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mastershakeman posted:It's not really busywork though, if there isn't an easy way to replenish the material components. Getting rare ones can either be very expensive, a sidequest unto themselves, or a way to just say 'nope, you don't get to cast that spell every single day.' So, you track material components? All of them, or just the "rare" ones? Do you, for instance, disallow the casting of Barkskin if you've described a week's travel through a pine forest and the Druid forgot to write "big sack of oak bark" on his sheet? Oh wait, you just need to write "component pouch" and you're fine. I bet everyone who has no problem with that would also have no problem with me writing down "weapon and tool belt" which contains whatever weapon or tool I might need, right?
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Dec 30, 2014 04:54
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Not to mention that, if you make gathering rare components a thing, it just further emphasizes that the game's about the casters. People, generally speaking, are going to go for the options that result in perceived advantages, so a game where you need to sidequest for the good spells is just going to turn into Let's Make The Wizard Happy - The Game.
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Dec 30, 2014 05:01
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jigokuman posted:^^^ Since you brought up Diablo, something I realized of late is that things like the 15 minute workday are really quite similar to the metagaming that went on in Diablo 2 (and several stages of WoW, really). That is, if you give a character a limited resource with the trade-off that it powers a lot of their stuff, people aren't going to behave like they'll save it up, use it when it's appropriate, then fight without it until it recharges. Rather, they're going to find a way, hook or by crook, to set themselves up in such a way that they always have it. In Diablo 2 that meant getting mana leech rings for the Barbarians and the Paladins and the Amazons, while the Sorcs and Necromancers would try to build an Insight Polearm so their mercenary would provide a 24/7 Insight Aura to them In WoW that meant stacking lots of Spirit (or mana-per-5-seconds), and running with a Shadow Priest that generates mana, and tricks like downranked heals. It's why in Diablo 3, everyone's energy resource is a quickly-refilling orb that takes mere seconds to refill, because at some point the developers realized that nobody really likes playing with an empty tank.
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Dec 30, 2014 05:13
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Darwinism posted:Let's Make The Wizard Happy - The Game. You know, this would actually be an OK game if all in-game magic was handled by The Wizard, an insane NPC who gives out mission briefings like Friend Computer used to. +++ADVENTURERS! A CR90 $MONSTER HAS APPEARED AND I NEED 6x beholder brains AND the concept of zero TO CAST <spell>, THE ONLY THING THAT CAN STOP IT!
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Dec 30, 2014 05:25
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That would be amazing.
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Dec 30, 2014 05:33
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AlphaDog posted:So, you track material components? All of them, or just the "rare" ones? Do you, for instance, disallow the casting of Barkskin if you've described a week's travel through a pine forest and the Druid forgot to write "big sack of oak bark" on his sheet? Oh wait, you just need to write "component pouch" and you're fine. I bet everyone who has no problem with that would also have no problem with me writing down "weapon and tool belt" which contains whatever weapon or tool I might need, right? All of them. I had to track my dozen arrows on my last character and roll a percentile dice when collecting them after fights to see if they were salvageable or not. Darwinism posted:Not to mention that, if you make gathering rare components a thing, it just further emphasizes that the game's about the casters. People, generally speaking, are going to go for the options that result in perceived advantages, so a game where you need to sidequest for the good spells is just going to turn into Let's Make The Wizard Happy - The Game. There isn't too much difference in doing a quest to get the materials for a magic item and getting the materials for a magic spell.
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Dec 30, 2014 05:37
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moths posted:You know, this would actually be an OK game if all in-game magic was handled by The Wizard, an insane NPC who gives out mission briefings like Friend Computer used to. I swear this has been suggested before but it can't be suggested enough.
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Dec 30, 2014 05:38
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moths posted:In a way, that makes it even more disappointing. The rewards are on-par for the play-style, and at some point there must have been a guy who loved tracking what material components he had available, but after countless iterations the risk:reward for that class turned into tedium:reward, and all then all the tedium got hand-waved away. Magic in Warhammer games carry penalties that make Wizards/Psykers extremely dangerous to everyone in the surrounding area. Also magic is kind of "closer to Earth" in a sense, there's no equivalent of Wish or True Resurrection. There's also the whole setting's attitude towards arcane practicioners. I dunno if I'd even bother making them keep track of components 
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Dec 30, 2014 05:41
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If you're talking about questing for cool poo poo that's outside a regular character's purview (find the Holy Avenger; cast a spell that creates a category 5 hurricane) then that's an interesting game. If components boosted your spells instead of activating them, or there was some system where you always had components but you had to distribute various amounts to power various spells differently, then at least you'd have a mini-game worth talking about. 'The Quest To Activate My Class Features: The Game' on the other hand, doesn't seem like much fun.
