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Turtlicious posted:How do I make varied combat encounters for 5e? I liked 4e's class system for monsters where you just bought thing with XP. Apparently CR is a thing again, and any level monster could realistically be beaten by any level characters? I'm not sure how it works, even while leafing through the Monster Manual and DM guide.
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Jan 23, 2016 11:38
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As a person who never got a chance play 5E and held similar (but less extreme) opinions to the people here, I finally got to play a session tonight. It was surprisingly not as bad as I thought. Decided I'd post a trip report just in case anyone was interested. Our group has almost exclusively played 3.5 for the past decade or so, with the only exceptions being d20 Modern, odd homemade D&D heartbreakers, and a futuristic 4E game I ran. The DM's a 3E pro and actually helped design the Legend system. Our newest player's probably played ~4 campaigns. Most of us are more powergamers than RPers. I missed group character creation, but brought my bard I already prepared. The book's terribly laid out and I actually totally missed choosing a background, but I love how simple everything is. Ability Score + Proficiency + maybe an extra dice with Advantage/Disadvantage on top. Proficiency is so much better than BAB and weird save DCs, and it's so nice not having AC, Flatfooted AC, and Touch AC. I also didn't have to spend hours figuring out how to spend skill points and what feats to choose to make a functional character. We were told that the campaign would eventually lead up to stopping eldritch horrors from destroying the world, but we're starting out small as a group of mercenaries for essentially a large alchemical company that has a monopoly on healing potions and stuff, to the extent that they've made healing magic illegal. We pick up a few jobs in town and start with the closest, simplest one: deal with a necromancer who fortified himself in a local cemetary's crypt. Our group was comprised of my bard (aiming to be a front line, supportive Valor bard either stealing cool wizard spells are awesome paladin smites), a tanky polearm-wielding paladin, fire-spewing tempest cleric, deadly barbarian, and deadly roguish archer (played by our resident newbie, who had fun not being outclassed by other people for once!). First thing I noticed is that everyone actually seemed important skill-wise. When we talked in town, scouted out the cemetary, disarmed traps in the crypt, and in general progressed through non-combat encounters everyone could contribute. It wasn't the annoying case where the Skill Monkey made everyone else obsolete (and subsequently will screw over the party if they don't show up one week). Everyone was looking for traps, multiple people could stealth down to scout out the next hallways, and even though I wasn't proficient in Slight of Hand, I was still dextrous enough to help out with lockpicking! Combat was fine, although I'm playing a bard so I had plenty of neat options. Doesn't play any faster than 3E, and it's still stupid deadly at level 1. I took Inspiring Leader to try to help there, and a few people did get pinged for ~1-2 points of damage, but it totally didn't help the paladin getting squished by a critical hit for ~30 damage from an ogre zombie. We're using Hero Points though, so he just spent one to not instantly die. It was really fun to hold the line with Vicious Mockery after he went down so the other three guys could used their ranged options to bring the zombie down. Later on against the necromancer and his minotaur skeleton I also used Dissonant Whispers to not only deal a ton of damage to the skeleton, but also provoke reactions from our front line fighters to bring him down. It was cool! The plot point variant rule is also cool. I know that it probably isn't new to most people here, but this is about the extent of cooperative storytelling that I like (I genuinely don't understand how games like Strike!, Fate, or Dungeon World work; they just seem awkward). One player used his plot point to say that we coincidentally did leave the entire crypt cleared of undead when we left after killing the necromancer, and we decided the complication was that someone related to the necro's death knew we killed him. Another player then spent their plot point to claim we could loot the rest of the crypt, but the barbarian picked up a coin that the necromancer's master could use to scry on us. I'm genuinely looking forward to the next session. I feel like 5E does have some neat ideas and executes some of them pretty cooly. The most fiddly bonus I had to deal with was giving a Bardic Inspiration die to people, and my character sheet is literally like a fourth the size of my standard 3E sheet. The game's streamlined in a lot of nice ways and I can focus more on playing the game rather than preparing to play