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Kai Tave posted:Pathfinder isn't a great game, but enough writers have thrown enough poo poo at the wall over the years that between that and any bits of backwards-compatible 3.X era stuff you care to port over that you can probably curate a halfway decent experience out of it. That sounds like way more effort and tedium than I want to go through for my pretend-elf playtimes, but compared to Next where there's basically nothing to curate from it winds up sounding like a better option. I love the fact that we've reached the nostalgia point with 3.x where "there's been enough splats shitted out over the years that you can do anything, given time and effort" is no longer 'damning with faint praise' but has become considered an outright feature. something something a million monkeys on a million typewriters
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Sep 10, 2015 07:01
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P.d0t posted:I love the fact that we've reached the nostalgia point with 3.x where "there's been enough splats shitted out over the years that you can do anything, given time and effort" is no longer 'damning with faint praise' but has become considered an outright feature. It pretty much is damning with faint praise, I don't really want to play either one, but at least enough people have chunked through the tedious bits that if you go to the Pathfinder thread and say "hey I'd like to run Pathfinder and have decently balanced classes, what do I do?" that you'll generally be given enough good advice to be able to put assemble something out of the myriad component parts easily enough, whereas if you do that for Next the answer is "?????????????????????????" Both require time and effort but in the case of Pathfinder plenty of people have already put in that time and effort and you can at least crib off of them, meanwhile most attempts to homebrew Next into a better game wind up withering on the vine after the person doing it realizes "hey wait a minute, I'm just trying to put lipstick on a pig" and decides to do something better with their time.
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Sep 10, 2015 07:11
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Kai Tave posted:Well I think "unified ability pools" in a class-based game are kind of boring in general, whether we're talking martial classes, magic classes, whatever. At that point I start to question why I'm bothering with classes at all instead of a point-based game of some sort. Like to take this over to the magic side of the coin, I think it's pretty lame how many "variant D&D spellcasters" there are that basically boil down to "you get these and these and these spells from the Grand Unified Spell List, plus some class abilities for flavor." What's a Sorcerer? Oh, he's a spellcaster that casts exactly the same loving spells as a Wizard, he just casts some of them more times and gets fewer of them overall. What's a Thrakminian Hexweaver? Oh, he's a spellcaster that gets the same spells as everyone up to level X and can get a +5 to Perform (Kazoo) 3/day. This very thing created huge hilarity in 3/.5 as splat after splat after splat would come out with new spellcasters and new spells, and all of them needed to be back-checked against previously released classes. Sometimes they'd just give a new class its own isolated pool of spells, but most of the time they'd either write out the whole drat list or just say "fukc it, 'casts spells as a Sorcerer'".
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Sep 10, 2015 07:20
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At bottom we're really only talking about the difference between "don't roll fighters" (or "I have to write my own improved fighter") and "roll this instead of fighters" Of course the ideal situation would be a game that works well as written, but then you'd be working against factors beyond just pure game design because of the D&D name brand. E: which then points me towards pre-3e D&D
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Sep 10, 2015 08:10
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I'm now realizing that because the online reaction to this new Ranger is "automatic 1-level dip for martial classes, high hp is barbarians thing, TWO good saves?!?!", if they ever did make a new ranger, it would pale in comparison to this one. The baseline for good is so loving low that the other classes will drag this one down into the mud with it because the hardcore fans have a warped idea of what's balanced.
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Sep 10, 2015 09:20
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Well yeah that's right: this UA Ranger isn't "overpowered" so much as that should be how powerful everyone else should be to begin with. 14 HP at level 1?! That's approaching "kobolds can't focus-fire me down" level! Waaay to good to be a shitfarmer guys. What is this, 4e?! Might as well start at level 3 
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Sep 10, 2015 09:32
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gradenko_2000 posted:Well yeah that's right: this UA Ranger isn't "overpowered" so much as that should be how powerful everyone else should be to begin with.
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Sep 10, 2015 14:32
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P.d0t posted:This is pretty much where I'm at with Strike! as well, fwiw. At the same time, the game actually gives you guidelines and the ability to do that quickly and easily. Monsters get their own distinctive quirks within a simple framework, and the load on the DM is much reduced. It is a bit more complicated in some areas though - since nobody is just saying "I move and then attack," the combat is trickier to adjudicate and there is a lot more going on. To me, that's a good thing - there should be more tactical crunch and every player should have cool things that they can do.
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Sep 10, 2015 16:19
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I think what P.d0t is saying is that even if you make monster construction quick and easy, 4e still/also demands that you use "interesting" terrain, and that's also a bunch of additional work, even if you use DM tricks and shortcuts like asking the players to fill in details for you.
