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Every time some game designer decides he wants something like character classes with asymmetric abilities and resource management some classes always wind up getting shafted in the name of "not being boring/samey." I'm convinced that the pipe dream of a game where one set of classes can have super amazing gamechanging abilities X times a day and some classes can do less awesome things but more frequently and somehow it's balanced and fun for everyone is exactly that, a pipe dream.
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May 5, 2015 23:21
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Essentials was made by one Mike Mearls and was his attempt to "fix" 4E.
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May 5, 2015 23:21
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Other Mike Mearls contributions to 4E include the adventurer's vault which includes point-missing items such as a healing potion that does not expend healing surges.
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May 5, 2015 23:23
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30.5 Days posted:Essentials was made by one Mike Mearls and was his attempt to "fix" 4E. He did this by making the wizard more powerful and slapping a new coat of paint on top of it to make it seem different, creating two new leader classes out of the cleric and druid, removing AEUDs from martials, and making two versions of the warlock, one of which is arguably the worst class in existance, the other of which sounds very cool on paper but needs some serious rules gymnastics to make it viable.
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May 5, 2015 23:28
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Kurieg posted:He did this by making the wizard more powerful and slapping a new coat of paint on top of it to make it seem different, creating two new leader classes out of the cleric and druid, removing AEUDs from martials, and making two versions of the warlock, one of which is arguably the worst class in existance, the other of which sounds very cool on paper but needs some serious rules gymnastics to make it viable. Honestly I'm not sure which warlock is which because they both fit that description. 
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May 5, 2015 23:29
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The binder and the Hexblade respectively, but yeah they're both not super great. If the hexblade got a third use of it's encounter power it would feel less bad at least. The binder just makes absolutely no sense no matter how you look at it and got zero secondary support.
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May 5, 2015 23:31
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Kai Tave posted:Every time some game designer decides he wants something like character classes with asymmetric abilities and resource management some classes always wind up getting shafted in the name of "not being boring/samey." I'm convinced that the pipe dream of a game where one set of classes can have super amazing gamechanging abilities X times a day and some classes can do less awesome things but more frequently and somehow it's balanced and fun for everyone is exactly that, a pipe dream. To give a 3e reference, I mean something more like the difference between a crusader and a binder, not the difference between a wizard and a fighter. Did 4e ever get binders, by the way? They seem like the easiest class ever to port over.
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May 5, 2015 23:32
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As above, they hosed them up.
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May 5, 2015 23:33
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Yes and No. There is a class literally named "Binder" which is a controller warlock variant but is very very bad for a lot of reasons and has absolutely nothing to do with the 3.5 binder ("binding" in this case meaning binding monsters with wisps of shadow). There's also the Vestige pact warlock which involves binding various dead gods and souls to yourself with your daily powers and then using those souls to boost your other powers. It uses the base warlock toolkit though rather than anything unique, but it's one of the stronger warlock specs if you want to pretend to be a very leadery striker.
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May 5, 2015 23:35
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Tunicate posted: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? Psionics' power point system was a neat idea, but ended up being pretty dumb in practice since most classes ended up with one really good power to spend the points on that they used for most of a character's career. Most of Essentials ended up being somewhere in the middle outside of a few builds that were actually pretty strong, and most of those were built around boring gimmicks like charge optimization. I did have some good fun playing a Hexblade in Encounters though (levels 1-3).
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May 5, 2015 23:36
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goatface posted:As above, they hosed them up. How do you gently caress that up? Bind a vestige. Get these passive buffs, and its appropriate AED powers (see list).
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May 5, 2015 23:37
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Is it wrong that I'm mostly looking forward to DMing 5E cause they're aren't loads of splatbooks? Like, there's internet articles, but those don't carry the official nature of "A BOOK". Last time I DMed with 3.5. In a campaign that went to Level 20. It was practically an arms race to challenge the players. 5E still has Caster Supremacy, but it seems reigned in at the very least. I'm sure Mearls fought that kicking and screaming.
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May 5, 2015 23:38
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Tunicate posted:How do you gently caress that up? That's a Vestige Pact warlock. You could call them Binders, but there's also a Binder class that you could call Binders if you wanted, which you wouldn't because they are hosed up.
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May 5, 2015 23:39
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Tunicate posted:To give a 3e reference, I mean something more like the difference between a crusader and a binder, not the difference between a wizard and a fighter. I'm still not convinced that this approach is inherently better than just giving every class the same breadth of abilities at the same time. It always seems to me that asymmetry is a thing people are enamored of for its own sake.