the game or acting as a human calculator. I don't feel any large power gap between our characters so far. I do still feel like there's lots of awkward bits to the system. The PHB is unbelievably poorly laid out, the resource management stuff is abysmal (Let's divide resources up between short and long rests and screw over party members if we don't rest properly or encounters are weird!), and the game feels dead with how little support it's received (and the poor quality of the supplements that have come out), but it's been genuinely fun. The game now definitely feels closer to "this comes so close to being a really good, conservative evolution to 3E" rather than "this is a completely disappointing, lazily designed game". It cut out a ton of the garbage that got in the way of the actually playing 3E and 4E while the mechanics still maintain that same "D&D feel". I think some combination of 5E's simplicity with 4E's structure and good design would be my favorite edition of D&D. Ederick fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Jan 24, 2016 |
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Jan 24, 2016 05:42
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Yeah, 5e isn't a terrible game at its core. It certainly beats the hell out of 3rd for me, and I'd be more likely to use it for a story-heavy game than 4th (at least with new players). A lot of the ire comes from the steps backward it did take from the last edition, the lower production and support values, and the god-awful editing and layout of the core books. The laziness everyone harps on is just the sheer volume of material that was a straight cut and paste from their previously published stuff. The idea of keeping the structure of 4e with some of 5e's simplification as a "dream version" is one I'd agree with wholeheartedly. Especially if they restructured resting mechanics as giving you penalties on rolls/requiring checks to go on after being active so many hours vs. the "do x thing y times per day" mindset, but that's just me. 13th Age actually allllmost fills that niche, and I like it a lot, but I feel like it leans too heavily on established D&D material as well in a lot of places. It presupposes a fair amount of tabletop gaming knowledge, too.
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Jan 24, 2016 07:12
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A version of D&D that: doesn't have the obsessive item treadmill doesn't have a bunch of tiny little feats doesn't bloat its numbers across a thirty-level spread reduces most of the system math to d20 + two modifiers, three tops (as a result of the three earlier points) uses randomly rolled stats (but still produces decent characters) doesn't inherit the CoDZilla class balance problems of 3.5e and isn't 13th Age would probably very closely resemble Gamma World 4e, reskinned into "serious" Forgotten Realms fantasy tropes
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Jan 24, 2016 09:58
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I don't think anyone here thinks 5e is aggressively terrible. It's just aggressively mediocre. 5e's biggest sin remains how boring it is. It does nothing I can't do better in another game.
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Jan 24, 2016 10:28
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ScaryJen posted:I'd be more likely to use it for a story-heavy game than 4th (at least with new players). Oh, please do tell how Next's system supports ~HIGH STORY~ in a way that 4E doesn't. I find that rather bizarre — there's tons of systems there aren't only simpler to learn (since we're talking about new players) but also REALLY designed to support story/narration heavy games. If one's focus was REALLY all ~~story and roleplay~~. Fate would be a better match, since Next's only parts that directly deal with roleplay/story/naration bits (Inspiration + Backgrounds + those flavourless, generic pseudo-aspects backgrounds are composed of) work in a way that very much resembles Fate's mechanics (only worse, since Next lacks something like a Fate point economy, so, much like Cook with Numenera, it seems Mearls is unable to really get post-2005 game design). ScaryJen posted:Especially if they restructured resting mechanics as giving you penalties on rolls/requiring checks to go on after being active so many hours vs. the "do x thing y times per day" mindset, but that's just me. IMO this really sums up what Next is all about — the simulationist wank. Does it enhance gameplay? Who cares! I just want the game to become an elf trance simulator! That's why ENWorld had the huge damage-on-a-miss-dedicated-sub-forums fiasco, and that's why we got bloody ONE HOUR "short" rests and no Warlord class — a fun game isn't really as important as a "realistic" elf trance simulator.
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Jan 24, 2016 12:42
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Nancy_Noxious posted:elf trance simulator!
