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30.5 Days posted:You guys I've made the world's best RPG. *hands you post it note with "do whatever you want" written on it* Why did the fighter get the same do-whatever Post-It as my wizard, this is loving bullshit
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Oct 11, 2014 05:26
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Anyway, For the 'too easy to heal and rest up' problem, I guess the alleged solution was to remove the universal mechanic that actually put a hard cap on PC healing? 
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Oct 11, 2014 05:30
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Really Pants posted:This is supposed to be a good thing?
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Oct 11, 2014 05:33
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Generic Octopus posted:The battlemaster adding dice to his damage on demand outpaces the champion's crits like whoa. There'd have to be some ridic magic items in there to make it worth. Magic items that are in no way guaranteed or even choosable by you...!
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Oct 11, 2014 05:36
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Is someone actually working on something like 4e with most of the cruft stripped out, but maybe keep the battle map?
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Oct 11, 2014 05:39
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ProfessorCirno posted:Magic items that are in no way guaranteed or even choosable by you...! I lump magic items in with feats as things that are technically "optional" that everyone will use...that said I sometimes forget there are people who give their PCs random stuff instead of things they want. Like not in a whiny "I wanted a flame sword and got this lovely ice sword gently caress" way, but a "why the hell did I get a longbow when I use swords and shields!?" way.
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Oct 11, 2014 05:41
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ascendance posted:Is someone actually working on something like 4e with most of the cruft stripped out, but maybe keep the battle map? Mike Mearls was put in charge of that and he produced essentials which kept all the cruft. So I wouldn't bank on it.
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Oct 11, 2014 05:43
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Isn't that what Jimbozig's Strike! is supposed to be?
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Oct 11, 2014 05:45
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Really Pants posted:Isn't that what Jimbozig's Strike! is supposed to be? Oh poo poo yea there you go.
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Oct 11, 2014 05:47
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30.5 Days posted:You guys I've made the world's best RPG. *hands you post it note with "do whatever you want" written on it* No no, we've been over this, you need some art and rules and stuff too. It doesn't really matter what those are like, but that way people will have to buy your 3 giant rulebooks in order to do whatever they want.
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Oct 11, 2014 06:21
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ascendance posted:Is someone actually working on something like 4e with most of the cruft stripped out, but maybe keep the battle map? Please check out Strike! it is so good.
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Oct 11, 2014 06:27
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My trip report for session 1 isn't all doom and gloom. It felt a lot like playing 3.5 but a bit faster with the flatter math and casters not running out of things to do. The players spent a lot more time in character than normal since there wasn't as much time spent asking me about rules. The barbarian walked right into an ambush that he was told was an ambush but came out of it ok since he did well on his death saving throws. The warlock provoked a level 4 fighter at the end of the session and ended up getting 1 shot by a max damage longbow roll, but again the death mechanic that I vaguely remember coming from 4e kept him from losing his character. They did alright without a healer, though they did take a short rest.
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Oct 11, 2014 07:46
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ascendance posted:well, it becomes another situation where the DM just has to make a house rule because the existing rule is stupid. Interesting thought: poor design forces you to take ownership of your own campaign, and make changes to suit the kind of game you want to play. Having a tightly balanced, well constructed discourages people from tinkering. No. Poor design forces the DM to make house-rules that have no guarantees on actually improving the quality of the game because he's just some guy who doesn't spend all his time designing a good rules because that's not his job. It's like telling the Fighter "well just roleplay some poo poo to make your turns more interesting than normal attacks all the time!". Okay, so he says he's going to disarm a dude, and the DM makes him undergo a skill check or a Strength opposed roll or whatever. How is the DM supposed to know that it's a good ruling?
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Oct 11, 2014 08:53
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ascendance posted:Actually, thinking back to why I didn't homebrew for 4e, it had nothing to do with the quality of game design, and everything to do with the fact I had official RPGA characters. This isn't the first time that RPGA/Living Whatever has come up in the context of "why I didn't like 4E" and I can't help but think that maybe the RPGA is the root of that problem rather than 4E. Like, if someone were to sit down to try and devise a way to suck out whatever enjoyment was possible to extract from playing an RPG I can't imagine it would be too different from taking a game that sells itself on personalization and making it your own, a unique experience to be shared among friends, and cramming it into a joyless, organized play framework run by aspergian elitist turbonerds where everything has rigidly enforced guidelines and uses lovely prewritten modules designed by complete strangers. No poo poo that doesn't sound fun, I'd probably think 4E sucked balls too if that was my experience with it.
