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Andrast posted:It has some legacy D&D trappings that I personally don't like. Most of the official martial classes are also really boring compared to the casters. I like the Monk implementation a fair bit, though.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:35
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Ferrinus posted:There's balanced and there's balanced, though. Like, is a wizard balanced with a cleric? gently caress if I know, too much stuff is going on to make that determination. Is a wizard balanced with a rogue? Absolutely not, the wizard has a way bigger, better toolbox with which to do things.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:36
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ascendance posted:I remember Paladins being kind of lovely. I liked the monk until they butchered it by nerfing a bunch of things and making the class more MAD compared to the playtest. Fake-edit: Wow, it really sounds like D&D now.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:40
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Ferrinus posted:There's balanced and there's balanced, though. Like, is a wizard balanced with a cleric? gently caress if I know, too much stuff is going on to make that determination. Is a wizard balanced with a rogue? Absolutely not, the wizard has a way bigger, better toolbox with which to do things. I used to be a roleplayer like you, but then a wizard broke my system over his knee.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:40
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ascendance posted:Why aren't you a fan of 13th Age, out of curiosity? I'm not Andrast but I actually don't think 13th Age is a very good game and it's for a few reasons. 1). Class design is all the way over the place. Some of it is down to Johnathan Tweet trying to cram "traditional design" wherever he can, some of it is simply down to not finding stuff like "here's an attack that if you miss but roll evens on you get ~+2 AC for a turn wow~ very exciting. Classes range from actually kinda interesting and well made to "why would I ever play this?" and the band of stuff that seems interesting is pretty narrow compared to the selection of stuff that ranges from merely uninteresting to actively kind of bad. Surprising absolutely no one, there's a strong correlation between which classes are boring and which classes aren't spellcasters. 2). My actual play experiences with 13th Age are that combat, which no matter how you cut is is going to be the centerpiece of any d20-alike game, is very nebulous and unsatisfying. It tries to be a kinda-sorta hybrid between tactical gaming and abstract "theater of the mind" but I find it does neither particularly well. Part of this ties back into the classes who I don't feel have an especially robust assortment of tactical abilities to really fuel an engaging tactical experience, part of it is that the game doesn't seem to offer a ton of support for more narrative/freeform stuff that would benefit a theater of the mind experience. Basically if I want a fantasy game with fun tactical combat I'd rather play 4E, if I want a fantasy game with lots of freewheeling TotM stuff I would rather use something like FATE. Also the 13A combats I played through involved a lot of "well, I miss again," which dragged things on in a decidedly unfun fashion. 3). The few things that 13A does that are halfway interesting from a mechanical perspective (Icons, the escalation die) can easily be detached from it and welded onto another d20 game with minimal work, which to me further raises the question of why I really want to play 13A. I can't just turn 3.X D&D into something more like 4E without some serious effort involved, but the most interesting parts of 13A are essentially a couple of bolt-on extras. tl;dr 13th Age doesn't do anything better than any other game I have at my disposal and several things worse. It's good that Johnathan Tweet took time out from writing weird biotruther articles to deign to give Fighters the same average number of background points as everyone else after people repeatedly pointed out how stupid it was to shortchange them in the first place, but it's still an extremely heartbreaker-esque game in every respect.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:43
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Kai Tave posted:Stuff about 13th age. I agree with basically everything in this post.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:48
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ascendance posted:Yeah, but you look at the white box and wizards were still not balanced with rogues.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:52
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Reminder: Gygax literally wrote more then once that not only was balance important, but that he wanted D&D to get as balanced as he could make it. Also whenever someone talks about how 4e SHOWED YOU HOW THE HOT DOGS WERE MADE they're saying that 4e showed you math was involved and that terrified them. Oh, and this hobby will always point at VIDEO GAMES and scream in horror because tabletop games have and forever will be the very bottom of the nerd totem pole. I do give props to that Kotaku article for managing to say "4e is like a video game so it's bad, but 5e is like a video game so it's good!" Now, I don't want to play a bunch of samey classes, so time to head into 5e. Let's see, do I want to move and attack as a fighter, move and attack as a rogue, move and attack as a barbarian - wait, RAGE then move and attack. Heh, beat that, 4e. Really Pants posted:It is awesome that people think "verisimilitude" and "4e is WoW" are good and clever things to say again, I hope soon we can go back to talking about how females should have Strength and Intelligence penalties Literally this happened during 5e's playtesting. And ENWorld is already bringing back up the RANDOM WHORES table explicitly to defend it.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:57
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ascendance posted:Yeah, but you look at the white box and wizards were still not balanced with rogues. Yet they were with clerics. Seems like they shouldn't design classes like the rogue, but should instead design classes like the cleric - ones with unique, limited-use special abilities.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:59
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ProfessorCirno posted:Literally this happened during 5e's playtesting. And ENWorld is already bringing back up the RANDOM WHORES table explicitly to defend it. The what?
