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Asterite34
May 19, 2009



Char posted:

I have friends that are being actively turned off by this.
I agree because there's no space metal.

:sever:

Also the second thing in the playlist is titled "Arena of Blood," that's pretty metal as far as prog rock goes

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3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
All I've got is this piece I wrote for Curse of Strahd:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLoUPK7jXJo

Maybe I should I make something for Spelljammer though.

Guy A. Person
May 23, 2003

sebmojo posted:

5e really does get the d&d vibe, and while 4e is a better game that's because d&d is a distinctly average game so if it was better it would not get the vibe, u feel me

I've been thinking a lot about this topic recently and this is where I am at. My D&D expertise is mostly rooted in 3e/3.5e since that's the era I had the most free time to play, and that poo poo was so bad that it's hard to see anything with more attention to design being worse in basically any way.

I don't have much experience with 4e but given the amount of poo poo we outright ignored from our 3e games (christ look at how much of the combat section is dedicated to finnicky rules for tripping/sundering/disarming and my group at least just never used them because it was way too much hassle) or the band-aids I put over things as DM, or just the poo poo I improvised using the "rule of cool" in a lot of cases we could have been using any system or even none at all. I can definitely see a game where the rules were tighter actually feeling more restrictive because then you'd feel obligated to use them rather than just have the DM make up something cool to happen because the rules have repeatedly failed to provide anything cool.

I feel like I've seen the exact same story a dozen times about why being a "simple" fighter is cool in D&D because someone once leapt onto the back of a dragon and stabbed it a bunch, as if there's anything in the actual mechanics that facilitate this aside from just "there's a dragon and you're a guy with a sword and this is the obviously coolest thing to do in the situation" while most of the times the rules would just work to hold you back if anything.

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat
I might start running a 5 Torches Deep game on the side for a small group; it's basically very stripped down 5e, with simplified rules and flattened math. Anyway, there's absolutely zero rules about tripping, pushing, leaping on the backs of, etc, and my plan is to home brew:

If you can hit the monster with an attack, you can also, additionally, make the attack do something appropriate to the situation. If the party feels it's particularly clever, you can get advantage in the attempt. If the monster enemy is particularly powerful the DM might modify the action: eg a duel on a roof top won't end the first time you score a hit and try to knock them off, but it could work once they're sufficiently injured.

Narsham
Jun 5, 2008

neonchameleon posted:

Objection. 3.0, 3.5, and 5e multiclassing is dual classing - which is how human multiclassing worked in the older editions. And should never have existed. But then neither should TSR era multiclassing with the way XP scaled.

4e multiclassing was accomplished through the feat system and was cool and a good use of feats until you went full on hybrid (which was TSR era multiclassing).

I'll say again: 4E was a good system, but if we used the conventions of 3E and 5E you'd have to say 4E went through multiple 3.5/5.5-level revisions over its lifetime. A major change to the game could be expected every 3-6 months as part of the monthly "errata" release. Multiclassing was more awkward than it needed to be, but the biggest problem was that their carefully balanced system didn't stay that way. I am guessing, for instance, a big problem with melee types multiclassing into Avenger for the utility giving you two dice on every attack roll, given how big a nerf they applied to that in one of the bigger reworks.

5E could have handled things via the archetype system if they'd gone that direction.

Bobby Deluxe posted:

Still maintain that prestige classes from 3e were a good fix for this, if extremely fiddly in terms of how you had to reach them. If they reintroduced them as epic pathways only available at character level 10 (and you don't need so much of the bullshit like skill point requirements, feats and proficiencies), you could do some more level-appropriate abilities and features without worrying about munchkins dipping and destroying the balance below level 5.

Also maybe introduce feats based on character level? I don't know, I just think it's a shame that the 10+ game is underwhelming - it should be something players look forward to and get excited about, rather than start looking for multiclass abuse.

Prestige classes were part of what triggered the full "planning out a PC can take days" issues that 3E/3.5E increasingly had. Often you needed ranks in skills you wouldn't normally take, or feats you wouldn't normally take, or even access to specific spells (which was really getting into the weeds).

If it were simply a matter in 5E of empowering 10+ level characters, and not also addressing some inequities in the power ramping, you could just have a paragon or heroic path to select at L10 and L15 that would give you more abilities and that could be taken regardless of your base class or classes. Maybe you need all those levels in a single class and they provide some of the same utility as multiclassing (armored wizards, barbarians with magic powers). The system can easily sustain more powerful PCs, especially if there's a premium on utility options over DPS.