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Oct 11, 2014 08:54
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I've never even attempted to play an official/living whatever the hell DND game, it seems to defeat the whole purpose of playing a RPG instead of just a video game. That's just my opinion on that matter though. I can easily see that sucking pretty hard, although I don't see how it could suck anymore for any particular edition, unless the adventures are that much worse (and to be fair, WoTC made mostly really really bad 4E adventures in general for whatever reason).
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Oct 11, 2014 10:09
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goldjas posted:I've never even attempted to play an official/living whatever the hell DND game, it seems to defeat the whole purpose of playing a RPG instead of just a video game. That's just my opinion on that matter though. I can easily see that sucking pretty hard, although I don't see how it could suck anymore for any particular edition, unless the adventures are that much worse (and to be fair, WoTC made mostly really really bad 4E adventures in general for whatever reason). I was first introduced to 4e running Keep on the Shadowfell which was hot garbage and definitely put me off for a long time.
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Oct 11, 2014 10:11
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goldjas posted:I've never even attempted to play an official/living whatever the hell DND game, it seems to defeat the whole purpose of playing a RPG instead of just a video game. That's just my opinion on that matter though. I can easily see that sucking pretty hard, although I don't see how it could suck anymore for any particular edition, unless the adventures are that much worse (and to be fair, WoTC made mostly really really bad 4E adventures in general for whatever reason). FWIW, the point of it is to play in person and get some actual social interaction whilst not having to do the work of DMing.
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Oct 11, 2014 10:14
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So our group's module should be ending soon. We're about to hit the fifth milestone (no level up one) with a pretty solid party. Our fighter is a manuver based fighter who solo killed one of the big bads in two rounds. Whole extra dice system can be brutal on one on one fights this early in the game. Our two warlocks focused on improving thier pacts and have insane utility between the two of them. One is illusion/contro based and the other is AoE spell based. Our party wizard actually does not get to do much outside magic missle spam. I'm now a Monk 3/Sorceress 1 after having my bloodline kick started thanks to backround story and the settings theme. We own houses in Greenmist now, setting up the town as our base of operations until we get to Waterdeep (where my family are minor nobles.) We also have a kobold sorc/rogue hireling we pay in goats. Without getting spoilery so far the module is far better than most 4E modules. We are looking forward to hitting up the next story arc after this module. No healer, no problem. Everything dies within four rounds. Just a trip report. Loving my Elemental Monk, combined with Expiditious Assault (we renamed the spell in my honor. Moving 160 a round to punch a big bad in the face warrented the change.) Kortel fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Oct 11, 2014 |
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Oct 11, 2014 11:33
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Being fair to Peas, the 5e rogue feels like it escaped from 4e and decided to blend in. It's probably the most interesting class design in the game and if you skipped 4e it would feel like a revelation at low levels. The second most interesting class is the other 4e escapee- the Warlock.
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Oct 11, 2014 12:26
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gradenko_2000 posted:No. Poor design forces the DM to make house-rules that have no guarantees on actually improving the quality of the game because he's just some guy who doesn't spend all his time designing a good rules because that's not his job. And honestly, with all the complaining about poor game design in this thread, you would think people would have more faith in their ability to mod the game and continue to have fun.
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Oct 11, 2014 13:27
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Kai Tave posted:This isn't the first time that RPGA/Living Whatever has come up in the context of "why I didn't like 4E" and I can't help but think that maybe the RPGA is the root of that problem rather than 4E. Like, if someone were to sit down to try and devise a way to suck out whatever enjoyment was possible to extract from playing an RPG I can't imagine it would be too different from taking a game that sells itself on personalization and making it your own, a unique experience to be shared among friends, and cramming it into a joyless, organized play framework run by aspergian elitist turbonerds where everything has rigidly enforced guidelines and uses lovely prewritten modules designed by complete strangers. No poo poo that doesn't sound fun, I'd probably think 4E sucked balls too if that was my experience with it. And RPGA did start off as a pretty fun experience. I mean, it did deliver on the team based tactical combat. And I did meet some pretty cool, fun people from RPGA.
