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Sinteres posted:Advancing the timeline a hundred years to try to clear the board and throw out a lot of what people knew about the setting so it would fit the points of light theme better seems more significant than killing a few gods in the time of troubles, which they also did this time, even if they found ways to bring back the popular characters eventually because they didn't want to live with the changes that were forced on them in the first place (and which they obviously undid going into 5e). Yeah, the Spellplague was far more deleterious to the Realms than pretty much any other RSE. The one hundred years was most of it, because that means a lot of Ed's world is dead and buried by time.
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Mar 10, 2018 09:24
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quote:ALWAYS AVAILABLE ABILITIES Are you telling me that 4e would have been better had the abilities been written out like this?
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Mar 10, 2018 09:24
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Kai Tave posted:No, you're just regurgitating the same dumb bullshit from 10 years ago then acting like everyone's being unreasonably mean to you when they don't decide to give it a fair shake this time. Nobody here is impressed in the eleventy millionth "I never played [GAME], but let me give you my personal hot takes on it." I said multiple times that the game may be amazing, but my first impression was that it wasn't D&D. Maybe that first impression was bad and wrong, but the edition objectively turned off enough of the fanbase that they massively walked it back for 5e, so a lot of people seem to have shared it.
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Mar 10, 2018 09:28
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Arivia posted:Yeah, the Spellplague was far more deleterious to the Realms than pretty much any other RSE. The one hundred years was most of it, because that means a lot of Ed's world is dead and buried by time. the spellplague was the only interesting bit of FR i've ever read
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Mar 10, 2018 09:28
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Elfgames posted:the spellplague was the only interesting bit of FR i've ever read Probably a good sign that you're looking for something different from the setting than the people who actually like it.
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Mar 10, 2018 09:30
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It's very easy to take 3e, 3.5e, Pathfinder, 5e, or whatever other D&D chassis you want and fix the LFQW problem: give fighters and rogues increasing amounts of per-day abilities that are comparable in power to spells of the same level. You don't have to touch existing casters at all - just make everyone quadratic. The problem is, fans of those games actually and specifically like that the fighter is bad.
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Mar 10, 2018 09:34
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Objectively, the best selling edition of D&D at that time was such a disaster they had to walk it all back because of the objective statistics and figures of ??????? Much like the rest of this supposedly ex nihilo development of now that's what I call grogpoints volume 2008, no one is pissy you're saying this, it's just the idea that these are original thoughts is baffling.
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Mar 10, 2018 09:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:Are you telling me that 4e would have been better had the abilities been written out like this? No, but I'm saying that it might have been better received. I mean, this is basically how Tome of Battle is written. I love fourth edition, I'm just providing a perspective.
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Mar 10, 2018 09:36
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Mr. Maltose posted:Objectively, the best selling edition of D&D at that time was such a disaster they had to walk it all back because of the objective statistics and figures of ??????? Where did you get the idea that 4e was the best selling edition of D&D at the time? The only quote I saw was someone saying the industry goes through highs and lows and 4e wasn't selling as well as 3e had. Edit: This too: Sales of the June 2008 set of core rulebooks exceeded Wizards of the Coast's expectations, requiring them to order additional books to be printed even before the books' release date.[4] By third quarter 2010, however, sales of 4th edition products were tied with those of Paizo Publishing's Pathfinder, based on supplier interviews. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 09:45
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Sinteres posted:Where did you get the idea that 4e was the best selling edition of D&D at the time? The only quote I saw was someone saying the industry goes through highs and lows and 4e wasn't selling as well as 3e had. Per Mike Mearls, every edition of D&D has sold more than the edition beforehand. 3E sold more than 2E, 4E sold more than 3E, etc. His stated aim with 5E was to magnify that growth instead of simply the small but steady rise that's standard, but whether or not they've actually succeeded at this is speculative because no sales numbers are ever released.
