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AlphaDog posted:You understand that your ability to ignore what's written in a rulebook doesn't actually change the rulebooks that are in front of everyone else, right?
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Aug 20, 2014 01:20
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Falcon2001 posted:So to be clear, this isn't a loaded question for edition war time, but I just got the 5e player's manual, and this looks a LOT like 3.5. Are there any significant differences between the two systems? Web searches found me a lot of 3.5 v 4e which is a huge difference but 5e so far seems almost identical. It's a less-broken 3e.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:22
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kingcom posted:Now all D&D games should involve the players being paranoid of flys being secret rocks fall party dies traps. If this doesn't become the defacto gotcha of Dispel Magic this edition, we should all hang our heads in collective shame.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:22
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ocrumsprug posted:If this doesn't become the defacto gotcha of Dispel Magic this edition, we should all hang our skeletons in collective shame. ftfy
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Aug 20, 2014 01:24
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AlphaDog posted:You understand that your ability to ignore what's written in a rulebook doesn't actually change the rulebooks that are in front of everyone else, right? I did not mention ignoring rules. If you have a monster with a few spells. Just don't have the monster use the spells is what I mean. That or don't use the monster.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:30
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MonsterEnvy posted:I still don't consider your problems an issue. It's easy to ignore them and if you say can't use a Pit Fiend because you have to look up spells I say play a different game if remembering Fireball does 8d6 damage in a 20 ft radius is too much of a task for you. Most games don't require you to memorize every listed power to be able to run the game. quote:Almost all of the Monsters other then the Lich if they had spell likes did not have a lot of them and they were easy to remember what they did. With the Lich that thing is terrifying and makes every 4e lich look like an pansy. Because god were the 4e lichs pieces of poo poo that did not deserve the lich name. Not true at all. In every game the lich is basically a wizard with some extra resistances.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:30
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MonsterEnvy posted:I did not mention ignoring rules. If you have a monster with a few spells. Just don't have the monster use the spells is what I mean. That or don't use the monster. You understand that ignoring a monster's spells or a whole monster entry is ignoring what's written in a rulebook, right? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 01:34
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So it looks like anyone can cast spells from scrolls if you pass an Int check. That is sort of interesting.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:50
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AlphaDog posted:You understand that ignoring a monster's spells or a whole monster entry is ignoring what's written in a rulebook, right? It's never been said once in any game that you have to use everything a mosnter can do and use every monster. Ferrinus posted:Most games don't require you to memorize every listed power to be able to run the game. You don't but knowing what fireball does is really easy. On your 2nd example that requires you to upgrade a lich. They normally don't have a lot going for them.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:57
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MonsterEnvy posted:You don't but knowing what fireball does is really easy. Really? What about Heroes' Feast? Insect Plague? Are you sure Fireball is 20 and not 30? Is that radius or diameter? What's the range on it, anyway? quote:On your 2nd example that requires you to upgrade a lich. They normally don't have a lot going for them. Right, they're basically just wizards. A lich is powerful and scary for the same reasons a wizard is powerful and scary. The more overpowered wizards are, the more overpowered liches are, because liches are wizards with some extra perks.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:00
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MonsterEnvy posted:It's never been said once in any game that you have to use everything a mosnter can do and use every monster. If you ignore a bunch of stuff a monster can do, how are its CR and XP at all meaningful?
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Aug 20, 2014 02:00
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cbirdsong posted:If you ignore a bunch of stuff a monster can do, how are its CR and XP at all meaningful? They weren't meaningful to begin with to be fair.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:02
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MonsterEnvy, may I ask what you think of 5e so far? We can all theorycraft about skeleton armies and fly boulders all drat day, but do you think this is worth the money and time to learn and play over other RPGs?
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Aug 20, 2014 02:05
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dwarf74 posted:I saw it described best on another forum - 5e is the best version of 3e ever published. *Only because it's been around for longer, to be fair.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:08
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How can anyone be this angry about looking up spells? Unless you are GMing at literally random, I can't imagine that looking up a handful of spells will critically destroy your prep time. I bet if enough people suggested page numbers to Mearls it would happen. And once a searchable PDF is out, the entire argument is meaningless. This game has some serious problems, and "now I have to read through the spell list and find these spells" isn't one of them.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:08
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MonsterEnvy posted:It's never been said once in any game that you have to use everything a mosnter can do and use every monster. No, it hasn't. You still haven't answered my question though. Let me rephrase it. Why do you think saying "ok, so ignore the rulebook" will change anyone's opinion about what's in the rulebook?
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Aug 20, 2014 02:11
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QuantumNinja posted:How can anyone be this angry about looking up spells? Unless you are GMing at literally random, I can't imagine that looking up a handful of spells will critically destroy your prep time. I bet if enough people suggested page numbers to Mearls it would happen. And once a searchable PDF is out, the entire argument is meaningless. This game has some serious problems, and "now I have to read through the spell list and find these spells" isn't one of them. This is definitely up there on the more stupid things to get upset about. I mean the alphabetical spell list is loving retard though and I hope someone else just sets up a wiki to nicely list this stuff.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:11
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That Rakshasha - immune to nonmagical weapons and spells of 6th level or less, CR 13. I guess you have one 7th level slot to drop it in one go at that level, so no problem! Also it curses you until you recieve a Remove Curse to not receive 'benefits' from resting - I wonder what that means? Hit points? Spell slots? Spell preparation? Welfare? Could be a pretty funny lock if it scratches your cleric, stopping them from preparing Remove Curse forever...
