advantage) because the two dice are used in conjunction. There's no way to determine which dice from one pool sister to which dice from the other pool, unless you're using ten pair of color-matched D20s. Without Advantage, you could be rolling all the attacks (against a particular target) at once, and batch-check results against defense. But Advantage properly requires a DM to roll and resolve each attack separately. It's time consuming, tedious, and clumsy as hell.
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Aug 9, 2014 15:18
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Going from Kobold Slinger/Kobold Dragonshield/Kobold Shaman/Kobold Cutter back to plain old "here's one statblock for all kobolds, go do the work yourself if you want more than that, DM" is a huge step backwards. I loving loved being able to have an encounter made up of a few different monster groups without having to do any prep at all. Just open the MM to the page on kobolds, it's all there. What's next, having to design boss monsters from the ground up using PC rules?
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Aug 9, 2014 15:23
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xiw posted:So you beat up the vampire and chase it back to its coffin. If you stake it through the heart, it doesn't die, it's paralyzed. If you prod it anywhere else for 1 hp of damage, it dies instantly. If you want to get technical for vampire mythology this is actually true. It was only the "buffy" approach that staking a vampires heart killed it outright. Most of the Victorian era myths revolved around staking the heart (or sometimes stomach) to empty the blood it had been drinking (the source of its power) and then usually beheading/burning the body. So this is not too far off normal vampire myth. Gort posted:Going from Kobold Slinger/Kobold Dragonshield/Kobold Shaman/Kobold Cutter back to plain old "here's one statblock for all kobolds, go do the work yourself if you want more than that, DM" is a huge step backwards. Why is this not possible? I'm really confused. The new packet has a bunch of new monsters, two of them are Kobolds...why does a free PDF preview make it impossible for there to ever be more/variations of kobolds in the monster manual?
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Aug 9, 2014 15:32
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MonsterEnvy posted:Given how few spell casters there are no I don't agree. Monsters don't need a ton of stuff anyway and the ones that do are the more important ones. So, actually, you do agree that most monsters are a pile of hit points with one attack. You just agree in a hostile and contentious way because you don't like the implications of the point I'm making and/or don't care. That's cool, go ahead. I'm just saying, it's not correct to say that 5e has "better" design than 4e did because 5e's monsters are largely not designed in any significant sense, they just have numbers assigned. It's like how the nothic is basically an ogre that attacks a different defense. quote:That supplement of monsters is great and has great monsters for a good game. Well, not really. The simplistic monsters we've seen are too complicated for how simple they are - why do they still have pools of hit points or ability scores or the ability to individually suffer need-to-be-tracked status effects? The complicated monsters tend to be complicated because they're just wizards and/or clerics, requiring the DM to have memorized the spell list in order to use or customize them with any speed. Occasionally you've got intermediaries like the dragon, but the dragon's special features boil down to "more hitpoints", "gently caress melee", "gently caress melee", and "gently caress stealth".
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Aug 9, 2014 15:36
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treeboy posted:If you want to get technical for vampire mythology this is actually true. It was only the "buffy" approach that staking a vampires heart killed it outright. Most of the Victorian era myths revolved around staking the heart (or sometimes stomach) to empty the blood it had been drinking (the source of its power) and then usually beheading/burning the body. So this is not too far off normal vampire myth. I think the issue is more that in 4E the different types had inherently unique roles in an encounter and could be easily modified to work for whatever level, in whatever context. It's not clear 5E supports that.
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Aug 9, 2014 15:37
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Daetrin posted:I think the issue is more that in 4E the different types had inherently unique roles in an encounter and could be easily modified to work for whatever level, in whatever context. It's not clear 5E supports that. I can appreciate people really liking and enjoying the 4e minion/normal/elite/solo structure for their artillery/brute dynamic, but these complaints are getting really ridiculous
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Aug 9, 2014 16:40
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moths posted:You also cannot roll ten dice, only re-rolling misses because a 20 result is a significant for either die. Gah! Yes. Hadn't spotted that. On the other hand I don't think most people care - and what you can do is separate the dice into two piles - and when you reroll the hits you only check for 20s. And if the initial roll was a crit you don't reroll.