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Mar 10, 2018 09:57
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Kai Tave posted:Per Mike Mearls, every edition of D&D has sold more than the edition beforehand. 3E sold more than 2E, 4E sold more than 3E, etc. His stated aim with 5E was to magnify that growth instead of simply the small but steady rise that's standard, but whether or not they've actually succeeded at this is speculative because no sales numbers are ever released. Isn't that quote from 2008, comparing first year sales? Early sales were good, but it seemed to slump hard after that. Later on he was giving interviews having to say he didn't intend for all the fans to go away and they were going to fix 4e. Either way, he said a couple years ago that 5e PHB has outsold lifetime sales for 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0 but nobody really knows how much 1.0 or 2.0 sold (probably a shitload imo). Even there, I suspect 3.x might have higher total sales still since they sold a lot more products back then, but I guess they would have had a lot more overhead too. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 10:05
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Sinteres posted:Where did you get the idea that 4e was the best selling edition of D&D at the time? 1. the number of DnD Insider subscribers, which was a publicly known figure, would have blown any sort of competition out of the water. 2. Pathfinder finally tying with 4e coincided with 4e Essentials, which pissed off people who already liked 4e as it was and didn't appreciate Mike Mearls doing a 180 on the design, which didn't win back any of the grogs that hated 4e for groggy reasons, and which scared off retailers because of a feared repeat of the 3.0-to-3.5 kerfuffle
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Mar 10, 2018 10:29
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Jeezus the slap fighting will never end. Oh and gently caress agro mechanics in a ttrpg.
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Mar 10, 2018 10:51
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Maxwell Lord posted:What I don't understand is when was the action economy in D&D a huge problem? Both 5e and PF 2 are making shows of being strict about it but even in 3.x, barring "bag of rats" silliness it wasn't a major issue. So far as I can tell from games I've been invited to, PF's whole purpose at this point is 'how can I break this system in the optimal manner'. Fudging the action economy is one of the few ways to get non-casters to theoretically keep up.
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Mar 10, 2018 11:19
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Paolomania posted:Jeezus the slap fighting will never end. Oh and gently caress agro mechanics in a ttrpg. Which RPGs have farming mechanics in them? Elfgames posted:the spellplague was the only interesting bit of FR i've ever read Maybe if you didn't like FR, sure. I don't either, and I still found the setting entirely boring after the 4E changes. The Spellplague and FR cosmology changes were bad because all they did was make the setting worse for people who like it and not actually make the setting any more interesting for the rest of us. There was absolutely no point to them, and trying to shoehorn the PoL planes into everything was completely stupid. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 12:50
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Anyone in the Kickstarter have updAtes on the Unity RPG?
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Mar 10, 2018 13:45
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Zurui posted:No, but I'm saying that it might have been better received. I mean, this is basically how Tome of Battle is written. In what world was tome of battle well received by grogs?
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Mar 10, 2018 13:49
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Sinteres posted:I just had the unoriginal impression that the class abilities seemed to be drawing from MMOs. Maybe that's not how it actually plays, or maybe I saw someone express that idea beforehand and it influenced my thinking, but that was my initial impression either way. If the mmo-y stuff you're talking about is the powers, 4e's clearly delineated at-will, encounter, and daily powers, but that wasn't anything more than a formal, consistent designation of stuff that was already happening constantly in 3e (mostly to casters). People talk about the defender classes having an aggro mechanic, but the way defenders work is actually the opposite of how tanks in WoW work. They're also the most well-designed of the 4e class types, each having an interesting way of reinforcing their defender's mark. Sinteres posted:Abandoning Greyhawk and nuking Forgotten Realms with a bunch of weird poo poo kind of added to the impression that it was a major break with the past (including the numerous books and video games people had read and played set in FR), which 5e obviously tried to remedy by undoing those changes to make FR normal again. Did anyone actually care about Greyhawk? I mean, clearly not because it's still in the pile of abandoned settings for 5e and nobody ever complains about that. I never had any deep attachments to the Forgotten Realms, but I don't see how "rewriting the Forgotten Realms lore.... again" makes 4e not-D&D. Ferrinus posted:The problem is, fans of those games actually and specifically like that the fighter is bad. It's mostly this. You could kind of track fissures forming during 3e between different fan reactions to the balance issues inherent in the system. After a while people tended to fall into one of three camps: 1. The system is broken, here are some extensive house rules to fix it. 2. The system is broken but I love it so much, look at all the wacky things I (probably a caster) can do by stacking a half-dozen prestige classes that were never meant to meet! and 3. The system isn't broken, it's working as intended! And where it's not I can fix it myself! And I think a lot of the differing reactions and the games people drifted to in post-3e impacted how you coped with the system while it was the main game. Zurui posted:No, but I'm saying that it might have been better received. I mean, this is basically how Tome of Battle is written. There were a ton of people that hated the Tome of Battle and everything it stood for. The blowback wasn't massive, being a smaller splat that came in in the later portion of 3e, but it was definitely common to hear people vocally hate on it. It probably would have drawn the same level of rage if they'd actually implemented the rules in a core rulebook like they were soft-tested for. Come to think of it, The Tome of Magic never drew as much heat for its scaled-down casters. Sure, you'd get people who would rightly call the Truenamer a hot mess, or be disappointed by the Shadowcaster, but the Binder got a lot of love. Nobody ever went on huge rants about what a break from tradition the classes were, or how ridiculous and unrealistic their powers were. Any negativity was heavily directed at the lack of playtesting, and even that was a lot more muted. I wonder why... 
Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 14:06
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Nuns with Guns posted:People talk about the defender classes having an aggro mechanic, but the way defenders work is actually the opposite of how tanks in WoW work. They're also the most well-designed of the 4e class types, each having an interesting way of reinforcing their defender's mark. Reminder that the 3.5 Knight actually did have an mmo style aggro mechanic.
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Mar 10, 2018 14:35
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Man, if you think Forgotten Realms had issues with being upended, Greyhawk kept getting whole reinventions, usually by people who wanted to make it the Dark Ages counterpart to the Forgotten Realms high fantasy kitchen sink and scrub all the goofy stuff out. Last I saw everything was at warrrr because of the minis game and it basically came across as Warhammer Fantasy Lite starring that D&D Thing You Remember From Way Back.
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Mar 10, 2018 14:37
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Arivia posted:No, it's true. Better content, better system, better designers. 5e is the dregs of pretty much everything and it really, really shows. 5e is poo poo, but Pathfinder is just poo poo covered in chocolate sauce to make it seem like ice cream rather than the offal it actually is. PF is built in a broken-rear end system. Like, straight up, 3.5 was busted out of the gate and Paizo didn't change the class disparity to any meaningful degree with their glorified house rules. You know this, I know this, everyone on this hell-site knows it, so saying one is better than the other and continuing to defend that choice is tantamount to admitting "I like warmed-over garbage." Nuns with Guns posted:Did anyone actually care about Greyhawk? Maybe at places like Dragonsfoot? But by and large no one really cared about it. I've seen more people pine for Mystara than I have for Greyhawk, which makes at least some sense if you're one of those (rad) people who liked the Hollow Earth part of it, or the Capcom arcade games. I guess if you played in Living Greyhawk then I could understand having some nostalgia for it, but it was so basic it may as well have been white bread. gradenko_2000 posted:1. the number of DnD Insider subscribers, which was a publicly known figure, would have blown any sort of competition out of the water. Also, the 4e PHB2 got on the NYT best-seller list, which I don't think any version of D&D prior to that ever reached.
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Mar 10, 2018 14:39
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Ferrinus posted:It's very easy to take 3e, 3.5e, Pathfinder, 5e, or whatever other D&D chassis you want and fix the LFQW problem: give fighters and rogues increasing amounts of per-day abilities that are comparable in power to spells of the same level. You don't have to touch existing casters at all - just make everyone quadratic. The problem with that is that it addresses the problem of “i hit one dude and the wizard fireballs 20”. It doesn’t address “I help gather crops and the wizard casts Control Weather”, or “the enemy wizard casts flight and protection from missiles and I go suck my thumb”. Those, especially the first one, likely require removing “wizard” as a single class.
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Mar 10, 2018 15:19
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ProfessorCirno posted:
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Mar 10, 2018 15:36
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:Reminder that the 3.5 Knight actually did have an mmo style aggro mechanic. I really liked that. Not because it was, finally, a mechanic to keep enemies from just going straight after your casters while you go after theirs, but because it was a decent genre simulation. Seriously, how many of us have seen a new player wade into single combat with something bigger than them, or go in swinging at a swarm of smaller critters, only to be told that the game doesn't actually support storybook derring-do?
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Mar 10, 2018 16:00
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Xelkelvos posted:The solution at this juncture to resolve LFQW is to just remove pure Martials. the solution at this juncture to resolve income inequality is to just remove the proletariat hyphz posted:The problem with that is that it addresses the problem of “i hit one dude and the wizard fireballs 20”. or retool how magic is broken up and distributed like in shadow of the demon lord
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Mar 10, 2018 16:08
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Ferrinus posted:The problem is, fans of those games actually and specifically like that the fighter is bad. Well, there's also plenty of straight up ignorance on balance - We've all heard the "monk is banned" thing. Lots of people have never even seen a decently-played caster (not optimized, just decent), either as a courtesy from the table or because they don't know what that looks like. My roommate was shocked when I suggested Rogues weren't as good as Wizards in 5e, saying she's always done well as a Rogue. And I don't think she's lying or anything, but like, she's still wrong.
