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ImpactVector posted:you have to throw up arbitrary road blocks (anti-scrying, anti-magic fields, etc). In a world where magic is real and is accepted as a common risk among the powerful, these things wouldnt be arbitrary. Of course* powerful people protect themselves against scrying, death rays, poison, and whatever else they are concerned about. *I mean if you want to use those things they are very easy to include in a sensible way. It would make for a different game where half of what wizards are scheming about is hacking the gibson of the other wizard while the armored people do the killing. Or: the warrior types have to go disrupt things while the wizard hides and gets off the critical ritual to let the party move on. Basically it could be used as a mechanism to make everyone work as a team - with some work done up-front by the DM. (Of course the usual "everyone should communicate and make sure they want to play this kind of game" thing applies.)
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Nov 14, 2017 15:55
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Serf posted:i don't see why this would be an unreasonable thing to do. i'm pretty sure i read a hulk comic where be punched the universe so hard it just gave up and moved him to where he wanted to be It's super reasonable, and the fact that it's not possible to do really speaks to the lack of imagination that went into this edition (and most of the others).
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Nov 14, 2017 15:56
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ImpactVector posted:One possible answer is that "guy with sword" is the expression of a particular class during the poo poo farming tier of the game (along with "woman who knows stuff about the gods" and "that weird guy who keeps bat poo poo in a pouch"), and they graduate to something else when the spellcaster types start getting phenomenal cosmic power. this is one of the reasons i like a dark sun-style view of magic as a finite resource, or at best one that needs time to replenish
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Nov 14, 2017 15:57
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FRINGE posted:In a world where magic is real and is accepted as a common risk among the powerful, these things wouldnt be arbitrary. Of course* powerful people protect themselves against scrying, death rays, poison, and whatever else they are concerned about. It's better for the long term health of a game that players have control of when their powers work, and for player powers to have a scope where that's possible. There's way fewer opportunities for hard feelings that way, on both sides of the table.
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Nov 14, 2017 16:04
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In 4e "guy who can teleport" could be the fighter. All you had to do was take 1 feat (a feat that wizards got for free but nothing's perfect). I can't remember if "ranger uses his woodcraft to find an ancient, forgotten teleport circle in the wilderness" was an official example of how that could go down or an interpretation that just stuck with me for whatever reason.
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Nov 14, 2017 16:06
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In 4e, the Eladrin (snooty High Elf type) could do a once per encounter (or maybe daily) teleport, no strings attached. Which gives me an idea. What if instead of, or in addition to Fighting Styles, Fighters also got Traditions? They would represent where the Fighter got their training. Trained with Elves? One proficiency in an Elven weapon and maybe access to a cantrip or two, or maybe the teleport mentioned above. Halfling training is all about being nimble and fast, letting you add proficiency to AC when wearing light armor and letting you go for things like the Achilles heel to hobble movement, or knocking them prone if you do damage. Half-Orc tradition involves going for the eyes (blindness) or choking out (restrained, suffocation rules).
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Nov 14, 2017 16:22
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Zandar posted:Cutting space itself with your sword to bring two distant points together isn't necessarily magic. (If nothing else, with enough technical justification, it's science fiction.) A JoJo's RPG would be absolutely terrible to play, but drat if I don't want one.
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Nov 14, 2017 16:25
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I feel like Xanathar's continually depresses me in various ways. The college of swords bard gets 3 "maneuvers", and they're fueled by bardic inspiration dice--except at 14th level you don't have to use the dice for them anymore, so you can do them once per turn, every turn, without expending any encounter/daily resource. And battle masters can't have a similar feature because
Magil Zeal fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Nov 14, 2017 |
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Nov 14, 2017 16:28
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Magil Zeal posted:I feel like Xanathar's continually depresses me in various ways. The college of swords bards gets 3 "maneuvers", and they're fueled by bardic inspiration dice--except at 14th level you don't have to use the dice for them anymore, so you can do them once per turn, every turn, without expending any encounter/daily resource. And battle masters can't have a similar feature because FIGHTERS CAN'T HAVE GOOD THINGS
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Nov 14, 2017 16:29
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In 4e, everyone is more or less capable of magic because if you strip the fluff from the powers, they all use the same template. Martials have the Martial power source, which just meant your magic was powered by push-ups. It ruled.