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Aug 9, 2014 16:51
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looking at monster stats, the only creatures getting save proficiencies so far are NPCs (Sildar, Nezznar, Assassin) and dragons. I'm betting the former are based off some kind of class template (since they share saves with their PC class counterparts) and the others are either a dragon template or a "solo" type template
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Aug 9, 2014 16:56
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goldjas posted:Man D&D is super obsessed about Tiamat, it feels like we've been having a billion adventures dealing with her and her minions since like 3rd edition at least. It probably has something to do with Dragonlance.
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Aug 9, 2014 17:45
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Not defending having to roll 36d20 here, but if you need to roll this quickly you can actually roll all the dice together. Once you've rolled them, shove them all towards you into a line (with a ruler or book or something) and then go down the line in pairs - left roll is the first roll, right roll is the second roll.
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Aug 9, 2014 17:52
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treeboy posted:looking at monster stats, the only creatures getting save proficiencies so far are NPCs (Sildar, Nezznar, Assassin) and dragons. I'm betting the former are based off some kind of class template (since they share saves with their PC class counterparts) and the others are either a dragon template or a "solo" type template Probably a solo type ability because the Vampire has them but it doesn't seem to have class levels. Idk why it doesn't get CON, maybe because it's undead?
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Aug 9, 2014 18:35
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MonsterEnvy posted:Then you would be complaining if 20 non kobold monsters were fought. Kobolds are not rats they are humanoids that take up a space. The fact that rolling dice and picking the higher one is so hard for people is stupid. This is barely different then if you fought 10 goblins. But apparently having to roll twice for a monster once when his allies are near is bad design. Dear god it took 1 second longer. I would love to know what cybernetic enhancements he uses where rolling all those extra dice, crunching the numbers, and playing out the results apparently only requires exactly 1 more second to perform. At a PF game I play in, two other players and I were talking about what we've enjoyed about 5e so far and we all agreed that advantage/disadvantage was probably our favorite new mechanic. Our GM heard this and had a small My PF GM who has not actually played 5e or read the rules as far as I know posted:"it ruins, the, the role-playing aspect, it completely removes any motivation for the players to role-play how they get their bonuses, like, they don't have to even try now, they just need to get one thing and then they're set, it's too easy and, it, it removes the role-playing in combat for like, maneuvering, or flanking, all that stuff. I hate it, I just think its bad."
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Aug 9, 2014 19:07
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IT BEGINS posted:Not defending having to roll 36d20 here, but if you need to roll this quickly you can actually roll all the dice together. Once you've rolled them, shove them all towards you into a line (with a ruler or book or something) and then go down the line in pairs - left roll is the first roll, right roll is the second roll. You could probably rig up some kind of trough or chute to pour your D20 bucket into - but even then it seems a long way to go just to give monsters their fair shot at criticals. And I suspect that trying to line up the most spherical of standard polyhedron dice is going to cost you more time in re-rolls from tipping dice over or knocking them off the table. neonchameleon posted:On the other hand I don't think most people care - and what you can do is separate the dice into two piles - and when you reroll the hits you only check for 20s. And if the initial roll was a crit you don't reroll. I had to read this twice, but it might work. You're saying: Roll a die for each attack, then 1. separate your D20s into three conditional pools: Hits, Crits, and Misses. 2. set the Crit pool aside 3. re-roll the Hit pool checking for 20s 4. re-roll the Miss pool looking for Hits or 20s and then repeat the entire process for the next target, then the next, then next, etc. That might work faster than rolling each attacker's pair individually, but I can't imagine this not being confusing or prone to dice falling into the wrong stack or off the table. What's more likely to happen is probably what's happening - just doing bulk Advantage wrong and cheating monsters out of criticals.
