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There's a literal side panel on page 5 about how wonderful magic and magic users are
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Jul 4, 2014 00:51
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I dunno, I haven't seen many people mention it tbh. The big thing I see in ENWorld is both "Wow, wizards and clerics are so cool!" and "It feels like D&D!" So, hey, mission accomplished for Next.
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Jul 4, 2014 01:40
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Here let me save you some trouble with the twitter. @Anyone : The rules about <thing> are muddled, unclear, or otherwise hard to decipher. @mikemearls : DM call, feature not a bug.
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Jul 6, 2014 05:28
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We don't balance the game for magic items and assume you'll never need them! *prints monsters that require magic items to kill*
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Jul 8, 2014 04:50
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The problem with the Medusa - with ALL SoDs - is that they're treated as combat mechanics and not environmental dangers. Any monster that can insta-kill you should be something built up to, not something that just wanders up and whoops you're dead. Fighting the Medusa is something that should start before you even enter her lair. Also this idea of early D&D being a "wild west of anti-math" is pure revisionism. As has been stated numerous times OD&D and a fair amount of AD&D was rigorously playtested more then any other ttg has been. All of AD&D and Basic's math lines is perfectly to the d20. The problem is that, starting in mid-late 2e, "playtesting" because synonymous with "I dunno play it a few times with your buds," whereas with AD&D/OD&D it was "play this poo poo literally every day with the biggest group of cheating rear end in a top hat wargamers you can find." This idea of "playtesting doesn't REALLY matter" got engrained in 3e and cemented in with Pathfinder. But then hey 3.x fans re-writing the past whodathunk.
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Jul 10, 2014 00:09
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Hit Dice are the results of finding the solution to a problem, and then realizing your core audience doesn't want that problem to go away, but desperately wanting to shove it in anyways. Basically the grog crowd would never agree to ~*~magic~*~ healing being restricted in any way (it was one of the complaints about 4e's healing surges), so they couldn't use it for that. And up until very recently there was no sort of "martial healing" and frankly never will be because Mearls adamantly hates the Warlord. So it can't be used for there. But by god we are crowbaring this idea into the mechanics somehow!
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Jul 10, 2014 19:27
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Healing surges are a pacing mechanism that you can play with but never really "solve."
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Jul 11, 2014 02:36
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From what's been seen of the monsters so far, yeah, there's no actual "engineering" going on, just making up numbers for everything.
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Jul 13, 2014 18:41
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The problem with Next has been the unrelenting laziness that's pretty extreme even for this hobby. Every response Mearls makes when asked why a feature is missing or why the math doesn't work as been "Well that's for the DM to change!" Any chance and any opportunity to pass the buck is taken. It's become more and more increasingly clear that the bare minimum of work when into this game as more news comes out and more questions are asked. The whole thing has that "homework done on the bus" taste. Beyond that, Next has nothing new in it. Nothing in Next is interesting. Even it's more hardcore proponents brag about it being "familiar" more then anything else. It's biggest tagline has been "everyone's SECOND favorite D&D." It's all just sad rehashes of past editions desperately churned out by old people desperate to not feel old.
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Jul 15, 2014 00:35
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Cleric was MVP of the playthrough here in the PBP forums, so the C of CoDZilla seems well in place.
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Jul 15, 2014 14:18
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treeboy posted:Defender was generally one of my favorite roles in 4e though it's been a year or more since I've had a chance to actually play. Also I'm not super sure of what you're arguing. Are you suggesting that Opportunity Attacks aren't worth it, or that this would be unbalancing? That's they're super common or uncommon? Because that would depend a lot on the DM's encounter setup. They're saying that 5e allows only one OA per round, not per turn. It is literally impossible to be sticky in 5e.
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Jul 18, 2014 12:52
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Comstar posted:I haven't played a Human thief in a long long time, and not having night vision to see in the dungeon was a rude awakening. The 1st encounter in the 1st cave hits you over the head with it. What's the way around that problem, where most monsters and dungeon dwelling humanoids can see in the dark? Apart from asking the wizard to do it It was one of the more hilarious "features" of 3.x - rogues can't attack someone in a dark alley, because they're just as blinded. Pathfinder later added a feat or something, which meant you still couldn't do it unless you took a specific choice for it that locked you out of other options.
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Jul 21, 2014 00:28
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The issue with changing the Cult of the Dragon or whatever is that the whole point of 5e is taking things back to how they were. "Except this one thing." Which to be fair is ALSO the most FR thing.
