|
ProfessorCirno posted:Essentials was objectively bad in that it was marketed towards an audience that hated the product. And marketed really poorly at that, too. It shouldn't be too surprising that 4e sales, according to that whole ICv2 or whatever, went into a free fall once Mearls took over and started the Essentials push. On top of suddenly shifting into a product that the current audience didn't want - and the desired audience hated - nobody had any clue what the core books were or what they should be buying. Oh, also, most of the essentials books were loving garbage! What should be surprising is that, after running one edition straight into the ground, Mearls was immediately given another edition to run. Wizards doesn't give a poo poo about D&D is the lesson here.
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 07:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 14:14 |
|
|
Kai Tave posted:It genuinely blows my mind that there are people who want to go to the trouble of playing something like D&D, the exact opposite of a casual game in every respect and one which is about 90% combat by volume, solely to sit around for their turn to come and then go "I roll to hit, damage, done." There really are people who are into a story and the roleplaying and the social aspect but don't want to bother dealing with anything more complex than a move and an attack. Simple classes let these people play with people who enjoy having far too many options in the same game. If they're designed right and able to be on similar enough power levels, then they can play without being a liability. The Essentials Slayer is actually great for this. If someone really does just want to be able to run around and slash things to death without any thought past target selection, they can, and the class is set up to let them be pretty much as good as any other average Striker of their level. The trouble comes in two forms. First, if the only simple classes are of one archetype while the only complex classes are of the other, then what happens when a pair of people come to the table wanting to play their favorite fantasy characters. One of them has just come from Dragon Age and was swording everyone to death there with a huge amount of techniques, while the other one loves Harry Potter and just wants to shoot some fire from a wand every turn. Whoops. The other issue is if these classes have different power levels. Like, sufficiently different. It's inherent that more options is going to be better than fewer options in a lot of cases. But, if once per encounter you can do 3d6 damage while you normally do 1d6 a round, while your friend does 1d10 a round, then things are pretty close (assuming a four round battle) even if most people would want the first over the second. If instead you have your friend doing 1d8 a round while you can instakill an average of two monsters a round while still having the option for seven other effects, then the people who just want to play the simpler characters feel as though they're not as useful. Which is, of course, bad.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 07:19
|
|
|
Red Hood posted:
Did they seriously abandon those plot lines?
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 08:01
|
|
|
S.J. posted:Did they seriously abandon those plot lines? Two things I found about Giants so far in my reading of RoT at work: Again  SPOILERS Rise of Tiamat, page 11 posted:G i a n t s And then later: Rise of Tiamat, page 17 posted:G ia n t s Honestly, I haven't gotten too far into the book yet since I"m at work, but I do know that when I do a search of the pdf version I have, the name of the Cloud Giant at the end of HotDQ isn't found at all, so he's just loving gone or something. EDIT: Also, Episode 2 takes the PC's up north to the Sea of Moving Ice. It's described this way by Rise of Tiamat: Rise of Tiamat, page 24 posted:Far to the north, beyond the Spine of the World and Yup. The adventure cops out on getting the PC's back to Waterdeep from the Spine of the World in Episode 1, then literally has them sail right past where they could have stareted the adventure in Episode 2. First, the giant circle of McGuffin chasing in HotDQ, then retracing your steps in RoT. Jesus Christ D&D 5e. Red Hood fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Dec 27, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 08:13
|
|
|
Trasson posted:There really are people who are into a story and the roleplaying and the social aspect but don't want to bother dealing with anything more complex than a move and an attack. Simple classes let these people play with people who enjoy having far too many options in the same game. If they're designed right and able to be on similar enough power levels, then they can play without being a liability. The ironic thing is you still need to be engaged with combat to play even the simplest of "Essentials" classes. Even if you never change your stances once in 30 levels, even if you don't care about poo poo but "I attack, hit, Power Attack" you still need to pay attention to things like movement and positioning, set your charge spam up right, deal with enemy abilities that shift you around or slap status