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I mean, if you were looking for an evolution and improvement of 3.5's rules: Increased HP levels and general survivability came from player feedback that the best 3.5 battles were those where the party took a beating, then "figured out" the boss, then came back swinging, but you needed battles to last longer than 2 rounds for that dynamic to play out. Healing surges and the AEDU model of powers were an attempt to address the problem of the 15-minute workday and the lack of inter-encounter tension. 3.5 already had At-will/Cantrips as well as "Daily" abilities out of the box, then Tome of Battle added Encounter and Utility abilities. Powers across all classes and non-magical sources of power were an attempt to address the problem of caster supremacy. The skill system is straight out of Unearthed Arcana and ended up being very similar to Pathfinder, just with more streamlined skill categories. Dr. Tough posted:Where is the new edition wars thread? I really should have just taken this there. You haven't actually asked anything specifically related to 5e. The frequent posters here that dislike it, dislike it precisely because they're familiar with the system. If there's something you would like to know, we'll answer. We'll even answer honestly. EDIT: I even wrote a short post on how to get started on Next without spending a single dime if you want to do an "interest check"
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May 5, 2015 18:22
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gradenko_2000 posted:"It's a boardgame" mostly comes from the fact that many of the game's mechanics, especially with regards to combat, are spelled out in a very technical manner that leaves very little room for misinterpretation. This is actually a good thing in the sense that there's not going to be that discussion from last page about what the gently caress Sneak Attack actually does. Social skills should not exist. Once again 2e is superior and 5e would be better off copying it instead of 3e.
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May 5, 2015 18:26
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mastershakeman posted:Social skills should not exist. Well you're certainly in the right hobby for that. Speaking of which, how's your game going? Abort any more fetuses for magical power lately?
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May 5, 2015 18:28
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How easy is it to adapt older adventures from say 1E or 2E to 5E? That last campaign I ran was for Pathfinder and during part of it I ran the group through Scourge of the Slave Lords (minus a couple parts I cut out) and they seemed to enjoy it. I'm thinking about trying to update maybe Curse of the Azure Bonds or maybe some old adventures out of Dungeon magazine.
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May 5, 2015 18:29
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^^ Pretty trivial. Smush a few skills together, eyeball a few monster numbers, you're done. Have they announced any non-campaign books yet?
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May 5, 2015 18:30
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goatface posted:Have they announced any non-campaign books yet? No, their current plan from the escapist article is to just keep putting out campaign books and include new options in the "Players Guides" for those campaign books and in Unearthed Arcanas.
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May 5, 2015 18:32
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Dr. Tough posted:How easy is it to adapt older adventures from say 1E or 2E to 5E? That last campaign I ran was for Pathfinder and during part of it I ran the group through Scourge of the Slave Lords (minus a couple parts I cut out) and they seemed to enjoy it. I'm thinking about trying to update maybe Curse of the Azure Bonds or maybe some old adventures out of Dungeon magazine. It's probably require some eyeballing, depending on your comfort level. Monsters in 5e aren't especially complicated but all the usual caveats exist - you need to look at HP totals and AC to make sure they're not unkillable for the level the PCs are supposed to be at. The overall feel of 5e is like something between 2e and 3e and that should fit in with those adventures. 5e uses ascending AC so you'll have to be careful when translating that, but in some ways it's actually better than trying to update a 3.x adventure. In 3.x there's no upper bound on AC or accuracy whereas there are very practical limitations on those in 5, just like 2e.
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May 5, 2015 18:34
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In my summation, 5e improves upon 3.5 in the following ways:
and 5e improves upon 4e in the following ways:
Like, if they had decided to take that basic framework and staple 4e's powers onto it, instead of the 3.5 spell list,  
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May 5, 2015 18:34
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Dr. Tough posted:How easy is it to adapt older adventures from say 1E or 2E to 5E? That last campaign I ran was for Pathfinder and during part of it I ran the group through Scourge of the Slave Lords (minus a couple parts I cut out) and they seemed to enjoy it. I'm thinking about trying to update maybe Curse of the Azure Bonds or maybe some old adventures out of Dungeon magazine. AFAIK there's no direct equivalency, but monsters are composed of much the same numbers: AC, Hit Dice, and attacks, although saving throws need to be "extracted" from a combination of attribute modifiers + proficiency bonus. It depends on how you do your adaptation, but it should be fairly straightforward to eye-ball it.
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May 5, 2015 18:35
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Kurieg posted:No, their current plan from the escapist article is to just keep putting out campaign books and include new options in the "Players Guides" for those campaign books and in Unearthed Arcanas. Then again they'd have to come up with a lot more rules per setting if they wanted to have enough to make a player book be worth it. A few more spells and races like the EE stuff isn't going to cut it.