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Aug 9, 2014 19:16
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moths posted:And I suspect that trying to line up the most spherical of standard polyhedron dice is going to cost you more time in re-rolls from tipping dice over or knocking them off the table. I've done this a few times, and it's not that bad. You don't really care about dice tipping over since that will happen at random, so you just read the rolls once they are lined up. It's obviously better with d6's, though, since those line up nicely. Alternatively, just grab random pairs from the pile and treat them as rolled together.
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Aug 9, 2014 19:22
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I think with practice you could eventually get able to bounce them off your DM screen in such a way to sort-of line them up to initially. I'm not invested enough to run time trials, but multiple tiered pools, rolling in a line, and brute-force paired rolling all seem like way too much effort for a recurring 5% chance of something interesting happening. But then again, you're potentially turning misses into crits instead of just promoting hits to crits. So I guess it comes down to whether Kobold stats were calculated and balanced around the implication of perpetual Advantage, or if that was added because it tummy-felt right in the guts.
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Aug 9, 2014 19:36
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i copied down basic stats for the new monsters (as well as corrected some issues with the previous data entries for HP, AC, and ability scores) for anyone wanting to mess around with reverse engineering monsters https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vOamoZYZMBOqY8mZIy6TTKpoL923BnBTEujJL78vlbI/edit#gid=0 edit: some notes on monster gen 1) unless it has natural armor, monsters follow the same AC as PC's as far as Dex bonus + armor AC + shield (i haven't dug into this yet, but i'm guessing even natural armor still follows 'normal' armor rules, they're simply not 'wearing' armor) 2) Hit dice size is determined by size of creature (tiny: d4, small: d6, medium: d8, large: d10, huge: d12) 3) HP constant is determined by multiplying Con bonus by number of hit dice. i.e. con +2 * 12d8 = HD: 12d8+24 4) for to-hit bonuses all monsters have proficiency of at least +2, for CR1+ CR appears to be treated as level for determining higher prof. bonuses (CR8 = lvl 8 PC prof. bonus) things I still have no clue about 1) how they're determining the no. of hit dice 2) how they're choosing ability scores (point buy?) 3) whether special abilities 'cost' points or are otherwise a trade off with other stats (ability scores, hit dice, etc) treeboy fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Aug 9, 2014 |
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Aug 9, 2014 19:56
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Or just... buy a bunch of pairs of different coloured dice. Seriously, if there's one thing we don't need to be having giant pissing matches over it's the actual physical act of rolling some d20s. 5e has SO much worse poo poo than this to bitch about. C'mon, guys.
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Aug 9, 2014 19:57
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So I've been on hiatus from caring about D&D since a few months after 4E Dark Sun got released. I read some of the design philosophy stuff for D&D Next when it was first announced and was not impressed so I stopped paying attention. Fast forward to today where I read the Basic Rules PDF. At first blush it didn't seem so bad, and it seems to fix some of the stuff that bugged me about 4E (a system I liked quite a bit), but obviously I haven't seen it in practice and don't have a real feel for the game at all yet. So can someone please sum up the goods and the bads about 5E so I don't have to comb through 65 pages of slap fights on dice rolling?