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Nov 14, 2017 16:31
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I mean seriously, if the battle master got that feature at level 15 and it said "When you use a maneuver, you can roll a d6 and use it instead of expending a Superiority Die" instead of "You get 1 Superiority Die at the start of combat if you have none" that'd be a much better feature. I don't remember if they get it at 15 or 18 but 15 would be better. Obviously it wouldn't put the fighter on a level playing field with a bard who has full casting on top of their stuff, but it'd be something dammit.
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Nov 14, 2017 16:39
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Soylent Pudding posted:
Yeah, I do that too. We were explaining to 2 people who had never even played any RPG before, who somehow ended up with the wizard and cleric pregens. "Okay so there's these spells you KNOW -- oh and the wizard only knows some of them but the cleric knows them all -- yeah they're different sets -- and anyway, you can PREPARE a certain subset each day -- you're level 3 and the 2 + 4 spell slots coincidentally is equal to the level + int = 6 spells you can prepare -- and then you can cast any of those but ..." Once I just wrote this on his paper with a pen: Level 1 uses: O O O O Level 2 uses: O O and told him to draw a line with a pencil through an appropriate one when he casts one, and to erase those lines when he rests, there were no follow up questions
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Nov 14, 2017 17:20
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Magil Zeal posted:I mean seriously, if the battle master got that feature at level 15 and it said "When you use a maneuver, you can roll a d6 and use it instead of expending a Superiority Die" instead of "You get 1 Superiority Die at the start of combat if you have none" that'd be a much better feature. I don't remember if they get it at 15 or 18 but 15 would be better. Obviously it wouldn't put the fighter on a level playing field with a bard who has full casting on top of their stuff, but it'd be something dammit.
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Nov 14, 2017 17:23
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Infinity Gaia posted:To be fair, I feel like that's an inherent problem with D&D as a whole, not just 5e. But like, what would be your suggestion for a Fighter to be able to compare narratively to a Greater Teleport? You just can't, at least not without giving the Fighter something that is essentially magic, at which point the nature of the class is put into question. You need more rules neutral system for a mage and a fighter to EVER be able to contribute to the narrative on the same level without having them just be reskins of each other. Simply because, well, magic, yknow. It tends to dominate a narrative by it's very nature. In essence, a Fighter... Fights things. Their contributions can really only come from situations at least tangential to fighting. But because of the broad nature of magic, a wizard is not similarly limited. But there's not much you can do about it besides give EVERYONE magic (the 4e attempt at a solution), or by imposing hefty limitations on the wizard. You can leave the game exactly as it is, but preface the Fighter and similar classes with DO NOT PLAY THIS CLASS IF YOU WISH TO PARTICIPATE IN THE NARRATIVE BEYOND A SUPERFICIAL LEVEL. 5E does not do this. You can grant the non-magical classes narrative currency. The wizard can teleport the poisoned escort quest guy to hospital, or the cleric can cast cure poison, but the Fighter's player can spend a plot point to hey look it's a hut with herbs on the door, maybe he can help. Fate does this. 5e has inspiration, which is... less useful, and available universally. You can state that mundane ability can only get you so far, which is why the Fighter class stops at level 6 and you need to take something more esoteric. Or become more about ELF with sword rather than elf WITH SWORD. SotDL kind of does this. Some of 4e's paragon paths and epic destinies could fall under this. Pre-3.x made casters level slower than fighters, because wizard levels are worth more. 5e and 3.x imply through omission that level 20 in Fighter is somehow comparable to level 20 in Wizard. You can not include a mundane class at all. You can give thematic supernatural but not magical abilities. An epic level 4e rogue can steal concepts. Bunch of other stuff from legends that I see has already been posted. A 5e level 20 fighter gets advantage on saves once a day. You can assume the non-magical classes are going to require magical items to buff them to magic levels, and codify this into the rules and assumed character progression. Pre-3X did this. 5e aggressively does not do this, claiming magic items are optional. You can give the non-casters vast mundane possessions and influence. The wizard can teleport, but the Fighter already has an army right there so... Pre-3.x did this. One 4e epic destiny was that if your character died one of their students would go full The Phantom and take their place. Another just flat gave you a country. 5e does not do this. There are so many potential ways to deal with the potential problems with mashing the NMX Bandit into a party of Angel Summoners, but the 5e books don't even give a GM or Player the heads up that the imbalance exists. Splicer fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Nov 14, 2017 |