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Sep 23, 2014 21:06
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I was watching a video about GM preparation with Steven Lumpkin and Adam Koebel (co-author of Dungeon World) and they unironically talked about the importance of verisimilitude. Should I discount everything they said? Also, Adam was talking about *liking* 5e in some of his other videos and idk. Makes me wonder if I was wrong about Dungeon World being a good game, ya know?
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Sep 23, 2014 21:07
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Andrast posted:The what? AD&D had a table of random prostitutes to roll so they could ensure you met women in town, and a note that female wizards could be confused for said prostitutes. Someone else in the thread advertised for the Judges Guild material on women, which detailed that they were all conniving whores out to seduce and trick men because they were lesser creatures. 5e's fanbase!
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Sep 23, 2014 21:08
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Dairy Power posted:I was watching a video about GM preparation with Steven Lumpkin and Adam Koebel (co-author of Dungeon World) and they unironically talked about the importance of verisimilitude. Should I discount everything they said? The problem with grogs using verisimilitude as an argument isn't that there's anything wrong or unimportant about verisimilitude with regards to narrative consistency, it's that they are using it to attack/defend things where the term doesn't apply at all or it's application is strained to the point where they're obviously just grasping at straws. S.J. fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 21:09
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ProfessorCirno posted:AD&D had a table of random prostitutes to roll so they could ensure you met women in town, and a note that female wizards could be confused for said prostitutes. Here's the Fatal and Friends bit on the Judges' Guild pages. Has to be seen to be believed - and don't forget, this material is a "classic!"
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Sep 23, 2014 21:10
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I'm a person who doesn't see a meaningful difference between MMO tanking and 4E tanking (at least as a fighter tends to do it in that system) and I am OK with that. The tank in 4E is the dramatic centerpiece of combat, which is something it fails to achieve in every other edition. By contrast, the wizard isn't even strictly necessary to the cohesion of the group, which is nearly revolutionary by D&D standards.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:11
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Dairy Power posted:I was watching a video about GM preparation with Steven Lumpkin and Adam Koebel (co-author of Dungeon World) and they unironically talked about the importance of verisimilitude. Should I discount everything they said? People can have good ideas and bad opinions. Jonathan Tweet is a evolutionary psychology dork. I was reading a lot of good gaming advice from the Alexandrian recently, one of Zak S's biggest supporters. Etc etc etc.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:12
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Verisimilitude is a word that has an actual, useful definition which has since been co-opted to mean "this thing I like is good, this thing you like is bad."
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Sep 23, 2014 21:18
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Dairy Power posted:I was watching a video about GM preparation with Steven Lumpkin and Adam Koebel (co-author of Dungeon World) and they unironically talked about the importance of verisimilitude. Should I discount everything they said? Just because dumb grogs need to put their favorite game creators on pedestals and pretend they do nothing wrong because they're children doesn't mean everyone does that. "Oh yeah well this game some of you like? The creators said DUMB THINGS!" Who is this really going to convince? The fact you think this is some kinda witty retort says a lot about you.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:19
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Dairy Power posted:I was watching a video about GM preparation with Steven Lumpkin and Adam Koebel (co-author of Dungeon World) and they unironically talked about the importance of verisimilitude. Should I discount everything they said? Was it actual verisimilitude, or internet "lovely things should stay lovely in ways I find comfortable" verisimilitude?
