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In general, if you want to be relevant in combat past level ~5-7, pick a class that is primarily a spellcaster. Pure martials are really weak in comparison once casters start getting their spells.
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May 14, 2015 21:51
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si posted:We're all friends and the balance part too important. If you've played things like Apoc World, classes are inherently not balance-able, and it creates a lot of inter-character awesome. The vast majority of D&D moves just make monster numbers go down. Some classes make them go down faster than others. The game provides few guidelines to what happens when those numbers hit zero (beyond "it dies") so everything you get out of that you bring to the table yourself. si posted:The lethal thing, I say awesome - if our first merry band of adventurers goes out and is slaughtered by the first thing we encounter, this will be great hilarity when we create the second band and march into the same doom.
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May 14, 2015 23:41
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Siivola posted:If you're interested in old-school meatgrinders, you should also check out the Old D&D thread. Also consider Strike, which has rules for adversarial play where the DM is encouraged to kill the players (and the players are given both narrative and mechanical tools to fight back). It's pretty novel, even has things like choosing which dungeon to explore based off the tags it has like Deadly, Sickly, etc.
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May 15, 2015 00:02
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Countblanc posted:Also consider Strike, which has rules for adversarial play where the DM is encouraged to kill the players (and the players are given both narrative and mechanical tools to fight back). It's pretty novel, even has things like choosing which dungeon to explore based off the tags it has like Deadly, Sickly, etc. This is, by the way, one of the thread's biggest issues with 5E. For whatever style of game you want to run, there's another system that does it better (tactical wargame, oldschool meatgrinder, epic hero fantasy...)
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May 15, 2015 00:10
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Daetrin posted:This is, by the way, one of the thread's biggest issues with 5E. For whatever style of game you want to run, there's another system that does it better (tactical wargame, oldschool meatgrinder, epic hero fantasy...) It's been stated before, repeatedly, that 5th Edition was and is the edition of Dungeons and Dragons most focused on being an edition of Dungeons and Dragons. It wasn't going for the best math, or the best balance, or the coolest, or the most retro, or the most customizable, or the best at narratives, or the best at combats, or the best at skills, or the best at literally anything but being Dungeons and Dragons. It was not made to stand out, or be the best, or excel in anything, it's only purpose was to be Dungeons and Dragons. Fifth Edition strove mightily to be the most mediocre of all Dungeons and Dragons, the Dungeons and Dragonsiest of all DnD editions. It succeeded, and sadly quite a lot of people were happy with it because all they wanted was Dungeons and Dragons. If you want to play the most Dungeons and Dragons edition of DnD choose fifth edition. If you're looking for a game with good design that rises above mediocrity and is without a decade's worth of deliberately included baggage you should seek another game.
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May 15, 2015 00:20
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theironjef posted:Honestly despite the constant lack of actual 5e conversation in here, I don't think anyone hates the game, it's too basic and plain to hate. You'll have a good time, it might just be the same good time you had with other systems that didn't take the big buy in. Then again, I may be burning out from playing in two level 1-5 campaigns at the same time.