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Dec 30, 2014 06:01
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I was looking through 3rd Ed's Unearthed Arcana and: * Hero points in the DMG are just Action Points: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Action_Points * Combat Facing in the DMG is also taken from Unearthed Arcana, right down to "your shield doesn't protect you from attacks from right-side if it's on your left hand": http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Combat_Facing * CON saves to stabilize are taken from the Death and Dying rules, although slightly modified so that you need 3 failed checks to die / 3 passed checks to stabilize rather than just one: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Death_and_Dying * The Proficiency system as related to skill checks is the "Level-Based Skills" variant rule from UA, except "level" in this case has a multiplier so it doesn't go up every level 1-for-1: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Alternative_Skill_Systems * Character Backgrounds to grant you which skills you're automatically skilled/trained/proficient at: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Character_Background:_Aristocratic_Background * The Spell Point system is from UA, though we all probably all knew that already: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Spell_Points === I think the way old-school spell components worked was that besides needing to spend gold on the components while you were in town, some of the components could be found in the dungeon. Moreover, some of the components could be worth a lot of gold, and since gold was your way of earning experience and leveling up, the Wizard would have to make a choice between using the diamond to cast a Fireball and deal some bighuge damage, or keep it for selling for more experience so he doesn't fall behind the Fighter even more in level.
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Dec 30, 2014 06:11
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mastershakeman posted:You're going a bit too far the other way. Actually I'm not, that's the whole point. Giving Fighters an insta-kill attack and four-figure hitpoints looks ludicrously unbalanced and overly advantaged but it turns out that it isn't because having those things doesn't really address any of the issues people have with "simple Fighters" like you suggested. The Wizard isn't lauded because it can do infinity damage or has huge numbers, the Wizard's power lies in the fact that it gets to engage with the game on an entirely different level than the Fighter does. The Wizard gets a host of abilities that let the Wizard player declare things like D&D is suddenly Fate while the Fighter can only attempt to interact with things through attack rolls, skill checks (of which they generally get shafted on these days), and negotiating with the GM for permission. This is the crux of the issue people have with "simple classes" side by side with classes like Wizards. 4E's Slayer works perfectly fine at least through Heroic tier, it is perfectly effective at hitting things with a sword and making numbers go down, but it's still loving boring to play and it always will be when there's someone over there who can upend entire encounters and dance across the PC/GM boundary. quote:edit ^^^ what he said What he actually said was "It handily fixes the problem of spellcasters owning the game by making them annoying piles of un-fun poo poo that are very easy to completely shut down and that nobody wants to play. In other words, it's not a good solution." And I agree with him 100%. If one set of classes is fun to play and the other is tedious and dull it's absolutely insipid to go "well clearly what we need to do is make every class tedious and dull!" A lot of people cite WotC removing all the lovely little checks and balances that were ostensibly supposed to rein spellcasters in as the source of D&D's current caster/non-caster issues but I agree wholeheartedly with their decision to do that because that poo poo isn't interesting and it isn't fun. The problem isn't that they removed that stuff, good riddance to that stuff, the problem is that they removed it without considering the knock-on effects and they did a bad job of designing classes in general. But they were right to ditch spell components and eventually even give Vancian casting a vacation for a while. Note that it's entirely possible to ditch things like tracking bat guano while also placing guys with a sword on equal footing with guys in a robe and pointy hat, it just involves getting past the mindset that class balance means giving the Fighter more bigger numbers while the Wizard gets more ways to dictate the game.
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Dec 30, 2014 06:29
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Kai Tave posted:Note that it's entirely possible to ditch things like tracking bat guano while also placing guys with a sword on equal footing with guys in a robe and pointy hat, it just involves getting past the mindset that class balance means giving the Fighter more bigger numbers while the Wizard gets more ways to dictate the game. I was reading through the Pathfinder thread and it boiled down to "yes, the Fighter is really good at hitting monsters to reduce their HP values, but that's the only thing the Fighter can do. Meanwhile the Wizard just skips trying to reduce a monster's HP altogether and completely neutralizes it some other way, while also having utility spells that can dramatically affect out-of-combat interactions" So yeah, it's less about making the Wizard more annoying to play, but more about letting the Fighter declare that he can do several things, period, no check needed, because he is a Fighter (or changing a Wizard's spell repertoire such that it allows them to attempt things, but under the same rules as everyone else trying to do it with their natural ability)
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Dec 30, 2014 06:49
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Did we ever figure out the interaction between using a shield and a Barbarian's Unarmored Defense?