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May 5, 2015 18:37
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ImpactVector posted:This seems insane to me, because you're going to sell at most one copy of a campaign book to a group, whereas you could potentially sell multiple books to a group if they had player options in them. I assume they expect everyone to buy the campaign books for toilet reading.
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May 5, 2015 18:43
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Cool settings are what makes old school D&D great. I might play in a D&D 5E campaign if they had cool Dark Sun or Ravenloft of Al-Qadim books. Instead I'll keep playing the old editions that do let me have fun in the worlds I like. The fact that 5E is also mechanically inferior to many other games I prefer is also a factor, though.
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May 5, 2015 19:08
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Everyone who's thinking of buying this extremely lovely game should just pre-order Heroquest: Glorantha instead, not only does it actually try to have it's mechanics emulate some sort of story rather than D&D's 'because it was always this way' magic that is boring as hell and not like anything in fiction, it's also based in literally the best fantasy setting ever, all the D&D settings combined aren't one quarter as good.
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May 5, 2015 19:13
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Fsmhunk posted:Everyone who's thinking of buying this extremely lovely game should just pre-order Heroquest: Glorantha instead, not only does it actually try to have it's mechanics emulate some sort of story rather than D&D's 'because it was always this way' magic that is boring as hell and not like anything in fiction, it's also based in literally the best fantasy setting ever, all the D&D settings combined aren't one quarter as good. This is definitely system wars'ing. Don't do that. Glorantha is one of the raddest settings around, though.
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May 5, 2015 19:17
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I was actually serious when I asked if there was a new edition wars thread
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May 5, 2015 19:17
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Kibner posted:
Not really, what I said was more about D&D in general than any particular edition. I find it strange that this thread is ten times more active than the Glorantha, while the D&D one is just people saying how much they hate it and the Glorantha Thread is all about how awesome it is. To be honest I'd prefer the old days of pointless edition wars to how depressing reading D&D threads are these days.
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May 5, 2015 19:22
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Dr. Tough posted:I was actually serious when I asked if there was a new edition wars thread I get the impression that the stuff you have to say about 4e would probably play well in grognards.txt. Just pretend you found your ideas on RPG.net and you'll be a hit.
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May 5, 2015 19:23
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RPGnet at least started banning people who couldn't stop frothing about how 4E was a WoW clone boardgame MMO for rollplayers not roleplayers, so there's that.
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May 5, 2015 19:27
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Kai Tave posted:RPGnet at least started banning people who couldn't stop frothing about how 4E was a WoW clone boardgame MMO for rollplayers not roleplayers, so there's that. Yeah, I always forget where the grog bastions actually are.
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May 5, 2015 19:30
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theironjef posted:I get the impression that the stuff you have to say about 4e would probably play well in grognards.txt. Just pretend you found your ideas on RPG.net and you'll be a hit. I'm not sure why you think I hate 4E? Some people have told me it's bad, other people (in this very thread!) have told me it's good. I want to read an edition wars thread because I find those types of threads humorous.
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May 5, 2015 19:31
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We used to have a chat thread for that sort of thing but I think it got gassed. There's always Imp Zone. EDIT: All of the good edition wars arguments were already had, ages and ages ago. Both factions, tired from fighting the same battles over and over, retreated back to their private bastions to lick their wounds and craft biting jabs about the enemy. There are no more arguments. In the grim darkness of the present there are only circlejerks. Mendrian fucked around with this message at 19:35 on May 5, 2015 |
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May 5, 2015 19:32
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Dr. Tough posted:I'm not sure why you think I hate 4E? Some people have told me it's bad, other people (in this very thread!) have told me it's good. I want to read an edition wars thread because I find those types of threads humorous. There really isn't one.
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May 5, 2015 19:32
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Kai Tave posted:
I'm going have to agree with Shakeman. 3.x social skills were so stupidly broken especially if you used epic level rules, and 5E didn't even try. For 3.x, most DMs I played with either curtailed Diplomacy and Bluff shenanigans hard to the point that both skills were near useless, or they just let the character do anything they wanted provided they had the roll for it. Spells like Glibness just compounded the issue. Though I think NEXT does it better by not providing hard and fast rules, there is no guidelines how to incorporate these rules (and most of the skill system) into your game. I personally think it is very bad design to pair a system of hard set rules with a system with very, very loose rules especially, again, if there is no guidance how to use the latter in the game. If you're not going to put the effort into making a good task resolution system for social skills, don't include them in the game. Give some guidelines to the players and DM and leave it to roleplaying. GrizzlyCow fucked around with this message at 19:47 on May 5, 2015 |
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May 5, 2015 19:34
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"This one game did social skills badly" isn't a compelling argument for "social skills shouldn't exist" though which is what he said. 3.X did a lot of poo poo badly, social skills are like the tip of the iceberg in that regard.