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Oct 11, 2014 13:31
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ascendance posted:And honestly, with all the complaining about poor game design in this thread, you would think people would have more faith in their ability to mod the game and continue to have fun. You can fix a lovely system, as long as there's at least something to work with. Or you can find a better system that doesn't require the time and effort.
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Oct 11, 2014 13:34
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neonchameleon posted:Being fair to Peas, the 5e rogue feels like it escaped from 4e and decided to blend in. It's probably the most interesting class design in the game and if you skipped 4e it would feel like a revelation at low levels. The second most interesting class is the other 4e escapee- the Warlock. Unless you're playing Theatre of the Mind-style combat in which your turn still boils down to saying "I attack", and your Cunning Action doesn't really set you apart. I played a rogue in my first 5E game and it really made me want a grid so I could actually do interesting things with my movement and actions and opportunity attacks and so on.
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Oct 11, 2014 13:36
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:1d8 if you are sword and boarding, but the champion doesnt really synergize with that. 1d12/2d6 dropping 1s is more their style, and with the DMG we'll probably see on-crit bonus equipment. A Fighter subclass that requires (optional) magic items from a different book and still doesn't synergize well with the arguably the most iconic depiction of the Fighter is nothing to be happy with.
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Oct 11, 2014 13:41
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goldjas posted:I've never even attempted to play an official/living whatever the hell DND game, it seems to defeat the whole purpose of playing a RPG instead of just a video game. That's just my opinion on that matter though. I can easily see that sucking pretty hard, although I don't see how it could suck anymore for any particular edition, unless the adventures are that much worse (and to be fair, WoTC made mostly really really bad 4E adventures in general for whatever reason). The other role the official games play is during conventions. You can then get together and play D&D with friends you see once in a blue moon. Also, there are lots of people out there who want to play D&D, and only know a couple of people to share the interest. Or maybe know nobody. In my case, one of my friends wanted to run D&D 4, but I really didn't like how he ran it (I.e. John Wick style, with every encounter being a brutal meat grinder). The Encounters adventures for 5e have actually been kind of decent. The 4e always tried to have 3 encounters, and in a 4 hour session, almost all the time was spent on encounters.
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Oct 11, 2014 13:42
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Really Pants posted:You can fix a lovely system, as long as there's at least something to work with. Or you can find a better system that doesn't require the time and effort.
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Oct 11, 2014 13:44
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Boing posted:Unless you're playing Theatre of the Mind-style combat in which your turn still boils down to saying "I attack", and your Cunning Action doesn't really set you apart. If you weren't playing on a grid / mat, then yeah, it wouldn't be nearly as great. But I'd also argue that you'd be way better off with Dungeon World in that instance though
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Oct 11, 2014 16:22
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There are like, 3 interesting mechanics in 5e and I feel like I'd rather port those mechanics to other systems. Advantage/Disadvantage, Concentration and Rituals. Except I'd use the 4e ritual system instead because anyone can use them.
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Oct 11, 2014 16:43
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 Concentration is already in 4e, as Minor: Sustain
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Oct 11, 2014 16:45
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ascendance posted:I think this kind of diy ethic comes from the early days of the game, where the barrier between the amateurs and the professionals was much more porous, and games were very thin on rules and required a lot of adjudication. Given self publishing, the barrier between amateur and pro is back to being extremely porous. I mean, ACKS has gone from self published PDF to running 2 successful kick starters. Pathfinder has poo poo like the Iron Game Designer contest, where they solicit stuff from fans to publish, etc. Etc. I don't discount the ability of a layman/paying customer to come up with a house-rule that actually improves the game, but that says less about the layman's ability to improvise and more about how poor the written rules are in the first place. As well, there's a difference between a game being deliberately light on rules and purposely requiring lots of adjudication, and a game where there is a rule for most outcomes, but the rules are either so vague they need adjudication anyway or they're not well-designed enough that you need to make up some changes of your own.
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Oct 11, 2014 17:20
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moths posted:
And Advantage is already in as Multiclass: Avenger. Those fiends!
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Oct 11, 2014 18:21
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I'm having a lot of fun playing a Open Hand monk in a 5E game. I haven't punched a dragon yet, but I did punch a dinosaur, so it's all good.