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May 15, 2015 00:49
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Omnicrom posted:It's been stated before, repeatedly, that 5th Edition was and is the edition of Dungeons and Dragons most focused on being an edition of Dungeons and Dragons. It wasn't going for the best math, or the best balance, or the coolest, or the most retro, or the most customizable, or the best at narratives, or the best at combats, or the best at skills, or the best at literally anything but being Dungeons and Dragons. It was not made to stand out, or be the best, or excel in anything, it's only purpose was to be Dungeons and Dragons. Fifth Edition strove mightily to be the most mediocre of all Dungeons and Dragons, the Dungeons and Dragonsiest of all DnD editions. It succeeded, and sadly quite a lot of people were happy with it because all they wanted was Dungeons and Dragons. I personally don't think it succeeded at even that. 5e doesn't feel like quintessential D&D to me. I mean, sure it has elves and paladins and crap. But that's not saying much, you can get those anywhere. Flat math is not D&D to me. I was raised on THAC0 and I expect a Fighter's attack accuracy to drastically rise as he levels up. 3e managed to do that. 4e managed to do that too, although it also elevated the other classes to (roughly) the same levels of accuracy. But in 5e your bonus increases by, what, 4 points over your total career? That's nothing. Even an AD&D wizard's attack bonus improved better than that. Moreover, advantage/disadvantage are suddenly a core mechanic. And there's personality traits which are more integral to your character than even your alignment. You can get Inspiration by quoting religious texts all the time (page 127 if you don't believe me), but whether or not you are pure evil does nothing mechanically. I absolutely do like aspects and personality mechanics in a well-designed game, but why would you introduce such a thing into D&D and have it be separated from your alignment? That's one of the most classic D&D mechanics, use that as your starting point. I don't know, maybe this all sounds super-groggy. But I don't get why they want to make a "greatest hits album" of D&D... and then make it not like D&D. If that was your design goal, why didn't you do that?
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May 15, 2015 01:08
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They made it like 3.5e, which is D&D. There aren't other D&Ds, sorry.
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May 15, 2015 01:39
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2e is the only e. 
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May 15, 2015 02:16
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FRINGE posted:2e is the only e. 2e was the last e, but I'll fight you for the Red Box.
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May 15, 2015 02:51
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Sage Genesis posted:I personally don't think it succeeded at even that. 5e doesn't feel like quintessential D&D to me. I mean, sure it has elves and paladins and crap. But that's not saying much, you can get those anywhere. Yeah, it misses a WHOLE lot of notes for being D&D for me. I think a lot of it comes down to halfassing way, way too much of the system. I think what 5e was really intended to do was be Mike Mearls Presents: Third Edition. And it does that great! If you're Mike Mearls! But if you aren't Mike Mearls then half the systems don't work, and the other half don't work well with each other. Fighters are boring and weak unless you significantly increase the number of "short" rests, but then monks become way more powerful. SoDs are back to being way too powerful a'la 3e, so now the big monsters have "Save or Die Hit Points." Monster generation is made of two different nonsensical messes combined. The problem isn't just that pretty much the entire D&D team has never worked on a non-d20 game, they've also never really cracked an engine to see how it works. 5e is made of a team of people who don't actually know how game systems are made, and didn't give enough of a poo poo to learn. It's fundamentally lazy. 5e is extremely amateurish; you have to know what the designer was doing or thinking when they made it, and little of it stands on it's own. 5e's only mechanical saving grace is that it's target audience specifically wants a broken down mess explicitly just to fix. It's only other saving grace is knowing how little D&D players actually care about mechanics, and pummeling them with a barrage of PR and advertisement to hit them right in their 14 year old feels.
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May 15, 2015 03:10
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theironjef posted:Honestly despite the constant lack of actual 5e conversation in here, I don't think anyone hates the game, it's too basic and plain to hate. Its too much of disappointment to hate. Too pathetic to warrant the effort. Very pitiful that they had some ideas and then shied away from it, whether voluntarily or by overhead decision, to fellate grognard sympathies in hopes they could recapture the 1e AD&D/Pathfinder audience. I only kept up with it because I was hoping it would be like 2e with 4e encounter design and math. Instead we got.. whatever the gently caress this is suppose to be. Oh and Advantage is a poo poo system that skullfucks any sort of reasonable averages and math. There is a reason why the Avenger's whole gimmick was eventually locked off and then avoided at all costs in later 4e design. ProfessorCirno posted:5e's only mechanical saving grace is that it's target audience specifically wants a broken down mess explicitly just to fix. It's only other saving grace is knowing how little D&D players actually care about mechanics, and pummeling them with a barrage of PR and advertisement to hit them right in their 14 year old feels. Reminds me of Exalted. Strength of Many fucked around with this message at 03:33 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 03:27
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edit: ah poo poo I didn't mean to doublepost
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May 15, 2015 03:32
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Strength of Many posted:Oh and Advantage is a poo poo system that skullfucks any sort of reasonable averages and math. There is a reason why the Avenger's whole gimmick was eventually locked off and then avoided at all costs in later 4e design. Bullpoo poo. Check out the Ironwrought theme, from Heroes of the Elemental Chaos. They kept adding advantage throughout 4e. 