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Nov 14, 2017 18:07
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Yeah, the problem is definitely not with D&D. We saw during 4E that things can change, but between people poisoning the well, super reactionary people, and WotC being WotC we now are back with 5E, a safe warm return to nothing that can challenge preconceptions of ~what D&D truly is~ edit: also the idea that anything supernatural is magic and therefor wizard territory needs to die
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Nov 14, 2017 18:54
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My idea for a fighter built around tavern brawler has to be a variant human and I'm stuck. I want to have no weapons. I want to pick up this goblin, head butt him, take his scimitar, and throw it at the guy behind him, using this live goblin as a shield for the beginning of this fight. A level 20 guy would have enough attack actions to even pretend he could do this thing. A level 1 fighter can grab him and... that's it. That's my turn you guys. It's bumming me out, this mental image of a level 20 fighter that just hangs around level 1 encounters to style on them and feel narratively useful.
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Nov 14, 2017 18:57
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Darwinism posted:edit: also the idea that anything supernatural is magic and therefor wizard territory needs to die In which case, gently caress it, I'm now a muscle wizard and my arcane focus is pushups.
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Nov 14, 2017 18:58
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I can't believe what I'm reading. You guys are seriously putting forth the argument that non-casters are completely irrelevant narratively. That is the biggest load of horseshit I've read so far in this thread. How on Earth is it possible that you can't find a way to meaningfully impact the plot of a campaign without poo poo like teleport on demand?
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Nov 14, 2017 19:04
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SwitchbladeKult posted:I can't believe what I'm reading. You guys are seriously putting forth the argument that non-casters are completely irrelevant narratively. That is the biggest load of horseshit I've read so far in this thread. How on Earth is it possible that you can't find a way to meaningfully impact the plot of a campaign without poo poo like teleport on demand? no one is saying you can't. they're saying you just had far less capability than a person who can do literally anything they want with few restrictions
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Nov 14, 2017 19:05
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Serf posted:no one is saying you can't. they're saying you just had far less capability than a person who can do literally anything they want with few restrictions Splicer literally just did this.
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Nov 14, 2017 19:06
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SwitchbladeKult posted:Splicer literally just did this. they made a lot of good suggestions for how the game can be improved??
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Nov 14, 2017 19:07
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SwitchbladeKult posted:I can't believe what I'm reading. You guys are seriously putting forth the argument that non-casters are completely irrelevant narratively. That is the biggest load of horseshit I've read so far in this thread. How on Earth is it possible that you can't find a way to meaningfully impact the plot of a campaign without poo poo like teleport on demand? 1) What listed abilities for the fighter or barbarian equal the power of a teleport spell? 2) Where in the DMG does it teach me as a GM to design a plot such that a barbarian or a ranger can have equivalent narrative impact using their listed abilities. The second is a point I think has been lost in the discussion of "spells have outsize narrative power because they make the GM have to do something". The 5e DMG has no guidance on how to structure things and run a game that lets everyone feel useful.