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Dec 30, 2014 06:51
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I think it's hilarious when people suggest suddenly fighters do a billion HP damage, because what they're saying is "What if Fighters got Save or Dies, but the save was AC?" Congrats, you made fighters SUPER overpowered by giving them a single wizard spell.
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Dec 30, 2014 07:01
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gradenko_2000 posted:I was reading through the Pathfinder thread and it boiled down to "yes, the Fighter is really good at hitting monsters to reduce their HP values, but that's the only thing the Fighter can do. Meanwhile the Wizard just skips trying to reduce a monster's HP altogether and completely neutralizes it some other way, while also having utility spells that can dramatically affect out-of-combat interactions" In earlier editions wasn't magic slightly less of an "I win" button because Saving Throws weren't dependent on the level of the caster, but were instead flat and linked up to monster/class type? EDIT Also, isn't magic basically a kind of treasure/item? Wizards get the ability to cast more spells and spells of a higher level as they level up, but isn't learning new spells entirely dependent on what the DM allows in game? Can't you just NOT put the really broken or lovely spells in for the caster to use? Maybe put some cool fighter loot in the dungeon alongside any new scrolls the Wizard could scribe into their spell-books? People complain about the Fighter being equipment dependent for his abilities, but nothing about the wizard makes them inherently able to cast Time Stop or Overland Flight if you don't put those spells in for them to use, same as how you probably wouldn't give a +5 sword to a level one character. Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 07:08
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Bob Quixote posted:Also, isn't magic basically a kind of treasure/item? Wizards get the ability to cast more spells and spells of a higher level as they level up, but isn't learning new spells entirely dependent on what the DM allows in game? Can't you just NOT put the really broken or lovely spells in for the caster to use? Maybe put some cool fighter loot in the dungeon alongside any new scrolls the Wizard could scribe into their spell-books? The problem is not that some spells are broken, or that a wizard is casting time stop. It's that the wizard interacts with the game on a fundamentally different level than a fighter. While the mundanes are stuck doing basic attacks and rolling to jump up on a table, the wizard is able to break the rules, without rolling, with even the most basic of spells. You can downgrade a wizard from a Ferrari to a Toyota, but he's still ahead of the fighter's 'super-tricked-out' skateboard.
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Dec 30, 2014 07:30
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Bob Quixote posted:Also, isn't magic basically a kind of treasure/item? Wizards get the ability to cast more spells and spells of a higher level as they level up, but isn't learning new spells entirely dependent on what the DM allows in game? Can't you just NOT put the really broken or lovely spells in for the caster to use? Maybe put some cool fighter loot in the dungeon alongside any new scrolls the Wizard could scribe into their spell-books? Randomly allocated spells/spells as treasure is right alongside things like "rigorous enforcement of material components" and "wasting spells upon getting hit" for being lovely ways to balance Wizards in D&D because it turns out when you're a stickler for them it makes being a Wizard a huge unfun pain in the rear end but if you get rid of them whoops, suddenly the game turns into the weird wizard show. Seriously, the solution to problematic class balance isn't to try and force everybody to eat a poo poo sandwich and call that fair. It is entirely reasonable, and even laudable, that WotC killed a lot of AD&D and earlier's restrictions on spellcasters because those restrictions sucked. It is completely possible in this, soon to be the year of our lord 2015, to make a fantasy RPG that doesn't rely on the GM quarterbacking the Wizard's spellbook and constantly cracking down on bat poop expenditures that also somehow doesn't result in spellcasters getting all the cool toys while everybody else gets none.