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Jul 21, 2014 06:03
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Ferrinus posted:I would say that 5e is for people who liked 3e but didn't invest themselves into it heavily or got too tired of their giant houserule matrices to keep at them. "3e with numerically stronger fighters and numerically weaker spellcasters" appeals to some people. 5e is also for edition warriors who still place meaning in the name "D&D." 5e's shredding of nearly all 4e-isms appeals to them rather strongly. That's also the biggest group of pro-5e fans in ENWorld - people who thought 4e was a grand betrayal that killed D&D and proved WotC fired them forever, but were too obsessed with the name "D&D" to comfortably move on to even Pathfinder. The second biggest group would be AD&D -> 3e fans. Fans that never actually liked 3e mechanically but went with it because WotC revived D&D after TSR nearly killed it, and absolutely want "a simpler 3e with more AD&D inside." That's probably the group Mearls intended the game to be for.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:29
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zachol posted:I guess I'm having trouble understanding what it is about 3e that kind of person actually likes that wouldn't be better served by, say, 13th Age. The biggest group of ACTUAL 3e fans - people who like the engine, not the bullshit "culture" wars that popped up around it - would be the GitP and minmax forums crowds. They like 3e BECAUSE it's so easily broken. They're tinkerers. They kind who buy lovely torn apart cars explicitly to rebuild them or experiment with them. If you love super crunchy mechanics and weird obtuse combos 3e is easily the best edition of D&D for you.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:32
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Countblanc posted:Is the unspoken assumption here that no one likes 4e's heavily cooperative, meaty combat, or that 4e isn't actually D&D? Because none of those games use 4e combat, and I remember being particularly disappointed when people here kept saying 13th Age was "4e but better!" when it didn't have the single defining characteristic of the edition well emulated. I think it's more assumed that people here have generally played 4e, and those who like 4e are just gonna keep playing that, so game suggestions are for people who didn't like enough things about 4e.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:51
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Hour long rests are there to have "short rest mechanics" for 4e players, while effectively neutering because gently caress 4e players.
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Jul 23, 2014 07:06
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It's not even as if this is a "natural language" issue. If a short rest was listed as "any length of stress-free time to bind your wounds and catch your breath" it'd be entirely in "natural language" and still wouldn't last a goddamn hour. The problem is Mearls has stated gently caress 4e and gently caress fighters.
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Jul 23, 2014 08:33
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treeboy posted:i was gonna say murphy but she's *too* normal. She really can't take a hit like the other characters can and is actually probably more inline with where D&D martial characters in reality are: exceptional normal humans So she's a fighter? 
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Jul 24, 2014 00:40
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Every class in TF2 plays the same, it's the same moving around with a small list of weapons for each one. Edit: Non-sarcastic answer, it's the latter. I'll even give an example! Take the Fighter and the Swordmage. Now, both classes not only have the same general mechanics of AEDU, they're even the same type of character (defender). But how do the actually play? The fighter wants to be in your face, and once she's in your face, you will never get rid of her. Try to move around her? That's a beatin'. Try to attack her friends? That's a beatin'. Try to charge through her? That's a beatin', AND you fail your charge. And every single one of those beatin's end with you knocked off your rear end and thrown away for your troubles. The swordmage wants to be nowhere near you. He isn't some buff burly warrior with great armor who's punching you for daring to exist in their vicinity, he's some pasty-rear end nerd. So the swordmage casts down an arcane enchantment on you to weaken your blows and then sets about using that same arcane trickery to mess up anyone trying to hurt his besties. You thought you were stabbing his cleric friend, but then you got teleported and stabbed that other orc instead. Mechanically speaking, the fighter wants to be the center of attention because she's a whirlwind of death and denial. The swordmage is the opposite - he wants to lurk outside on the edges, swooping in to punish enemies who attack his buddies, or making them swoop around instead. That's not even going into the multitude of different fighter types, to boot! ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Jul 24, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 10:32
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We found classes built and balanced around encounter powers used their encounter powers every encounter. So stopped them from doing that.
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Jul 24, 2014 11:18
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Like, the most charitable response is "Players really love and appreciate the "encounter" powers when DMs allow players to have them!" Funny how he doesn't talk about pushing groups so hard they don't regain their daily powers...
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Jul 24, 2014 18:00
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P.d0t posted:yeah it's sorta weird how magic classes get better at magic as they level, because it's The Thing They Do, whereas being martial means getting better at martialling via Finding Magic Items (if the DM feels like it). To be fair, originally it was "gets better at casting spells it doesn't have" along with "gets better at swinging a sword it may not get" until 3e allowed wizards to both buy spells and gain them automatically as they leveled up. Magic spells were meant to be treasure just as much as magic swords were. And then 3e changed a bunch of poo poo and everyone just sorta accepted it as the norm.