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat
They'd solve a lot of problems by just abandoning physical armor rules and bake the increased defense into the marital classes as a leveled ability. You can wear the best armor in the game at level ONE and you can buy whatever mundane armor you want by level TWO. That's begging for a dip.

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

College Slice

Jack B Nimble posted:

They'd solve a lot of problems by just abandoning physical armor rules and bake the increased defense into the marital classes as a leveled ability. You can wear the best armor in the game at level ONE and you can buy whatever mundane armor you want by level TWO. That's begging for a dip.

Eh, but then you remove some aspect of progression via magic items/loot for new/better armor and shields. Additionally probably breaks some amount of immersion of having the different kinds of armor as a choice; do you want to be a stealthy stabby? You need to pick the ones that don't give disadvantage at the cost of less AC for that armor; etc. And this lets you pick and choose depending on the quest.

Having the armor as AC and also maybe the disadvantage on stealth baked into fighter is probably not going to be cool with some subset of people who want to go it stealthy once in a blue moon.

Saxophone
Sep 19, 2006


Raenir Salazar posted:

Eh, but then you remove some aspect of progression via magic items/loot for new/better armor and shields. Additionally probably breaks some amount of immersion of having the different kinds of armor as a choice; do you want to be a stealthy stabby? You need to pick the ones that don't give disadvantage at the cost of less AC for that armor; etc. And this lets you pick and choose depending on the quest.

Having the armor as AC and also maybe the disadvantage on stealth baked into fighter is probably not going to be cool with some subset of people who want to go it stealthy once in a blue moon.

You could probably fix this by adjusting down what the armors themselves give AC-wise and class features allow ‘you are becoming more proficient and mobile in plate armor, it now gives +1 AC while wearing it’ or something. Basically give the armors their own properties like ‘plate is too noisy for stealth, armor is too constricting for castings’, give them a much lower base AC and then have the classes unlock higher AC as they level up, incentivizing sticking with classes.

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

College Slice

Saxophone posted:

You could probably fix this by adjusting down what the armors themselves give AC-wise and class features allow ‘you are becoming more proficient and mobile in plate armor, it now gives +1 AC while wearing it’ or something. Basically give the armors their own properties like ‘plate is too noisy for stealth, armor is too constricting for castings’, give them a much lower base AC and then have the classes unlock higher AC as they level up, incentivizing sticking with classes.

This does beg other questions though, because what happens when classes that don't normally wear armor but sometimes can do so for niche situations? Does now only the Battle Smith Artificer have AC progression? Do we also now write that they have to wear the armor to benefit from their AC progression and specify this in case of some odd niche oversight in the rules where not wearing armor is now more benefitial somehow?

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat
The problem here is that a level twelve fighter has better armor because the armor itself is better, not because they're better at wearing or using it. And a level 12 character with one level in fighter is largely the same in that respect.

If, on the other hand, a high level fighter wore all armor better than a level one fighter, that'd matter. The armor could also improve magically, but if the bonus is spread between item and class, then you can't have one character level in fighter and wear the armor as well as a pure fighter.

lightrook
Nov 7, 2016

Pin 188

Guy A. Person posted:

I've been thinking a lot about this topic recently and this is where I am at. My D&D expertise is mostly rooted in 3e/3.5e since that's the era I had the most free time to play, and that poo poo was so bad that it's hard to see anything with more attention to design being worse in basically any way.

I don't have much experience with 4e but given the amount of poo poo we outright ignored from our 3e games (christ look at how much of the combat section is dedicated to finnicky rules for tripping/sundering/disarming and my group at least just never used them because it was way too much hassle) or the band-aids I put over things as DM, or just the poo poo I improvised using the "rule of cool" in a lot of cases we could have been using any system or even none at all. I can definitely see a game where the rules were tighter actually feeling more restrictive because then you'd feel obligated to use them rather than just have the DM make up something cool to happen because the rules have repeatedly failed to provide anything cool.

I feel like I've seen the exact same story a dozen times about why being a "simple" fighter is cool in D&D because someone once leapt onto the back of a dragon and stabbed it a bunch, as if there's anything in the actual mechanics that facilitate this aside from just "there's a dragon and you're a guy with a sword and this is the obviously coolest thing to do in the situation" while most of the times the rules would just work to hold you back if anything.