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Dec 30, 2014 07:38
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Bob Quixote posted:In earlier editions wasn't magic slightly less of an "I win" button because Saving Throws weren't dependent on the level of the caster, but were instead flat and linked up to monster/class type? Looking at my copy of the Rules Cyclopedia: It depends. Some spells like Cloudkill have no saving throw; you just take damage every round, period. Other spells like Hold Monster or Feeblemind have a saving throw, but also penalizes the save at -2 to -4 anyway. A Delayed Blast Fireball is half-damage on a save. Power Word Stun and Power Word Blind have no saves, but the duration changes depending on the amount of current HP (anyone with more than 71 HP is not affected). Reverse Gravity has no save. Dance needs an attack roll, but otherwise has no save. Explosive Cloud has a save-or-paralyze every round, but the damage-per-round cannot be saved against (like Cloudkill) Mass Charm has a -2 penalty to the save Meteor Swarm has effectively no save Power Word Kill has a -4 penalty to the save The Wizard also has summoning spells such as Summon Elemental, Sword, Clone, Create Magical Monsters, etc. quote:Also, isn't magic basically a kind of treasure/item? Wizards get the ability to cast more spells and spells of a higher level as they level up, but isn't learning new spells entirely dependent on what the DM allows in game? Can't you just NOT put the really broken or lovely spells in for the caster to use? Maybe put some cool fighter loot in the dungeon alongside any new scrolls the Wizard could scribe into their spell-books? Yes, it used to be that the ability of a Wizard to gain spells was much more limited: BECMI: Random or DM-selected starting spells. 1 new spell every level, but it stops by character level 5 and any new spells have to be found by adventuring. AD&D: Random or DM-selected starting spells. Learning spells later always involves finding scrolls, rolling to see if you can learn, and transcribing to your spellbook. 2e: Random or DM-Selected starting spells, with side-note stating that a kind DM will allow you to pick a few. Learning spells as AD&D unless you are a specialist, then one free spell per new spell level from your specialty school. 3.5: Pick your starting spells. Choose two new spells per character level. More spells per day per level. You can also transcribe spells, and the process is easier than previous editions. ...and you can see exactly where the big problem occurred. 3.5 wizards have 400 spells to choose from in the core game, including spells that improve other spells, and you can choose any two that you can cast whenever you level up. However, the idea of banning overpowered spells doesn't really go well with organized play, or having to convince players that you're looking out for their best interest (unless everyone is on board), or as a good investment of the DM's time. Why should I root through the PHB to remove stuff that's going to completely outclass the Fighter when I could just not play Next? It's the developer's job to deliver a passable experience right out of the box.
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Dec 30, 2014 07:51
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AlphaDog posted:So, you track material components? All of them, or just the "rare" ones? Do you, for instance, disallow the casting of Barkskin if you've described a week's travel through a pine forest and the Druid forgot to write "big sack of oak bark" on his sheet? Oh wait, you just need to write "component pouch" and you're fine. I bet everyone who has no problem with that would also have no problem with me writing down "weapon and tool belt" which contains whatever weapon or tool I might need, right? The tools thing was actually part of the 3e rules. Artisan's tools, 5 gp, 5 pounds. "These special tools include the items needed to pursue any craft." And if a player said 'My fighter has a bunch of cheapo weapons', I'd say sure. Throw as many daggers, shoot as many sling bullets, entrench as many spears and pole-vault with as many quarterstaves as you want. If you feel like having an excuse, have them on the mule who help carry all your heavy loot offscreen. (Loot logistics is busywork too. If I wanted to micromanage selling off goblin armor, I'd be playing dwarf fortress) If you want to spend your GM effort on ruling exactly how much time, space, weight, and effort is involved in obtaining and carrying around "a pinch of soot and a few grains of salt," and how many castings of comprehend languages you get with 5 grams of soot and 3.5 grains of salt, more power to ya. But specifically ruling and nitpicking the components for each and every spell is going to be super time-consuming, but not actually nerf the wizard in any notable way - he might end up spending 1 copper to get a gram of salt for a thousand castings, but at low levels the cost of obtaining soot out of a chimney or some fleece out of an old robe is probably less than a handwave generic material component pouch would cost (effectively making this a tiny buff), and at high levels a difference of 2 or 3 gp is worthless. Material components just aren't a good balancing target. They're basically just a bunch of silly jokes (or if you're charitable, sympathetic magic flavortext) about the spell. Excluding the expensive components like the diamonds for raise dead, or whatever, but I haven't ever seen anyone handwave those. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 11:11
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Tunicate posted:Excluding the expensive components like the diamonds for raise dead, or whatever, but I haven't ever seen anyone handwave those. I usually don't see these handwaved away, more like handwaved to "yeah, spend 15,000gp and you get the right stuff", so it just amounts to "do you have the GP?" instead of "where do you expect to find 450 years wages worth of diamonds, 3 pages of finest vellum, and a platinum pepper grinder worth no less than 5,000gp, in Bumfuck, Chessenta (pop: e: Look, I agree with you. Tracking minituae is dumb and boring. Material components are a stupid thing to try to track, as are arrows, throwing knives, etc. If the wizard can (as in Next) but a component pouch that contains every minor thing they need, then so should the ranger be able to buy "a quiver" that has all the arrows they need, and the rogue buy "a shitload of throwing knives" etc etc. Gating stuff like raise dead behind rare components not covered by "it's in your pouch" is a cool idea, but in practice it usually amounts to a gp drain (which sucks) rather than "Sorry Dave, you'll have to sit out until the party can get their hands on a venom-ruby, the only known example of which is currently the jewelled eye of the statue of the snake-god in the temple of..." which sucks for a whole different reason. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 11:37
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Regarding rogue's sneak attacks, do they apply to undead now? I've been reading through the Monster Manual for 5th ed, and they don't mention any immunity to it (i believe previous Eds do).