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Jan 24, 2016 13:15
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Ederick posted:Our group has almost exclusively played 3.5 for the past decade or so, with the only exceptions being d20 Modern, odd homemade D&D heartbreakers, and a futuristic 4E game I ran. The DM's a 3E pro and actually helped design the Legend system. Our newest player's probably played ~4 campaigns. Most of us are more powergamers than RPers. I missed group character creation, but brought my bard I already prepared. The book's terribly laid out and I actually totally missed choosing a background, but I love how simple everything is. Ability Score + Proficiency + maybe an extra dice with Advantage/Disadvantage on top. Proficiency is so much better than BAB and weird save DCs, and it's so nice not having AC, Flatfooted AC, and Touch AC. I also didn't have to spend hours figuring out how to spend skill points and what feats to choose to make a functional character. It still amazes me every time I read something like this, where basically someone says "Man I love how 5e gets rid of lovely/dumb 3.5isms!" but apparently when 4e did the exact same thing there were tears about how it changed too many things too quickly and isn't real D&D!!!1! 
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Jan 24, 2016 15:07
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I wouldn't call 4e's feats anything but a mess, but at least the choice was worth giving a poo poo about.
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Jan 24, 2016 15:10
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P.d0t posted:It still amazes me every time I read something like this, where basically someone says "Man I love how 5e gets rid of lovely/dumb 3.5isms!" but apparently when 4e did the exact same thing there were tears about how it changed too many things too quickly and isn't real D&D!!!1! Yeah, I totally loved what 4E did with AC and the saves along with super simplifying skills. I think 4E handled skills even better since there's that awesome page in the DMG that says ""hey, here's a list of DCs applicable for any task the players do at any level" rather than the weird 3.5-transposed DCs in this edition. From my limited experience, it's still really fiddly with tons of modifiers though; our only 4E game went to about level 9 and I think my players were definitely beginning to feel the fatigue of all the conditional bonuses and moves. Still the funnest, easiest system I've ever DM'd though. I do think that overall 4E was too large of a change for a good portion of the stubborn D&D fan base. It's an awesome edition, but too many sacred cows were slain, they had a weird passive-aggressive marketing campaign, and I feel like the books did a poor job of teaching older edition players how to get that same D&D feel out of the very different style of rules.
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Jan 24, 2016 16:52
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P.d0t posted:It still amazes me every time I read something like this, where basically someone says "Man I love how 5e gets rid of lovely/dumb 3.5isms!" but apparently when 4e did the exact same thing there were tears about how it changed too many things too quickly and isn't real D&D!!!1! It's doubly ironic insofar as BAB, flat-footed AC, and touch AC are actually AD&D-isms, and 5e actually increases the number of saves you have to keep track of by 1.
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Jan 24, 2016 17:17
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Especially early on, everyone will be able to contribute skill wise, because the very highest early game bonus you can have to a skill is +7, with the average person being 'skilled' at a small handful of skills with a +5. Compared to the strength of the d20, these bonuses are small enough that everyone has a reasonable chance of doing things well, trained or no. At my tables, any time a skillcheck comes up that everyone can roll, everyone rolls it. Often times, it's not the high wisdom cleric trained in religion that makes the check, but the warlock with a +1 religion skill modifier.
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Jan 24, 2016 18:28
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CaPensiPraxis posted:Especially early on, everyone will be able to contribute skill wise, because the very highest early game bonus you can have to a skill is +7, with the average person being 'skilled' at a small handful of skills with a +5. Compared to the strength of the d20, these bonuses are small enough that everyone has a reasonable chance of doing things well, trained or no. At my tables, any time a skillcheck comes up that everyone can roll, everyone rolls it. Often times, it's not the high wisdom cleric trained in religion that makes the check, but the warlock with a +1 religion skill modifier. I always find this to be more of a hindrance than a help. Assuming most characters have at most a +5 to a given skill you run into a weird problem. A trained and talented character has a 25% better chance of knowing or doing something than a character with no skill or aptitude. That's weird! It suggests that the things you identify as core to your character aren't really. It's entirely possible that the learned and scholarly Cleric who has put points into Intelligence (to the detriment of other stats!) may know nothing about a urban pantheon one city over while the Barbarian with +0 to the check magically does know. I'm not saying this is a verisimilitude problem. It's more about making a character to specifically be good at thing and then being constantly upstaged by untrained characters.
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Jan 24, 2016 18:58
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Mendrian posted:I always find this to be more of a hindrance than a help. Assuming most characters have at most a +5 to a given skill you run into a weird problem. A trained and talented character has a 25% better chance of knowing or doing something than a character with no skill or aptitude. That's weird! It suggests that the things you identify as core to your character aren't really. It's entirely possible that the learned and scholarly Cleric who has put points into Intelligence (to the detriment of other stats!) may know nothing about a urban pantheon one city over while the Barbarian with +0 to the check magically does know. That character's background should also factor in. If the cleric can roleplay his way into arguing he should have some insight, he could also gain advantage (another ~ +4).
