D&D NEXT: Infinite Posts of the Abyss

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Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

treeboy posted:

Kinda falls flat and pandering.

On the bright side, that's the theme of the packet.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2014 01:35

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 03:45

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

SirFozzie posted:

WOTC is in a dammed if you do, damned if you don't situation. Build on 4th? Continue to lose the core audience that hated 4th edition. Throwback? Risk alienating the newer fans.

This thinking, on the part of the designers (and others, as evidenced in the quoted post), is actually why some of us don't like 5e: it's been framed start to finish as being the game For D&D Players, but it's not really. Because it's for "the core audience" and not "the newer fans," nevermind that one would assume that "people already playing the game called Dungeons and Dragons" would be your "core audience," just, at all.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 15:51

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Fenarisk posted:

Have you literally played no other system? This is like when I first got into D&D in early high school and thought I could make awesome DBZ campaigns by using D&D as the base system and tweaking it, because no other system existed!

He's right, and you sound like you're projecting maybe a touch? Just because the 3e/d20 system debacle was a hilarious explosion of bad ideas and poorly-formatted shovelware doesn't mean you have to go digging through drivethru to find a game to play the genre you want, and if you have a decent enough framework you can service a Lot of concepts in pretty much any given system if the playstyle it encourages works for the playstyle you seek to emulate. "We get together in a group that goes and adventures at a place where there is combat! [sci fi|fantasy|action]" can be handled pretty well by 4e (or any other edition or game where you can reskin/rename/limit spells/powers, like Mutants and Masterminds), the *world system lends itself fairly well to a huge variety of genres (post-apocalyptic adventure | fantasy | detective pulp | high school monster drama) so long as your playstyle is narrative-back-and-forth-heavy. poo poo, you could probably even run a lethal-as-hell Fantasy loving Vietnam campaign of dungeon crawling with Dread.

Do not let the scribbly binders of a misspent youth color your opinion of the wide wide world of much better ideas other people have had.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 05:21

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Balancing core class options with "this one means you're evil" has an implicit "and you shouldn't play evil characters" to it, doesn't it? In which case, why would you put that in the PHB, instead of the DMG? (With things like Paladin-falling)

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 00:35

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

dwarf74 posted:

Yeah, but it's precise at least.

Has there ever been a D&D where "burrowing" wasn't a huge clusterfuck though?

In The Edition That Dare Not Speak Its Name, bulettes could make an "Earth Furrow" move action in combat where they made an attack to knock down anyone they passed under and created difficult terrain out of the area surrounding where they emerge. Which was something, at least.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 18:36

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Sir Kodiak posted:

But if all your fights are things you pre-planned and then improv'd into being relevant then you're not seriously engaging with the choices that the players are making.

Reskinning: Threat or menace? You decide, we judge.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2014 05:20

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Sir Kodiak posted:

Yeah, if D&D is the sort of game where fighters can completely obviate an encounter by asking permission to totally gently caress over a monster with a single roll - which I'd be fine with in a general sense - then there's no need for a big spell book. Just say that wizards can do "cool magic stuff" and work it out at the time based on what would be awesome and fun.

Similarly, I'm fine with monsters being defeated using purely-narrative mechanics, but then we don't need a monster manual with HP listings and nonsense like that. I'd already heard of orcs before picking up the monster manual. I'm capable of implementing them myself if the way characters defeat them is by making a d20 roll against a DC I make up representing the difficulty of kicking someone's head off.

And at that point you're basically playing Dungeon World, which hey, sure, great! But that game already exists and this one isn't it, unfortunately.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2014 20:49

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Ratpick posted:

One of my biggest disappointments about 5e is the fact that they talked about magic items being optional, yet a number of monsters in the game are still all but immune to attacks made with non-magical weapons. Like, it's really simple: get rid of the +1 to hit and damage junk, don't make your monsters immune to non-magical weapons, and bam, you've got a system where magic items are entirely optional (provided you've got the math right).

I kind of wonder how much of the glut of "Resistances: normal poor people poo poo" monsters is to do with making it look like the math's more squished than it is.