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Dec 30, 2014 12:21
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Mudoubleha posted:Regarding rogue's sneak attacks, do they apply to undead now? I've been reading through the Monster Manual for 5th ed, and they don't mention any immunity to it (i believe previous Eds do). Nah, they ditched that awful rule in 4th ed. Sneak attack away.
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Dec 30, 2014 12:37
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AlphaDog posted:I usually don't see these handwaved away, more like handwaved to "yeah, spend 15,000gp and you get the right stuff", so it just amounts to "do you have the GP?" instead of "where do you expect to find 450 years wages worth of diamonds, 3 pages of finest vellum, and a platinum pepper grinder worth no less than 5,000gp, in Bumfuck, Chessenta (pop: It occurs to me that Raise Dead in particular should probably be a two-stage ritual, where the first step is cheap and easy and puts a person back to combat readiness in like an hour (possibly as a ghost or a frankenstein or mostly alive-looking but clearly Marked By The Death God in some way or whatever), and the second step has to be performed within like a month to bring them back to actual life (or else they will be ACTUAL DEAD FOREVER!) and/or prevent the super-dire consequences of performing the first ritual from befalling the dead guy / the party / the world, and that's the step that requires a venom-ruby or whatever.
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Dec 30, 2014 12:39
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Iny posted:It occurs to me that Raise Dead in particular should probably be a two-stage ritual, where the first step is cheap and easy and puts a person back to combat readiness in like an hour (possibly as a ghost or a frankenstein or mostly alive-looking but clearly Marked By The Death God in some way or whatever), and the second step has to be performed within like a month to bring them back to actual life (or else they will be ACTUAL DEAD FOREVER!) and/or prevent the super-dire consequences of performing the first ritual from befalling the dead guy / the party / the world, and that's the step that requires a venom-ruby or whatever. I like this a lot. Depends on the game, of course, but it's definitely the sort of thing that I'd enjoy as a player, and I can think of a couple of really entertaining scenarios that kick off with "...the cleric is telling you that there's good news and bad news. The good news is that you're not exactly dead..." Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 13:05
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Tunicate posted:(Loot logistics is busywork too. If I wanted to micromanage selling off goblin armor, I'd be playing dwarf fortress) Loot logistics can be kind of fun sometimes, though, and I think it's part of the low-level game. It's fun to see how the party reacts to finding a barrel filled with like 2,000 pounds of Copper Coins, especially if you strip away the video game logic of "touch money get money". GM: It's an enormous barrel full of what appear to lovely orcish copper coins. "How many CP is it?" GM: Like, a shitload of them. You can't even kind of lift the barrel. Your Mileage May Vary. My group used a block and tackle to rig the barrel up as a home-alone style trap to splatter the point man of the incoming guard patrol. After fighting the remaining guards, they shoveled what coins they could carry into their bags after the fight was over, which I think was as cool a reaction as I could have hoped for.