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Aug 20, 2014 02:12
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QuantumNinja posted:How can anyone be this angry about looking up spells? Unless you are GMing at literally random, I can't imagine that looking up a handful of spells will critically destroy your prep time. I bet if enough people suggested page numbers to Mearls it would happen. And once a searchable PDF is out, the entire argument is meaningless. This game has some serious problems, and "now I have to read through the spell list and find these spells" isn't one of them. A searchable PDF is the same problem, just slightly faster. When I ran 3.5, I used the SRD on a laptop. And I don't want to do that again, either. It's simply unnecessary bullshit. Either stop leaning on the spell lists so much for your monsters' poo poo, or give some kind of capsule description that's enough to run the monster with. This was a known problem of pre-4e D&D, it was fixed, and now it's broken all over again despite articles saying, "no, no, only real spellcasters like enemy wizards have spells."
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Aug 20, 2014 02:18
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Is it so strange to want the abilities of monster printed alongside that monster in the monster book? I'm guessing random encounters are still a thing, and monsters can probably summon other monsters. Also, looking up spells for players is also a pain in the rear end. Take the Shapechange discussion. "Can you really cast that on yourself?" Well, look at the spell description, then look at another part of the book for targeting rules. "Can you cast it on a boulder and turn it into a fly?" Well, flip open the book again, and read through the paragraph of spell description until you hit a badly worded sentence you that can easily be misunderstood.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:19
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jigokuman posted:Is it so strange to want the abilities of monster printed alongside that monster in the monster book? No its not strange and pretty reasonable. Its more the idea that this is the issue that breaks it for people. This is over the line. Natural language is pretty terrible though.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:21
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ritorix posted:So it looks like anyone can cast spells from scrolls if you pass an Int check. That is sort of interesting. Seems like this is most useful for restricted arcane caster subclasses like Eldritch Warrior, because it put a real damper on things if you were regularly missing the check. Can you scribe divine spells into a scroll?
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Aug 20, 2014 02:24
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I don't think that any of 5E's issues are really make-or-break. It's just that there is a hill of them. It's not the worst game in the world, but it is full of little aggravating issues that plagued the game in the past, and were often fixed as editions progressed. My guess is that when the development gang was making their journey through the editions, they played with the core alone when they should have been looking at the whole history, noting how things changed, when things reached a sweet spot, and when things went too far.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:26
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Stormgale posted:I love 4e but 4e is pretty loving awful at playing mythic heroes that can talk to the earth or sever a mountain in one blow. What's this non-dnd game who's non-dndness makes it more suited to this. What part of Dnd, which has been several different games in it's time to varying degrees of value, makes it unsuited to what you describe, compared to other non-dnd-like-games? Are you talking about Nobilis? Or Champions? What are you talking about, apart from 'not dnd'.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:28
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What is Stone to Flesh like in 5E? In 3.0 it would take about 34,000 people capable of casting it once per day to provide the amount of meat consumed by the US. Has this been buffed? Nerfed?
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Aug 20, 2014 02:35
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A Catastrophe posted:So again what's your alternative. The official game of Traditional Games: Exalted 3E.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:36
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Spell lists in monster stat blocks was my biggest annoyance when I used to be heavily involved in DMing Living Greyhawk for 3.x. I am not prepping all that bullshit, and there was likely some devious plan the author had for it all, but  . Those encounters normally got blasted in the first round by the There are way more petty things in 5E to complain about.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:37
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A Catastrophe posted:So again what's your alternative. Ok why Do I have to provide something better? Lord knows D&D can't emulate anything I described above or when it does (4e) it does so in a clunky way (Again not saying D&D 4e is bad I like it but you have to either start at an incredibly high tier to play a mythical hero).
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Aug 20, 2014 02:39
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QuantumNinja posted:This game has some serious problems, and "now I have to read through the spell list and find these spells" isn't one of them. Hey you seem like a cool guy. Have you met my friend, Pacing?