I've thought about this a bit, and anyone that knows better is welcome to correct my drat idiot fool ideas, but it seems like the popular perception of D&D is that the highest form of playing D&D is to not play D&D, and instead paint outside the lines. You see this most obviously in greentexts, which I think strongly do inform the popular perception of the game, where the player uses a creative interpretation of a spell to get a grossly-disproportionate effect or something. I don't know if anyone has ever tried to pull the trick of using Prestidigitation to create the flavor of pepper spray inside someone's mucous membranes, but the fact there is no shortage of discussion explaining why you can't would imply there's no shortage of people that wish they could. The long laundry lists of spells with their extremely specific effects as much explains what you can't do as it does what you can; the existence of the Knock spell implies that Knock is the only spell that opens locks at the flick of a wrist. It's not enough for players to say they incapacitated a warrior by magicking up pepper spray in their face, but that they recreated a Level 3 Stinking Cloud with a Level 0 cantrip, or something.

And I don't think it's exclusively a greentext thing, either, since there's evidence of this attitude in published materials, too. When I was listening to someone explain how 2e rewarded and incentivized creativity, they described a published adventure about clearing kobold squatters from a mine, with different XP rewards listed for different solutions. The worst reward was for the "dumbest" solution of going in and killing the kobolds, a better one for negotiating an accord between the kobolds and the village, and the best reward of all for thinking outside the box, with the given example being to divert a river to flood the mine. But to me this seemed strange, since flooding the mine should be the worst solution - killing the kobolds benefits surface-dwellers by returning to them access to the mine, negotiating a peace benefits the kobolds for obvious reasons, but flooding the mine seems like it would benefit both sides the least. But to me at least it also implies the antagonistic roots of the game; players aren't supposed to follow the breadcrumbs and play into the DM's hand, and the DM isn't supposed to encourage or expect it either.

I guess all this is to say that a big part of the D&D vibe is to not play D&D and go out of bounds, which is best served by having extremely restricting and well-defined lines that you can't sneeze without crossing by mistake. In other words, a well-designed game that flexibly and dynamically supports you in realizing your goals is not what D&D is about. :v:

Raenir Salazar posted:

Eh, but then you remove some aspect of progression via magic items/loot for new/better armor and shields. Additionally probably breaks some amount of immersion of having the different kinds of armor as a choice; do you want to be a stealthy stabby? You need to pick the ones that don't give disadvantage at the cost of less AC for that armor; etc. And this lets you pick and choose depending on the quest.

Having the armor as AC and also maybe the disadvantage on stealth baked into fighter is probably not going to be cool with some subset of people who want to go it stealthy once in a blue moon.

Honestly, I'd consider removing gear progression to be a good thing, and instead turn it into an essential class/character feature instead of an actual discrete item. It seems unfair (to martials, of course) that a caster can get their essential paraphernalia of new spells at their next Long Rest after leveling with no questions asked, but sharpened stick-holders get their essential level-appropriate gear only at the whims of the DM, and potentially never. The problem was partially solved in 4e by the inherent bonuses optional rule, where everyone is automatically guaranteed a +X bonus to their armor and weapon at certain levels, so no one should seriously fall behind, and it also helps players focus more on character-relevant enchantments by reducing the incentive to just grab the biggest +X they can find. But tables of gear porn is also too sacred a cow to really get rid of in D&D, I guess, so I don't see it changing dramatically either.

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

College Slice
Yeah ngl, I like looking forward to loot and decoupling loot from progression would remove that source of dopomine. My biggest goal in the Strixhaven campaign I'm in is looking for Half Plate for that +1 AC to bring me to 20 base AC (25 with Shield); the possibility of getting it early if I turn over enough rocks i.e quest/story hooks forms a lot of my motivation for session to session play.

If I got that AC automatically at specific level ups then I'm at the mercy of a different form of DM fiat determine by when and where I happen to level up. While gear is independent of level at least in theory and is more about skill checks/saves and exploration of the world.

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat

Raenir Salazar posted:

Yeah ngl, I like looking forward to loot and decoupling loot from progression would remove that source of dopomine. My biggest goal in the Strixhaven campaign I'm in is looking for Half Plate for that +1 AC to bring me to 20 base AC (25 with Shield); the possibility of getting it early if I turn over enough rocks i.e quest/story hooks forms a lot of my motivation for session to session play.

If I got that AC automatically at specific level ups then I'm at the mercy of a different form of DM fiat determine by when and where I happen to level up. While gear is independent of level at least in theory and is more about skill checks/saves and exploration of the world.