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May 15, 2015 06:08
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ProfessorCirno posted:pummeling them   Drizzt weighs in on the edition war  :http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.249632-Drizzt-Creator-Prefers-First-Edition-Dungeons-Dragons quote:R.A. Salvatore was recently asked which edition of tabletop Dungeons & Dragons he prefers, 4th or 3rd, and he responded that he didn't like either one.
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May 15, 2015 06:23
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ImpactVector posted:I hate this game. It's too heavy to be freeform, too unbalanced and unpredictable to be tactically satisfying, and the few good advances it makes are held back or contradicted by adherence to tradition. Bolded part is my main issue. There's actually a LOT of mechanical cruft to this game that a lot of people just deliberately blind themselves to. If you wanted simple D&D, pick up the Red Box for a fiver.
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May 15, 2015 06:28
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He's not wrong, he's just applying information that's correct about every RPG to one as if it was unique. Every game gets better with creative players and sucks with boring ones. Smart dude.
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May 15, 2015 06:29
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theironjef posted:He's not wrong, he's just applying information that's correct about every RPG to one as if it was unique. Every game gets better with creative players and sucks with boring ones. Smart dude. I still recall trying to describe how my character moved, attacked, etc. while playing D&D once, and my friend telling me that he would penalize how far I moved or how well I attacked based on certain details of my description. From that point on, I only ever described movement as "I move here" and attacks/spells as "I attack."
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May 15, 2015 07:34
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Hmm. You know, what with the unbalanced classes, misworded rules, and low-hp/high-damage things, if you only add a ton of obscure rules only the DM knows that affect gameplay in unforeseen ways, 5E could make a decent SaGa rpg.
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May 15, 2015 07:37
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Dirk the Average posted:I still recall trying to describe how my character moved, attacked, etc. while playing D&D once, and my friend telling me that he would penalize how far I moved or how well I attacked based on certain details of my description. I had that happen once when I was playing a bard in a pickup 2e game. Didn't feel like singing constantly for the bardic valor or whatever. Switched to a Psionicist during the dinner break. So I guess it's creative players AND DMs that aren't dumbasses.
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May 15, 2015 07:38
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Seems like there's a ton of gruesome experiences and opinions on 5E. I know "guys posting on a forum" somewhat indicative of the overall gaming population, but I started with 2E, preferred 4E over 3.5 and my friends and I are thoroughly enjoying the poo poo out of 5E. The rules are simple, combat is fast and deadly with a good mix of tactics and luck, and although I do kind of miss the skill challenges of 4e for disarming elaborate traps, there's enough secondary skills to make diplomacy and whatever fun. We have an assassin rogue who snipes using sneak attack from all over the battlefield, a berserker barbarian who is a notoriously bad roller and is constantly deep in the poo poo, a chaotic evil paladin who hordes all the defense items they find and is nearly untouchable at level 5, and a wizard who does wizard things. I think the rogue has the most fun, using all sorts of acrobatic tricks and and probably has the most kills overall. I know "have a good group" is a fix-all for any allegedly broken system but if the DM is good at painting a picture of bloodshed and carnage, those "I roll to attack" classes can enjoy all sorts of hilarious and satisfying moments. We just finished up the Lost Mines of Phandelver (the rogue found the gauntlets of ogre power and for the next 5 rooms she was interrupting every room description with "I use my new found strength to tear the door off the hinges", "I use my new found strength to smash open the chest", "I use my new found strength to choke the ghoul to a second death". We were howling with laughter for the last hour of the cave.) What's a good segue into Horde of the Dragon Queen? I know POTA gets a better rap but I flipped through it and it seems overly non linear and complex for me to run with minimal time to prepare each session.