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Aug 20, 2014 02:50
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I mean, every tabletop game in existence demands some amount of system mastery from anyone who hopes to run it. For instance, if you're running Vampire, you just have to know what the various Disciplines do. An NPC writeup in Vampire is just going to say "Obfuscate 3"; it's not going to repeat or even summarize each of Obfuscate's first three levels in the writeup. If you don't know what the Disciplines do off the top of your head - even if you can't remember precisely what traits they use - you're not going to get far running a game of Vampire. Now, you need to know all the Disciplines in Vampire because Vampire sort of runs on Disciplines; what special powers exist and how strong those powers are strongly define the Vampire setting. They're the logic the game runs on. Vampires have such and such mind control, so they can afford to have so and so power structures. Vampires can be this tough and this fast, so vampires can breezily ignore threats of X caliber but must respect threats of Y caliber. In 4e, you didn't actually have to know the spell list. You had to know the combat rules and had to have at least a vague idea of appropriate skill check DCs, but the number of distinct spells in the game could grow arbitrarily without weighing you, the DM, down, because in 4e spells (read: powers with the "arcane" keyword) were variegated and idiosyncratic. Some random NPC wizard didn't have the exact same spells a PC wizard did. They could, but they didn't have to. A lich might cast PC spells, but they might instead cast their own arcane/shadow hybrid powers that they presumably developed all on their own by drawing on their own undeath. Angels and devils didn't cast spells at all, they used unique divine powers appropriate to their stations. In 3e and 5e, the spell list is the equivalent of the Discipline list in Vampire. Everything runs off the spell list. Every spellcasting class draws from the spell list. The masters of Hell don't expectorate hell-fire; they cast Fireball, because Fireball is one of the building blocks of the universe, much like the longsword and the hit die. Everything runs on spells, is practically made of spells, so you'd better sit down and learn the spells, buddy, or you don't know poo poo about D&D. The thing is, there's hundreds of the drat things and there will be more in each supplement.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:04
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Stormgale posted:Ok why Do I have to provide something better? Lord knows D&D can't emulate anything I described above or when it does (4e) it does so in a clunky way (Again not saying D&D 4e is bad I like it but you have to either start at an incredibly high tier to play a mythical hero). I'm not sure what you meant to say, but what you're saying is that only high-tier characters have truly mythical abilities. I mean, this isn't a big knock against 4e, compared to, say, the failures of the skill system, the increasing bloat at high levels, and the lack of any systematic advice for running the epic tier.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:06
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dwarf74 posted:I saw it described best on another forum - 5e is the best version of 3e ever published. Alright. I'm pretty sad about that (the conversation on these pages is a pretty good summary of why) but it's at least good to have it confirmed. 
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Aug 20, 2014 03:07
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Effectronica posted:I'm not sure what you meant to say, but what you're saying is that only high-tier characters have truly mythical abilities. I mean, this isn't a big knock against 4e, compared to, say, the failures of the skill system, the increasing bloat at high levels, and the lack of any systematic advice for running the epic tier. What i'm saying is that generally if I want to run a game about mythic characters from legends I don't want the mythic cool stuff to happen 2/3rds of the way through and from my experience everything like that is locked behind epic destinies. Heck 4e is better at it than most editions, it just still sucks for it but this isn't the 4e thread.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:09
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moths posted:Hey you seem like a cool guy. Have you met my friend, Pacing? Yeah, he's good buddies with my friend, GM Prep.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:11
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You could just start a 4e game at 21st level. Or, alternatively, you could play Exalted
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Aug 20, 2014 03:12
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Ferrinus posted:You could just start a 4e game at 21st level. Or, alternatively, you could play Exalted Yes because that sounds like a fun time for everyone (it isn't at least in my experience)
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Aug 20, 2014 03:13
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Stormgale posted:What i'm saying is that generally if I want to run a game about mythic characters from legends I don't want the mythic cool stuff to happen 2/3rds of the way through and from my experience everything like that is locked behind epic destinies. Heck 4e is better at it than most editions, it just still sucks for it but this isn't the 4e thread. There's nothing stopping you from starting at high levels beyond the prisons of your own mind. Achieve RPG Illumination and Ferrinus posted:play Exalted
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Aug 20, 2014 03:14
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Alright so the thing that does kind of blow my mind is that in a world where Pathfinder exists and seems to be really goddamn popular, why would they drop all the good stuff in 4e and then do this? (martial classes being interesting, DM prep being tolerable, etc) it just seems like a good way to literally compete against two entrenched positions, one of which is your own goddamn product (3.5)
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Aug 20, 2014 03:14
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I assume it's because they want to steal back some of Pathfinder's market share.Stormgale posted:Yes because that sounds like a fun time for everyone (it isn't at least in my experience) Actually, it probably would be if you're really minimalist about it. Give everyone the four magic items they're entitled to (no splitting the gold) and just go. Hell, get experimental - just delete feats from the game entirely, or something.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:17
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Falcon2001 posted:Alright so the thing that does kind of blow my mind is that in a world where Pathfinder exists and seems to be really goddamn popular, why would they drop all the good stuff in 4e and then do this? (martial classes being interesting, DM prep being tolerable, etc) it just seems like a good way to literally compete against two entrenched positions, one of which is your own goddamn product (3.5) All we can do is speculate, but there are basically two camps. One says that Hasbro, and WOTC leadership, don't give a poo poo about D&D so long as they can still sell novels and potentially license videogames, and that Mike Mearls has taken advantage of this to make the D&D he wants. The other camp says that the people leading D&D, whether that's Mearls or someone above him in WOTC, are convinced that the current market is the biggest it will ever be, and so they're trying to claw away Pathfinder people by providing an "improved Pathfinder" and assuming that everyone who played 4e will come along out of brand loyalty.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:17
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