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Jan 24, 2016 22:25
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Hubis posted:That character's background should also factor in. If the cleric can roleplay his way into arguing he should have some insight, he could also gain advantage (another ~ +4). Don't backgrounds specifically give you the proficiencies in the first place rather than giving advantage on them?
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Jan 24, 2016 23:16
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AlphaDog posted:Don't backgrounds specifically give you the proficiencies in the first place rather than giving advantage on them? Fill in the blank, Up to your ________________
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Jan 24, 2016 23:17
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I generally do a quick calculation of DC per player into easy, medium, hard, or very hard. The acolyte cleric from the imperial city who's god is the mother of the god the party just rolled religion for is going to have an easy check, but the sailor fighter from another realm who openly hates books might be making a hard check to see how much they know about the god in question.
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Jan 24, 2016 23:19
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Well yeah, never not be asking your DM if you can have advantage. Soylent Pudding posted:I generally do a quick calculation of DC per player into easy, medium, hard, or very hard. The acolyte cleric from the imperial city who's god is the mother of the god the party just rolled religion for is going to have an easy check, but the sailor fighter from another realm who openly hates books might be making a hard check to see how much they know about the god in question. This is good. I'd also ask the sailor PC "how would you even know about that?" because that might create some cool background regardless of the results of the check.
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Jan 24, 2016 23:32
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Food for thought: There are 18 skills in the game. Most classes can get proficiency in 4 skills: 2 from their class, 2 from their background. Exceptions are the Bard and Ranger with 5, and the Rogue with 6. The "classic" party of Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard can have someone proficient in everything, provided they coordinate their skill proficiency selections well enough. But, they won't have someone proficient AND have maxed attribute modifiers in everything, since the distribution of skills is uneven across attributes: the Wizard is the only one with a maxed-out INT, except there are 5 INT skills.
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Jan 24, 2016 23:36
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Mendrian posted:I always find this to be more of a hindrance than a help. Assuming most characters have at most a +5 to a given skill you run into a weird problem. A trained and talented character has a 25% better chance of knowing or doing something than a character with no skill or aptitude. That's weird! It suggests that the things you identify as core to your character aren't really. It's entirely possible that the learned and scholarly Cleric who has put points into Intelligence (to the detriment of other stats!) may know nothing about a urban pantheon one city over while the Barbarian with +0 to the check magically does know. That was my point, yes.
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Jan 24, 2016 23:53
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AlphaDog posted:Well yeah, never not be asking your DM if you can have advantage. "Yes, you know <X> -- how?" is another of my favorite DM tools.
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Jan 24, 2016 23:57
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Hubis posted:"Yes, you know <X> -- how?" In this case - the one with the untrained sailor who actively hates book-learning and isn't from around here - I'm not going to let them "just know" because they came up with an explanation about how they learned. I'm going to keep that check Hard, but they're not going to be rolling until they tell me how they know this. It sounds like something that's so far out of the character's knowledge and experience that unless the player can come up with something, the answer's no. If they pass the roll, then that's great. Turns out that listening to the sorts of weirdos in far-flung dockside taverns who endlessly tell stories about their travels can sometimes pay off. If they fail, then they can describe what they thought they knew instead of the real answer, and that will help me come up with something about the part of the world where they thought they'd learned the thing. That could be as simple as "they're very foreign and don't know much about us at all" or as complicated as "they're our enemies for the past 200 years and there's been a vast, lengthy propaganda campaign to make us look like evil weirdos (and what about what we know about them? Have we been lied to as well?)" Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 00:23
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AlphaDog posted:In this case - the one with the untrained sailor who actively hates book-learning and isn't from around here - I'm not going to let them "just know" because they came up with an explanation about how they learned. I'm going to keep that check Hard, but they're not going to be rolling until they tell me how they know this. It sounds like something that's so far out of the character's knowledge and experience that unless the player can come up with something, the answer's no. "I am a sailor I go to lots of ports. Also we are super superstitious I used to work work rigging on a purple kelp ship with a half orc that picked up a religious icon everytime we went anywhere for good luck. He swears that one in particular saved him from getting eaten by a dragon-turtle" Or as my players would say. "Dunno, you hear stuff at the pub"
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Jan 25, 2016 00:45
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Hubis posted:"Yes, you know <X> -- how?" This is exactly how I view it should be done. Not unique to DnD but "you succeed, why? or " you fail, why?" helps keep away from "you're genius debonair noble farts in front of the king because you rolled a one" or "your elite rogue starts splashing in the water singing because you rolled a one" situations.