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May 15, 2015 08:32
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Gorefluff posted:The rules are simple, combat is fast and deadly with a good mix of tactics and luck Well one out of three isn't too bad right? I mean unless you consider rules that are unclear, could be read multiple ways, are haphazard and likely written by someone who doesn't even know how their own games work, simple. And well fast. Some, especially if a spellcaster can unload all their spells like in 3.x, can end up fast. But often enough they end up dragging on just as any other edition has. Last weak I went to a game, we were supposed to be going back to a tower to finish clearing it out. We never made it to the tower. We got a random encounter. With orcs. This random encounter took up our entire playtime that night. More than 3 hours on a single combat. It took us 11 rounds to finish off 2 orcs and an orc chieftain, we took so long that they got reinforcements right before we finally managed to kill the orc chieftain. And as for deadly? Well okay yeah that it has. That same fight last week? One character died. Outright. And if we didn't have a bunch of flying mounts that just about everyone retreated to after that we would have probably had a TPK. This is after spending more than 3 hours on this fight. This random encounter. If we didn't have flying mounts, which we probably shouldn't have had, we would have likely had a TPK. This was with four level 3 characters, five if you count the level 3 DMPC that was helping us out for the first half of the fight, and another two additional characters for the second half. Man a lot of orc options get multiple attacks, and Orcs have a feature where yeah you aren't running from them. But that was last week. This week we finally make it back to the tower we were trying to get to. Again only four made it, with the DMPC making five. We go through, doing well enough through most of the fights, though we get weakened a bit in some of them, until we get to the big climactic battle. Where three enemies get multiattack. One of which can then cast Haste on himself. Suffice to say the first casualty was the Ranger's Dire Badger. Then my character, then the wizard, and another character gets knocked down to 0 and making death saves. A lot of people going back and forth between 0 and up as healing gets used as much as possible. The DMPC runs, the aarakroka tries to run but doesn't get out of range of a lance on a hasted enemy, and gets put to 0 while way up in the air, like probably hundreds of feet. Around this point a DM for another table jumped in with a level 4 Bard to try and save us. But most were dead, and the last couple quickly died afterwards, he was nearly killed. He went invisible right before the bad guy poked the aarakroka, then shattered the enemy, in the hope of getting rid of the last 22 hp, but did not do enough, then jumped from the tower and cast feather fall before the big bad turned around, so he might survive since it would suck if he jumped in to save us and lost his character. So at this point everyone is dead except the DMPC that fled, the Bard that joined in and now fled, and the one who was at 0 hp, finally succeeded on his third death save, which stabilizes him at 0 hp. But the enemy is not going to leave a still living body alone, with nothing to stop him the enemy throws the unconscious body from the tower. Yeah I would say the game is deadly. Stupidly deadly at low levels. Deadly enough that I would not be surprised if a lot of people try the game, then never come back as their character is brutally killed with nothing they could have done to prevent it. Still I would not say the game is fast, maybe, just maybe, faster than high level 4e, but really what isn't? But the game isn't fast unless you unload all your spells and kill everything before they get to go. Like people did in 3.x.
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May 15, 2015 08:51
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Gorefluff posted:if the DM is good at painting a picture of bloodshed and carnage, those "I roll to attack" classes can enjoy all sorts of hilarious and satisfying moments.
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May 15, 2015 10:19
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5e is actually good because you can do [thing that applies to literally any tabletop game ever made, including Monopoly]
Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 12:30 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 12:26
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Ryuujin posted:Well one out of three isn't too bad right? I mean unless you consider rules that are unclear, could be read multiple ways, are haphazard and likely written by someone who doesn't even know how their own games work, simple. Why did it take you three hours to fight against three orcs?