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Jul 26, 2014 14:50
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The main thing with the Eldritch Knight is that it has no option to attack AND spellcast together. It's literally just a fighter/mage multiclass as one class. It's not like there aren't examples of how to do this better. Ok fine, ignore the Swordmage because Mearls hates 4e, but now you're also ignoring Paizo's magus and 3.5's duskblade and psionic warrior. I see a lot of people talking about how 5e is better then 3.x. Know what? No it isn't. Because 3.x learned in it's 8 year period. 3.x created Tome of Battle and the factotum, it gave 3.x style psionics and the warlock/dragon shaman, the beguiler and dread necromancer, the duskblade and spellthief. 5e isn't just desperately trying to forget 4e - it's trying to forget most of 3.x, too. 3e core was more unbalanced then 5e core, but 3e core was made 14 motherfucking years ago. What's 5e's excuse? 5e is a 2001 game made in 2014.
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Jul 28, 2014 16:42
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Guitar was always a part of the picture; they've shown that one before. Personally I'm wondering if they allowed bards to give more then like 5 actions a +1d8 every day.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:43
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Generic Octopus posted:None of these previews actually say anything about the mechanics of these classes. Or is the fluff supposed to make me rush to the store on release day? Gort posted:Pretty much no one will give a poo poo about mechanics Yeah, 5e isn't selling on it's mechanics. If you want to ask about the actual math, you're not the intended audience. Like there's literally an ENWorld thread dedicated to "stop talking about math!" DalaranJ posted:I wonder what the design rationale behind putting Basic's Weapon Mastery and 4th's Warlord into the same subclass was? I'm sure no one will ever tell us. Mearls hates the warlord. This gets forgotten. But every time he's talked about the warlord, it's been with COMPLETE scorn. It's also the only core class not to get an e-version once Mearls took the helm. Mearls hates the warlord.
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Jul 31, 2014 05:15
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The thing with this hobby is that, outside of like one or two people, nobody who has a chance to leave it refuses it. Anyone who can escapes this industry and never looks back.
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Jul 31, 2014 14:23
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treeboy posted:cross posting from the Art thread. I found the original piece of art that was used for the new PHB first page while helping one of my players find an avatar for our game. They trimmed it down significantly, I liked it to begin with, but the whole piece is even better. 5e's art is legitimately it's best feature. Maybe it's one good one. LFK posted:By TTRPG standards 4e was a great success, but it wasn't the success that Hasbro wanted or paid for, so Hasbro basically said "whatever, just don't kill the brand, we're not giving you MLP, Transformers, or MTG money until you can deliver MLP, Transformers, or MTG sales." FWIW there's been hints that 4e also fell victim to some very heavy office politicking that oh so coincidentally seems to follow Mearls in his ascension from minor dev to gaining complete control of D&D both as a brand and it's development. 4e sold gangbusters right until Heinsoo was let go and Mearls was put in charge, only for Mearls to make the weird muddled mess that was Essentials. And yet that ended with him getting even more control over D&D.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:18
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zachol posted:One thing I didn't like about 4e was actually the relative simplicity of building a character in terms of selecting powers. There weren't power chains. The thing is, there were. They were just built into synergies rather then explicitly enforced. Look at some of the power combos people put together; I've seen monks use powers that are normally not good at all but have such amazing combo potential with something else that they become a thousand times better.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:25
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Kai Tave posted:This isn't really a problem that's unique to 4E as far as RPGs, or even games in general, go. Another thing that most charoppers in 4e universally agree on is that, for many classes, if all you do is randomly pick gold and light blue powers, you still aren't going to be fully optimized. 4e is much like 3e in that it's all about synergy; the difference is that 3e was all about combining together everything to one type of "trick" (trip monkeys, maximum save DC, "Hood," etc) whereas 4e is about setting up combos, at least so long as you stay out of Essentials, which was Mearls desperately trying to crowbar 3e back in. If you look at a lot of their own sample characters, you'll see they occasionally eschew "light blue" choices because they don't fit their overall design. An ok and so-so power can combine to become something far greater then two good powers. My favorite example of this is the barbarian|swordmage, who makes for a decidedly powerful striker, but who more or less throws away all swordmage advice to do so. The whole is greater then the sum of its parts.
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Aug 1, 2014 04:16
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That's literally any Cunning Sneak rogue with a crossbow though.
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Aug 1, 2014 06:10
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zachol posted:Well that's what I started with, yeah. That's still not that hard, all you need with cunning sneak is concealment. Like this is a bad examplr because it literally disproves your own point. "Is literally always impossible to see" is far more complex then just "sniper."
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Aug 1, 2014 07:56
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cbirdsong posted:"really happy they're returning power to the GM" Anyone who thinks this has an actual issue. "I can't be a GM unless the game EXPLICITLY STATES that I'm more important then the players!" "I can't make GM decisions unless the game FORCES me to!" Like it's one of those two, and neither one is good.