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Mar 10, 2018 16:48
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Countblanc posted:Well, there's also plenty of straight up ignorance on balance - We've all heard the "monk is banned" thing. Lots of people have never even seen a decently-played caster (not optimized, just decent), either as a courtesy from the table or because they don't know what that looks like. My roommate was shocked when I suggested Rogues weren't as good as Wizards in 5e, saying she's always done well as a Rogue. And I don't think she's lying or anything, but like, she's still wrong. In my groups this was the case for years. NO one played wizard but me, because no one wanted to deal with the minimal bookkeeping of memorizing spells. Combine that with being broke college students who couldn't own every book, and the fact that we hadn't even heard of Character Optimization forums back then made wizards feel kinda lame. Everyone else went either druid or metamagicked sorcerer for spellcasting and no one wanted to play cleric because " who wants to just heal all the time". It's not like we didn't still have powergamers, it's just that some of the more cohesive groups had a gentleman's agreement not to break the game over our knee for the DM's sake.
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Mar 10, 2018 16:59
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Countblanc posted:Well, there's also plenty of straight up ignorance on balance - We've all heard the "monk is banned" thing. Lots of people have never even seen a decently-played caster (not optimized, just decent), either as a courtesy from the table or because they don't know what that looks like. My roommate was shocked when I suggested Rogues weren't as good as Wizards in 5e, saying she's always done well as a Rogue. And I don't think she's lying or anything, but like, she's still wrong. A ton of balance is dependent on the GM. If the GM is forcing 8 encounters between rests you're going to see casters drop off. If the GM is allowing 2-3 encounters between rests you're going to see martial classes drop off. And the balance issues don't become super blatant until fairly high level.
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Mar 10, 2018 17:02
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Lemon-Lime posted:Which RPGs have farming mechanics in them? Ryuutama. 
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Mar 10, 2018 17:34
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Lemon-Lime posted:Which RPGs have farming mechanics in them? HarnMaster, notably.
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Mar 10, 2018 17:40
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grassy gnoll posted:Ryuutama. No it doesn't. Not in the core book at least.
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Mar 10, 2018 17:44
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Man, if you think Forgotten Realms had issues with being upended, Greyhawk kept getting whole reinventions, usually by people who wanted to make it the Dark Ages counterpart to the Forgotten Realms high fantasy kitchen sink and scrub all the goofy stuff out. Last I saw everything was at warrrr because of the minis game and it basically came across as Warhammer Fantasy Lite starring that D&D Thing You Remember From Way Back. Remember when they rebooted Dragonlance into grimdark low fantasy because Weis and Hickman pissed off WoTC? Countblanc posted:Well, there's also plenty of straight up ignorance on balance - We've all heard the "monk is banned" thing. Lots of people have never even seen a decently-played caster (not optimized, just decent), either as a courtesy from the table or because they don't know what that looks like. My roommate was shocked when I suggested Rogues weren't as good as Wizards in 5e, saying she's always done well as a Rogue. And I don't think she's lying or anything, but like, she's still wrong. Some people need to see the game broken to get why it's a problem. My best buddy demonstrated it for us back in AD&D when his Wizard not only defeated but soloed a Great Wyrm black dragon thanks to contingencies, Lower Resistance, and Polymorph Any Object. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 17:59
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4th Edition was so good y'all. I actually really enjoyed it becoming a very tight fantasy themed board game. The group I play with was really into the tactical combat aspect of D&D, so it focusing more on what the game usually boils down into was perfect. Huge improvement over 3rd, and I say this as a guy who has also played a ton of Pathfinder too. I way prefer more narrative systems like Blades in the Dark or other PbtA games, but at the end of the day the best system is the one you play with your friends.