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May 15, 2015 13:44
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mastershakeman posted:Why did it take you three hours to fight against three orcs? "Roll to hit, roll for damage, next turn" isn't actually that fast if you keep jumping back and forth between conscious and unconscious with all the book-keeping that that needs, plus all the attempts to use some healing, plus all the rolling done by a monster with multi-attack, capped off by to-hit rates never actually getting all that high because "bounded accuracy" isn't so great compared to how OSR or even 3rd Ed D&D scaled.
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May 15, 2015 13:58
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mastershakeman posted:Why did it take you three hours to fight against three orcs? DM has to invent 10-40% of a functional RPG every round.
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May 15, 2015 14:02
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HP is pretty loving stupid in 5e. First level you get max hit die + CON mod, then every level after, you get average-round-up hit die (or rolled, I guess) + CON mod. If weapon damage is [a die + a mod], that basically means you can take 1 hit per level, before you're unconscious.  Or to look at it another way, you can take [level-1] hits per rest before you have to either get a combat heal or start making death saves. All this is to say, giving even boring dumb Orcs a multiattack, at levels lower than when a Fighter gets Extra Attack (and no doubt, the orcs probably also hit harder because reasons) is pretty loving retarded.
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May 15, 2015 14:54
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Sage Genesis posted:I personally don't think it succeeded at even that. 5e doesn't feel like quintessential D&D to me. I mean, sure it has elves and paladins and crap. But that's not saying much, you can get those anywhere. I agree. When I think about Next, I think about bounded accuracy, advantage/disadvantage, and ability scores as saving throws. All of those concepts are mostly new to this editions. I mean, you can find scattered examples of things that look like them or were precursors to them in earlier editions, but they were never centerpiece mechanics like they are in Next. I'm having a hard time getting through the PHB, partly because it's poorly organized and party because its full of concepts that are similar to things from 3.X or 2E but not identical. I keep getting hung up by things like figuring out the way spell preparation has changed or having to remember that the "proficiency" means "gets a bonus".
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May 15, 2015 15:26
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TheAwfulWaffle posted:I agree. When I think about Next, I think about bounded accuracy, advantage/disadvantage, and ability scores as saving throws. All of those concepts are mostly new to this editions. As has been pointed out several time by gradenko, yeah, Proficiency converts to 3.5-style BAB/save progression pretty easily. It's actually also similar to 4e; it basically replaces half-level plus: - proficiency bonus, for weapon attacks - class bonus, for defenses - training/racial bonus, for skills - probably some other thing I'm forgetting right now So yeah, it's not unique to any one edition; it's a compromise that streamlines a couple of them. Like, was anyone actually expecting them to pick-and-choose whole subsystems from various editions and staple them together?
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May 15, 2015 15:47
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Castles and Crusades did ability-scores-as-saves first. poo poo, maybe I could do a "5th Edition feature: where did it come from?" master list sometime. P.d0t posted:HP is pretty loving stupid in 5e. quote:But damage works a little differently than usual. When damage is rolled, it is added to the relevant attribute modifier then compared to a table. A damage roll of 1 means no actual damage took place, 2-5 means a single damage point, 6-9 means 2 points, and 10+ means 4 points. If multiple dice of damage are rolled, then the damage for each is counted separately then totaled, but the attribute modifier only applies to one of the dice involved. And here is where the game reveals its trick: while damage is counted off a PC's hit points as normal, it is counted off the hit dice of other foes. A 10-HP warrior takes ten points of damage to be brought low; a 1-HD mook goes down in a heap with a single point. Furthermore, excess damage can be applied to other foes within range that have an armor class equal to or worse than that of the unlucky target. If you take out a 1-HD soldier with a 4-point wound, then you have three damage points to share out with their similarly-armored comrades.