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Oct 11, 2014 18:33
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ascendance posted:I think this kind of diy ethic comes from the early days of the game, where the barrier between the amateurs and the professionals was much more porous, and games were very thin on rules and required a lot of adjudication. Given self publishing, the barrier between amateur and pro is back to being extremely porous. I mean, ACKS has gone from self published PDF to running 2 successful kick starters. Pathfinder has poo poo like the Iron Game Designer contest, where they solicit stuff from fans to publish, etc. Etc. The barrier between "amateur and pro" in elfgaming has never stopped being porous. It's not like game designers are ever held to any sort of rigorous standards because even if you produce a bad game you'll still wind up with a bunch of people willing to shout "System doesn't matter! The GM can fix it!" Pathfinder bragged about employing Sean K. Reynolds for years and I'm pretty sure a random person just throwing darts at a board could have done a better job making new 3.X stuff than he did. And "well this is a bad game but I guess I'll just have to soldier on and fix it" may have been your only recourse back when D&D was the only game in town but these days it isn't, you aren't starving for choices competing for your entertainment time. "Well go play one of those games then" isn't a ringing endorsement for Next either.
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Oct 11, 2014 18:52
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Kai Tave posted:Pathfinder bragged about employing Sean K. Reynolds for years and I'm pretty sure a random person just throwing darts at a board could have done a better job making new 3.X stuff than he did. You sound like a fan. The main thing, though, is that just because you like a certain type of game design, and demand certain things from your elf games does not make the kinds of elfgames you like objectively better than other elfgames. Elfgames are fundamentally a matter of taste, which makes one true wayism around them particularly stupid.
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Oct 11, 2014 19:07
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Things like "How does D&D Next's CR system work? Answer: it seems to be largely random and arbitrary, based on no discernible formula or framework" isn't a matter of taste. You, personally, may not give a poo poo about a formula (like certain other people posting to this thread) but the fact is that the Next designers stuck it in the game going "you can use this to determine appropriate monster fights for your characters!" only it turns out that no, actually maybe the CR system is a bunch of guesswork and gut-feels that doesn't really do much to help with that. "I don't care if the stuff the designers put in the game I paid money for actually works like it's supposed to" is absolutely an opinion you can have, it's just a stupid one.
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Oct 11, 2014 19:29
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Agent Boogeyman posted:If your GM's cool with it, you could convince them that your Lute doubles as a weapon (Like maybe a club or something) and use the Eldritch Knight's Weapon Bond to make sure that your multiclassed Bard/E.Knight is never without their instrument.
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Oct 11, 2014 19:30
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ascendance posted:Elfgames are fundamentally a matter of taste, which makes one true wayism around them particularly stupid.
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Oct 11, 2014 19:30
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Jackard posted:Eldritch Kabong. Best post of the thread. Ettin, lock it up, we're done.
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Oct 11, 2014 19:33
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Trip report: my table has been enjoying 5e, but having DMed 4e, I'm already rather sick of DMing this edition. Encounters are much more effort to put together, and even at 5th level it takes considerable narrative creativity to avoid the "move up; trade attacks until death; loot" that was pretty endemic to 3.5. I could take random monsters from 4e and toss them together and get a neat combat dynamic. I still haven't seen caster supremacy rear its ugly head, although controlling spell scroll drops has probably helped with that. The lower save DCs and the comparatively higher spell attack mean often the save or suck abilities don't work or just do half damage with no effect instead, and the abjurer player has taken to act more like an evoker in combat. The abjurer ward is rather strong, and he can afford to sit in melee occasionally and unload a perfectly lined up burning hands. The biggest problem I've had with balance is the open-hand monk DMPC (party-controlled) is actually stronger than our fighter in combat with flurry, and trades a tiny amount of toughness for more flexibility out of combat like the 2x jump distance. This was exacerbated by her choice of eldritch knight over battlemaster, and I've been trying to feed her some utility magic items so she has more options on things to do. Eldritch knight is pretty awful, so I've let her throw her swords and use the bond to recall them without any damage penalties or whatever so she at least feels like she got something out of it. We'll be switching up DMing soon and I'll be playing a sickly fey pact warlock, so I look forward to seeing poo poo from the other side of the table. We rolled for stats for this campaign and out of 8 stats keep 6 highest, only 2 were even double digit so this'll be interesting.
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Oct 11, 2014 19:36
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ascendance posted:I bet you're going to be contributing to SKR's Kickstarter, right? Are you seriously arguing that you can't/shouldn't criticize game design & mechanics to determine if they are bad or good? I guess you can't say FATAL is a bad game either since it's just a matter of taste.
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