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Nov 14, 2017 19:11
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Serf posted:they made a lot of good suggestions for how the game can be improved?? Yes because he is taking the stance that a character is required to have supernatural abilities to be able to participate in the narrative of a campaign.
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Nov 14, 2017 19:11
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SwitchbladeKult posted:Yes because he is taking the stance that a character is required to have supernatural abilities to be able to participate in the narrative of a campaign. That seems a gross misinterpretation of the point "how is a character supposed to have equal narrative impact as the one with supernatural abilities?"
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Nov 14, 2017 19:14
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SwitchbladeKult posted:Yes because he is taking the stance that a character is required to have supernatural abilities to be able to participate in the narrative of a campaign. this doesn't seem like an unreasonable statement (that you are framing dishonestly but whatever) in a game where people do have infinite supernatural power at their disposal. you're really missing a lot of the nuance of the posts being made here
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Nov 14, 2017 19:19
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SwitchbladeKult posted:Yes because he is taking the stance that a character is required to have supernatural abilities to be able to participate in the narrative of a campaign. It is not required for a character to have supernatural abilities to impact the narrative of a campaign, no. It is indisputable that the characters with supernatural abilities have more opportunity for declarative impact on that campaign, though.
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Nov 14, 2017 19:23
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Serf posted:this doesn't seem like an unreasonable statement (that you are framing dishonestly but whatever) in a game where people do have infinite supernatural power at their disposal. you're really missing a lot of the nuance of the posts being made here Framing dishonest? Projection much? If you guys think you need supernatural powers to have equal narrative impact (sorry don't want to trigger your instinct to split hairs) you insanely boring and uncreative individuals who should stop playing tabletop games and go read some works of fiction to grab some ideas. For gently caress's sake, the very template from which the genre of Fantasy is wrought is about a mundane idiot from he boonies being more impactful on the fate of the world than god-like beings!
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Nov 14, 2017 19:25
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SwitchbladeKult posted:Framing dishonest? Projection much? If you guys think you need supernatural powers to equal narrative impact (sorry don't want to trigger your instinct to split hairs) you insanely boring and uncreative individuals who should stop playing tabletop games and go read some works of fiction to grab some ideas. For gently caress's sake, the very template from which the genre of Fantasy is wrought is able a mundane idiot from he boonies being more impactful on the fate of the world than god-like beings! u mad
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Nov 14, 2017 19:26
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D&D wizards are now extremely boring to me and I suspect most of the people in this thread. - No specialization required. You are a wizard or you are not. Variant wizards tend to have access to almost the same list of spells. You're not being asked to stick to a theme, and therefore not being given cool and unique theme powers even if you place such a restriction on yourself personally. - When you cast a spell, it just happens. The most that may be required of you is to spend gold. There's no interesting submechanic going on that makes anyone's casting different from anyone else's. Magic is in no way unpredictable or dangerous, and almost anyone can learn it and cast spells with a flick of the hand, yet here we are stuck in Hundred Years' War technological stagnation for all eternity. - Vancian magic is extremely dull and even groggy grog 5E tries to get away from it.
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Nov 14, 2017 19:29
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Sufficiently Advanced, one of my favorite indie sci-fi TTRPGs, has that kind of narrative-control-for-less-powerful-characters system. It takes place in a far-future, post-singularity setting. Individual character power level varies wildly; during my last game, we had a guy who was capable of firing antimatter black holes out of his transmutable arm cannon sitting at the same table as a guy whose most powerful ability was a doctorate in psychology. All characters in SA have a sharply limited number of points they can spend on direct narrative effects, either to make good things happen or to get out of bad things. Regaining these points is very slow, typically to the point that you should expect to only get one per session. However, you can get points for free by letting bad things happen as a result of the action you’re spending points on. The scale of the bad thing is directly linked to your own personal power level, so the more powerful you are, the worse things get when you ask for free points. For example, at one point, our party was targeted for assassination. We went into the game’s “sudden death” mode, where the GM told us that snipers had just fired particle beams at our heads and we needed to justify to him (by spending points) why we’re not dead. Arm Cannon had no points left, so in order to deploy his hyper-reactive multiphasic defense matrix he had to accept a catastrophically bad thing, which in this case involved the beam reflecting into the building we were trying to go into, which then exploded. The psychologist, who also had no points, tripped and skinned his knee. (I miss that game.)