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May 5, 2015 23:45
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NameHurtBrain posted:Is it wrong that I'm mostly looking forward to DMing 5E cause they're aren't loads of splatbooks? Like, there's internet articles, but those don't carry the official nature of "A BOOK". I mean, if uber-powerful characters are bothering you (or making it significantly harder to DM) then you could probably talk to your players about it. It's not wrong about wanting less splatbooks, but really that's only a temporary solution.
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May 5, 2015 23:45
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30.5 Days posted:Essentials was made by one Mike Mearls and was his attempt to "fix" 4E. Oh....that explains a lot when I look at my Slayer I'm playing in PbP and compare it to other Striker classes....
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May 5, 2015 23:46
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D&D Next: less broken because there's less of it.
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May 5, 2015 23:46
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NameHurtBrain posted:Is it wrong that I'm mostly looking forward to DMing 5E cause they're aren't loads of splatbooks? Like, there's internet articles, but those don't carry the official nature of "A BOOK". Why not just say that if it's not in the PHB it requires DM permission? That seems a lot easier than getting into an arms race. Especially with a system like 3.5 which was notorious for rules bloat.
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May 5, 2015 23:51
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Essentials was proto-5e, but functions a lot better because the Mage/Skald/etc. aren't literally better at everything than the Slayer/Thief/etc. Like the martials are simpler/more boring, but they're still effective at their intended role such that you can't replace your Knight with a Skald and be 100% better off for it.
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May 5, 2015 23:58
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Kurieg posted: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. They are already planning out multiple years of FR stories, and I'm not even joking. It took years to get a dark sun book for 4e. They did an amazing job with it though. That, PHB3 (psionics) and Psionic Power were pretty much the last 'real' 4e books published before Mearls swooped in and shitted out Essentials.
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May 5, 2015 23:59
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Dr. Tough posted:Why not just say that if it's not in the PHB it requires DM permission? That seems a lot easier than getting into an arms race. Especially with a system like 3.5 which was notorious for rules bloat. Plenty of 3.5 GMs do this without the faintest clue that some of the most broken stuff in the game is core PHB only, meanwhile a those excluded sourcebooks are the ones with actually balanced casters and nice things for fighters.
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May 6, 2015 00:04
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Just dusted this thread off after dropping off around page 210 or so, good to see some things never change. Since 200 pages is a tall order, would someone mind sharing: 1) Has anything interesting been done with Assassins yet? They were the most blatant trap class at the beginning, and I'm curious if they did anything to make it functional or just doubled down on screwing over people who don't know better. 2) When did Sean K. Reynolds get hired on to work for 5e? I found out about it in Grog.txt today and I'm genuinely curious as to when 5e actually [Power Word: Jump]'d the shark.
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May 6, 2015 00:10
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Father Wendigo posted:1) Has anything interesting been done with Assassins yet? They were the most blatant trap class at the beginning, and I'm curious if they did anything to make it functional or just doubled down on screwing over people who don't know better. Rogue and Fighter are still pretty bad, the former mostly because Expertise is readily available on the Bard and the other features of its archetypes can be replicated with spells. So it has neat stuff that looks cool on the surface but isn't that great in the context of the rest of the classes (so yea, kind of a trap). The most recent Unearthed Arcana thing has a new archetype that is much better (though still weaker compared to casters).
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May 6, 2015 00:25
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Father Wendigo posted:Just dusted this thread off after dropping off around page 210 or so, good to see some things never change. Since 200 pages is a tall order, would someone mind sharing: 1) As far as I know, they haven't really changed any of the core options and nothing they've added so far has added that much that's useful for Assassin rogues. 2) Reynolds literally first posted about it on Facebook yesterday. Apparently he's only there to help sort out realmslore so whoever they license it out to doesn't have to, not to do any full-on game design.
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May 6, 2015 00:25
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There doesn't seem to be any official fixing going on, and I don't think their will be with their skeleton crew. There's prob a million and one homebrew solutions for Champion and Assassin. I'm a nerd and basically giving Assassins the table top version of WoW Rogue poisons. VIDEO GAMES IN MY D&D.
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May 6, 2015 00:30
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NameHurtBrain posted:Is it wrong that I'm mostly looking forward to DMing 5E cause they're aren't loads of splatbooks? Like, there's internet articles, but those don't carry the official nature of "A BOOK". Well, 5E seems to be a solid upgrade on 3.5. The game is bad, but it's playable. Go and have fun, fair goon.
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May 6, 2015 00:41
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Father Wendigo posted:1) Has anything interesting been done with Assassins yet? They were the most blatant trap class at the beginning, and I'm curious if they did anything to make it functional or just doubled down on screwing over people who don't know better. Not really, about the only major gimmick the assassin has is surprise rounds. Normally they're uncommon, but by investing in stealth or something with your expertise bonus you can scout a little bit ahead, shoot a dude to start the surprise round and then use your bonus action + move to hide or dash your way back to the other folks. It's still pretty gimmicky, only works for a round and can go south pretty easily, which is why you want your party some 30 feet back.