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May 15, 2015 15:57
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gradenko_2000 posted:I've wondered how it might work if you used Kevin Crawford's OSR damage model from Scarlet Heroes/Exemplars and Eidolons: Jesus, was this a rule for an actual game? It seems like a lovely house-rule kludge; like, at that point, just gently caress the dice rolling and rebuild the math without it.
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May 15, 2015 16:05
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So I'm playing a wizard, is there a nice free online thing anywhere that lets me view the spells by level and class?
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May 15, 2015 16:06
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P.d0t posted:As has been pointed out several time by gradenko, yeah, Proficiency converts to 3.5-style BAB/save progression pretty easily. Proficiency doesn't bother because it's new. It's just that the word itself calls to my mind 2E's weapon proficiencies and nonweapon proficiencies. I have little mental hiccup trying to remember that Next uses the same word to mean something different. I'm reading the PHB for the first time this week, and I keep hitting either new terms that are introduced before they are defined (dash, reaction, bonus action) or old terms that seem to have new definitions (hit dice, proficiency). It bugs me.
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May 15, 2015 16:09
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P.d0t posted:Jesus, was this a rule for an actual game? It seems like a lovely house-rule kludge; like, at that point, just gently caress the dice rolling and rebuild the math without it. It's supposed to allow you to play a D&D module with/as a single player-character without having to rebuild encounters and stuff from the ground-up: damage taken by the PC is cut to a quarter, while damage dealt by the PC kills off entire single HD monsters at a single stroke. I'm working on an F&F write-up of the supplement now.
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May 15, 2015 16:10
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I did precede my comments by saying I realize a good group is a fix-all for everything. I guess my demands out of my elf games isn't very high so take my input as it relates to anyone that's new or casual to the hobby that 5e has been extremely entertaining so far for me and my friends.Splicer posted:So I'm playing a wizard, is there a nice free online thing anywhere that lets me view the spells by level and class? There's a good app on IOS and Android called D&D 5 Spellbook Cards that lets you easily filter, search and build custom lists of spells.
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May 15, 2015 16:17
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TheAwfulWaffle posted:Proficiency doesn't bother because it's new. It's just that the word itself calls to my mind 2E's weapon proficiencies and nonweapon proficiencies. I have little mental hiccup trying to remember that Next uses the same word to mean something different. I'm reading the PHB for the first time this week, and I keep hitting either new terms that are introduced before they are defined (dash, reaction, bonus action) or old terms that seem to have new definitions (hit dice, proficiency). It bugs me. Eh, they did basically the same thing with Saving Throws in 4e; recycling terms for something different is not new. How are hit dice different in 5e than what you're used to, though? 
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May 15, 2015 16:20
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gradenko_2000 posted:poo poo, maybe I could do a "5th Edition feature: where did it come from?" master list sometime. This would be a thread I'm interested in reading. It's amazing just how much of Next is cobbled together mechanics from better games, without actually sanding the pieces to fit or any overarching vision guiding their assembly.
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May 15, 2015 16:21
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moths posted:This would be a thread I'm interested in reading. It's amazing just how much of Next is cobbled together mechanics from better games, without actually sanding the pieces to fit or any overarching vision guiding their assembly. At this point, pretty much any new system would have the vast majority of it's mechanics appear on a list like this. Although, those usually have a new idea that everything else is centered around.
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May 15, 2015 16:23
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TheAwfulWaffle posted:Proficiency doesn't bother because it's new. It's just that the word itself calls to my mind 2E's weapon proficiencies and nonweapon proficiencies. I have little mental hiccup trying to remember that Next uses the same word to mean something different. I'm reading the PHB for the first time this week, and I keep hitting either new terms that are introduced before they are defined (dash, reaction, bonus action) or old terms that seem to have new definitions (hit dice, proficiency). It bugs me. Did people hate those weapon/nonweapon proficiencies? It's weird they disappeared to where the word got reused.
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May 15, 2015 16:25
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