effects on you (or beneficial ally abilities that do the same)...even if you're playing a Slayer you still have to actually pay attention and think about things on a deeper level than the truly casual combat guy probably wants or he's likely to spend most combats getting spiked into the ground because just running around without a care in 4E is a good way to get isolated and beat down. My experience is that people who tune out and go on autopilot in 4E fights are the ones who always have to get bailed out by the rest of the party. I can't speak for everyone and I'm sure somebody found the Slayer a refreshing change of pace, but if the ultimate goal with the Essentials martial class builds was to make characters that Bob the guy who tunes out every time "roll initiative" is called can love then they were still off the mark because there's still a bunch of poo poo to keep track of (and that's not counting combat-related things like feats), and anybody who actually enjoyed engaging with 4E's combat is going to find fuckall worthwhile in the simplified Essentials classes except maybe as a source of spare parts for some Frankensteinian hybrid build. tl;dr 4E is not a great engine to try and build super-simple combat classes for people who don't give a gently caress the same way *World is a bad engine for trying to create a Champions-esque superhero game or something. edit; to bring this around to Next, I often see Next's proponents touting its short combat times and lack of tactical crunch as a feature, which would be fine if the rest of the game was robust and interesting and engaging, but it's not...it's the same old "roll d20" bullshit only this time with ADVANTAGE, so those short combats aren't there to get you back to anything super-interesting and exciting, and I just as frequently see the same people who talk up short combats mention that they use the time they save to...have more combats. So it seems to me that all Next has really managed to accomplish is make fights less interesting without actually reducing how much D&D leans on monster fighting as its primary "stuff to do." Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 09:32 on Dec 27, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 09:27
|
|
|
Possibly a better approach for a player who is truly checked out during combats is to set up a character who is fairly standard in skills and interaction, but in combat is more of a moving aura generator. Contribute to the fight in ways that the other PCs whose players are more tactically engaged can direct. Not just a simple +X to hit and damage, but something like "Each ally in your aura can <do something particularly cool> once during this encounter as a <move/minor/standard> action". I don't know enough about balance and game design to think of what that might be though.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 10:21
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:I can't speak for everyone and I'm sure somebody found the Slayer a refreshing change of pace, but if the ultimate goal with the Essentials martial class builds was to make characters that Bob the guy who tunes out every time "roll initiative" is called can love then they were still off the mark because there's still a bunch of poo poo to keep track of (and that's not counting combat-related things like feats), and anybody who actually enjoyed engaging with 4E's combat is going to find fuckall worthwhile in the simplified Essentials classes except maybe as a source of spare parts for some Frankensteinian hybrid build. It's me, I'm somebody. I've played both the Slayer and the Knight, and really enjoyed them both - but then, I'm into CharOp and I like wringing effective characters out of poo poo design. The Slayer only really works for me with the feats that give it real Fighter attacks, and a pre-E Paragon Path and a bunch of pre-E feats. I built mine as a Rending Weapon using critfisher (basically, roll and maximise ALL the d6s, then hit him again for good measure). He's great fun. And my Knight is the teleporty Eladrin build. But yeah, the Slayer and Knight are not remotely simple in combat. I built the simplest Slayer I could for a new player at one point (even before the power-swap feat came out) at I think 8th level, and it took twenty minutes or so even after explaining the basics of the game, to explain all the powers and abilities of the character properly. They come with attack, ranged attack, charge, power attack, a variety of stances to switch between which give a tonne of fiddly numerical bonuses, and utility powers which again give fiddly bonuses or fiddly things to track. It's definitely not a 'I move and then hit' class if you want to be effective. And it's a TERRIBLE class to give to someone who actually wants to do anything other than fight and maybe run around a bit because it gets three trained skills and is WIS or CHA tertiary at best, INT dumping, so doing useful things out of combat are basically reduced to' run, balance, where should I put the heavy thing?'. 4e is simply *not a game* where you can tune out mentally in the combat and not gently caress it up for the other players. Ironically, the class that really comes closest to being able to do that (at least through to mid-paragon, if you pick the right options) is a well-built enabling leader like, say, a Warlord. Because all you have to do is tell OTHER people to do things and let THEM work out all the dice and so forth. And you get more useful skills and stats.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 11:03