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May 5, 2015 19:36
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ImpactVector posted:This seems insane to me, because you're going to sell at most one copy of a campaign book to a group, whereas you could potentially sell multiple books to a group if they had player options in them. Because the focus has shifted to the DM being the decision maker, and not the players. Their online playspace is designed DM being the one who puts down all the money and the players not being able to do anything unless they're on at the same time as the DM (Unless they want to pay the DMs fees too). And most of the additional material they've put out has the "Ask your DM if this is okay" thing, which is okay, but doesn't really feel like it needs to be said. The fact that they turned February into this bizarre combination of valentines day and "Fellate your DM month" just made things weird and creepy, suggesting that you buy your DM rinestone d20 underwear as payment for putting up with your miserable player rear end. MonsieurChoc posted:Cool settings are what makes old school D&D great. I might play in a D&D 5E campaign if they had cool Dark Sun or Ravenloft of Al-Qadim books. Instead I'll keep playing the old editions that do let me have fun in the worlds I like. The same interview said that they're going to keep putting out FR stuff until they're out of ideas for FR, then they'll consider looking at other settings. But they've "Got a lot of ideas for FR" so that might not be for a while.
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May 5, 2015 19:42
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They just pulled Minotaurs from Dragonlance.
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May 5, 2015 19:44
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Kurieg posted:The same interview said that they're going to keep putting out FR stuff until they're out of ideas for FR, then they'll consider looking at other settings. But they've "Got a lot of ideas for FR" so that might not be for a while. Gonna go out on a limb here and say "a lot of ideas for FR" will be like "Gold Dwarf, Shield Dwarf, Ghostfoot Halfling, Drow..." Speaking only of personal predilections, I think we'd be super lucky if they felt like throwing Saurials back in.
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May 5, 2015 19:44
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goatface posted:They just pulled Minotaurs from Dragonlance. In an online supplement. We're probably only going to see FR adventure paths for a good long while. And i doubt we'll see anything like the dark sun or eberron setting books that 4e had.
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May 5, 2015 19:47
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I really hope they don't poo poo up Ravenloft.
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May 5, 2015 19:52
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moths posted:I really hope they don't poo poo up Ravenloft. They could get IGA to make a Ravenloft videogame, now that Konami has blown up.
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May 5, 2015 19:54
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Is there a decent 5E NPC generator? When I ran Pathfinder I used this: http://www.dinglesgames.com/tools/NPCGenerator/pathfinder/ which allowed me to whip up high level enemies fast. It helped a lot when adapting old modules.
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May 5, 2015 19:54
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Nope, and there probably never will be. 5e doesn't have an OGL like 3.X did, and the free online spells and character creation tool that someone made got C&Ded.
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May 5, 2015 19:56
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5e in Fantasy Grounds makes me go "ew", and I'm one of those idiots who spends money on Hero Lab. The Mac version of the FG demo doesn't even have an actual icon set on the Wineskin wrapper.  Mecha Gojira posted:Why can't a wizard have an impressive bench press while also being able to shoot fireballs?
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May 5, 2015 19:58
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MonsieurChoc posted:They could get IGA to make a Ravenloft videogame, now that Konami has blown up. But we already have Bloodborne.
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May 5, 2015 20:03
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GrizzlyCow posted:I'm going have to agree with Shakeman. 3.x social skills were so stupidly broken especially if you used epic level rules, and 5E didn't even try. That bolded part is more or less the correct approach, though. The DM is the final arbiter of whether or not a particular action can be rolled for, so if the Bard with a +30 Bluff modifier supposedly fast-talks his way out of having to do 2-3 hours of whatever other activity the DM had in mind, it's technically the DM's fault for allowing the Bard to make the fast-talk roll in the first place, instead of saying "nope, you cannot do that"
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May 5, 2015 20:17
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I'm not a super huge fan of everyone having the at will / encounter / daily paradigm in 4e, since I like having more differentiation in resource management. I also think it didn't go far enough in removing fiddly bonuses, and I personally just don't like forced movement abilities that much. Healing surges were basically a better version of some of my house rules, though, and I appreciate it having better balance. I've basically drifted away from grid-based combat entirely, though, so I'm not playing 5e either.