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Nov 14, 2017 19:30
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The exact point is this: Here's the scenario. A fighter and a wizard are attempting to get a man to sell them a horse. Let's say this man is a commoner, with +0 in all stats. The fighter has to roll a skill check, probably intimidate since that's the only one they have proficiency in. The DM arbitrarily sets the DC. The base dc RAW for a medium check in the game is 15, which means the fighter will have a better than 50% shot only with a +5 or better which is pretty terrible. Then there's really nothing prescriptive about the intimidate skill other than 'the man is now intimidated'. It's up to the DM how the situation plays out. The wizard casts friends. This gives him advantage on the exact same roll. Or enhance ability. Or he casts charm person. Or he casts suggestion, or geas, or he casts dominate person. Many of which are the man rolling against the wizard's spell dc, a fixed set of numbers that cannot be arbitrarily determined by the GM and are heavily in the wizard's favor. These spells also have a predetermined outcome or effect, many of which the wizard gets to overrule a GM on. Another example: A fighter and a wizard are attempting to cross a 30 foot chasm. The fighter must make a series of skill checks or figure out some shenanigans with ladders and ropes. The wizard casts jump, or fly. You may argue that the wizard is using resources to solve these problems. But that's because the wizard has resources to spend, the fighter has literally no other tools to solve these very common situations.
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Nov 14, 2017 19:30
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I dunno man just let fighters say whatever outlandish poo poo they want to do and spend a superiority dice on the roll. Want to charm the angry king by flexing? Go for it. Leap over a 40 foot chasm? Sure. Solve the puzzle lock by chopping it in half? Why not?
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Nov 14, 2017 19:31
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SwitchbladeKult posted:Yes because he is taking the stance that a character is required to have supernatural abilities to be able to participate in the narrative of a campaign.
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Nov 14, 2017 19:37
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SwitchbladeKult posted:Framing dishonest? Projection much? If you guys think you need supernatural powers to have equal narrative impact (sorry don't want to trigger your instinct to split hairs) you insanely boring and uncreative individuals who should stop playing tabletop games and go read some works of fiction to grab some ideas. For gently caress's sake, the very template from which the genre of Fantasy is wrought is about a mundane idiot from he boonies being more impactful on the fate of the world than god-like beings!
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Nov 14, 2017 19:42
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SwitchbladeKult posted:Framing dishonest? Projection much? If you guys think you need supernatural powers to have equal narrative impact (sorry don't want to trigger your instinct to split hairs) you insanely boring and uncreative individuals who should stop playing tabletop games and go read some works of fiction to grab some ideas. For gently caress's sake, the very template from which the genre of Fantasy is wrought is about a mundane idiot from he boonies being more impactful on the fate of the world than god-like beings! The "if you don't immediately recognize the perfection of a thing I like you're badwrong and don't deserve to have it" is the most toxic grognard idea in nerd culture. The entire loving discussion is people talking about creative ideas and how the game as written doesn't support them. Also in your example the mundane idiot from the boonies spent most of the adventure not meekly tagging along with the god-like beings. Creative example: My high level fighter Stabby McHero needs to get across a vast river to the bad guys fortress. McHero is based primarily on Diomedes. I decide I want to get across the river by acting like the Achaean heros in the Illiad and literally wrestle the river god into submission so I may safely cross. The 5e RAW does not provide any useful framework for 1) adjudicating this, or 2) helping a GM understand how to structure an adventure so that these things are possible.