Like, a level 1 monster with 22 hp, and a special condition to take less/extra damage? Doesn't seem too bad in your special feely places where all D&D judgments in 2014 reside. A level 1 monster with 44 hp? Now, hold the phone, that's one tough snake.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2014 16:20

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Yorkshire Tea posted:

I agree and if you really want to play a fighter that must suck. But I was hoping to show why someone might enjoy 3.5 or 5 more than 4 despite issues of balance.

"If you like to play the classes on the good side of bad balance, you may enjoy this game" seems fairly straightforward, yes.

Kai Tave posted:

For what it's worth I'm pretty sure there's a 4E feat that just gives you telepathy at level 1, regardless of what class you are.

And one of the races just, has it (Kalashtar).

# ¿ Sep 23, 2014 18:27

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Talmonis posted:

Weirdly nothing in your second quote contradicts anything in your first quote?

# ¿ Oct 8, 2014 20:51

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Malcolm, would you say the phrase "roleplaying, not rollplaying" finds much use in your conversations about this hobby?

# ¿ Oct 14, 2014 06:23

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

friendlyfire posted:

I realize that chart is just a norm to base things around, but I really like the idea of the math being more "spikey" at certain levels than others, of this monster's super-dangerous attacks being balanced by its very poor defenses, of players really kicking rear end at 5th level because fireball rule until you start fighting encounters at 7th level. I dunno. Things being so mathematically predictable feels bland and un-magical to me. I realize this triggers goons' asperger's, but it's how I feel.

Hey rather than assume that your lovely tastes cause people to disagree due to some mental illness on their part (which, classy to evoke, and gently caress off with that poo poo), it's entirely possible that maybe people just like the interesting, magical parts of the game to come from stuff other than alternating between dirt farming and rocket tag.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2014 19:32

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

LightWarden posted:

It's kind of confusing because if you were going to design a pure evil species why would it have an extended infancy stage? Babies are weak and require tons of attention and nurturing- nature has so many other ways to reproduce that don't involve spending years cleaning up after poop.

Yeah, like Warhammer 40k orks are a fungus and reproduce through spores seeding caves, swamps, etc. which is a handy way of explaining why there's suddenly a full-grown army at your door, while also meaning you can track them down and burn their base of operations without having to engage in Bad Star Trek Episode philosophical exercises.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 16:40

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Ixjuvin posted:

Whatever one may think about Pathfinder, at least they had the good sense to release all the rules in one fat book.

It did help that pretty much all the rules were already written when they started, to be fair.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2014 15:57

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

mirthdefect posted:

SkimReddit shows you only the posts that the author has replied to - handy for AMAs like this or that one by the guy with two dicks.

Mike has answered all of ten questions thus far

Of the three rules questions asked/answered, his responses were:
1. Up to the DM
2. Depends on the group
3. Up to the DM's campaign

Better authentication than a picture in the OP, right there.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2014 21:41

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

moths posted:

Eh, I can understand having some reservations against digital when your flagship product's release gets scooped by free bootleg PDFs.

Considering that the 4e leak pdf was straight-up a production copy with marks and bleeds (meaning it's indicative of a problem on their end that could persist unless they went to a Palladium-style wax machine layout process), their reservations against digital releases have always been wrong-headed and more about cutting off their noses to spite their faces (and mistakenly believing that their incredibly niche product has more to lose than it does to gain by ceasing reliance on physical media) than anything grounded in reality.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 20:16

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

SwitchbladeKult posted:

A hard tanking mechanic is something that forces the enemy to engage the tank like a taunt or compulsion.

So the things that haven't existed in D&D already, outside of the one 3.5 additional class and pf feat?

# ¿ Dec 31, 2014 03:40

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Quantumfate posted:

This is why I say it's a philosophy thing. I'm not as on board with going "nah, your potions don't heal you when you drink them because you spent all your healing points today"

Except that even in 4e, that's not how they worked by the end of the system's lifespan (so, the point at which hypothetically the designers would've been working on 5e, were they either working or designing at all in that time). For example:

Potion of Cure Light Wounds posted:

Effect: You drink the potion. If you have a healing surge, you must spend one. Instead of the hit points you would normally regain, you regain 1d8 + 1 hit points. If you are bloodied and don�t have any healing surges, you still regain the hit points. If neither of these things is true, there is no effect.