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Jan 25, 2016 01:00
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Reznor posted:"I am a sailor I go to lots of ports. Also we are super superstitious I used to work work rigging on a purple kelp ship with a half orc that picked up a religious icon everytime we went anywhere for good luck. He swears that one in particular saved him from getting eaten by a dragon-turtle" Yeah thats definitely a play group specific kind of thing. Most of the people ive run/played with dont really give a poo poo about writing a backstory or whatever and just develop stuff as it goes so its pretty good to just throw questions like that out to get a bit more of character info or a plot hook for later. Plus if the person is tired or cant be assed they can just respond with 'i heard poo poo dont worry about it'.
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Jan 25, 2016 01:09
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Reznor posted:"I am a sailor I go to lots of ports. Also we are super superstitious I used to work work rigging on a purple kelp ship with a half orc that picked up a religious icon everytime we went anywhere for good luck. He swears that one in particular saved him from getting eaten by a dragon-turtle" Yes, exactly! The best thing about this is that it's just as interesting if he's wrong. I think I'd go in the direction of discussing why the half-orc had a good (if wrong) reason to believe it, note that down, and use it later if dragon-turtles ever come up. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 01:09
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PJOmega posted:This is exactly how I view it should be done. Not unique to DnD but "you succeed, why? or " you fail, why?" helps keep away from "you're genius debonair noble farts in front of the king because you rolled a one" or "your elite rogue starts splashing in the water singing because you rolled a one" situations. Every game system needs to use Edge of the Empire style results. AlphaDog posted:Yes, exactly! The best thing about this is that it's just as interesting if he's wrong. Leading questions that push these kinds of answers tend to result in the best campaign experiences imo.
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Jan 25, 2016 01:11
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P.d0t posted:It still amazes me every time I read something like this, where basically someone says "Man I love how 5e gets rid of lovely/dumb 3.5isms!" but apparently when 4e did the exact same thing there were tears about how it changed too many things too quickly and isn't real D&D!!!1! Yeah, I can admit as much as I love the options in 4th ed, leveling up can be involved for every class since you have a specific to your class/level chart nearly every single time. But most of the people I know, or are friend's of a friend gushing about what's "Improved/Totally great idea they should have thought of before!" are about stuff 4th ed already did, and that they probably hated when 4th ed did it. Like how At-will powers for fighters and wizards are dumb stupid trash because there is no more spell table and they ruined rituals-oh cool, 5th ed gives me at-will cantrip spells? 5th ed lets me recharge wizard spells on a short rest? This is AMAZING! Why didn't they think of this before!?... Oh Fighters don't get poo poo? What's your point? 4th ed already did this? What's your point? I got my issues with the formatting of the rulebook and I miss a lot of the options, as much as I can admit the system itself doesn't seem bad. Mostly it's all the "REAL DnD is-" Baggage that's the problem. Like "Realism" being "It's not realistic to houserule back in 4th ed's ranged attacks can knock out, because arrows are sharp and that doesn't make sense. But I'll totally allow the warlock to knock people out with fire and radiant lasers.... what? It's not my fault magic isn't realistic. It's okay I'll let you use lovely variant blunt arrows... why are you looking at me like that?" I can understand the desire for trying to keep stuff realistic in the sense of not just being full bullshit "Oh I just know boats, you know? whatever". But 90% of the time "It's not realistic it-" and "Immersion" are just words people swing around like a club to smash things to fit their specific opinion  At least the above "Guy A just know boats, I guess? Vs. Guy B put effort into why they know boats" is a GOOD example. Unlike people telling me (expensive bought and paid for, in other system) immunity to poison isn't "realistic" to have it actually, you know, provide immunity to poison. (and also, it's "Not fair" to attacks with "Disadvantage:Poison" bolted onto them  )
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Jan 25, 2016 01:46