|
|
|
This is why I thought Next's whole "it's D&D for EVERYONE!" sales pitch was destined to be bullshit right from the outset because it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to make an RPG that's going to appeal to Bob Doesn'tgiveafuck on one side of the table and Johnny Tacticscrunch on the other. It's okay for a game to have a focus and say "you must be this engaged to ride this ride," but trying to appeal to widely disparate mindsets and wants is going to give you something that doesn't really appeal to either side, the best you can aim for is "inoffensively tolerable." I can't really imagine someone trying to design, say, a board game that appeals to fans of both Twilight Imperium and Monopoly and having it work out very well, and D&D is probably not very well-served by trying to do so either.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 11:14
|
|
|
Red Hood posted:Yup. The adventure cops out on getting the PC's back to Waterdeep from the Spine of the World in Episode 1, then literally has them sail right past where they could have stareted the adventure in Episode 2. First, the giant circle of McGuffin chasing in HotDQ, then retracing your steps in RoT. Jesus Christ D&D 5e. S.J. posted:Did they seriously abandon those plot lines? Wizards can't write adventures because all the talented writers who are directly employed or freelance for the company are doing Creative work for Magic. I don't think there has been a good adventure published directly under the D&D banner since the days of the Sunless Citadel series and Red Hand of Doom, and I'm sure someone will pop in to explain just why they sucked any minute now. Even if you like 5e please don't use the official adventures. Kai Tave posted:This is why I thought Next's whole "it's D&D for EVERYONE!" sales pitch was destined to be bullshit right from the outset because it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to make an RPG that's going to appeal to Bob Doesn'tgiveafuck on one side of the table and Johnny Tacticscrunch on the other. It's okay for a game to have a focus and say "you must be this engaged to ride this ride," but trying to appeal to widely disparate mindsets and wants is going to give you something that doesn't really appeal to either side, the best you can aim for is "inoffensively tolerable." I can't really imagine someone trying to design, say, a board game that appeals to fans of both Twilight Imperium and Monopoly and having it work out very well, and D&D is probably not very well-served by trying to do so either. That's the problem with D&D's whole rep as the only RPG that exists, Wizards feels like they have to cater to that idea, or at least pay lip service to it. While you and I are quite clued in on this not being true at all, some dude who plays Skyrim and wants to sling dice as a result isn't. That isn't the guy's fault, that's just the hobby's mainstream rep. And it's a huge problem when trying to get that guy to try something else because it can feel like trying to push Tibetan throat singing on someone who wants to listen to Top 40s. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Dec 27, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 14:09
|
|
|
Red Hood posted:Two things I found about Giants so far in my reading of RoT at work:
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 14:20
|
|
|
Ughhh I was looking forward to subjugating kobolds in our mobile oppression palace with an army of giants. gently caress everything to do with Horde of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat. It still completely irks me that through the entire 2-book adventure, you never get high enough level to fight that first dragon you see all the way in session 1.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 15:14
|
|
|
Horde of the Dragon Queen is hot garbage. Its writers have talked on various forums about how they were writing it before the rules and monster stats of the game were finalized, so the encounters are just written without rhyme or reason. There are occasional mentions of mechanics that never made it into print. But even on a more basic scale, the plot is just poor: At one point, you go scout an enemy camp and then go back to town where you are told to go back to the camp for more information. A huge chunk of the middle of the module is an extended road trip north (which makes just teleporting back to Waterdeep hilarious since you spend a lot of time just hoofing it to another city on foot earlier). Anyway, one of the authors revealed a bunch of stuff that got cut from Rise; namely the giants' army and the plot thread about the black dragon twins living in the bullywug swamp. Nobody turned in their homework this edition.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 15:36
|
|
|