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Dec 30, 2014 14:39
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ProfessorCirno posted:I think it's hilarious when people suggest suddenly fighters do a billion HP damage, because what they're saying is "What if Fighters got Save or Dies, but the save was AC?" Kai Tave posted:Actually I'm not, that's the whole point. Giving Fighters an insta-kill attack and four-figure hitpoints looks ludicrously unbalanced and overly advantaged but it turns out that it isn't because having those things doesn't really address any of the issues people have with "simple Fighters" like you suggested. The Wizard isn't lauded because it can do infinity damage or has huge numbers, the Wizard's power lies in the fact that it gets to engage with the game on an entirely different level than the Fighter does. The Wizard gets a host of abilities that let the Wizard player declare things like D&D is suddenly Fate while the Fighter can only attempt to interact with things through attack rolls, skill checks (of which they generally get shafted on these days), and negotiating with the GM for permission. The difference, of course, is that the wizard can't cast finger of death every single round. But don't get me wrong, I think fighters should be killing a bunch of lower leveled creatures per round, or chopping out big chunks of hitpoints from higher level enemies. There's a lot of complexity in the minigame between fighting defensively, or taking parries with some/all of the fighters' attacks, or just going full attack, or sacrificing all attacks in order to grapple. I'm wondering if a lot of the problem with casters is that the DMs aren't being told enough in DMGs to make sure to have a lot of combats between each rest, to interrupt rests, and to make time integral to the plot. If you just let the casters come in completely prepared to every fight and there's no penalty in taking a break and resting, then there's going to be huge issues with caster supremacy. Without knowing the future, casters have to hold back on their spells, or will often select completely inappropriate ones. Taking away all the fiddly bits does destroy the balance - letting wizards have every single spell in the book (and maybe some they make up!), all the components required, making them tougher, making them better in physical combat, getting rid of memorization times, and even worse, removing interrupts, just leads to caster supremacy. You're right that the wizard (and priest, it's caster supremacy in general) does interact with the game on a different level. But the caster is operating on guesswork. If the DM sits back and says well you can just make sure to always have the right spells prepared for every fight, or have the right noncombat spells prepared for a day when you somehow know there won't be any fights, that's completely idiotic and it's a bad job of DMing. It'd be akin to letting the martials find a wolfsbane, or ogrebane, or whatever poison for every fight they knew was about to come up. Don't get me wrong - casters should be toned down in a lot of ways (mainly by getting rid of divination). But there's nothing inherently bad about martial classes in the earlier D&D editions (basically anything pre-3e).
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Dec 30, 2014 17:26
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AD&D, at least 2E AD&D, still had caster supremacy, though admittedly you had to survive several levels of being easier to kill than a quadriplegic, leprous kobold. It's a dumb system and the 'fiddly bits' didn't balance the class very well at all later on. Adding unfun mechanics to 'balance' narrative control is dumb and bad design. That's all there is to it. edit: Just saw this mastershakeman posted:There isn't too much difference in doing a quest to get the materials for a magic item and getting the materials for a magic spell. I really disagree; unless you're somehow making sure that your caster only ever uses the component once every few levels, you're going to be doing a shitload more, "Well, guys, I used up my Stoneskin/Cloudkill/Polymorph Other/Whatever materials, if we wanna be at full potential (which of course we loving do we're murderhobos) we gotta find the materials again," than, "The ancestral sword of my family has been found in the Evil Baron's castle," type quests. The key difference is that a magic item that someone really wants usually isn't something that you're going to use once and then go on another quest for - the game design itself would encourage the party to do this because chances are that spell just made surviving easier or even possible, meaning of course the group is gonna get behind having that resource available again. Darwinism fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 17:39
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mastershakeman posted:I'm wondering if a lot of the problem with casters is that the DMs aren't being told enough in DMGs to make sure to have a lot of combats between each rest, to interrupt rests, and to make time integral to the plot. If you just let the casters come in completely prepared to every fight and there's no penalty in taking a break and resting, then there's going to be huge issues with caster supremacy. Without knowing the future, casters have to hold back on their spells, or will often select completely inappropriate ones. Non-casters also have a limited resource though in the form of HP, so throwing multiple encounters at the party will hurt the Fighter's ability to heal as much as it will hurt the Wizard's ability to prepare spells.
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Dec 30, 2014 18:07
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Make wizards single target for everything. No more clouds, areas, walls, multiple targets for magic missile or whatever, just one target per spell. They want to cast sleep? Fine, which one of these 20 people is going to take a nap? Make them useless against mobs of villagers with pitchforks and torches (because any wizard worth the name should be able to be chased out of their tower by angry locals) but able to whack an arch-daemon around like a bitch. Then use lots of 13A-style hitpoint-grouped minions (that a wizard can only ever kill one of at a time), with elite bosses that are intelligent, make terrain and (avoiding) cover and general battlefield control important. Probably just play something that isn't D&D.