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Aug 2, 2014 16:37
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eth0.n posted:The vast majority of modern roleplaying is by people who have never played a tabletop RPG, and have absolutely no interest in doing so. A Catastrophe posted:Most of the time, Freeform collapses under it's own weight for want of system. There's no way to reach a collaborative resolution in a freeform space, and contrary to what those strange second cousins of railroading GMs will tell you, acting out a bunch of prescipted stuff isn't what makes roleplaying special. Yeah, the internet is absolutely filled to the brim with Harry Potter or Nightvale or Doggon RonPaul roleplaying, and so on, and so forth. The thing is, this is absolutely unconnected to D&D. While I think there IS a fairly big untapped market on how to sell these people a product, you will never, ever find it in D&D, or in any sort of "Traditional roleplaying" system, and I can point at one reason why: the DM. Freeform roleplaying does not need a DM and often doesn't want one. The harder D&D clings to the DM, the farther away it falls from this market. What's needed is a a) simple, b) EXTREMELY lightweight, c) internet/tumblr/livejournal/facebook friendly conflict resolution system. That d) uses as little math as humanly possible. That means no minmaxing. Hell, no character creation period. There is no character creation involving numbers, it's all involving fiction. This is a place where I think "storygames" could expand into, but D&D? Never. MalcolmSheppard posted:You shouldn't take Mearls' communications in his professional capacity as a reflection of what he's really, truly into. I would say that 4e is far more indicative of his interests as a designer. For example, healing surges in 4e can be traced back to his WotC interview where he said he wanted to emulate the concept of Halo's regenerating shields in D&D. If you know him personally then maybe you have experience with the rest of us do not, but I think his statements and design philosophies for both Essentials and 5e speak more then enough in of themselves. The fact is, he was not the lead dev for 4e's core system, even though everyone now desperately tries to claim such - that was Heinsoo. And since 5e was announced, Mearls has taken every opportunity he could to attack the system and put down both it and it's fans. Like, when asked what 4e fans could get from 5e, his official line was "You can always keep playing your old game." That's a) hilariously terrible marketing the likes of which I've never seen before, and b) not a very good sign that 5e is made by a dude who just LOVES 4e.
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Aug 3, 2014 07:44
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Maxwell Lord posted:The depressing thing is when 4e came out, you had the OSR already, you had Paizo doing their thing, I was happy to think for years "great, everyone gets the kind of game they want, some people innovate and some do the traditional thing." But nooooo, that wasn't enough, the traditionalists had to win. The "Edition Wars" was never about having a game you wanted to play. It was always about the "heart and soul" of D&D.
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Aug 3, 2014 19:16
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ObMeiste posted:Like as good as MTG does as a table-top game, it does not nearly have the same cultural gravitas as D&D does D&D has absolutely no cultural gravitas at all. The only people outside of the hobby who know of it, know it as a stupid nerd joke.
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Aug 4, 2014 04:54
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Lightning Lord posted:The idea that it is just a joke to everyone who doesn't play it is an outdated stereotype. Sure, it absolutely still exists. But a lot of other people think of it neutrally as some sort of boardgame that they don't really understand. Or an old cartoon. Or the basis of some video games. It really is though. D&D never became the nostalgic touchstone that Transformers or comic books did. It was always a dumb nerd game for nerds. Could D&D improve it's image? Hypothetically sure. Iron Man was like B-list at best before Robert Downey Jr made one of the most miraculous comebacks in film history, so it can be done. But right now if you talk about D&D, people born post-80's will know it as that super nerdy thing. And those born pre-80's probably see it STILL as that one super nerdy thing, also wasn't there some Satan thing? Like you have to realize that even the very worst video game nerds still use "hah hah loving Dungeons and Dragons" to mock people. It's really not seen neutrally as some sorta boardgame and certainly not seen as the basis of some video games, even though it is. It's the lowest spot on the nerd totem pole.
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Aug 4, 2014 05:12
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ritorix posted:D&D isn't the lowest spot on the nerd totem pole. For most people outside of D&D those are the same thing.
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Aug 4, 2014 05:35
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The rogue on the bright side isn't too bad. Thief eventually lets you steal literally anything, physical or non, shadow walk has a lot of non-combat utility if you're creative with it, and swashbuckle basically mimics the spell function of "I don't roll, this just happens."
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Aug 4, 2014 09:36
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 22:11 |
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D&D has ALWAYS been a miniatures game that people sorta glossed over and made shittier by refusing to use them. 5e carries on the proud tradition of poo poo mechanics while desperately jacking off onto your AD&D books. Like if you made a phantom 4e where it went the OPPOSITE route and instead embraced the whole "THEATER OF THE MIIIIND" thing instead of going for more hard process battlemaps and poo poo, that'd be pretty cool, but, and this is the kicker, it'd be just as different from D&D as 4e was, if not more so.
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Aug 4, 2014 19:23
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