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Sep 10, 2015 16:31
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think what P.d0t is saying is that even if you make monster construction quick and easy, 4e still/also demands that you use "interesting" terrain, and that's also a bunch of additional work, even if you use DM tricks and shortcuts like asking the players to fill in details for you. I never found that 4e needed interesting terrain. I would make interesting terrain once in a while, but usually I'd just draw some blobs on my dry-erase grid and go with it. I do the same with Strike now. 4e became grindy at higher levels, yes, but good terrain would just take your mind off the grind, not really prevent it. If you want gridless D&D with more crunch than a PbtA game, I think 13th Age is probably the best thing out there right now. (And if you like the grid, do Strike! Nothing does the grid better. Says me, the totally unbiased author.) Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 19:22
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Okay. If that works, perhaps I'm overthinking it. I'll have to try that.
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Sep 10, 2015 19:30
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Skellybones posted:Well I had this for an idea - What if there was a list of abilities and stuff that were akin to the Battlemaster Manoeuvres, but greatly expanded. They would be broken up into levels, and martial-focussed classes and subclasses could obtain varying sets of them. So Rogues, Rangers, Fighters could get lots of them, while Paladins could get a smaller array. So basically organised spells for martials. And it would go beyond "I hit the goblin 1d8 harder" and go more towards "I use the goblin as a throwing weapon" or "I Kool-Aid man through the wall" or "I ignore the Instant Death spell because I am That Tough" I'm actually working on something like this because my group likes 5e too much to try any other systems, and I don't want the ranger and the rogue to be screwed once we rise past level 3.
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Sep 10, 2015 19:34
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I'm sure this has made the rounds, but speaking of terrain and doodads and making the grid more interesting, a few months ago I came across this guy's channel who has a lot of decent but standard advice and such for playing tabletops in general, but in particular his commitment to room design and his insights about what makes dungeon crawls work is really pretty fantastic. Two samples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haY9mD74FSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za6JgNx2exU For one, I'm frankly intimidated by the levels of effort he puts into those things. I go for marker squiggles and if I'm getting really fancy I'll use empty dice containers to show elevation, so I'm wondering if I need to step my game up a bit. But also I really like some of the concepts that he demonstrates so well like "make the room have a feature which steadily builds pressure on the party to do the thing / solve the puzzle and get out of there". A room-wide DC is a good idea as well, both as a time-saver and as a way of giving a dungeon the tone of being progressively more epic/dangerous the farther in you go.
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Sep 10, 2015 20:11
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gradenko_2000 posted:Okay. If that works, perhaps I'm overthinking it. I'll have to try that. Yeah, the thing with 4e is that when things start to really slow down at later levels, and you're spending over an hour playing out one fight, it makes sense to put in more effort and planning to make that one fight the best it can be. If your fights are quicker and you can get in a few per session, then you won't feel bad about half-assing it a bit. I'm a big proponent of systems that support DMs who want to half-rear end things sometimes (or all the time).
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Sep 10, 2015 20:27
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Does anyone know of any videos or podcasts of people playing this game? I like watching people roleplay and as much as I enjoy playing 4e, hour long combats aren't really fun to listen to.
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Sep 10, 2015 21:42
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djw175 posted:Does anyone know of any videos or podcasts of people playing this game? I like watching people roleplay and as much as I enjoy playing 4e, hour long combats aren't really fun to listen to. There are some podcasts by Mike Mearls! If you want to thrill to the exploits of "endlessly describing walls" and "roll Perception to find the clue to advance the plot, oh you failed, well uhhh."
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Sep 10, 2015 21:51
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Kai Tave posted:There are some podcasts by Mike Mearls! If you want to thrill to the exploits of "endlessly describing walls" and "roll Perception to find the clue to advance the plot, oh you failed, well uhhh." I wonder how much money they're paying Kurtz and the PA guys to keep on shilling 5e at this point, even though I'm pretty sure that Kurtz is still running 4e in his own personal game.
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Sep 10, 2015 22:05
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mastershakeman posted:The hatred of rolling damage dice is really weird. One of my character's defining moments involved damage dice. If turns are taking too long the dm needs to start skipping people. I don't get it. You know what your dice are. It takes 5 seconds to roll them.
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Sep 10, 2015 22:15
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ActusRhesus posted:I don't get it. You know what your dice are. It takes 5 seconds to roll them. In my experience, with various groups, each die roll takes 15 seconds between fishing the die out, rolling it, leaning over the table to read it, looking up their bonus, finally giving the total, and recovering the die after it's rolled. Not to mention all the times ~something~ gets in the way of the die or it falls off the table, and now the table loses another 15 seconds asking if they can reroll it because X and Y and Z. It's great and wonderful if your group only takes 5 seconds to roll a die. And honestly it wouldn't be the first thing I'd cut even with the groups I've played with. But in a group with 6-7 players I'd consider it, because unlike all of you (apparently) I've played in groups that cut out damage rolling and it actually made a significant difference in play speed WITHOUT significantly changing the experience. Sure rolling damage dice is fun, but if damage is static people latch onto something else to define moments in their characters' lives. The human intellect is funny like that; it searches for and finds patterns and meaning even in random results.
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Sep 10, 2015 22:38
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djw175 posted:Does anyone know of any videos or podcasts of people playing this game? I like watching people roleplay and as much as I enjoy playing 4e, hour long combats aren't really fun to listen to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-p9lWIhcLQ It's a 5e game made up entirely of voice actors, who are basically the ideal people to be playing a dnd game on a stream.