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Aug 9, 2014 20:05
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ManMythLegend posted:So I've been on hiatus from caring about D&D since a few months after 4E Dark Sun got released. I read some of the design philosophy stuff for D&D Next when it was first announced and was not impressed so I stopped paying attention. allow me before people jump in an tell you to kill yourself or something equally sensible Plusses 1) quick combat, with some simplified rules (esp. drawing/sheathing weapons) which allow for more flexibility in actions 2) advantage/disadvantage is a very elegant simple replacement for 99% of conditional +1/2/3/4 bonuses from previous editions 3) AC/DC is much less vertical doing away with the +1 treadmill of 4e and even earlier. AC 20 will *always* be hard to hit, 10 will always be easy 4) aspects of char gen like backgrounds help separate class/race from character/RP 5) archetypes help give various flavors to broader classes (Melee vs. Archer vs. Warlord-ish fighters for example) 6) feats are more like additional class features than +1 to dumb stat specialization 7) starting stats are lower, but the game throws a lot of them at you during leveling. Feats are alternatives to ability score increases. Minuses 1) at the moment it looks like caster/martial divide is *closer* to 3.x than it was in 4e as far as power scale, but still *nowhere* near as bad as 3.x 2) casters get a lot of flavor and options, martial generally feel a bit 'plain jane' 3) "Natural language" rules are more ambiguous than 4e's concise technical style 4) Encounter/Monster design is still pretty unclear. Seems more in line with 3.x's CR system than 4e's well planned budget/role system. Potential issues in balancing combat 5) maintains D&D's issue of having really powerful combat feats vying for attention with flavorful RP feats with little combat benefit. mitigated by many feats now offering +1 to an ability score in addition to their effects. Too Early to Say 1) concentration - casters can only maintain one focus spell at a time, there's a chance on hit to lose the spell, many spells have had concentration added to them. However it might not go far enough with the risk/reward to truly bring casters down to reasonable levels even though it does mitigate their godhood 2) Good DM's have a bit more flexibility in making calls in edge cases 3) Bad DM's have a bit more flexibility in making calls in edge cases edit: slight edits and additions edit2: added concentration pro/con treeboy fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Aug 9, 2014 |
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Aug 9, 2014 20:14
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ManMythLegend posted:So can someone please sum up the goods and the bads about 5E so I don't have to comb through 65 pages of slap fights on dice rolling? It's basically 3e with a bunch of pretty solid innovations added onto it, but it completely fails to fix any of the huge fundamental problems 3e had.
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Aug 9, 2014 20:14
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thespaceinvader posted:C'mon, guys. It's a pretty great microcosm of the entire Next experience: Looks OK-ish on paper, is physically impractical to play as written, is defended by MonsterEnvy for no discernible reason.
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Aug 9, 2014 20:15
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moths posted:is physically impractical to play as written hyperbole and a half
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Aug 9, 2014 20:17
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I think the reason everyone is tripping over themselves over the dice rolling has less to do with having to roll 100d20 or anything and more that MonsterEnvy seems to think the vast majority of negative opinions about 5e are wrong. People get into these big fights, not really to talk about the game or anything, but just to see if MonsterEnvy will concede ANY point. Like, Treeboy. You're pretty pro-5e, but you're also willing to say things like "Assassins are super DM dependent and also their abilities are pretty lame" and stuff. So when you're defending 5e, people don't trip over themselves to prove you wrong. But MonsterEnvy, man. You literally make it difficult to defend 5e. Especially when you say things like MonsterEnvy posted:Have you analysed and broken them down. No I did not think so. when, you know, You have literally quoted examples of people breaking down monster math. Look, MonsterEnvy, I feel you, bro, I really do. 5e isn't the Worst Game Ever or anything, and, with some houseruling and some time, I think it can be a lot of fun! But you gotta pick your battles. And until the writers start actually fixing problems, you really should be saying "I hope they fix it later" rather than "they probably will fix it later." So let's try to let the healing begin. MonsterEnvy, I will say two positive things about D&D 5e, and you say one thing that's negative. Here we go: I think the Advantage/Disadvantage system is a great way to represent someone having mastery or a significant problem with any given check, without resorting to bogging down in a series of +s and -s like 4e got to. I like how the feats are shaping up to actually be meaningful per selection. A +1 bonus to everything attached to a stat is powerful, and so feats should be powerful too. If you want to play your shapeshifting druid as a defender, you can do so better with feats like Sentinel. Now you say something negative.
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Aug 9, 2014 20:18
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moths posted:It's a pretty great microcosm of the entire Next experience: Looks OK-ish on paper, is physically impractical to play as written, is defended by MonsterEnvy for no discernible reason. That's because I don't think it's a problem and bet if you actually played it. The entire thing would not take very long.