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Nancy_Noxious posted:Oh, please do tell how Next's system supports ~HIGH STORY~ in a way that 4E doesn't. I don't really want to get into some edition war crap, but I'll bite. If we're talking "why not another game", well, sometimes you want to play D&D. Every edition of D&D has some major issues to work around for certain kinds of games, but it has enough material to make it fun to do so. It has some very cool (if derivative) worldbuilding. D&D is very much It's Own Thing, and other games aren't really going to scratch that itch for most people. Personally, I find FATE one of the least engaging and most flavorless games on the market. I'd be much more apt to play something like Pendragon or Amber if I wanted to play something mechanics-light. As far as other mechanics-heavy fantasy games, most of them are either too generic for me or "not-D&D" and don't really bring anything new or better to the table. 4e in particular has its story supporting gameplay completely crushed by the weight of its combat-focused ruleset, and there's not really a good way to run a "combat light" 4e game. There's a lot of moving parts to keep track of on a character sheet, and combat generally takes up 50-80% of game session time. Especially if anyone playing is still learning the system. It also pretty much can't be played as written without minis and a map, even if you do the mental math to convert squares to measurements because you have so much shifting to keep track. The ability scores are meaningless in terms of defining a character's ability in the game world (this isn't isolated to 4e obviously, but 4e did the worst job with them). I enjoy playing 4e, but it is what it is. Plus, I would say the encounter and daily ability management isn't much better than the way other editions have handled it since 1st (the one it actually made sense in). You can tweak 4e to not be so top heavy in this regard, sure, but how is that any different than doing that with another edition? If you don't like the rest system in 5e, it's not like you can't handwave that poo poo either. I actually like how backgrounds work mechanically, even if the chapter on them is way too long. The skill system itself isn't better or worse than 4e, and I feel like D&D only even has a skill list to give the game direction in a "these are the things you should be focusing on while exploring" kind of way. The biggest failings of 5th is its general roughness and lack of polish. The core system isn't that bad. e- I don't really want this to come off as "5e beats the hell out of 4th in every way ever", because that's not what I'm driving at. Ideally,for me, new D&D would resemble something to a pared-down 4e at its core, with a little less emphasis on the battlefield mechanics and a little more on narrative abilities by class and tier. As for the simulationism thing, I feel like the desire for that kind of play is pretty system agnostic and everyone house rules it anyway. ScaryJen fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 01:53
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Hubis posted:That character's background should also factor in. If the cleric can roleplay his way into arguing he should have some insight, he could also gain advantage (another ~ +4). Okay, don't take this the wrong way, because the discussion is good, but isn't: you get a flat bonus to the check you get advantage on the check you reduce the DC of the check All parts of the same thing?
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Jan 25, 2016 02:06
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I think the point is that 4e has exactly as much support for skills/story/non-combat as every other edition. What is the difference between the skill systems in 3.5, 4, and 5? Also, class balance in 5e falls apart past a certain point. Everyone who's posted in this thread with something to the effect of "Hey the balance doesn't seem so bad! We just got to level 2 and everything's fine." comes back later with "Well, we're level 6 now, and the Bard is solving everything and the Rogue feels useless..."
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Jan 25, 2016 02:08
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Depends if you're doing stacking rules. But that way lies madness via feat bonus + skill bonus + item bonus + racial bonus + situational bonus + untyped bonus etc.
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Jan 25, 2016 02:09
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There's no good way to run combat-lite any edition of D&D - the non-combat stuff is either bare-bones pass/fail or spell-solves-the-problem, so the heavy roleplaying is almost universally in spite of the system, definitely not because anything actually encourages RP mechanically. D&D is and has basically always been a tactical combat RPG first, with some non-combat stuff creeping in but never getting much of a focus.