Well, if the AC was derived from a combination of the item and the class level, it sounds like things would be the same for you?

Edit: like, if a level one fighter could maximize mundane AC, and a level two fighter could maximize +1, and a level three +3, and a level five +3, and a level 7 +5.

Every "step" you fail to qualify for it's one worse. So even a "dipped" level one fighter, in a high level could game, could wear some spare +2 armor and have it be +1.

Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Aug 17, 2022

nelson
Apr 12, 2009
College Slice
Possible leak from Reddit says D&D Beyond is going to a subscription based model for $30 per month for all content instead of individual sales. Any previously purchased content will still be available.

Yusin
Mar 4, 2021

nelson posted:

Possible leak from Reddit says D&D Beyond is going to a subscription based model for $30 per month for all content instead of individual sales. Any previously purchased content will still be available.

It sounds feasible, but I don’t know if I trust random Reddit stuff.

St0rmD
Sep 25, 2002

We shoulda just dropped this guy over the Middle East"

nelson posted:

Possible leak from Reddit says D&D Beyond is going to a subscription based model for $30 per month for all content instead of individual sales. Any previously purchased content will still be available.

If that includes Master-tier benefits from the current sub model, I'd consider it, but drat that's pricey. Could just buy a $30 book every month and own them forever, and I've already bought and paid for most of the really useful ones.

Mr. Lobe
Feb 23, 2007

... Dry bones...


Yeah I'm not paying 30 dollars a month for dnd materials

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
I could see that being in addition to what they have now, but not a replacement.

CountryMatters
Apr 8, 2009

IT KEEPS HAPPENING

nelson posted:

Possible leak from Reddit says D&D Beyond is going to a subscription based model for $30 per month for all content instead of individual sales. Any previously purchased content will still be available.

Good god I hope that's bullshit, I loving hate everything being "x-as-a-service" I just want to pay once and then own the drat thing. Not everything has to be a bloody MMO

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat
I'm in the camp of "buy the core books once and home brew anything I want", and everyone else in my group might be utterly consumed with splat book fever but they're also all inveterate pirates.

I've heard books cost a lot more after COVID, so they're probably hungry to make more distribution digital.

Piell
Sep 3, 2006

Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer


Young Orc

nelson posted:

Possible leak from Reddit says D&D Beyond is going to a subscription based model for $30 per month for all content instead of individual sales. Any previously purchased content will still be available.

That has to be more than it would cost to buy releases at their current release rate, right?

Edit: The legendary bundle with every official 5E release on D&D Beyond is 943 dollars. Spread out over the last 6 years, that's 157 dollars a year, compared to 360 a year for the Beyond subscription. This is basically doubling the price of 5E materials, especially if you've already bought stuff in which case lol enjoy paying twice.

Edit2: The sourcebooks bundle without adventures is 490 dollars, coming out to 80 bucks a year equivalent, and would be cheaper than a year and a half of the subscription

Piell fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Aug 17, 2022

pog boyfriend
Jul 2, 2011

CountryMatters posted:

Good god I hope that's bullshit, I loving hate everything being "x-as-a-service" I just want to pay once and then own the drat thing. Not everything has to be a bloody MMO

i think as an option it is actually really good. like if you want to run a dnd game for friends for a few months, that makes a lot of sense. but if its a replacement yea that sucks rear end and i might end up moving off dndbeyond

Cool Dad
Jun 15, 2007

It is always Friday night, motherfuckers

It would really need something else included to be worth that much. Built in VTT with all the space you want for uploaded assets, maybe? As it is, they released the first book in 2022 on March 15, then May 16, then July 19, Then August 15. I'm not aware of anything else coming out anytime soon except a new starter set and Dragonlance in December, IIRC. A lot of releases are also going to be adventures you're not going to run or campaign settings you're not going to use, so I can't see any way to extract $30 dollars of value per month out of D&D beyond. Even if I consider it an additional $24 dollars, since I'm already paying $6 for the subscription, it's just not worth it.

homeless snail
Mar 14, 2007

You talking about this? Fakest poo poo I've ever seen but I'm glad that D&D directs allow for this kind of classic fake video game announcement photoshop

Azathoth
Apr 3, 2001

It would have been really cool starting out, since it was definitely annoying to tell my players that I didn't have a certain module they wanted something out of because I hadn't dropped a couple hundred on something I wasn't sure was gonna last a couple sessions. Now? Hard pass. They'd better give a bunch more exclusive tools or seriously up the pace at which they deliver content. Though admittedly it does make it quite a bit easier for me to abandon Fantasy Grounds if they ever decide on a sane price point or the company goes out of business or some poo poo.