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Mar 10, 2018 18:03
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Xae posted:A ton of balance is dependent on the GM. Okay but no. In the first instance, you're going to see (smart) casters dominate the majority of fights still and then slowly taper off but still be very effective. A single decently placed control or damage spell and an encounter is guaranteed for the party. Meanwhile, if it's a 2-3 encounter day they can just unload like a jilted Zeus all over the place until smoking craters are all that remain. quote:And the balance issues don't become super blatant until fairly high level. And this is wrong unless you count "after level 4" as fairly high level. Even at level 1 most casters pull ahead simply in the options available department, and the gap widens as levels give more tricks. It's not as bad as 3E, but seriously the balance issues are there from level 1. Unless you're primed to see them as just part of the game, I guess.
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Mar 10, 2018 18:18
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I feel like peoples' main experience with busted casters is less wizards and more clerics coming out of the gate being able to be way better fighters than fighters.
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Mar 10, 2018 18:21
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Arivia posted:No, it's true. Better content, better system, better designers. 5e is the dregs of pretty much everything and it really, really shows. I asked before but I'll ask again; what are these good design choices that Paizo's devs have made? I get it's easy to rag on 5E, it's a bad game, but... 5E actually tried to address the 3.5E baggage that you excuse Pathfinder for clinging to pathologically. Like they actually tried, with mixed success for sure, but that is far more than Pathfinder has done in the ten years they've run their show. Also the Spellplague was the best thing to happen to the ridiculously overburdened with DMPC Realms and it was improved roughly a million times by dumping (insert your favorite lovely overpowered character from a lovely FR book here) into an incinerator.
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Mar 10, 2018 18:24
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Liquid Communism posted:Remember when they rebooted Dragonlance into grimdark low fantasy because Weis and Hickman pissed off WoTC? Was that Fifth Age? I didn't pay attention too much to that. I mean, SAGA wasn't bad, but Dragonlance was so deeply rooted in its own little corner of AD&D that it seemed surreal to try and market it without it. I mean, it makes some sense, trying to turn on novel readers with a lighter storygame, but at that point Dragonlance just wasn't as hot (trash) it was in the eighties.
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Mar 10, 2018 18:25
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Was that Fifth Age? I didn't pay attention too much to that. I mean, SAGA wasn't bad, but Dragonlance was so deeply rooted in its own little corner of AD&D that it seemed surreal to try and market it without it. I mean, it makes some sense, trying to turn on novel readers with a lighter storygame, but at that point Dragonlance just wasn't as hot (trash) it was in the eighties. Yep, that was Fifth Age. quote:This set takes place 30 years after the second Cataclysm of Krynn, with the old gods of Krynn having left after the destruction brought by Chaos. The game is based in the new Krynn era, that of the Fifth Age, also known as the Age of Mortals. Dragon Overlords now rule much of Ansalon, and have slaughtered the other dragons for their lifeforce. Although the Dragon Lords remain, Man is now the dominant force in Ansalon. The world's old magic is gone, and creatures such as the good dragons, silvanesti elves, and kender live in fear. It is a time of chaos, with rival factions vying for power and the Dragons desperately attempting to reassert their authority. Dragons of Summer Flame, the book tied into that, was what Weis and Hickman thought was the last DL book, because they were leaving TSR. They came back to do another trilogy and 'fix' the campaign world after the WoTC buyout, and did some 3e Dragonlance stuff via Weis' husband at the time's company, Sovereign Press. It dissolved after their divorce, and the rights went back to WoTC who haven't touched it since 2008.
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Mar 10, 2018 18:50
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Ferrinus posted:It's very easy to take 3e, 3.5e, Pathfinder, 5e, or whatever other D&D chassis you want and fix the LFQW problem: give fighters and rogues increasing amounts of per-day abilities that are comparable in power to spells of the same level. You don't have to touch existing casters at all - just make everyone quadratic. There's a relatively well known set of homebrew for 3.5 that does this. It's an absolute loving mess because it turns out the already broken underlying system breaks even harder if everyone is wizards.
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Mar 10, 2018 19:04
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Leperflesh posted:Anyway, all I'm really trying to get at is that I think Paizo is in a bind with this product. I'm sure it's possible to make some improvements to the mechanics without necessarily completely abandoning the things that attracted their 3.5 customers in the first place, but they're walking a tightrope, and the (in my opinion) most important weaknesses of the game can't be solved while still belonging within that so narrowly defined "genre" (or whatever). Yeah I think this is right on the money. Pathfinder built its player base on people that didn't want to move on from 3.5, and so it shouldn't be a huge surprise that they're finding a lot of resistance to a new edition from those same players.
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Mar 10, 2018 19:16
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