Lightning Lord posted:Wizards can't write adventures because all the talented writers who are directly employed or freelance for the company are doing Creative work for Magic. I don't think there has been a good adventure published directly under the D&D banner since the days of the Sunless Citadel series and Red Hand of Doom, and I'm sure someone will pop in to explain just why they sucked any minute now. Even if you like 5e please don't use the official adventures. Wizards didn't write the adventures, Kobold Press did. I'm pretty sure one of the reasons they didn't have the monster stats in the books was because Wizards hadn't finalized 5E when Hoard came out. EDIT: I think there are only 3 people working on D&D right now because everything took forever to release and they're already outsourcing important material. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Dec 27, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 15:49
|
|
|
"The way to build monsters in the DMG is perfect, but the way we built monsters in the Monster Manual is even more perfect." http://thesageadvice.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/monster-manual-cr/ 
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 16:26
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:"The way to build monsters in the DMG is perfect, but the way we built monsters in the Monster Manual is even more perfect." And another thing. And also But then And have you considered And oh yeah, I forgot to mention And of course What's the point of using Twitter if you're going to take six tweets to reply? Rodney should have just replied "They are fine. I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this tweet is too narrow to contain."
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 16:53
|
|
|
Well naturally we can't write up coherent rules that follow our own published book's standards for making monsters because ~creativity~
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 22:25
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:This is why I thought Next's whole "it's D&D for EVERYONE!" sales pitch was destined to be bullshit right from the outset because it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to make an RPG that's going to appeal to Bob Doesn'tgiveafuck on one side of the table and Johnny Tacticscrunch on the other. It's okay for a game to have a focus and say "you must be this engaged to ride this ride," but trying to appeal to widely disparate mindsets and wants is going to give you something that doesn't really appeal to either side, the best you can aim for is "inoffensively tolerable." I can't really imagine someone trying to design, say, a board game that appeals to fans of both Twilight Imperium and Monopoly and having it work out very well, and D&D is probably not very well-served by trying to do so either. It's okay! There'll be modules for that! There won't be any modules for that
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 23:15
|
|
|
My favorite D&D Next modules are dungeon world and 13th age.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 01:27
|
|
|
Rannos22 posted:My favorite D&D Next modules are dungeon world and 13th age. I sometimes wonder if the modules Mearls alluded to are the inevitable scad of semi-official houserules that will come pouring out of the community as time wears on. "Danny's 5e hack for bonus feats" and "Fan feat pack 9." Basically the Neverwinter Nights school of game design. Or the Skyrim model. Make game, fans will fill in the rest, 90% of it will be depraved semi-porn.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 04:31
|
|
|
BatteredFeltFedora posted:Possibly a better approach for a player who is truly checked out during combats is to set up a character who is fairly standard in skills and interaction, but in combat is more of a moving aura generator. This is what fighters already are. The aura deals an amount of damage per turn to one nearby enemy.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 04:53
|
|
|
Red Hood posted:I"m going to keep bitching about D&D 5e and the Tyranny of Dragons storyline in this thread while you guys talk about 4e. The Giants along with one of the Wyrmspeakers the 2nd in command of the entire Cult of the Dragon, Galvan the Blue were cut out of the adventure. They both had their own chapters originally but because of page space issues they had to cut their parts largely out. Both Rise of Tiamat and Hoard of the Dragon Queen would have seriously benefited from a larger page count. Art from these chapters are still around and were uploaded by their creators. Galvan the Blue  Giant Area complete with crashed Skyreach Castle.  Likely the Frost Giant King 
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 08:21
|
|
|
Lightning Lord posted:Even if you like 5e please don't use the official adventures. Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat have their fair share of problems. They could use a bit more polish and some more space in the books but I would say they are still pretty good overall. Anyway I disagree with this on principle because the Starter Set adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver is straight up great. Also it should be noted that like Tyranny of Dragons was outsourced to Kobold Press. The next storyline is being sent to Sasquatch Studios.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 08:25