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May 6, 2015 00:55
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moths posted:I really hope they don't poo poo up Ravenloft.
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May 6, 2015 01:05
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I didn't really care for White Wolf's take on the setting, mostly because they couldn't or didn't get the rights to some of the characters in it (like Soth for example). I'm not sure what's wrong with 2e Ravenloft though? I have Domains of Dread and I think it's a pretty good campaign book. Adapting to 5E shouldn't even be that hard. It's been a while since I've played a Ravenloft game but I seem to remember that it's main rules gimmick was fear/horror/madness which shouldn't be that hard to translate. Just assign each one to an attribute and make sure each class is proficient in one of the categories.
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May 6, 2015 01:12
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What's wrong with 2e Ravenloft is the metaplot baggage from the modules, like many of the 2e settings.
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May 6, 2015 02:13
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GrizzlyCow posted:Well, 5E seems to be a solid upgrade on 3.5. The game is bad, but it's playable. Go and have fun, fair goon. My players are having a blast playing 5E over 3.5. I don't get some of the people here making GBS threads all over the game's problems as there as is an easy fix to how broken this game is: just have fun, don't throw the book down every loving time, and listen to your DM. 5E is also like a homebrew goldmine for me, I've already ripped apart the dragonborn and created a platinum dragonborn (Dragonborn of Bahamut) for a player who died at the end of Hoard of the Dragon Queen and whose character is being brought back to life by Bahamut for "services rendered". I've also allowed our Ranger to use the spell-less variant with some tweaks and I've created a custom Psion class. It's so much easier to swap out features of races and heroes, and to balance them. But Commissar Kip, this isn't how this works, blahblahblah I don't give a gently caress - my players are enjoying themselves immensely. Your job as a DM is to create a story people enjoy playing - not to gently caress them in the rear end with the rulebook. But then again, I like to tinker with the system to make it just how I, and my players, like it.
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May 6, 2015 02:50
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You're proving everyone's main beef with 5e. Yes, if you re-write most of the game it can be good. Some of us think that the people paid to write the book should have explained what the hell they were going on about instead of making the DM do their job for them.
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May 6, 2015 02:59
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There are games in which it is vastly easier to do these sorts of things because they do not assume system mastery or a "good" dm, and also don't involve rewriting classes or rules text. For example, everything you just described in this post is much easier to do in DW and 13th Age.
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May 6, 2015 03:01
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Commissar Kip posted:Your job as a DM is to create a story people enjoy playing - not to gently caress them in the rear end with the rulebook. Correct, my job is not to go through and recreate the game.
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May 6, 2015 03:06
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Commissar Kip posted:My players are having a blast playing 5E over 3.5. I don't get some of the people here making GBS threads all over the game's problems as there as is an easy fix to how broken this game is: just have fun, don't throw the book down every loving time, and listen to your DM. You're not actually disagreeing with anyone, you're just saying it doesn't matter that the game's bad.
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May 6, 2015 03:08
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Why are you guys playing this game if you hate it? Like why not go back to 4E or Pathfinder or whatever you were running beforehand?
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May 6, 2015 03:09
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Lurks With Wolves posted:2) Reynolds literally first posted about it on Facebook yesterday. Apparently he's only there to help sort out realmslore so whoever they license it out to doesn't have to, not to do any full-on game design. This makes WAY more sense; while SKR was abysmal at design, he did almost all the 3.x FR books and I've been told on good authority that the fluff was solid. Dr. Tough posted:Why are you guys playing this game if you hate it? Like why not go back to 4E or Pathfinder or whatever you were running beforehand? Pretty sure most people here don't play it.
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May 6, 2015 03:10
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Dr. Tough posted:Why are you guys playing this game if you hate it? Like why not go back to 4E or Pathfinder or whatever you were running beforehand? I ran it for my group, but everyone including me wanted to stay with 4e. Works for me, frankly. I think it's a much better game than 3.x/PF and just hope people are enjoying it.
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May 6, 2015 03:20
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I played 5e weekly for almost a year and a half for the playtest. I feel like I can bitch about 5e at this point; I'm not going to change my mind about the things I like or dislike, but I am curious about where they are going with the game.
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May 6, 2015 03:23
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dwarf74 posted:Goons in this thread do tend to get goony about 5e, but nearly everyone here gave it a fair shake and left, or else they're playing because their group is. The people who really got me into D&D never got into 4e themselves; I like to pretend one day I can get them to agree on 5e (Everyone's 2nd-Favourite Edition™) but as it is, we're basically on non-speaking terms right now.
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May 6, 2015 03:25
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