At which point you still have Some healing, when you really need it (below 50% hp), but your system can still be built around damage assumptions that say roughly people have access to X HP per day, so a rough day would constitute monsters dealing some % of that damage on average. From that, you can also do things like outline intelligent progressions and benchmarks for monster damage, assuming that at a certain % to-hit they would do a certain average damage per fight to a target, then leave those guidelines in a book like MM or DMG and so people can build monsters that swing fairly across the board and can be used with one another (both created by DMs at the table and pre-existing in sourcebooks) without having to eyeball it, shrug, and fudge dice when stuff gets all fucky.

So you can kind of squint and see where designers doing all that sticky icky math work comes in --- nothing exists in a vacuum in a well-designed system, so even when you have theoretically-infinite things built in (what if you always stay below 50% hp and chug healing potions outside of combat? you can go forever!) there's still the "if you're out of surges and below 50% the whole time" caveats built in to try and shove those edge cases further out to the edge. The system isn't designed around shrugging and saying "well you could heal whenever whatever, so, sure these numbers work, I dunno I'm tired what's for lunch."

It's not even a philosophy, really, to claim that the contrary works just as well. Unless your philosophy is "I don't care that people didn't learn anything from the last 5 years of the product line they were hired to work on, and indeed, I am fine with smoothing over the rough edges from their non-work because hey, I already paid for it and got this far." In which case yes. It is a philosophy, I will concede this.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 08:07

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

AlphaDog posted:

I sure am glad they added 3 more saves and divided spells up nice and evenly between them
code:
				St	De	Co	In	Wi	Ch
Spells requiring this save	8	43	35	3	40	14
Proportion			5.59%	30.07%	24.48%	2.10%	27.97%	9.79%

And yet when you group them, like, hypothetically
St+Co (43)
De+In (46)
Wi+Ch (54)
an interesting thing occurs. Now if only someone would've thought to do that before...

# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 02:46

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

It saves space, but also takes up way more actual play time if you need to flip back to the PHB, as a DM, whenever you have to adjudicate the consequences of one word on a monster's stat block. Space sounds like a problem for their layout and editing folks, not the people playing the game later.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2015 17:43

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

OneThousandMonkeys posted:

Yeah I am going to individually rate every feat in the game on your survey. Jesus.

Added bonus, the "additional comments" for the entire survey is tucked at the bottom of that page so if you have any closing thoughts, you better be aware that that's the first and last place to put them.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2015 21:21

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

ActusRhesus posted:

Because "being magical" isn't part of the character I'm making.

Unfortunately, in 5e as it stands that means "making more choices than

Generic Octopus posted:

pick 1 of the 3 archetypes at level 3 and that's it.

"is not going to be part of the character you're making, either.

On the bright side, it'll be pretty hard to screw up if you just pick the one that looks like what you wanted to do anyway.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 22:34

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Die Laughing posted:

You loving spergs. He doesn't care about what you think is better than a rogue.

People also offered their build advice, which was "pick one of the following one options," dunno why you're getting so aggro about it bro

# ¿ Feb 3, 2015 00:06

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

ActusRhesus posted:

Perhaps because "Everyone is just loving magic, ok?" is boring stroytelling if you are in a less hack and slash and more RP based game?

Remind us why you were asking for mechanical build advice for an RP-based campaign, again?

# ¿ Feb 3, 2015 16:51

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

ActusRhesus posted:

Because it's possible for a game to incorporate both? Otherwise why have back stories at all?