|
|
|
MonsterEnvy posted:Anyway I disagree with this on principle because the Starter Set adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver is straight up great. I haven't heard or read anything about this thing (aside from maybe someone saying it sucked) so I just wanted to ask what the adventure is about and what makes it great.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 08:40
|
|
|
P.d0t posted:I haven't heard or read anything about this thing (aside from maybe someone saying it sucked) so I just wanted to ask what the adventure is about and what makes it great. Well it's about finding a mine that can create magic items and thwarting a Drow adventurer called the Black Spider and his Goblin Allies who also want to find it, Also they kidnap your patrons (patrons and cousins if you took the Dwarf backstory from the premades) As for what makes it great. It just feels like a great start up adventure. Exploration, Roleplaying Combat it has the 3 pillars of the game with a good balance between them. It has a dragon who will murder your players if they are stupid. It has a few dungeons. It also has some hooks at the end of it that makes continuing from it after it gets you through the first 5 levels easy. Pretty much its a great starting point.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 09:33
|
|
|
Just finished the second revision of my first campaigns world map. A bit too Tolkien for my liking considering it's middle eastern / south seas inspired. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 00:33
|
|
|
Monster w21 Faces posted:Just finished the second revision of my first campaigns world map. A bit too Tolkien for my liking considering it's middle eastern / south seas inspired. Tell us about the land of Utah.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 04:15
|
|
|
Monster w21 Faces posted:Just finished the second revision of my first campaigns world map. A bit too Tolkien for my liking considering it's middle eastern / south seas inspired. Is there some kind of cool fantasy mapmaking tool you're using for this, or are you a Photoshop wizard?
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 04:24
|
|
|
We're having our own fun with the WotDQ flying castle at the moment. See, we'd been getting through the adventure reasonably intact, and then one of the encounters inside the castle went to utter poo poo and got the whole castle called out to high alert against us. The party panicked, grabbed the injured and recently revivified party members and lept off the edge of the castle to Feather Fall to the ground. Whereupon the GM got this whole "um" look on his face. See, the adventure goes into some detail about how to get the PCs onto the castle, and how to deal with them missing getting on it. But at no point does it address the PCs getting onto the castle but then leaving before completing the adventure. Apparently the PCs are supposed to either do an entire section of the adventure, including at least two boss fights, on a single round of resources or to somehow grab 8 hours kip in an enemy castle. I'll be honest - it basically seems that someone thought a floating castle would be cool but then just wrote a dungeon, put "in a floating castle" on the top of the map, and didn't think through the consequences. Thanks to a nice winter cough I missed the last session but was informed it consisted of the PCs stealing some tame wyverns from a dragon cult camp and pursuing the castle again only to have the wyverns shot down by ballista fire....
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 05:12
|
|
|
Lightning Lord posted:That's the problem with D&D's whole rep as the only RPG that exists, Wizards feels like they have to cater to that idea, or at least pay lip service to it. While you and I are quite clued in on this not being true at all, some dude who plays Skyrim and wants to sling dice as a result isn't. That isn't the guy's fault, that's just the hobby's mainstream rep. And it's a huge problem when trying to get that guy to try something else because it can feel like trying to push Tibetan throat singing on someone who wants to listen to Top 40s. Looking back on it, I don't recall the idea that D&D should cater to multiple playstyles and approaches towards elfgaming even really being a thing until the whole 4E/Next deal blew up the way it did. Back when I first got into the roleplaying hobby, which was mid-90's, D&D players seemed on the whole to be inordinately proud of the game's reputation for being all about kicking down doors, killing monsters, and stealing poo poo, and the general response to someone who said they'd rather focus on roleplay and story over combat was along the lines of "then go play Vampire with your goth buddies, theater nerd." Yes, there was a lot of "roleplaying versus rollplaying" ego masturbation that went on even then but that was always basically a case of some guy trying to prove himself the Alpha Geek than any critical examination of playstyles or anything. And even with 3E I don't remember hearing a lot about The Guy Who Sleepwalks Through Combat except in vaguely derogatory terms, like "yeah Bob plays D&D with us but every time a fight starts he just mumbles about attacking the closest monster, whatever." It wasn't really until 4th Edition came along that D&D being too focused on combat was suddenly a bad thing and what about Bob? We need simpler, more casual options for the Bobs of the world, all of which just coincidentally happen to be Fighter-shaped. Nobody in D&D-land gave a poo poo about Bob until doing so gave them another talking point to edition war with.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 05:30