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Sep 23, 2014 21:21
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ProfessorCirno posted:5e's fanbase!  You know you can just do what the vast majority of folks did with 4th edition and pretend it doesn't exist right? No need to go on about WoW kiddies or Prostitute tables grogs or what have you.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:21
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Talmonis posted:
Sure, except this is literally the bellwether and most prominent part of our favourite hobby. Like it or not, we're all invested in D&D and its future, unless we want to dwindle away into true grog-dom.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:23
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ProfessorCirno posted:Just because dumb grogs need to put their favorite game creators on pedestals and pretend they do nothing wrong because they're children doesn't mean everyone does that. Wait so bad things can come from the same source as good things...? I think that's actually the first time I've heard that argument around here. On a related note, I definitely need to try to fit the word "grog" into more of my posts. Apparently, that's the cool thing to do! It definitely makes your argument sound more reasoned and less vitriolic. Edit: Really Pants posted:Was it actual verisimilitude, or internet "lovely things should stay lovely in ways I find comfortable" verisimilitude? How do you tell the difference?
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Sep 23, 2014 21:23
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Talmonis posted:
Yeah, that's totally what people did during 4e. They just pretended it didn't exist. They didn't spend literally years whinging about how they were FIRED AS CUSTOMERS and BETRAYED. They totally don't still do that. Edition Wars is the cool name of an indie band that everyone's been super ironically into and nothing else. Like, even here, the worst people are doing is pointing out the actual literal objective math problems and flaws 5e has. Nobody's claimed 5e ISN'T D&D or that 5e fans are SPOILED CHILDREN, NOT TRUE CLASSY GAMMERS, or whatever other stupid bullshit you dumbfucks ranted about constantly during 4e. The level of defensiveness that 5e fans have immediately launched into is hilarious out of context, but absolutely amazing in the context of all the nonstop sobbing you did throughout the last edition.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:24
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Talmonis posted:
Letting the lovely vocal minority yell down every other opinion is how we got into this situation in the first place.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:25
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Dairy Power posted:Wait so bad things can come from the same source as good things...? I think that's actually the first time I've heard that argument around here. Plenty of people in this thread have complimented Next's art.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:25
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Dairy Power posted:Wait so bad things can come from the same source as good things...? I think that's actually the first time I've heard that argument around here. We've literally talked about the art or Advantage / Disadvantage or other poo poo as "good things" in 5e. Again, just because you are incapable of seeing good and bad things coming from the same source doesn't mean we all share your damage.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:27
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I think most normal people that didn't like 4E just quietly continued playing 3E. They probably didn't even post about it on the Internet.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:27
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I'm a person who doesn't see a meaningful difference between MMO tanking and 4E tanking (at least as a fighter tends to do it in that system) and I am OK with that. The tank in 4E is the dramatic centerpiece of combat, which is something it fails to achieve in every other edition. By contrast, the wizard isn't even strictly necessary to the cohesion of the group, which is nearly revolutionary by D&D standards. It's been discussed a few times in the thread, but basically the difference is that in MMOs the tank uses taunts and abilities to generate aggro, which makes a monster unable to attack anything else, whereas in 4e the tank penalises the monster if it attacks his buddies.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:29
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Jack the Lad posted:It's been discussed a few times in the thread, but basically the difference is that in MMOs the tank uses taunts and abilities to generate aggro, which makes a monster unable to attack anything else, whereas in 4e the tank penalises the monster if it attacks his buddies. Right. What generally happens in 4E is that if the DM violates the mark, often for verisimilitude reasons, the fight becomes easy mode (unless it's a garbage-tier mark mechanic), so he may as well not.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:32