Cool Dad
Jun 15, 2007

It is always Friday night, motherfuckers

homeless snail posted:

You talking about this? Fakest poo poo I've ever seen but I'm glad that D&D directs allow for this kind of classic fake video game announcement photoshop


Oh ok lol that's obviously fake

CountryMatters
Apr 8, 2009

IT KEEPS HAPPENING

homeless snail posted:

You talking about this? Fakest poo poo I've ever seen but I'm glad that D&D directs allow for this kind of classic fake video game announcement photoshop


oh drat this looks like a leak that says D&D beyond is going to be in smash bros

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.
They should probably do what Paizo does and release adventures monthly.

I think Radiant Citadel and Candlekeep shows that there are poo poo tons of writers who can do good stuff, they should pay people to do one of those a month or so

Yusin
Mar 4, 2021

homeless snail posted:

You talking about this? Fakest poo poo I've ever seen but I'm glad that D&D directs allow for this kind of classic fake video game announcement photoshop


Yeah very fake. Like the Homebrew Piracy thing is not even a thing. You can't publish stuff that is too similar to an official thing.

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER


Dexo posted:

They should probably do what Paizo does and release adventures monthly.

I think Radiant Citadel and Candlekeep shows that there are poo poo tons of writers who can do good stuff, they should pay people to do one of those a month or so

they should just release the mad lib adventure already so our Nouns can Verb the big bad Noun

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

champagne posting posted:

they should just release the mad lib adventure already so our Nouns can Verb the big bad Noun

What?

Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

CountryMatters posted:

oh drat this looks like a leak that says D&D beyond is going to be in smash bros

It's a double fake. This obvious fake was made by WotC to gauge the reaction of the community to the new price model, while being denyable.

neonchameleon
Nov 14, 2012



Narsham posted:

I'll say again: 4E was a good system, but if we used the conventions of 3E and 5E you'd have to say 4E went through multiple 3.5/5.5-level revisions over its lifetime. A major change to the game could be expected every 3-6 months as part of the monthly "errata" release. Multiclassing was more awkward than it needed to be, but the biggest problem was that their carefully balanced system didn't stay that way.

Going to disagree hard on this; 5e I'll accept (probably) but the 3.5 rework was huge and broke backwards compatibility hard. In 4e there was a ton of errata put you could pick up an entirely unerrata'd character from the original PHB and, if they weren't a broken build, the biggest thing you'd probably notice is that they didn't have a theme. 4e was one game throughout although very heavily rebalanced. I expect the 10th Edition rework to be similar.

The 3.0 to 3.5 change on the other hand was probably bigger than the 1e to 2e change. They did things such as change the skills, cutting several and renaming others. They changed the size and shape of a horse from 5ft by 10ft to a 10ft square. And they changed a fair few other underlying rules, notably how spell resistance and immunity worked and how damage resistance worked (and whether you needed the golf bag of weapons).

There is a huge difference however. 4e was released about a year early (they were given 24 months from start of development to launch and went back to the drawing board 10 months in) - and 3.5 was deliberately planned by corporate at the launch of 3.0 and intended to be not backwards compatible.

quote:

If it were simply a matter in 5E of empowering 10+ level characters, and not also addressing some inequities in the power ramping, you could just have a paragon or heroic path to select at L10 and L15 that would give you more abilities and that could be taken regardless of your base class or classes. Maybe you need all those levels in a single class and they provide some of the same utility as multiclassing (armored wizards, barbarians with magic powers). The system can easily sustain more powerful PCs, especially if there's a premium on utility options over DPS.

The thing is it's not just a matter of power ramping but of fixing that only some classes power ramp. The main casters ramp throughout; the fighter stops ramping at level 11 and the barbarian basically loses ground against a commoner after L6 as the higher level you get the more their rage damage resistance is bypassed.

Saxophone
Sep 19, 2006


15 bucks a month and I think I’d be in. 30? Nah I’ll keep buying physical books.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011
Neonchameleon 3.5 was explicitly designed and sold to be backwards compatible with 3.0 material. There are 3.0 books referenced in 3.5 rules (most commonly the Epic Level Handbook), WotC published voluminous compatibility and conversion materials, and there were even about 6 months of “3.25” supplements that adapted some forthcoming 3.5 changes before the core rulebooks came out.