|
|
|
Yeah, "Bob" in my experience is a player who is either your friend and wouldn't be playing D&D if you weren't, or a person who is going to show up for two weeks at the FLGS on a lark, never buy anything and never be seen again.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 06:24
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Looking back on it, I don't recall the idea that D&D should cater to multiple playstyles and approaches towards elfgaming even really being a thing until the whole 4E/Next deal blew up the way it did. Back when I first got into the roleplaying hobby, which was mid-90's, D&D players seemed on the whole to be inordinately proud of the game's reputation for being all about kicking down doors, killing monsters, and stealing poo poo, and the general response to someone who said they'd rather focus on roleplay and story over combat was along the lines of "then go play Vampire with your goth buddies, theater nerd." That's how I remember the 1988 to somewhere around 2004ish period where D&D was the only game I played regularly. D&D was about killing stuff and looting it. There were lots of different interesting places to find stuff to loot and kill, and lots of published materials that gave you various reasons to kill and loot things, but the game was always about "go to X, kill Y, gain Z (for reasons)". Most of every rulebook has always been rules about killing, different ways to kill, different things to kill, different kinds of loot, and sometimes how to loot a place/person without killing anyone. The other stuff is primarily concerned with getting to the place you're going to do the looting/killing or about how to construct a world with lots of things to kill and loot, different reasons to kill and loot things, and maybe some discussion about how much killing and looting an average party should get through in whatever standard time period. ...and yes, if I didn't want to play a game about killing and looting, I'd take a break to play Mage or something. Or Baron Munchausen. Kai Tave posted:And even with 3E I don't remember hearing a lot about The Guy Who Sleepwalks Through Combat except in vaguely derogatory terms, like "yeah Bob plays D&D with us but every time a fight starts he just mumbles about attacking the closest monster, whatever." It wasn't really until 4th Edition came along that D&D being too focused on combat was suddenly a bad thing and what about Bob? We need simpler, more casual options for the Bobs of the world, all of which just coincidentally happen to be Fighter-shaped. Nobody in D&D-land gave a poo poo about Bob until doing so gave them another talking point to edition war with. I don't actually recall the idea of simple/complex classes being a common discussion prior to 3rd ed. I mean obviously there are things that are simpler/less-simple to play, but the idea of a basic/newbie class just wasn't a thing. Every time I saw a new player introduced it was like "what sounds cool out of <classes> <races>?" not "you're new, just be a fighter". When a player has disengaged from the game, the solution was not "give them something with no choices", it was "find out why they're not having fun". The idea of the player who wants to show up but doesn't really want to play the game is completely foreign to me. I mean, sure, stuff like "I'm having a bad day / there's heaps of stuff on my mind / I'm still thinking about work" for a single session, but the idea that someone wants to be part of the D&D group without wanting to play D&D is weird as hell to me. I get some people aren't that into combat games, but then why on earth are they playing D&D in the first place? e: I don't think "D&D is too focused on combat..." is a wrong or bad statement. I do think that "...so we should put in some classes where combat isn't interesting" isn't even the start of a solution. The focus of the rules is on combat. Making an uninteresting-in-combat class does nothing at all about that aspect of the game. Making that class also the class that doesn't get any non-combat abilities at all and pretending that the not-interested-in-combat-guy now has the perfect class is loving idiotic. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Dec 29, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 06:36
|
|
|
If anything it seems like "the new guy class" should have been the Cleric given how much of a rep they had as the class someone had to play whether they wanted to or not because somebody has to play the healbot and everyone else not-it-ed it before you showed up (back before 3E wildly overcorrected and gave rise to CoDzilla anyway).