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Sep 10, 2015 23:19
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djw175 posted:Does anyone know of any videos or podcasts of people playing this game? I like watching people roleplay and as much as I enjoy playing 4e, hour long combats aren't really fun to listen to. The Adventure Zone is my favorite overall rpg podcast, and they're using 5e.
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Sep 10, 2015 23:37
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Seconding Adventure Zone. It is really great, although they end up ignoring the rules for the most part. It's worth a listen to hear what they did to the introductory module, at the very least.
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Sep 10, 2015 23:57
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Kurieg posted:I wonder how much money they're paying Kurtz and the PA guys to keep on shilling 5e at this point, even though I'm pretty sure that Kurtz is still running 4e in his own personal game. I haven't actually listened to any of their 5e stuff, are they actually playing it straight rules or is it like every other one I've seen where they house-rule out half the retarded poo poo?
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Sep 11, 2015 01:25
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djw175 posted:Does anyone know of any videos or podcasts of people playing this game? I like watching people roleplay and as much as I enjoy playing 4e, hour long combats aren't really fun to listen to. The West Marches is good, one-shot weekly sessions with some recurring cast. First week is average, but gets better from then on.
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Sep 11, 2015 01:37
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djw175 posted:Does anyone know of any videos or podcasts of people playing this game? I like watching people roleplay and as much as I enjoy playing 4e, hour long combats aren't really fun to listen to. I recorded myself playing 5e, although I am far from a professional. This session didn't even really have that much combat!
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Sep 11, 2015 01:55
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ZypherIM posted:I haven't actually listened to any of their 5e stuff, are they actually playing it straight rules or is it like every other one I've seen where they house-rule out half the retarded poo poo? My only real knowledge of it is a third hand account of it ("a real poo poo show") and the pvp comics where the Aquisitions inc. Crew teleport to PAX and endlessly complement the attractiveness of their players and Mearls is depicted as a real life literal wizard.
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Sep 11, 2015 01:57
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ZypherIM posted:I haven't actually listened to any of their 5e stuff, are they actually playing it straight rules or is it like every other one I've seen where they house-rule out half the retarded poo poo?
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Sep 11, 2015 02:17
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I don't know how anyone can look at the UA ranger and call it overpowered. Hell it's only better than other martial in very narrow edge cases.
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Sep 11, 2015 02:25
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It's quite strong if your standards are "the Champion with Great Weapon Fighting and Savage Attacker can randomly drop a bunch of damage all of a sudden, then activate Action Surge and do it all over again!"
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Sep 11, 2015 02:31
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Lots of people on ENWorld regularly complain about Acquisitions Incorporated explicitly because they play real fast and loose with the rules, so there you go.
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Sep 11, 2015 04:19
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ActusRhesus posted:I don't get it. You know what your dice are. It takes 5 seconds to roll them. *twitch* Clearly you've never played alongside someone who plays a 4e melee Ranger and has ONLY ONE OF EACH DIE and refuses to ever borrow anyone's dice to roll multiple dice at once. And takes 5 seconds or so per die. A turn at epic for that character can easily involve rolling 20+ dice, one at a loving time. And worse, no-one else can talk AT ALL whilst this is happening, even when it's to confirm what extra bonuses are floating around, without getting snapped at. I'll never understand people who don't have a big-rear end dice cup and roll everything all at once. The maths get a little slower but it's so much quicker overall.
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Sep 11, 2015 08:36
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Playing PbPs and through roll20 has spoiled me to instant generation of random numbers and never having to worry about loaded dice.
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Sep 11, 2015 08:40
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ProfessorCirno posted:Lots of people on ENWorld regularly complain about Acquisitions Incorporated explicitly because they play real fast and loose with the rules, so there you go. Those are the same people who also praise 5e for rulings-not-rules and DM empowerment, yes?
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Sep 11, 2015 09:01
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thespaceinvader posted:*twitch*  When's their birthday? Get them dice.
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Sep 11, 2015 10:13
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I have many spare dice and have repeatedly offered to lend them. The player can't manage to do the maths any other way. Which is fine when it's a character that makes one attack a round, painful when it's a character that makes ten or so.
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Sep 11, 2015 10:17
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Give them a calculator too. It is pretty easy to punch in the numbers while you slide the dice to the side.
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Sep 11, 2015 10:18
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thespaceinvader posted:I have many spare dice and have repeatedly offered to lend them.
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Sep 11, 2015 10:22
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Eh, he's extremely set in his ways and I honestly can't see myself playing with him again once our 4e campaign ends which is most likely before the end of this month so meh.
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Sep 11, 2015 10:51
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Sounds like he badly needs an "average damage" chart or something.
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Sep 11, 2015 11:04
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Gort posted:Sounds like he badly needs an "average damage" chart or something. The ranger and maybe some barbarians really need an average damage table if you're rolling physical dice with how many attacks they put out.
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Sep 11, 2015 11:07
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