A lot of 3.0 material was obsoleted but that’s more because the design philosophy significantly changed going to 3.5 and the things WotC didn’t update were not super interesting. But it’s difficult to find anything first party that was outright obsoleted (I think it was an issue if you bought a bunch of 3pp dreck but whatever to that.)

neonchameleon
Nov 14, 2012



Arivia posted:

Neonchameleon 3.5 was explicitly designed and sold to be backwards compatible with 3.0 material.

Except it isn't actually backwards compatible and I've listed a few areas that changed in significant ways to the point that you can't look at the character sheet and find what you were playing. It was designed as a shameless cash grab, planned even before the launch of 3.0 according to Monte Cook, and part of this was making things different enough that trying to mix was a really obnoxious process full of land mines. But of course they couldn't call it a new edition or the fanbase would have realised just how shameless a cash grab was so they pretended it was backwards compatible while ensuring enough changed that it wasn't.

quote:

WotC published voluminous compatibility and conversion materials, and there were even about 6 months of “3.25” supplements that adapted some forthcoming 3.5 changes before the core rulebooks came out.

You do not need conversion materials if it's actually backwards compatible. And the messy 3.25 supplements again show that it wasn't actually backwards compatible or you could use it without these.

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat
I think this really depends on what " backwards compatible" means. There's degrees of compatible. I'd like to read a source on "they planned this all along and lied".

Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy
Monte Cook is a direct competitor with wizards of the coast, but I'm sure he would never say anything to disparage their sales. That would be unprofessional.

piL
Sep 20, 2007
(__|\\\\)
Taco Defender
Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed was a cool 3.0 compatible Heartbreaker that got ravaged by coming out in the 3.25 window and it's terrible name.

piL fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Aug 18, 2022

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Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

neonchameleon posted:

Except it isn't actually backwards compatible and I've listed a few areas that changed in significant ways to the point that you can't look at the character sheet and find what you were playing. It was designed as a shameless cash grab, planned even before the launch of 3.0 according to Monte Cook, and part of this was making things different enough that trying to mix was a really obnoxious process full of land mines. But of course they couldn't call it a new edition or the fanbase would have realised just how shameless a cash grab was so they pretended it was backwards compatible while ensuring enough changed that it wasn't.

You do not need conversion materials if it's actually backwards compatible. And the messy 3.25 supplements again show that it wasn't actually backwards compatible or you could use it without these.

None of that broke compatibility. There's a simple table WotC provided for any skills changes. I just read over the voluminous explanation of spell resistance in the DMG in 3.0 and 3.5 and it's the exact same. If getting rid of non-square size enemies wrecked your game, you were doing something really weird - for everyone else it worked just fine with the clarified squeezing rules. You can absolutely look at a character sheet and find what you're playing - your skills all still work (the only ones that are completely gone being Animal Empathy, Intuit Direction, and Scry and none of those are absolute showstoppers in the middle of play where you can't look up how they work now), and some of your feats got better or worse. Unless your gameplan was abusing the gently caress out of haste, harm, or polymorph other prior to the 3.5 change you could take those books to your game that night and have 0 problems using them without any prep. I remember because I did that, and so did everyone else.

The best argument you maybe have is with the changes to damage reduction, but that still didn't break compatibility. Hell, you could have used the 3.0 damage reduction system still.

None of this, ever, prevented you from pulling up with a 3.0 book and using it in a 3.5 game. There were updates to fix the small issues so you didn't have to do it on the fly, and you could have bought books with printed updated versions of many things. But Wizards never, ever came down and said "no, your 3.0 books are bad and obsolete and you can't use them any more." I'm familiar with the discussion about 3.5 being planned from the beginning, and they were open with it to fix small mechanical issues and freshen the books up, like they'd done with 2e beforehand. I think Ryan Dancey might have argued at some point that 3.5 was nice to clear the glurge out of the 3.0 third-party products market, but that's it.

You are dying on a really weird hill from like 20 years ago, and the historical record doesn't bear out anything you're saying. Sorry, but 19 years on and two editions later, you're just wrong because people who still play 3.5 and Pathfinder happily mix this poo poo all together all the time. These changes aren't compatibility breaking, they aren't hard to do, you ideally just want to do them ahead of time to cut down on the work during play (because 3.5 is infamously heavy during play so something you can fix ahead of time is stellar.)

Arivia fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Aug 18, 2022

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