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Nov 14, 2017 19:44
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I'm currently listening to The Adventure Zone and Taako just destroyed 3 battle wagons with 2 spell slots and 1 die roll. Meanwhile Magnus makes like 5 rolls to get into a position where he can inconvenience one and then about as many rolls to actually do so. Almost none of this, for either character, was actually in the rules, it was just the DM making judgement calls on what he'd call fair when they tried to do stuff that weren't explicitly allowed in the rules. And then the DM says (paraphrased) "hey Magnus your +7 Strength check modifier is starting to be a problem."
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Nov 14, 2017 19:44
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SwitchbladeKult posted:Framing dishonest? Projection much? If you guys think you need supernatural powers to have equal narrative impact (sorry don't want to trigger your instinct to split hairs) you insanely boring and uncreative individuals who should stop playing tabletop games and go read some works of fiction to grab some ideas. For gently caress's sake, the very template from which the genre of Fantasy is wrought is about a mundane idiot from he boonies being more impactful on the fate of the world than god-like beings! Nice meltdown. Don't come barging back in this thread in a huff, whining about "triggered" when people are trying to have a reasonable discourse. Maybe you should take a break to cool down.
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Nov 14, 2017 19:44
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When people talk about narrative weight, they don't mean does the character have the ability to fall in love, suffer betrayal or behave heroically. Obviously all characters can do those things. When a problem arises, players look at their character sheets and ask, 'what tools do I have to solve this problem'? This discussion was about neat ways to improvise poo poo but they are well outside the scope of the rules. Wizards have way more tools than Fighters, and if we get into the realm of skills and improvisation, nothing stops a Wizard from doing the same kind of improvisation as the Fighter. They just don't need to, in many situations, so they cast Tensor's Floating Disk instead.
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Nov 14, 2017 19:53
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SwitchbladeKult posted:Framing dishonest? Projection much? If you guys think you need supernatural powers to have equal narrative impact (sorry don't want to trigger your instinct to split hairs) you insanely boring and uncreative individuals who should stop playing tabletop games and go read some works of fiction to grab some ideas. For gently caress's sake, the very template from which the genre of Fantasy is wrought is about a mundane idiot from he boonies being more impactful on the fate of the world than god-like beings! Thing is, in most fantasy books any god-like beings or wizards with unspecified limits are away from the main narrative. The problem isn’t necessarily that Gandalf is more powerful than Frodo. The problem is that when you have a wizard PC, Gandalf is permanently right there with the fellowship. The limit on spell slots feels like it was supposed to simulate this, but it backfired when at higher levels everyone must rest when the wizard is tapped, or be defenceless against the enemy wizard who is round the next corner (oh, yea, that “he’s right there” thing ends up applying to Sauron too)
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Nov 14, 2017 19:55
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SwitchbladeKult posted:Framing dishonest? Projection much? If you guys think you need supernatural powers to have equal narrative impact (sorry don't want to trigger your instinct to split hairs) you insanely boring and uncreative individuals who should stop playing tabletop games and go read some works of fiction to grab some ideas. For gently caress's sake, the very template from which the genre of Fantasy is wrought is about a mundane idiot from he boonies being more impactful on the fate of the world than god-like beings! I think you're missing the overall point here. The system gives spell casters the tools to do this, and others have to go find them (or ask the DM for permission to borrow them). This is the state of things that is being complained about. It's not about whether or not a non-caster can influence the narrative, it's about the system giving them the means to do so. You know, like it does for casters. Here's the thing: improvisation tends to become easier if you are given more tools to work with. Both the fighter and the wizard can improvise. But the fighter has to improvise with things like "examine a guy for a minute to learn some stats" or "has proficiency with smith's tools" while the wizard has a super long spell list to utilize for all sorts of creative purposes. That right there is the problem. Those two things aren't just unequal, they're not even really playing the same game.
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Nov 14, 2017 19:58
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