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Right. What generally happens in 4E is that if the DM violates the mark, often for verisimilitude reasons, the fight becomes easy mode (unless it's a garbage-tier mark mechanic), so he may as well not. Hmm? No, it doesn't. It usually just means the defender gets to do some extra damage, or if they're a high level fighter, knock the guy down without doing any/much damage.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:33
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Jack the Lad posted:It's been discussed a few times in the thread, but basically the difference is that in MMOs the tank uses taunts and abilities to generate aggro, which makes a monster unable to attack anything else, whereas in 4e the tank penalises the monster if it attacks his buddies. Taunting, by the way, having its mechanical roots in the special ability of the Kender in Dragonlance, 1st edition AD&D. edit to not doublepost: In an actual 4e game, the defender wants the enemy to ignore the mark. They dare the enemy to ignore the mark. The defender is most useful when the enemy is ignoring the mark. In an MMO, if the tank's target attacks someone else, the tank isn't doing his job. In 4e, when the defender's target attacks someone else, the defender shines. Tendales fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 21:35
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ProfessorCirno posted:Yeah, that's totally what people did during 4e. They just pretended it didn't exist. They didn't spend literally years whinging about how they were FIRED AS CUSTOMERS and BETRAYED. They totally don't still do that. Edition Wars is the cool name of an indie band that everyone's been super ironically into and nothing else. I'm only seeing people here whine about phantom grogs who aren't here and people bitching about fighters somehow being useless forever for their spreadsheet damage (  ) being low or some other such stupid poo poo about how terrible DM's will "conga line" monsters around the them without tank powers.I'm sure there's a lot of the "WoW boardgame!" elsewhere on the internet. The rest of the internet can get hosed.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:35
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Infinite Karma posted:4e's crunch was overwhelmingly focused on combat and combat balance. Stuff that want useful for combat, but was useful narratively was minimal. Look at the 3E spell Storm of Vengeance. It's high level, and pretty useless against high level threats. But it's a spell that could wipe out an entire army of regular joes. Of course, the DM could place a macguffin that's capable of it, but it's not the same as a player having a problem and finding a solution I'm his toolbox that the DM didn't have to build into the scenario. 4e absolutely kicks the arse of any previous edition of D&D at out of combat play that isn't (a) dungeon crawling logistics or (b) picking your spell from a predetermined list. Taking one very obvious example, you want to play a thief. A pickpocket. A sneak. What's one of the classic skills for a sneak-thief? The brush pass. The ability to walk through a crowd and steal a wallet without obviously slowing down. Can you do it in 3.5? Yes - it even has a set DC to not use a standard action. That DC? 40. You can't even make a coin disappear as less than a standard action in 3.5 without passing a DC 30 skill check. And your chance of actually picking pockets in AD&D? Yeaaaahhh! In 4e there was a second level utility encounter power to allow you to use Thievery as a minor action. No -20 to your thievery check to be seen. Just a utility power to let you go above and beyond the norm into the realms of the really well trained and experienced. Being fair, this is something 5e has right - a level 3 Thief can pick pockets as a bonus action*. So we'll take another example. My 4e character before last was a Thief with Acrobat's Trick - something that gave me a climb speed. What did this mean I did when we got boxed in? Climbed up the wall, along the ceiling, then dropped to the floor next to the enemy mage, daggers landing point first in my enemy. The sort of fun shenanigans that aren't actually about combat (even if that was technically its use) that no non-spellcaster will give me in editions other than 4e (outside the Bo9S). And another example. I was playing an alchemist in a 4e campaign. The Alchemist theme gives you the ability to make an alchemical item at a short rest. It's normally meant to be used for flasks of fire I think. What were my alchemist's favourite items to make? Sovereign Glue and Ossip Wax. (The latter lowers the weight of whatever it's smeared on by 500lbs). This was fun, interesting, non-combat shenanigans (or sometimes combat shenanigans - where does gluing someone's sword into their scabbard qualify?) It also was much, much more fun than the classic wizard "Oh. A locked door. What's the solution? Knock. We need to get from A to B. What's the solution? Teleport. They want to come that way? Let's solve it. Wall of annoyance." Or even the other classic "I want to feel powerful and crush mooks. Storm of Vengeance! Muahahahaha!" 4e gives you plenty of ways of thinking outside the box. There are over 300 rituals in the game - at some point it just gets silly. It just doesn't hand you them on a silver platter, complete with instructions as to how to use them to disrupt the game and take it over. * I actually like the design of the rogue and the warlock in 5e. The rogue's a lot more combat centric than the 4e rogue, but that can't be helped. As for Dungeon World? I'm not surprised the designers like 5e. Dungeon World is a game made by people who don't quite get the Apocalypse World engine and are attempting to play D&D the way they were when they were 10. Dungeon World, like 13th Age, is an attempt to do what 5e was doing - but the good parts of the game design are inherited from using Vincent Baker's game engine in just the same way that most of what is good in non-4e D&D comes from inheriting Arneson's design notes and Gygax's incredible amount of development work, and the further D&D gets from that structure the worse it gets.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:39