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Dec 30, 2014 18:08
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AlphaDog posted:I'm not sure how many people posting here understand just how hosed a RAW AD&D wizard is at level 1. This is normally an argument made by people who started AD&D with 2E. At 1st level 1E wizard was no more hosed than a 1E fighter - and considerably better off than a 1E thief - with the 1E cleric being a slightly pants fighter as it had no spells. The thing was in 1E you were supposed to have an entire platoon of troops (or war dogs) with you. The fighter had an average of 6HP to the wizard's 3. But no one expected the wizard to take a hit - the fighter was on the front line, and little more accurate than the wizard. The thief was almost deadweight and combat was a numbers game. In AD&D 2e, the platoon of allies went as did the dungeon walls keeping the wizard safe - and the fighter gained Weapon Specialisation.
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Dec 30, 2014 18:35
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Mudoubleha posted:Regarding rogue's sneak attacks, do they apply to undead now? I've been reading through the Monster Manual for 5th ed, and they don't mention any immunity to it (i believe previous Eds do). Undead were only in 3e explicitly immune to sneak attacks. In previous editions there were some restrictions on the Backstab ability but undeath wasn't one of them. (Although with old school rules being somewhat vague, I guess you could make an argument for it in some cases.) Speaking of which, let me tell you my #1 gripe with 3e and 5e. In 3e they introduced a lot of stuff that somehow, seemingly magically, convinced the entire world that it had always been this way. I see loads of people hold up 3e as being "traditional" D&D while in my opinion it was the single biggest break with tradition in the game's history. And now in 5e they bring back traditions and make it recognizable D&D for everyone... so long as you think 3e was the very definition of traditional, because 5e does a lot of stuff that is anathema to OD&D or AD&D. It's a little silly to gripe about it because "3e did it" is not by definition a bad thing, I just can't stand the falsification of history that keeps going on.
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Dec 30, 2014 19:13
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Sage Genesis posted:Speaking of which, let me tell you my #1 gripe with 3e and 5e. I think I know what you mean but some examples would be cool.
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Dec 30, 2014 19:21
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gradenko_2000 posted:Non-casters also have a limited resource though in the form of HP, so throwing multiple encounters at the party will hurt the Fighter's ability to heal as much as it will hurt the Wizard's ability to prepare spells. HP is a limited resource for everyone, assuming the DM isn't pulling punches and only attacking the martials. Especially with ranged enemies - if casters stroll up behind fighters in robes and start chanting, they should expect to get a half dozen goblin/kobold/whatever else arrows in the chest right away.
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Dec 30, 2014 19:27
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Sage Genesis posted:Undead were only in 3e explicitly immune to sneak attacks. In previous editions there were some restrictions on the Backstab ability but undeath wasn't one of them. (Although with old school rules being somewhat vague, I guess you could make an argument for it in some cases.) I think it has a lot to do with what this generation grew up playing. I'm 30 and while I learned on AD&D when I was really little 3E came out when I was 16 and have been playing or variants of it the majority of my life. For a ton of people 3E what they think of when they think D&D. Not a lot of their target audience is going to appreciate the older stuff. Also, no one likes THAC0.
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Dec 30, 2014 19:32
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mastershakeman posted:HP is a limited resource for everyone, assuming the DM isn't pulling punches and only attacking the martials. Especially with ranged enemies - if casters stroll up behind fighters in robes and start chanting, they should expect to get a half dozen goblin/kobold/whatever else arrows in the chest right away. If you're ever playing the enemies as entirely composed of perfectly rational tacticians who know exactly who to target for the most damage... you're probably going to be wiping parties a lot. You're also probably a bad DM, because enemies should probably play to their IC knowledge, so why does everyone know to go for the dude in bathrobes wiggling his fingers while their friends are being sliced apart by the frontliners?