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May 5, 2015 20:30
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gradenko_2000 posted:That bolded part is more or less the correct approach, though. The DM is the final arbiter of whether or not a particular action can be rolled for, so if the Bard with a +30 Bluff modifier supposedly fast-talks his way out of having to do 2-3 hours of whatever other activity the DM had in mind, it's technically the DM's fault for allowing the Bard to make the fast-talk roll in the first place, instead of saying "nope, you cannot do that" All that does is make spells even better though. If all social manipulation in game comes down to convincing the DM to let you do it - .e.g, no social skills - than you remove another avenue of character differentiation. The Wizard can still just cast a spell and make the guards believe you're actually birds while the Bard can obviously never do that because nobody would ever believe such nonsense. I'm not saying that convincing a guard that you are the moon is a good thing but social obstacles are a kind of obstacle. By shifting it to pure roleplay you're creating yet another thing that non-wizards can't interact with. The fault lies in the DMs ability to recognize the difference between a social obstacle and a social scene; as well as the DMs ability to incorporate what a player-character is actually saying into the rolled portion of a social challenge.
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May 5, 2015 20:41
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Mendrian posted:I'm not saying that convincing a guard that you are the moon is a good thing but social obstacles are a kind of obstacle. By shifting it to pure roleplay you're creating yet another thing that non-wizards can't interact with. The fault lies in the DMs ability to recognize the difference between a social obstacle and a social scene; as well as the DMs ability to incorporate what a player-character is actually saying into the rolled portion of a social challenge. I got two problems with this. First, D&D Next has been awful at telling people on how to use skills in general, and social skill usage kind of needs at least rough guidelines if you're not using a more rigid system. Maybe the Dungeon Master Guide has more information in it for this kind of thing, but I don't have that book. Second, magic-users dominating portions of the game has less to do with the skill subsystem (and removing it from game) than the brokenness of the D&D's magic system. That'd require a separate fix regardless of any changes to the social skill system. gradenko_2000 posted:That bolded part is more or less the correct approach, though. The DM is the final arbiter of whether or not a particular action can be rolled for, so if the Bard with a +30 Bluff modifier supposedly fast-talks his way out of having to do 2-3 hours of whatever other activity the DM had in mind, it's technically the DM's fault for allowing the Bard to make the fast-talk roll in the first place, instead of saying "nope, you cannot do that" Mendrian already pointed how unfair it is to police skills like that when spells will surely be given free reign. But there is also the problem that the player will have no idea when it is okay to use their skill, a part of their character they have invested in, or when it is not. Heavy policing like this will effectively make it no different from playing it freeform: If the Dungeon Master allow you to succeed, you will succeed, and if the Dungeon Master don't allow you to try, you fail. I say cut the bullshit and just codify this type of play if they cannot or are not willing to create a better resolution system for social interaction. Dungeons and Dragons (and Pathfinder) are still just dungeon crawls, so I don't feel it'd hurt the game too much. Coming off of 3.P's system, I'm sure there would be a net gain since social skill system seems like an active detriment to gameplay.
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May 5, 2015 22:10
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Tunicate posted:I'm not a super huge fan of everyone having the at will / encounter / daily paradigm in 4e, since I like having more differentiation in resource management. I also think it didn't go far enough in removing fiddly bonuses, and I personally just don't like forced movement abilities that much. Not to nitpick but several classes in 4E don't adhere to the AEDU paradigm. For instance, Psionic classes like Psion and Battlemind have Power Points instead of encounter powers which are used to buff up at-wills in certain situations. I think it's probably the best implementation of Psionics we've seen in D&D. Also several Essentials classes are missing either A, E, or D powers I believe. A subtlety to keep in mind also is that every class has these similar resources but they're encouraged to use them differently. For instance, my high level swordmage tends to want to shoot her most powerful stuff as soon as the encounter begins, while our shaman usually keeps stuff in reserve until later on in the encounter. Even our fighter, another defender like my swordmage, tends to use his resources very differently than I do. Like many things 4E, it looks really samey on the surface, but is actually complex and varied when you see it in action.
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May 5, 2015 23:13
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Rosalind posted:Not to nitpick but several classes in 4E don't adhere to the AEDU paradigm. For instance, Psionic classes like Psion and Battlemind have Power Points instead of encounter powers which are used to buff up at-wills in certain situations. I think it's probably the best implementation of Psionics we've seen in D&D. Also several Essentials classes are missing either A, E, or D powers I believe. I only got a chance to play with core books, so I imagine they had a lot of time to diversify after that point. I've heard essentials overall kinda sucked, though?
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May 5, 2015 23:19
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