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ProfessorCirno posted:literal objective math problems and flaws 5e has The result of doing said math is only as good as the assumptions of the model and the interpretation of the results. The fact that in any round an enemy is dropped, a greataxe comes out ahead in expected damage over a polearm in the presence of Great Weapon Mastery is completely ignored (and falsely said to require a critical when I brought it up before). The fact that an actual difference in number of actions required to drop an enemy for any difference in expected damage to matter in practical application is also ignored. Or the fact that many turns will be suboptimal, completely changing the required mathematics. The math being done here is useful, but it's interpreted far too broadly. Heaven forbid that play experience is mentioned-- that's unscientific. You know, because subject matter expertise and surveys aren't valid methods of aiding in the interpretation of results.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:39
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S.J. posted:Hmm? No, it doesn't. It usually just means the defender gets to do some extra damage, or if they're a high level fighter, knock the guy down without doing any/much damage. In either case the monster is practically better off doing nothing as opposed to that. Also, of all defenders, a fighter is not going to let a violated mark go without (A) a lot of damage AND/OR (B) a ruined attempt at a turn.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:40
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Talmonis posted:I'm only seeing people here whine about phantom grogs who aren't here and people bitching about fighters somehow being useless forever for their spreadsheet damage ( Fighters aren't forever useless but to act as if they scale properly or aren't made obsolete by all of the poo poo magic-users get is true. I also don't see how it's out of the realm of possibility to get conga-lined when it's stated RAW that you only get one reaction attack per round, and the Next rules pretty much encourage you to have tons of monsters at higher levels.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:41
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Dairy Power posted:Heaven forbid that play experience is mentioned-- that's unscientific. You know, because subject matter expertise and surveys aren't valid methods of aiding in the interpretation of results. Play examples coming from individuals invested in Next being a Good Game? Yeah that's bias and should be ignored.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:44
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:In either case the monster is practically better off doing nothing as opposed to that. Also, of all defenders, a fighter is not going to let a violated mark go without (A) a lot of damage AND/OR (B) a ruined attempt at a turn. You're overstating how much damage he's going to do unless the GM is just mindlessly generating mark punishment over and over and over. And there are plenty of monsters with plenty of ways of getting out of or reducing the significance of these situations. It's not nearly as binary or easy as you're making it sound.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:47
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neonchameleon posted:As for Dungeon World? I'm not surprised the designers like 5e. Dungeon World is a game made by people who don't quite get the Apocalypse World engine and are attempting to play D&D the way they were when they were 10. Dungeon World, like 13th Age, is an attempt to do what 5e was doing - but the good parts of the game design are inherited from using Vincent Baker's game engine in just the same way that most of what is good in non-4e D&D comes from inheriting Arneson's design notes and Gygax's incredible amount of development work, and the further D&D gets from that structure the worse it gets. As much as I like Dungeon World this is essentially true. There are a lot of parts to that system that would be better if the developers were willing to part from legacy D&D mechanics. At least the engine is really flexible and modifying things to suit your group is really easy.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:48
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The problem with the 5E Fighter's power curve is that everyone is buying, or at least playing lip service to, the "magic items are optional" bullshit. Obviously, magic items are an unspoken requirement because that's the only way the fighter balances out.  moths posted:Play examples coming from individuals invested in Next being a Good Game? Yeah that's bias and should be ignored.
PeterWeller fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 21:48
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