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Jan 25, 2016 02:11
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ScaryJen posted:e- I don't really want this to come off as "5e beats the hell out of 4th in every way ever", because that's not what I'm driving at. Ideally,for me, new D&D would resemble something to a pared-down 4e at its core, with a little less emphasis on the battlefield mechanics and a little more on narrative abilities by class and tier. As for the simulationism thing, I feel like the desire for that kind of play is pretty system agnostic and everyone house rules it anyway. Most of my pals and I joking "I can't roleplay in this system!" every time we, you know, roleplay, is over the kind of people who act like it is literally impossible to do more than beep boop robot WoW clone because they give you "suggested" lore a lot of the time, and no big novels of "This is how you should make your world, no takebacks". Even while we do sometimes wish there was more reference materials for a good groundwork to either use, ignore, or modify. Like, people actually pissed off the Thunderbolt Hammer's flavor text sums up as "Might be Moradin, might be Kord, or maybe it's own thing. We only know it's cool and is Not Mjolnir". Or that scream if you reflavor stuff to your tastes. Because it's not "Roleplaying" if you came up with anything using your own imagination. Like a swarm druid turning into a horde of ravenous adorable puppies. That's a nono, Must Be Bugs. And the usual "Only applies where they feel like it" issues. Like how Inernal warlocks are not allowed to do anything but suck the cock of DnD satan, but they are totally fine with a Fey Pact warlock being pacted to either their family or THEMSELVES, because they are from the Feywild  I CAN agree that the design is more focused on "Grid Combat stuff" in 4th than other systems. But that's as much because wizards are stuck casting their fireballs within 10 tiles as opposed to "Okay, I Roleplay that I cast color spray at every single enemy, they are totally close enough to all be hit by it, right? WHAO There fighter, how did you reach that goblin? You only have a movement of 30 feet and they were totally 31 feet away." Again though, that's more mindset baggage than any failing of either 4th or 5th on the "Can I roleplay in this system?" front.
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Jan 25, 2016 02:20
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Also one thing people seem to miss is that your powers can be used outside of combat. Even a super strict interpretation of what a target, every class has a tonne more options for roleplaying.
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Jan 25, 2016 02:25
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kingcom posted:Also one thing people seem to miss is that your powers can be used outside of combat. Even a super strict interpretation of what a target, every class has a tonne more options for roleplaying. Combining Kord's Force Athletics At-Will Utility (Use Athletics skill for STR checks) with Kord's Mighty Strength Boon (+2 Athletics, +5 to STR checks to break poo poo) goes a long way towards turning you into the Kool-Aid Man, yes. "Adamantine shackles? No problem!. Yes I know I'm level 6" Section Z fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 02:33
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ScaryJen posted:e- I don't really want this to come off as "5e beats the hell out of 4th in every way ever", because that's not what I'm driving at. Ideally,for me, new D&D would resemble something to a pared-down 4e at its core, with a little less emphasis on the battlefield mechanics and a little more on narrative abilities by class and tier. As for the simulationism thing, I feel like the desire for that kind of play is pretty system agnostic and everyone house rules it anyway. But if you're looking for "a pared down 4e at its core, with a little less emphases on the battlefield mechanics and a little more on narrative abilities by class and tier", there's still games that do that better (that aren't FATE either)
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Jan 25, 2016 02:52
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Section Z posted:Combining Kord's Force Athletics At-Will Utility (Use Athletics skill for STR checks) with Kord's Mighty Strength Boon (+2 Athletics, +5 to STR checks to break poo poo) goes a long way towards turning you into the Kool-Aid Man, yes. D&D 4e had the most roleplaying options of any D&D game.
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Jan 25, 2016 02:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:But if you're looking for "a pared down 4e at its core, with a little less emphases on the battlefield mechanics and a little more on narrative abilities by class and tier", there's still games that do that better (that aren't FATE either) Hi I actually would really like this. Also what does 5e do that 4e doesn't as far as role-playing I mean?
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Jan 25, 2016 03:02
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| # ? May 29, 2024 18:39 |
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Section Z posted:I know at least what you are going for. Even if I don't agree it's as extreme as you think. Especially because "Narrative abilities" is 99% of the time code for "Where are my campaign altering spelltable spells, you fucks?" Because honestly, how often have Fighters ever had "narrative altering" abilities Getting armies as a class feature was pretty pimp.
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Jan 25, 2016 03:28
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