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 06:43
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:If anything it seems like "the new guy class" should have been the Cleric given how much of a rep they had as the class someone had to play whether they wanted to or not because somebody has to play the healbot and everyone else not-it-ed it before you showed up (back before 3E wildly overcorrected and gave rise to CoDzilla anyway). Yep, Cleric is the obvious new-kid class. They've always been pretty survivable plus they interact with melee and spellcasting rules which makes them a good learning experience, and they'll never be an unwelcome addition to a party.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 06:52
|
|
|
Really, there's a lot that's spurious about the relatively recent association of "new to RPGs" with "therefore can't walk and chew gum at the same time" and it not-even-a-little-subtly smacks of ridiculous elitism.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 07:01
|
|
|
It's even less believable now because of how much more pervasive gaming has become. Someone who's only ever played Clash of Clans on their cellphone is still going to be able to draw on that to have some idea of what they want as a character and what they should be capable of doing.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 07:11
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:This is what fighters already are. The aura deals an amount of damage per turn to one nearby enemy. Yeah but I mean take some agency away from people who are clearly happier players without it and let the more tactical-minded players direct.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 07:38
|
|
|
"Hey, you wanna come over and play D&D this weekend?" "I guess, sure. So how do I play?" "Just sit at the table for six hours so the rest of us can get +2 to-hit and damage."
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 07:46
|
|
|
Have you missed the discussion on this very page about players who are there to hang out with friends rather than get deep into the game for its own sake, or players who enjoy interacting with the environment or NPCs more than tactically complex combat? I'm looking for a way for PCs to contribute on an equal footing without the same level of player investment, because for reasons already gone over the simple-fighter model fails badly at that. Lemniscate Blue fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Dec 29, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 07:49
|
|
|
BatteredFeltFedora posted:Have you missed the discussion on this very page about players who are there to hang out with friends rather than get deep into the game for its own sake, or players who enjoy interacting with the environment or NPCs more than tactically complex combat? The answer to this is "play something that isn't D&D." Like, sorry man, D&D sort of sucks as a game for people that don't care about getting into the game because there's not really a lot else there, and D&D doesn't really do anything super-amazing with its non-combat poo poo. But wait, with revolutionary new Advantage™ you can roll twice as many d20s to do a thing! Thrilling. So no, you're not going to find a way for super checked out players or players with priorities that don't, at some point, touch on the intricacies of fantasy combat to contribute on the same level as players who are actually invested in a game whose primary focus is fantasy combat. Best case scenario is the invested players come to count Bob as dead weight and quickly learn to work around him, worst case is that blanket aura of uncomfortable awkwardness where Bob's bringing everyone else down and everyone else is bringing Bob down but Bob won't come out and say that he kinda doesn't really like D&D all that much and everyone else won't say that they maybe have more fun playing without Bob. The good news is there are other RPGs out there that do a much better job of catering to players who would rather focus on interacting with the environment, exploring, dealing with NPCs, and where combat is much less involved and/or emphasized or at the very lest rendered no more mechanically complex than any other interaction with the system. Several of them are even D&D flavored for those who want that.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 08:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 14:14 |
|
|
BatteredFeltFedora posted:Have you missed the discussion on this very page about players who are there to hang out with friends rather than get deep into the game for its own sake, or players who enjoy interacting with the environment or NPCs more than tactically complex combat? What part of the D&D rules supports this play style of "interact with the environment or NPCs" in a way that's as interesting as the combat engine? You're not going to engage players who are disengaged with the >90% of the rules that deal with combat by further disengaging them from combat. You're looking for a game that supports non-combat stuff as much as it supports combat stuff, and that game isn't D&D. It's never been D&D. e: FATE does what what you're looking for. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Dec 29, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2014 08:02
|
|