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Dec 30, 2014 19:39
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SwitchbladeKult posted:I think it has a lot to do with what this generation grew up playing. I'm 30 and while I learned on AD&D when I was really little 3E came out when I was 16 and have been playing or variants of it the majority of my life. For a ton of people 3E what they think of when they think D&D. Not a lot of their target audience is going to appreciate the older stuff. Also, no one likes THAC0. Agreed. Edition Warring played some part in muddying the waters, but "Next is a return to the way D&D has always been" when they're really referring to how 3E did it is probably more about people just plain getting started on 3E than anything else. mastershakeman posted:HP is a limited resource for everyone, assuming the DM isn't pulling punches and only attacking the martials. Especially with ranged enemies - if casters stroll up behind fighters in robes and start chanting, they should expect to get a half dozen goblin/kobold/whatever else arrows in the chest right away. My point is that "Fighters can attack all day, Wizards can only cast so many times" as a justification for Wizards having much more powerful, but limited abilities ignores the fact that Fighters cannot attack all day, because they're losing HP while they're doing it. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 19:39
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Lightning Lord posted:I think I know what you mean but some examples would be cool. Fair enough. 3e introduced unified resolution mechanics (d20 for everything instead of multiple sub-systems), unified xp tables, unified ability score handling (Strength 18/00 anyone?), and so on. They drastically altered the saving throw system, which incidentally turned the Fighter from the best saving throws into arguably the worst. Cyclical initiative and lack of casting time modifiers meant spells had practically no chance to fizzle. It used to be that spells had casting times, usually equal to their spell level. At the start of the round you'd roll for initiative and if you get hurt before the spell goes off, you'd lose it. So lower level spells were quick and retained a lot of utility even at higher levels. In 3e they changed it so that you didn't need to select which spell you were casting (or even if you were casting at all) until your turn comes up. This is a huge boost in flexibility and reliability for spellcasters. Thief skills changed from unique class abilities into part of the skill system. The AD&D Thief had the worst non-weapon proficiency slots of all, because he wasn't a generic skill monkey - he was a dungeon scout. The 3e Rogue class changed him into a skill monkey combined with sneak attack damage machine. It's basically a complete reversal of what the predecessor was all about. No more followers and henchmen. Oh sure there's the Leadership feat but it's optional and universal. It used to be that around 9th level you reached "name level" and could attract followers (with most classes but not all). Especially the Fighter was awesome at this and the game really expected you to change playstyle, from dungeoncrawlers to landed nobility. In 3e they said "back to the dungeon!" and made it so that dungeoncrawling was the prime and only expected playstyle. Feats were introduced. Radical change for how characters are built. Multiclassing is totally different. It used to be that you could select to multiclass at character creation and from there on out you'd just split up your earned xp between your classes and eventually level up here and there, taking the best traits from all your classess. In 3e it changed so that each time you leveled up you could select on the spot which class that level would be in. This gave rise to "builds" that got pretty complicated if you throw supplements and prestige classes into the mix. You could plan a 3e character ahead for 20 levels and take them to all sorts of wild places, unlike in 2e where the course was pretty much set at level 1 and could only barely be adjusted afterwards (especially if you're non-human). Equipment used to work differently as well. Anybody remember the 1d8/1d12 longsword? Or how weapon categories like simple/martial/exotic didn't exist and you were just allowed to pick a few weapons in which you were proficient? The list goes on and on, really. 3e was an enormous departure from 2e but good luck finding anybody who will admit that.
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Dec 30, 2014 19:40
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Darwinism posted:why does everyone know to go for the dude in bathrobes wiggling his fingers while their friends are being sliced apart by the frontliners? This argument always comes up as a soft-tanking mechanism. That roleplay will take up the slack for lovely/absent threat mechanics. The dire bear prefers eating the fabric robed man to breaking his teeth on the metal-wrapped man. If you have the cunning and conniving of a kobold or goblin, you know exactly which character to murder first. Anyone living in the caster-supremacy world of D&D knows who the big threat is. And if they don't, it's probably because they're an animal that would prefer the easier feeding opportunity. Everything should burn down the casters first.
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Dec 30, 2014 20:11
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moths posted:This argument always comes up as a soft-tanking mechanism. That roleplay will take up the slack for lovely/absent threat mechanics. Why? Adventurers are things unto themselves, unless these kobolds have met adventuring wizards before (in which case why are they alive), how do they know this? The assumed world knowledge thing baffles me when adventurers are explicitly not representative of the world.
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Dec 30, 2014 20:21
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| # ? May 29, 2024 22:17 |
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At the very least as soon as the guy in the bathrobes blows up a couple dudes with a fireball he should be the center of everyone's attention.
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Dec 30, 2014 20:23
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