The thing is, if your counter to everyone bringing up anything mechanical in here is "well we run an RP-heavy game so there are Methods for dealing with <insert thing that isn't exactly what you already had in mind when asking for the advice given multiple times already>" what's even the point of worrying about your mechanics?
Just pick whatever you were going to pick based on what you already decided on before you got here and cross your fingers that the DM has savvy NPCs coating the ground in a thin layer of flour at all times and relying on a buddy system so there's no chance that the wizard, warlock, bard, or whatever other caster in the party doesn't incidentally trample your niche with an invisibility or charm spell. And if so: great! We probably couldn't give you much more advice anyway, because you're clearly playing a (much better, more balanced) game that exists in an ecosystem foreign to anything described in the books here.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2015 17:03

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

ocrumsprug posted:

The best thing to come from the last three pages is the idea of a society so paranoid of magical disguise, that they have created an elaborate greeting ritual whereby you knock the other persons hat off in welcoming.

"Welcome to the castle...", *knocks fedora to the ground*, "Sir Whiteby."

Here's the thing: if you aren't constantly checking for disguises, you never know if that visiting noble and his retinue aren't actually a wizard with a skeleton army.

It's all connected. :tinfoil:

# ¿ Feb 3, 2015 19:00

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Gerdalti posted:

What I really wonder is why so many people who dislike 5e in so many ways still hang out and post in the 5e thread as much as they do. I mean I get that many of you/them wanted to like the system, but it didn't turn out great. Move on though. Go post in a thread about a system you enjoy. Negative energy and hippie poo poo etc.

Counterpoint: +-only threads are for shills and rpg.net.

Besides, without that "negativity" this thread would never get around to coming up with things like Skeleton King campaign idea, magical disguise conspiracy setting, and actually examining the math for even a second to try to fix it (those house rules people posted in the first few pages of the happy place advice thread didn't come out of nowhere, after all).

# ¿ Feb 17, 2015 17:10

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Kitchner posted:

But multiple posters have actually said that it is basically a big negative circle jerk in the thread, which most people are guessing why an it was felt an entirely new thread was needed for people who just want answers to their questions without telling them to play other game systems, to only play casters, or how great other editions of the game were.

Regardless of what some people think here, multiple people have said that and quite a few people have posted once or twice with questions and then not bothered again. You can sit there and say it's their fault or realise that a multiple people have said the thread seems overwhelmingly negative. Up to you.

So is the irony of you relentlessly harping on how bad you feel this thread is compared to others that do similar things just...lost on you completely, or are we fully committed to going meta on this bad boy?

# ¿ Feb 17, 2015 19:19

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

I used to have more people in gaming groups like the ones Purple's describing, but I feel like that was a high school "we're bored so I guess we're doing this, now?" kinda thing. Meanwhile the people I game with nowadays, since we're all Olds with precious little free time, double the gently caress down on the stuff we ARE playing.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2015 18:38

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Red Hood posted:

Feel like I'm being criticized for sharing my story, my bad fellow goons.

I think you're being criticized because your story was "I ended one encounter with a spell and the other person with spellcasting took a fat chunk out of another, the people who did nothing but die complained, what entitled babies am I right?"

# ¿ Mar 13, 2015 04:25

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Generic Octopus posted:

'cause you know, when I think of something imbalanced in D&D, the first thing I think of is skill proficiencies/bonuses. And the Bard gets the same Expertise feature in addition to Bardic Inspiration, so how is the Bard not a problem for them and the playtesters?

Because a Mearls-and-co table would be too busy making veiled homophobic remarks to notice how strong a bard is in play.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2015 23:58

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

PurpleXVI posted:

This one is new to me. Care to elaborate?

He and his just seem like the type to titter a little behind their DM screens and feign a lisp when someone says they want to play a bard, is all.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2015 01:08

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

FRINGE posted:

Judging people sure is terrible!

Thank you for contributing to this thread again

# ¿ Apr 7, 2015 02:16

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 03:45

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

FRINGE posted:

Hey you should make up some lies about people you dont like and then post them as "content"! Thats pretty great all-around!

Why are you getting so shirty at me about saying a mean thing about someone who totally-jokingly-guys had stat penalties for women as a proposed edition feature? I'm sorry I kicked your dog?

# ¿ Apr 7, 2015 02:23

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