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Aug 9, 2014 20:26
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treeboy posted:Minuses OtspIII posted:It's basically 3e with a bunch of pretty solid innovations added onto it, but it completely fails to fix any of the huge fundamental problems 3e had. Ugh. I hated 3.X. The fact that the game is way closer to that then 4E is huge minus. Thanks for the feedback.
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Aug 9, 2014 20:28
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Gharbad the Weak posted:I think the reason everyone is tripping over themselves over the dice rolling has less to do with having to roll 100d20 or anything and more that MonsterEnvy seems to think the vast majority of negative opinions about 5e are wrong. People get into these big fights, not really to talk about the game or anything, but just to see if MonsterEnvy will concede ANY point. The champion fighter is fairly boring. I dislike how reach makes you worse at getting AoO's. There we go two negatives.
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Aug 9, 2014 20:28
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Yeah, the past few pages of terrible posts have been a sort of devolution from the middle of the thread which, while negative to 5E, didn't seem as overtly hostile. I think everyone agrees that Advantage is a really great mechanic. A lot of people have said that it's not even the lack of combat crunch, since rules-light combat would be great for a D&D entry point. It's that it's just...muddled. Things like advantage and martial dice and caster at-wills are good bits and bobs for starting a fast, simple, D&D combat system. But then all this other stuff gets stacked on it (including a lack of clarity for encounter-building)that runs counter to that ostensible goal and the things that we might get excited about are just more depressing in context.
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Aug 9, 2014 20:29
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MonsterEnvy posted:The champion fighter is fairly boring. I dislike how reach makes you worse at getting AoO's. There we go two negatives. Ok, let's continue! I like the whole bounded accuracy thing. For the vast majority of characters, skills that they aren't trained in aren't HUGELY different from the ones that are, which means it's more likely that someone without training in a skill can succeed moderate checks. Everyone can help! Because of things like bounded math, no weird iterative-attacks-all-have-different-attack-bonuses, less things to keep track of, I think 5e could be a nice way to introduce people to roleplaying games in general, especially if they have difficulty in building characters and math and stuff.
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Aug 9, 2014 20:35
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MonsterEnvy posted:That's because I don't think it's a problem and bet if you actually played it. The entire thing would not take very long. People did play it with the rats during the playtest, and it was a giant pain in the rear end. They aren't making this up out of thin air here, it really is annoying - it's made even worse when around your table of 4-6 players there are less than 10 d20's, and many players don't want to separate from their own. It takes up way too much time, and if you can't comprehend that then maybe, just maybe, you should accept what people are saying at face value and stop trying to argue against them so vehemently.
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Aug 9, 2014 20:35
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treeboy posted:allow me before people jump in an tell you to kill yourself or something equally sensible I just don't want to deal with that. With that said, I think the thread gets way too negative at times. It's a better game than 3.x or PF, I'd play it if offered, and I'm trying to keep an open mind for the DMG. I just don't know why I'd play it instead of 4e or RC right now.
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Aug 9, 2014 20:38
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Gharbad the Weak posted:Ok, let's continue! Ok another two negatives from me. I do think they should be a bit more clear in some some rulings and I think the books should be released closer together. Also I have gotten a closer look at Monks and they look really drat cool and I think you will enjoy playing one in the lp.
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Aug 9, 2014 20:48
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dwarf74 posted:With that said, I think the thread gets way too negative at times. It's a better game than 3.x or PF, I'd play it if offered, and I'm trying to keep an open mind for the DMG. I just don't know why I'd play it instead of 4e or RC right now. Yeah, I think my stance right now is that I'd absolutely like to play it eventually, since armchair analysis will never really let you understand if a game is fun or not, but I'll be surprised if it replaces any of my current core go-to systems.
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Aug 9, 2014 21:00
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